Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1)

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  “Perhaps you should give me an example, then.” He smiled back at her warmly. “And go first.”

  “Not much to say, really.” Ember shrugged and looked off into the woods. It was dark. But it was always dark in Under. She wondered idly what time it was, and then remembered she had a way to check. She pulled the pocket watch that Maverick had gifted her out of her bag and smiled down at it. She ran her thumb along the edge of the brass and flicked it open. It was noon. Or midnight.

  Guess it didn’t help to have a clock.

  Damn it.

  “I don’t believe that for a moment.” Lyon nudged his horse closer to hers. “You are a warrior from a world consumed by a plague.”

  “I can tell you about Gioll. I can tell you about the world that is now dead.” She fished a necklace out from under her shirt. It was the sigil of the Grandfather. Honestly, she wasn’t sure why she still wore it. It was futile.

  But that was who she was, wasn’t it?

  Futile.

  Her heart sank. “In my world, certain infants are chosen to become hunters—to join a hopeless cause. Since before I knew my own name, that was my destiny. I prayed to gods who were likely already gone. I fought in a war that was already lost. I tended to the living who were already as good as dead.”

  Lyon was silent for a long time. “I do not see in you a woman who has given up. I have heard you pray for the fallen ones. I saw you fight them in the street. That is not a woman who has surrendered.”

  “I have failed enough in my life. I will not lie down and die, even if it’s inevitable. That isn’t who I am.”

  “How have you failed, Miss Ember?”

  She sighed heavily. “Hunters travel in pairs. A slahundur and a graedari. Sword and shield. We were to keep each other alive at all costs. I…failed in my duty. I’m alone because I let my slahundur, Ash, die.”

  “I see…” Lyon sighed heavily. “I am sorry for all you have suffered. That you find the strength to continue alone speaks volumes about the value of your character.”

  Ember went silent, not sure what to say to that. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to trust him, but it went against everything she had ever been taught in her life.

  The pause in the conversation didn’t last long. And when it shattered, it was neither of them who had done it. It was a familiar noise. Something Ember had heard too many times in her life—a scream for help.

  Picking up the reins, she kicked Cricket in the sides. “Let’s go.”

  The insect-horse didn’t need any more encouragement than that. With a push of powerful legs, he was off at a full run, heading toward the noise. She heard the pounding of hooves beside her, and she knew Lyon was close behind.

  It wasn’t long before they found the source of the sound. Someone was pinned to the ground, a pair of drengil looming over them. She tugged on Cricket’s reins to try to get him to stop.

  The key word being try.

  “Hey! Hey, Cricket, stop!”

  With an angry snort, the horse lowered his head and charged into one of the drengil like a bull, using his large horns to send the corpse to the ground. Cricket reared, stomping down on the ribcage of the drengil with a sickening crunch of bone.

  Ember quickly jumped from his back between blows, not wanting to fall off. And besides, there was still a second corpse to deal with. It was ignoring them—it had a tasty, screaming, fresh kill to focus on. She grabbed the corpse and yanked it up and away. It hissed at her, baring yellowed and broken teeth.

  And they were stained with fresh, bright red blood.

  Damn.

  Lyon appeared standing next to her, like a blaze of white light in the darkness. He grabbed the drengil by the skull in one of his golden claws and squeezed. The corpse’s skull splintered like an overripe fruit.

  The King of Blood dropped the limp thing to the ground and flicked his hand to clean some of the dripping gore from the golden tips of his armor.

  “I wish I had you around for the past few years.” Ember shook her head. “You’re better at this than I am.”

  “Taking pride over one’s skill at killing is a dubious trophy.” He glanced at Cricket, who was still stomping away at the drengil. The corpse was mangled, but still attempting to crawl toward the bleeding man on the ground. “Pleasure at killing even more so…”

  “Hey, horsie.” She laughed. “Go for the head.”

  Cricket paused, then brought his hoof down on the skull of the corpse, shattering it easily under the weight. The drengil finally ceased clawing at the dirt with bony fingers.

  It was only then that the man on the ground stopped his panicked whimpers. He was leaning up against a tree by the side of the road. She recognized him instantly as one of her own. The tattered, pieced-together clothing was only one indication. The lack of colored ink or a mask on his face was the other.

  That meant the bites on his leg—the missing bits of flesh—were serious. She swore under her breath as she walked up to him and knelt, fishing through her bag for her supplies.

  “Oh, thank the Grandfather,” the man said through an exhale. He was grabbing his leg above the knee, needing to hold on to the source of his pain. “A graedari.”

  She smiled faintly at him as she began cleaning some of the blood away from the exposed skin of his leg. “I’ll do all that I can.” The wounds were bad…very bad. It wasn’t just the loss of blood she was worried about. She was searching for the signs of an even bigger threat to the man’s life.

  And there it was.

  The yellow-black lines that traced away from the wounds up the man’s leg in a spiderweb pattern of veins.

  Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

  The poison was already working quickly. She looked up at Lyon. “I need a knife.”

  He flicked his wrist, summoning a blade to his hand. He passed it to her. It was a beautiful thing with a pure white handle. It was balanced perfectly. The blade shone in the moonlight, far from the rusted and dinged knife she had carried with her for so long. “It is yours to keep.”

  “You can just…summon weapons?”

  “Of course.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Would have been nice to know that, blood-drinker.”

  Lyon chuckled. “It is easy to forget when it is so common to the rest of us.”

  “Sure. Whatever. Summoning knives is so normal.” She placed the knife against the palm of her hand and slit the skin. “Thank you, though. I don’t like being unarmed.”

  “What are you doing?” Lyon murmured. “Is their bite not toxic to—”

  “It’s fine.” She put her bloody palm against the bite in the man’s leg.

  “I fail to see how—”

  “I’ll explain later.” She kept her focus on the veins in the man’s leg. She watched as the yellow-black lines began to fade…but only some of them. And not fast enough. Damn it! Studiously, she kept the dismay off her face. Better that the man stayed calm.

  But the man was watching the same thing she was, and he was under no such opinion. She watched the panic begin to build in his eyes. “I—it’s not that bad. Right? Just—just keep trying.”

  There was no helping the inevitable. She watched the veins of poison spread faster than her own blood could wipe them away. There was no more that she could do. “Would you prefer I wait for you to die, or do you want it to happen now?” She pulled her hand from the man’s leg and began to wrap it with a bandage from her bag.

  The man wailed and began to cry. “Please, please, no…”

  “Miss Ember?”

  She gestured, telling Lyon to wait, before taking the man’s hand in hers and holding it. “May the Grandfather find and keep you in the land of the dead.”

  “This isn’t my fault,” the man argued. As if she were death itself and could be convinced to leave him alone. “I’ve been so careful. And then—and then the world fell—and I don’t know where I am, and—”

  “It’s all right. I understand.” She tried to soothe him. She kne
w, like everything else she did, it was doomed to failure. But it was her duty, all the same. “This isn’t your fault, you’re right. But I can’t stop the poison. You know what comes next.”

  The man wiped his nose with his sleeve. “I don’t—I don’t want to die.”

  Lyon took a small step forward. “Miss Ember…?”

  “The bites were too deep. The poison has already made its way to his heart. It’ll infest his brain soon. He’ll be dead in fifteen, twenty minutes. An hour, tops. And when he dies, he’ll get back up from the ground and become one of the creatures that are overtaking your world.” She stared down at the bandage on her hand, watching the red seep through the cloth. “I will put my blade through his brain and ensure that it doesn’t happen.” She kept her voice even, trying not to reveal how badly she wanted to scream.

  “I don’t want—I don’t want to die, please,” the man whimpered.

  “I am sorry I failed you, brother…forgive me.” She shut her eyes.

  She braced herself to listen to him argue about how they could save him. But instead, there was a crunch from beside her. She turned to see Lyon standing over the body, having twisted the man’s head around to the side, snapping his neck. He crushed the man’s skull in the same fashion that he did the drengil lying dead in the dirt a few feet away.

  Now they were all one and the same. Rotting meat.

  Gesturing a gold claw in a strange pattern over the corpse, Lyon whispered something to the man’s body. She couldn’t quite catch what it was, but she knew the intent. A prayer. He is their equivalent of a priest.

  She said her own quiet prayer that the man might find his rest, along with those who had mindlessly been responsible for his death.

  Lyon stood, his golden armor disappearing from his arms, shimmering into nothingness like it was never there. She would love to marvel over the display of magic—it really was incredible—but it was outweighed by her need to get the fuck away from what had just happened.

  Walking to Cricket, she patted the neck of the purple insect-horse. “Good job with the drengil. I like having a killer horse around, I think.”

  The horse puffed and nudged her shoulder with his nose.

  Smiling, she plucked a piece of ripped fabric from his horn. It must have come from the drengil he had rammed into. Even their horses were deadly. Suddenly, with no small amount of dread, she pondered what an insect-horse in a world of monsters actually ate.

  He seemed a little too practiced at killing.

  “Miss Ember?” Lyon interrupted. “What…may I ask, just happened?”

  “We’ll talk while we ride.” She climbed up onto Cricket’s back. “The smell of blood might attract more of them.”

  Lyon obeyed without comment, and they rode in silence for a few moments.

  “Go on.” Ember sighed. “Go ahead and ask. I’ve pestered you with enough questions.”

  “What did I just witness?”

  “You mean when I failed in trying to save him?” She gave up trying to hide her bitterness.

  Lyon rode up closer to her. “Your blood is the cure for the disease.”

  “Yeah.” She shut her eyes. “If I get there early enough, I can stop the corruption of someone’s body by the poison.”

  “Why have you not mentioned this earlier?”

  “It isn’t really important since your kind can’t be poisoned without your face marks—”

  “Soulmarks.”

  “—being removed first.” She smirked at his patient correction. He must be used to it. If Under only took people from other worlds, they must be accustomed to explaining things to the newcomers.

  “How are you able to do this?”

  She pointed at her black and white split hair. “This isn’t exactly natural, is it?”

  “I did not know what to think, as you are from another world. Inhuman colorings are not so uncommon here in Under. Someday soon, you’ll meet my wife. Then you’ll understand.”

  “That’s fair.” She found herself smiling faintly at the idea of meeting Lyon’s wife. She had no idea what to expect. “Well…hunters are inoculated against the disease. I cannot become a drengil, even after death. Moreover, my blood works as a sort of…antivirus if given to the ill early enough in the process. It became harder and harder for our scientists to create the serum as time went on, but it was still possible. It has odd effects. At least only my hair changed colors.” She wrinkled her nose. “Some hunters were not so lucky—skin discoloration, blindness, hearing loss, loss of taste, and so on.”

  “Why simply the hunters? Why not cure your world?”

  “The chance of surviving the serum is less than half. Someone is more likely to become one of the monsters than to become immune to it. Also…” She paused. It was personal, but what was the harm in saying it? “Also, in all cases, we are rendered sterile. If we were to cure the world with the serum, we would also ensure our own downfall. My world—my home—was as good as dead long before I came into it.”

  “I see…” The look on his face was one of pure sympathy and sadness. She wondered if that was why he always looked so forlorn. If he was constantly shouldering the weight of the pain of those around him. He reached out and placed his hand on her arm. “Perhaps this place could be your home.”

  “If I survive.” But she smiled at him all the same. “A mortal in a world of hungry immortals.”

  He winced. “Yes, well. Forgive me. I am frequently told I am terrible at platitudes.”

  She chuckled. “No, thank you. I appreciate it. And from what I’ve seen of your world, it’s beautiful. Eerie, terrifying, but beautiful.” She gestured to the forest. “Too bad our disease has come to ruin your world as well.”

  “We will recover. We will deal with this catastrophe, and we will move on. It will not be the first time Under has come back from the brink of extinction. I myself have witnessed Armageddon at least twice. This will be my third.” He smirked at her.

  “You have me beat! And I thought witnessing the end of the world twice was impressive.” She laughed. “You have my life story. Now tell me yours. Someone who has survived two apocalypses to greet a third must have something interesting to say.”

  “I suppose. I do not much speak about myself. It is not in my nature. But I will do what I can to try. I apologize, it might be quite long. My wife quite frequently reminds me that I am incapable of summarizing anything.”

  “I love stories. The longer, the better. And besides, it seems like we have some time to kill.” She cast him another warm smile.

  “Indeed, we do.” He smiled back at her.

  Hope once more swelled in her heart. Hope that this world might survive the destruction her world had brought to it. Hope that the drengil might be defeated by these powerful creatures that called Under home.

  Hope that she might find survival.

  And worse yet, hope that she might find something more than survival.

  Because in the stoic, tall, inhuman, dangerous creature riding the insect-horse beside her in the dark nightmare forest filled with monsters the likes of which she could never have possibly imagined…

  She might have found a friend.

  17

  “And that is it. As much as I can remember.”

  Lyon despised talking about himself. He despised talking in general. It seemed that no matter how hard he tried to avoid either, he inevitably found himself suffering through both. And although he had managed to traverse the obstacles this time without making a fool of himself, he still felt embarrassed.

  And Ember, the strange and tragic girl from another world, hung on his every word. Her dark eyes were wide and glittered in fascination. She listened to his memories of serving in the Roman army. Of the shattered glimpses he could recall of a wife and son who were now long dead. He spoke of his conversion to an upstart religion that followed a prophet that would later come to be seen as a son of god, and how not long after he had converted, a creature he had believed to be an angel had appeared
and taken him away.

  Now, he knew that angel had been Rxa.

  But at the time, it had been quite the spectacular moment.

  Lyon would always sympathize deeply with those who found themselves a little confused and overwhelmed upon arriving in Under.

  He had expected Ember to focus on his human life, like all others seemed to wish to do when he allowed them to broach the topic. Instead, she seemed far more intrigued by his life after arriving in Under.

  It had taken the better part of an hour, but he finally gave her as much of a summary of his life as he was capable. She sat there in silence for a long minute, turning it all over in her mind. He waited patiently for her to dredge up questions for details about the Great War that nearly ended their world, or the Rise of the Ancients that had nearly done the same.

  But she was an unusual creature.

  It seemed she preferred to focus on the logistics.

  “Wait. Wait. This ‘Ceremony of the Fall’ you talked about when you make people like you. You throw people into a lake?” She had her face scrunched up on one side, wrinkling her nose as she looked at him in disgust and disbelief.

  “No, no.” He laughed. “The phrase ‘fall’ is merely rhetorical, I assure you.”

  “But you…get into the water as a mortal, and come out like that?” She gestured at his face.

  “More or less, yes.”

  She paused for a moment. “Where do I sign up?”

  Lyon laughed again. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for individuals to decide that a new life was preferable to their old ones. Ember certainly had an excuse. “Unfortunately, it is not so simple. You must be marked by the Ancients before you enter the pool. Otherwise, exposure to the blood of the Ancients is deadly.”

  “The pool is filled with their blood?”

  “They reside at the bottom of the lake beneath the cathedral, yes. For endless years, they were free and ruled the world. But the kings and queens of old turned on the Ancients and imprisoned them. Bound them in chains at the bottom of the lake where they remained for five thousand years. It was Rxa who held them there. He was their greatest devotee, their most faithful son, and the keeper of their chains. He truly was their archangel.”