He grinned at the giant wolf. “I would rather not get sick, thank you.” He took a bite out of the food. It was tender and tasty. Gamey and a bit like deer. He liked it. Perhaps this world is an improvement.
Glancing at Dtu again, he smiled. A real improvement. He felt safe next to the big creature. And he rarely, if ever, felt anything of the sort. “Your friend seemed really upset when she came back. Is everything all right?”
“Kamira found her husband, another king of Under. He relayed news that was…upsetting.”
“Which was?”
Dtu paused. “It isn’t important.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The wolf sighed heavily and lowered his head onto his paws. The glowing green fire of his eyes went out, as if he had shut them. “Our capital has fallen to the creatures that overtook your world. They are being led by a king who died four hundred years ago, and now has risen from the grave to wreak vengeance on us all.”
Jakob blinked. The King of Moons sounded…hopeless. As if he’d simply accepted the world was coming to an end. Jakob decided he hated the sound of it. He needed to find a way to cheer up the strange monster immediately. He thought through his possible responses and picked the long shot. “Oh, is that all? Sounds like a regular day to me.”
Dtu laughed. His shoulders shook, even if the jaw of his rotted skull didn’t open. When his laugh quieted, he picked up his head, and those pinpricks of green fire that served as his pupils were fixed on Jakob again. “You are an odd man, Jakob.”
“Says the giant undead wolf.” He smiled all the same. “But thank you. I think.” He took another bite out of his meat on a stick. “What’s the plan now, then? If going to your capital is out of the picture.”
“We wait here for Lyon, the other king, to arrive. And then we decide whether or not we are to march on to—”
“Oh, thank goodness!” a female voice cried.
Jakob shrieked as a woman appeared out of thin air. Just blinked into existence. And to make matters worse, she was floating! And blue. But the color of her skin was the least important part of the equation at the moment.
Dtu shot up from the ground. “Ini?”
The floating blue woman threw her arms around the thick neck of the werewolf and hugged him. “Oh, Dtu—Dtu, I’m so happy to see you. It’s terrible! Absolutely terrible what’s happened. The whole city is just a sea of the dead now, and they’re in so much pain and—”
“Calm yourself, sprite. I can barely understand you.” Dtu chuckled. “One thing at a time.”
“Good. Someone else for her to ramble at.” Another man approached. He looked rather road weary, and utterly not dressed for the occasion. The man was dressed in all gray, with a matching mask over half his face, etched in purple ink.
“Hello, Maverick,” Dtu greeted the other man. “Good to see you are well.”
“I am alive.” Maverick grunted and sat down on a log by the fire. It looked like the motion hurt him. “Whether or not I am well, I do not know.”
“Alive is enough for now. It’s more than most people have.” Ini finally let go of Dtu and floated a foot away, her hands clutched together and pressed to her ample—and visibly bare through layers of sheer blue fabric—chest. “Oh, Dtu. You should have seen it…it’s terrible.”
Dtu sniffed the air. “You came with others. But not many.”
“No. We sent the majority of the survivors north toward Evie and the House of Flames. We are heading west, and it won’t be safe for them where we’re headed.”
“West?” Dtu tilted his head. “Why are you going west?”
Ini floated down to sit on the log next to Jakob. He went stiff, watching the woman with wide-eyed fascination. Her whole face was hidden behind a full and ornate porcelain mask, adorned with blue jewels and gold filigree. She was absolutely beautiful, her long, ocean-blue hair swirling in the air around her like it was caught in a stream.
“This world is incredible,” Jakob murmured without realizing it.
Ini turned to look at him. He couldn’t see her eyes—there was only darkness there, like all the others whose masks hid their eyes. But she lifted her shoulders and giggled, and Jakob knew she was smiling. “Such flattery. Hello, sweet boy.” She reached up and stroked Jakob’s hair, and the touch felt like a summer breeze.
He leaned into her hand.
A low growl broke into his thoughts, and Ini pulled her hand away. The growl hadn’t come from him and certainly not from her.
It had come from Dtu.
Ini turned to the wolf. “Well. My apologies, sweet brother.”
“It’s nothing.” Dtu looked away.
“Mmhm.” She giggled. “Nothing at all.”
“Were you two traveling on foot?” The wolf changed the subject. Away from what, Jakob didn’t know. He was still trying to figure out what had come over him when the strange, blue, elven woman had touched him.
“We were,” Maverick complained. He was pulling off his shoes to rub his feet. “We had horses, but we left them behind for Lyon and Ember, another refugee.”
“There are other survivors from Gioll?” Jakob perked up. “That’s fantastic! How many?”
“I have only met the one, I’m afraid. The others I have met from your world were not…shall we say…quite alive.”
Jakob’s shoulders fell. He frowned. “Just one? I hope there’s more…I hope more people made it.”
“I am still not sure what we are meant to do with you either way.” Dtu lay back down, resting his head across his paws again. It struck Jakob for the first time that the wolf might be tired. He hadn’t seen him sleep since they met. “A pack of mortals is ill-suited for our world. My plan to dump you on the King of Blood seems to be dashed.”
“Speak of the vampire, and he arrives.” Maverick motioned his head toward the far end of the clearing.
Jakob turned to watch two figures on giant insects that vaguely resembled horses ride into the clearing. One of them was a tall man in all white who looked as pale as a statue. He was bizarre and otherworldly. But it was the young woman on the other horse who caught Jakob’s attention.
Mostly because of the black mark across her face.
All conversation amongst the survivors in the clearing stopped. All he could hear was the crackle of the fires and the chirping of animals in the forest.
A hunter! A graedari. A real one, and alive. They never came to the sanctuary towns or the citadels. They weren’t allowed. He had never seen one before.
Her hair was half black and half white, split down the middle. She glanced around at the survivors who were gathered around several fires that dotted the clearing. She said something quietly to the man in all white and, climbing off her bug-horse, began to lead it to the outskirts of the clearing. Somewhere far away from everyone else.
The man in white sighed, shook his head, and dismounting his own horse, said something back to the graedari with a gentle smile. He gestured his hand and seemed to be insisting that she follow him. She shook her head.
Jakob watched, fascinated, as the graedari took the bit and bridle off the insect horse and petted the creature. In return, the horse-thing nudged her with its nose and began chewing on her coat. The woman smiled and laughed quietly, patting its head.
The man in white approached them. He looked to Dtu and Ini and bowed his head. “Well met, King of Moons. I’m quite glad we’ve happened across you.”
“And you, King of Blood.” Dtu picked his head back up and glanced over to the graedari where she stood with her horse at the outskirts of the clearing. “Why is your charge not joining us?”
“She insists she is not meant to join the others.”
Jakob stood from the log and picked up a few of the roasting pieces of meat he had set over the fire. Everyone was staring at the young woman, who was hiding by a tree, trying her best to stay in the shadows. She would have been less conspicuous without the purple bug-horse standing next to her, trying its darndest to chew on her
coat.
He walked up to her. And now everyone was staring at him, too. Let them stare. He held out one of the sticks of roasted meat to her. “Hello.”
The young woman froze, watching him with wide, dark eyes. She looked at him, then the meat, then back to him.
“Go on.” He smiled.
“I—”
She never got the chance to take it. Her horse didn’t seem to be nearly as shy as she was. It yanked the stick of meat straight out of his hands, and began eating it, stick and all.
“Hey!” He laughed. “That wasn’t for you, you know.”
The woman laughed as well. “Why am I not surprised the horses here eat meat?”
“Seems like everything around here does.” He offered her the second stick. “Quick. Before he’s done with the first.”
She took it from him that time. “Thank you.”
“My name is Jakob. I’m traveling with Dtu—the giant Varúlfur over there.” He motioned to the pack by the fire. “You should come sit with us.”
“But…”
“We’re not in a citadel or a sanctuary city. Just what’s left of one.” Jakob shrugged. “Our world is gone. Come sit by the fire. They outnumber us, anyway. I’d like to feel a little bit less like a fly among bears.”
“You’d rather there be two flies? What does that accomplish?”
“I like thinking I won’t die alone.” He grinned lopsidedly at her.
The woman laughed and held out her hand to him. “Ember.”
He took it. “Jakob.”
Ember wasn’t sure what surprised her more.
Maverick was alive. She had resisted hugging him but shook his hand instead. She was so relieved to see he was okay! She told him as much as she sat next to the Elder of Words. The man seemed fine, if exceedingly grumpy and a little sore from having marched for hours in the wrong footwear.
Ini was also alive, sitting between Jakob and Dtu.
Then, there was Dtu. An enormous, undead Varúlfur. There were shapeshifting werewolves in Under! That was another thing added to the list of incredible, impossible, beautiful, terrifying things she had seen in the past few days. The giant wolf seemed rather evenly tempered, if a bit gruff. He watched the conversation more than he added to it.
Cricket certainly enjoyed eating meat, and he was hungry. She kept trying to push the horse away from her food and was steadily losing the fight before Kamira brought the animal a corpse of his own to devour raw.
Gross.
She tried to ignore the sound of crunching as the horse ate its dinner. Kamira was now sitting next to Lyon, her hand wound through his. A man who fed on blood and a woman who could change into bizarre and deadly animals.
And then, there was Jakob. The least remarkable, yet most surprising of the bunch. He was from Gioll, and one of the eastern tribes, as far as she could tell from his beaded necklace and the charms he had woven into a few strands of his long blond hair. He was handsome, and he had an easy and charming smile. He was a trader, he explained.
What an odd man. Nice, but odd. He quickly flouted all tradition by inviting her to sit at the fire with him. Others were staring. She wanted to hide in the tree line and pretend she wasn’t there, but she knew she wouldn’t get away with it.
“What did Rxa want with you?” Dtu asked her.
She jolted at the sudden attention. “To ask me questions. He seemed confused as to what he was and why he had been brought back. I think he knows as little as we do.” She left out the detail that Rxa had tried to bite her twice. She didn’t know why that felt personal, but it did.
“Fantastic.” Kamira sighed. “Well, what do we do?”
“We were on our way to speak to Aon,” Lyon explained, “as he is the only one of us who has successfully restrained a royal for any period of time. We need to find a way to contain Rxa before he causes more damage.”
Dtu growled low. “No.”
“Old dog, we have few choices right now,” Kamira insisted. “I don’t like it either. But if Rxa is bent on killing us all, we have to stop him.”
“We shall not ask the warlock for help.” Dtu’s fur stood up on his back as his hackles raised. “I will not.”
“Do you have another suggestion?” Maverick had finally stopped muttering under his breath about the sores on his feet, but his mood had not improved.
“We fight.” Dtu dug his claws into the dirt. “We can stop him ourselves.”
“And then what?” Maverick shook his head. “Even if you are right and we could defeat him, which I sincerely doubt, then what do we do with him? We cannot kill him. You know that.”
“You assume he is a king. You assume he has the power of an Ancient behind him.” Dtu snarled. “There are seven Ancients. Not eight.”
Lyon’s expression was grim. “No. There are eight. I have seen the altar myself. This new Ancient…I believe it is the cursed creature that was destroying Gioll. I think our newcomer is their Dread God, and it resurrected Rxa as its king.”
“What do you know of this Dread God, Jakob?”
The young man blinked. “Ah. Nothing, honestly. Ember?”
“Only what they taught us when we trained.” She shrugged. “That eighty years ago, it came without warning and unleashed a plague amongst my people. The old world and all its technology fell quickly. The infrastructure we had placed around our civilizations crumbled as the dead fed upon the living. The old gods rose to fight the newcomer, but by the time I was trained as a graedari, no one had heard from them in a long time.”
“From whence did the Dread God arrive?” Maverick asked.
“I don’t know. No one does. But our moon turned yellow, and the world ended.”
Maverick ran his hand over his slicked-back hair. “Assuming that it came from another world and was not merely lying dormant, then we can assume its behavior will continue here. That it will not stop until it has consumed Under.”
“But what of the other Ancients? Can they not fight it?” Jakob frowned, his shoulders curling in. “Why would your gods let it happen?”
Kamira shrugged. “Our gods like to watch us die for sport. They’ll let this whole world hang on by a single thread before they intervene to help us.”
“I believe we should be extremely cautious before we commit to killing Rxa.” Maverick looked to Dtu. “I dislike asking Aon for help either, but it is the only way to capture Rxa and question him before a more permanent solution can be found.”
Dtu growled and lowered his head. “I refuse.”
“Then you do not have to come.” Maverick shrugged. “I do not feel like arguing with you over your old feud when we are in extreme danger.”
“Feud?” Dtu stood. “You would belittle what passed between us by calling it a feud? Do you wish to insult me?”
“No. And I do no such thing. But you are insulting us all by wasting our time with your assertions that you will not see the King of Shadows to ask for his aid,” Maverick lectured. He sounded like every tutor she ever had growing up. “If you wish to bark about it, very well. But we have no other logical course of action. We will need everyone to defeat this new threat. Including him.”
Dtu snarled, his claws digging deep into the dirt. “Mind yourself, Elder of Words…”
“I mind myself plenty. I believe that’s why I no longer sleep.” Maverick sneered at the Varúlfur. “Now, either suggest a viable alternative, or sit down and understand we all do things we do not enjoy in the name of the greater good.”
Ini placed her hand on Dtu’s leg. “Please, sweetheart…”
With a long growl, Dtu sank back down to the dirt. “I despise this plan.”
“Noted, old dog.” Kamira sprawled out to lie half in Lyon’s lap like a large cat. “I think we all despise this plan.”
“Should I be concerned about meeting Aon?” Ember whispered to Maverick.
He looked down at her, one golden eye visible. He looked exhausted. But his annoyance at the world seemed to soften a little at her q
uestion. “If you are lucky, you will not have to.”
“What do you think is going to happen to us?” She gestured at the other survivors.
Maverick frowned. “I haven’t the foggiest idea, to be honest.”
“From everything I’ve heard about the King of Shadows, I get the distinct feeling he won’t like a pile of refugees appearing on his doorstep.” Ember took a bite out of the cooked steak she had been given. She had managed to get some for herself now that Cricket was appropriately fed.
“No. He won’t.” Maverick grimaced. “And if we are lucky, we will keep you lot from becoming too interesting to him.”
“It’s dangerous to be interesting?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Immensely.”
Great. “When do you think we’ll get there?”
Maverick looked up at the stars for a moment. “Late tomorrow.”
“At least I’ll only have a day of everyone staring at me.” Ember could feel the weight of the stares from the other survivors. Jakob had invited her to sit with them, but it was clear she was not welcome with the others. Hunters were strange to them, and she didn’t blame them for their whispers and mutters.
“Let them stare.” Maverick began idly cleaning his cufflinks. “Either their prejudices will fade when they realize their world is truly dead and their distaste for you is meaningless, or we will all die, and it won’t matter.”
“Maverick!” Ini gasped in horror.
“What?” He arched his visible eyebrow at her. “Am I wrong?”
“No, but, you don’t just say those things,” the woman in blue scolded. “You really must have been a terrible doctor.”
“I was a fantastic doctor. Just a terrible nurse.”
Ember laughed. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t really meant to be a joke, but it struck her as funny anyway. She stood from the fire. “I, for one, am exhausted. Who is taking the first watch?”
“Sleep, little mortal.” Dtu was watching her. The eye sockets of his skull were large and empty, save for green pinpricks of light that flickered like fire. “My people shall stand guard.”
Trust no one. She glanced around the group. Save for Jakob, every single one of them was immortal, ancient, and powerful beyond her comprehension. Even if she didn’t trust his word, what did it matter?
Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) Page 19