King Of Flames (The Masks of Under Book 1)

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  Nick caught her gaze, and he too looked worn thin. He shrugged and kept an arm around the girl. It felt like they were being led to the slaughter. Even with what she knew—that they’d come out the other side as changed versions of themselves—it still felt like death.

  They were going to Fall.

  A few minutes later, they arrived at—yeah, that was a pool, all right. It was more like an underground lake. The pack of confused prisoners were forced to spread along the shore as the Hounds kept nipping at their heels, pushing everyone out of the corridor to stand at the edge.

  The lake seemed to glow red.

  Lydia had watched a documentary special on species of phosphorescent creatures, and this looked very much like that. The glow seemed to come from within the water itself, as though there was some kind of bacteria in the liquid that was letting off a faint red light. Maybe it wasn’t water; she had no clue, after all.

  The liquid at the edge of the pond where they stood was still, but there were faint waves that began to grow the farther it stretched ahead of them. Ripples from a massive, hundred-foot waterfall that sat at the far end of the lake, the source of which was three massive heads. Skulls or exoskeletons, Lydia couldn’t tell. Like everything else she had met or seen, their features were ghastly and overblown—strange and exaggerated.

  From their jaws or eye sockets poured the glowing red liquid, casting their vicious features in a dim and unfocused uplight that left the whole thing looking like something out of a horror show.

  Then she realized the walls of this cave were different than the rest of the hallways she had seen. Everything had a weird kind of bumpiness to it she didn’t understand at first. Then, slowly, it dawned on her what she was looking at. The walls of this cave, even the ceiling and the shoreline, were comprised of masks or skulls. Here, it was hard to tell the difference between them.

  It was a catacomb. A lake in a giant cavern, constructed entirely out of skulls. Each one different from the last, each one the remains of a strange and foreign creature. Lydia wasn’t the only one who noticed. A cry of terror broke out through the crowd, and several tried to turn and flee. But the Hounds were there to stop them. They were faced with the decision between the intangible fear of what the lake represented and the very tangible fear of the Hounds.

  There was a murmur from the darkness, and Lydia turned to look along the shore, realizing they weren’t here alone. There were crowds of people hovering in the shadows just out of view of the glow from the lake. Their little group of thirty were outnumbered by the creatures looming in the darkness—people and monsters alike. It was hard to pick anything out of the crowd, just a mass of people standing and watching. Some wore masks; many did not.

  Jutting out into the lake was a large, circular platform, like the ruins of a Greek temple. It was polished stone and one of the few surfaces that looked not to be made out of the heads of…whatever they were.

  It was at the edge of the stairs leading to this platform that they were all now clumped. Up the small flight of polished steps, white dress gleaming red in the glow of the lake around them, stood the old woman.

  Behind her, arranged about the circle of the platform, were seven pedestals that were on a separate small jut out from the circular platform. Each dais had a statue upon it. In front of each of the sculptures, save one, was a figure.

  She recognized Edu quickly. It was hard not to, as he was standing there in full armor, dwarfing the others in his sheer scale. He stood with his sword in front of him, tip resting on the ground, his gauntleted, clawed hands folded over the pommel of the blade. He looked like some demonic knight in repose. The statue that loomed behind him was of some great dragon, which resembled the armor he wore.

  Shockingly, she recognized Maverick. He was not wearing the medical equipment she had seen him in earlier. Instead, he wore a turn-of-the-century suit in brown and purple. He was standing in front of another one of the massive statues. His hands were clasped in front of him, and his expression was analytical and curious as he looked out at the crowd of huddled prisoners. The remaining four were strangers.

  One short, pudgy man in all white and gold wore a birdlike mask resembling that of the old woman. It went across the middle of his face like a strap, only serving to give him a beakish nose and doing absolutely nothing to help the fact that he suddenly reminded her of the Penguin from the Batman movie. And just as sleazy, to boot.

  The next was a woman with long white hair, pulled back and clipped in careful curls and waves. She wore an antiquated blue dress. Her pure white hair caught the reflection of the lighting around her and was a sharp mismatch to her young, beautiful face. Her Venetian mask obscured only her forehead and down the bridge of her nose, leaving—uncommonly, so far—both her eyes exposed. Her expression was placid and empty.

  The last she didn’t recognize was a woman with long, braided, and beaded dark hair. She was barely clothed, wearing only a loincloth that stretched down to the floor. She was actually pretty much topless, with scraps of jewelry and fabric hanging off her upper body in portions that did nothing to leave anything to the imagination. She was leaning back against her statue with her arms crossed over her ample chest, looking utterly bored. Her green wooden mask covered the upper half of her face and protruded back into her hair to form two small sets of horns Lydia hoped were only decorative.

  A broad-shouldered man in all black stood next to her. His bald head had scars that traced along over the edge of his ear and down his face. His mask covered more than just the side of his face but went up along half his skull and around to the back. He looked African or somewhere thereabouts. His clothing was an expensively tailored black suit, with details added by changing the sheen of the texture of the garment. It reminded her keenly of Aon, the man in her dreams.

  The statues the figures stood in front of were no friendlier than the six people themselves. She wondered why somebody was missing. There were seven statues, but six people.

  An overhead source of light that might be moonlight casting through a rock landed perfectly onto the circle of figures. They were illuminated in the stark difference of crimson from below and turquoise from above, leaving the rest in a ruddy, faint purple.

  “We greet you, Children of the Ancients…” the old woman said from the top of the stairs. She gestured dramatically again like she was in the middle of some ancient Greek stage, performing an epic tale. “…to the Ceremony of the Fall.”

  Then Lydia noticed Lyon standing at the far end of the platform. He was nearly out of the light. The seven platforms and statues were arranged such that it left a path up and through the center and then down onto the other side. Another set of stairs were on that far side, leading into the lake of glowing crimson liquid. He was standing, up to his ankles in the ooze, watching the group of them with a passive expression.

  Someone in the group decided to make a break for it. They pushed their way out of the pack and turned toward the tunnel through which they had come. A Hound leaped to block his path, and when he tried to dodge, the dog tackled the man to the ground and pinned him roughly to the floor with a massive claw. It pushed his face into the dirt and snapped its jaws toward his neck. It was clear the Hound wished to tear him to pieces.

  But they were needed, every single one of the prisoners. And even the dog seemed to know that, and it snarled in annoyance before climbing off the man. The man in question scampered across the floor, trying desperately to return to the false safety of numbers. The dog snapped its jaws, chittering them together in hunger and annoyance.

  “Escape attempts are all in vain, but your future is bright. Turn away from your fruitless, empty world of rot and disease, where all must wither away. Do not despair, Children, for you now come to your true path. Here in this world, you will find meaning the likes of which you could only aspire and power beyond your wildest dreams,” the bird woman orated. “Who will seek their new life first?”

  Nobody answered. Well, not for the first beat, anyw
ay.

  “I…I…” Gary stammered and stepped forward. “I will.”

  “Gary?” Lydia exclaimed as he left her side. He had startled her when he spoke, and she could only look, wide-eyed, as he let go of her arm.

  “I’ve only ever read stories. I’ve never been a part of one,” Gary said meekly, apologizing for leaving her side. He turned back to the bird woman, who was casting a thin-lipped smile down at him.

  “Come forward, brave child,” she said and held out her hand to him.

  Gary walked up to the stairs, still timid and unsure. His steps were wary, and he looked like he was going to leap out of his skin at any moment. Yet he was the only one ballsy enough to step forward.

  The bird woman was still smiling as she stepped aside and gestured for Gary to walk across the platform. He did, even if he spent the entire time glancing at the six dramatically lit, and equally dramatically dressed, figures arranged around the circle.

  Gary walked across the platform to where Lyon stood, and Lydia could hear him quietly greet the taller man. He stuck out his hand as if to shake Lyon’s. Even in a moment where he might be facing death, he was still unflinchingly British.

  Lydia found her hands had made their way over her mouth, and she desperately wished for Gary not to die. Desperately hoped he would somehow be saved. Or whatever was about to happen, let it not be so bad.

  Lyon looked down at the man’s hand, and Gary, realizing his silliness, laughed nervously and pointed into the water. Lyon merely nodded once.

  Gary stepped forward, and she watched as he picked his way down a flight of stairs she could not see, descending into the glowing liquid. When it moved, it looked viscous. The waves coming off him were thick and slow.

  When he had made his way down to his waist, it was like something grabbed him and tore him under the liquid. His startled cry was cut off as he was abruptly dragged beneath the surface.

  The crowd shrieked and pressed backward against the Hounds, who snapped and made hissing, rasping, barking sounds at them in response, keeping them trapped.

  The room hung in silence, the seconds dragging on.

  Lydia could have counted to ten. Oh, please, Gary…don’t be dead.

  Finally, a figure began to emerge from the crimson liquid. A shape moved under the water briefly before breaching the surface. An audible gasp for air rang out in the room.

  Gary pulled himself up the stairs, and Lyon reached down to grab the man under the arm and help him stand. When the Englishman stood, the left quarter of his face, from over his nose down to his jaw, was covered with a deep purple mask. It was featureless and unadorned, and she had no idea how it would have been stuck there if magic wasn’t suddenly a real thing.

  It was undoubtedly still Gary. Even with the mask, she recognized his face. His skin was paler, his hair was ruffled and wet, but it was him. He wobbled his way up the steps, and he looked unsteady and a little dizzy, but…fine. Queasy, but not dead.

  Gary turned toward where Maverick stood, and he smiled that same slightly toothy, overzealous smile she had seen Gary wear a few times in her short time knowing him and bowed at the waist to the doctor.

  Maverick nodded once to the man in turn, and Gary walked back down the steps, toward the crowd. As Gary approached the pack of prisoners, everyone parted for him—all except her and Nick. Kaori didn’t really count, as she was now hiding behind Nick as desperately as she could.

  “Gary?” Lydia asked warily. She realized his eyes were now yellow, like Maverick’s. “Is that…you?”

  “Yes!” he said brightly to them. “Still me, I must say. Although I feel…quite changed,” he said thoughtfully, laughed, and looked off into the darkness. “Everything makes much more sense now. All those answers you went looking for and now I have them. How charming. I…Oh.” Gary was babbling before something caught his attention off in the shadows. “I must go. I do hope we’ll chat later. Good luck, my friends!”

  And with that, Gary walked off, passing through the crowd of people who all moved aside, not wanting to go near the man who had gone in and out of the lake. Gary walked toward the gaggle of observers who were assembled near the shadows and began excitedly talking to someone who had stepped out of the darkness to meet him.

  Lydia blinked in recognition.

  Aria.

  The woman had beckoned Gary over and was now holding his elbow, talking to him and gently gesturing for him to lower his tone. Aria looked at Lydia and smiled faintly in greeting.

  “Are any others willing to step forward?” The bird woman interrupted Lydia’s thoughts, dragging her back to the moment. “To accept the transformation peacefully is to take into yourself the exaltation of the Ancients. To fight is to bring yourself unnecessary fear.”

  Someone else stepped forward, a woman this time. Lydia didn’t recognize her, and she could do little else but watch as the pattern repeated. The woman stepped into the water, disappeared under the liquid, and the re-emerged. This time, she wore no mask, and the markings on her face were in thin black lines.

  The third person to step forward didn’t have exactly the same experience as everyone else. Any hope of the crowd going peacefully one by one into the glowing waters was dashed, the moment the man who came out of the water…was no longer a man.

  The creature that emerged looked like the crossbreed between an iguana and a praying mantis. A long, thrashing tail snapped back and forth behind a body held up on spindly legs. It weaved back and forth as it climbed up the stairs. Red liquid was dripping from its frame. Long, spindly arms cleaned its face, wiping the moisture from its faceted eyes set into the skull of a reptile. The monster was enormous, raising itself up to its full height at twelve feet or more, and roared at the crowd.

  The sound was both a low rumble and a high, ear-piercing screech that left the group of prisoners ducking and covering their ears. No one else, none of those who belonged to this world already, reacted to the noise. It echoed and lingered in the large empty chamber for several seconds before fading off.

  That sent the small group of prisoners into a panic. They screamed and fell back toward the Hounds, who had their work cut out for them, trying to keep the sudden mass of people in place.

  “Enough!” the bird woman shouted, and her shrill voice echoed in the hall. The monster—the man who had just become a monster, rather—had walked up behind her. She seemed unafraid of it as it loomed over her. “Do not fear but rejoice! For he too has found his path.”

  The lizard-bug-monster-thing stepped around the bird woman and off the platform in one easy step, long legs ticking against the polished stone surface and onto the dirt. It seemed uninterested in the rest of them. The prisoners scrambled to get out of its way as it headed for the exit. The Hounds did nothing to stop it, standing aside for the creature as it went down the darkness of the way they had come. It had a new life to pursue.

  Shockingly, nobody volunteered after that.

  Two men approached from the wings. They approached the first person they came across, grabbing them roughly by the arms and dragging them kicking and screaming up the stairs. The two men seemed freakishly strong. Even though the man they had seized was a full-grown adult, nothing that guy could do—kicking, shouting, yanking backward to try to pull them off balance—seemed to do anything.

  They weren’t human, after all.

  One by one, they were fed into the pond. One by one, people were grabbed from the pack and fed into the pool. One by one, they emerged as monsters—or as beasts pretending to be people. It didn’t matter.

  Then, they came toward where Nick, Kaori, and Lydia had huddled in the crowd. The approach of the two men sent Kaori wailing into hysterics, and she ducked behind Nick once more, cowering behind her friend.

  The men went to grab Nick. “Wait,” Lydia interrupted. The two men looked at her, seemingly surprised she’d stop them. It might be pointless—it was only going to save Nick and Kaori a few minutes of time as humans—but damn it all, it felt noble. �
�I…I’ll go.”

  The two men in white stood aside and let Lydia make good on her pledge. Swallowing through her dry mouth, she glanced back at Nick, who was wild-eyed in fear. He mouthed something, trying to speak, but couldn’t find the words.

  The man next to her cleared his throat and reminded her they were trying to keep to a schedule. Lydia took a deep breath, held it, and walked toward the steps. It was her turn now. She could do this. About a dozen people already had. Maybe she’d come out as a big weird bug monster. Maybe she’d have superpowers. Maybe a lot of things.

  The polished stone steps in front of her felt immensely daunting as she stepped up to the top of the platform. The bird woman was watching her, expressionless behind the gaping black holes she had for eyes.

  “Do not be afraid, my child,” she said to Lydia as she passed.

  Lydia didn’t have the heart—or the ability—to explain to the woman exactly how little those words actually helped.

  The platform around her felt massive and overwhelming. The six figures were watching her in various states. Some bored, like the nearly naked woman. Some curious, like the woman in the blue dress. Her arms were exposed, revealing long trails of the cryptic writing etched onto her skin in blue ink. Her eyes were pure white. The woman had worn an empty expression until this moment and seemed suddenly interested in Lydia’s presence.

  Her mask had scrollwork upon it like that of a classic Venetian masquerade piece. Curling leaves and acanthus scrolls accented in silver tones wound into her hair and blended together. It almost looked like a crown, the way her mask wove into her stark white hair and back through the carefully arranged curls.

  In a twist to deep blue lips, the woman smiled at her. But as soon as the expression was there, it was gone, fading back to an emptiness that made the woman look like a statue, somehow even more so than Lyon.