Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Author:Kathryn Ann Kingsley [Kingsley, Kathryn Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kathryn Ann Kingsley
Published: 2021-03-06T22:00:00+00:00

14

Rxa hummed as he sat on the edge of the stone planter that ringed a large tree in the street. He kicked his feet idly. “Alas, poor Fred! I knew him well, Horatio.” He giggled as he held up the skull in his hand. It was dripping weird, murky gloop out of the spine. It had ceased to be blood a long time ago, and now was simply some kind of liquified organic material.

It also smelled terrible.

Rxa sighed and hurled the head away. It hit the wall with a quiet thump and rolled along the sidewalk into a gutter. “Oh, well.”

Maybe it wasn’t the head that smelled terrible. Maybe it was him. He sniffed his arm and wheezed. “No wonder she didn’t like me!” He frowned. Or he tried, anyway. He still wasn’t sure that he fully owned lips. He owned enough to talk, but they felt…sticky.

Could have been the smell that scared her off.

Could have been the blood.

The open wounds.

The army of mindless, shambling undead.

He sighed again, more wistfully than the first, and began to walk up the street. “You, there—Fred Two. Find me somebody to eat. Someone fresh and alive.” He gestured a hand aimlessly at the pack of corpses next to him. The ones on the ground that Lyon had re-killed stayed re-dead, but there were plenty more where that came from.

He knew this because he could sense them. Little by little, his head was starting to clear. Nothing made sense—things were still jumbled up like a bad jigsaw puzzle. But at least he could see the images on all the little pieces, even if he had no idea what order to put them in.

He suspected they were from all different puzzles.

Knowledge was buzzing around in his head that he didn’t remember having before. I was dead. I was in the Pool of the Ancients. Who knows what kind of shit they used to put me back together?

“Maybe you could have included the rest of my organs?” He was shouting at the sky. He knew it was pointless. But he didn’t care. “And what the fuck is a meme, anyway?” With a grunt, he shook his head. He didn’t expect an answer.

The Ancients never talked to him. Not once, in all his years. No matter how hard he prayed. No matter how devoted he was to them. He was never blessed to hear their voice. He assumed it had been because they wished to protect his sanity. He had seen what happened to all the Oracles who had come and gone through the House of Fate. They never lasted long, carrying the burden of the visions the Ancients gifted their Oracle.

But now he knew it was because they never loved him back.

They had never cared for him.

He was just another tool to them. Another toy to entertain their precious only son, Aon. The only one who had ever graced Under without being stolen from Earth. Or Gioll, he amended to himself.

He smiled. How wonderful it was to think that Under could cross paths with other worlds.

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