The Third Kingdom

Once the green luminescence over the underworld had evaporated from the world of life, the man who had been waiting beyond that opening into the underworld began to step forward out of the shadows.

When he came into the muted light of the overcast afternoon, Richard stood in stunned silence.

The whites of the man’s eyes were bloodred.

It looked as if his eyes had been deliberately tattooed a bright blood red, making the dark iris and pupil seem as if they were looking out from a fiery world—or perhaps from the underworld itself. It was as disconcerting as any gaze Richard had ever seen.

Even as otherworldly as his eyes looked, this man was clearly not an apparition from the world of the dead. Richard could tell that he was real enough, that he was flesh and blood.

Although it was that flesh that was the most disturbing aspect of the man. It was perhaps the most ghastly thing Richard had ever seen this side of death.

Every bit of the man not hidden by his dark robes was covered with tattooed symbols.

Symbols Richard recognized.

His flesh was not simply covered with the designs, but rather the tattoos were layered over the top of one another countless times so that the skin looked something other than human. As far as Richard could see, there was no spot that was not tattooed with some part or element of the circular designs, each one randomly laid over others that lay over yet others, all layer upon layer so that there was not one spot of untouched skin visible anywhere.

The top layers appeared to be the darkest, with designs underneath being lighter, and the ones under those lighter yet. It was as if they were continually being absorbed down into his flesh and new ones had to be constantly added over the top of those already vanishing down into his flesh. It gave them an endless, bottomless appearance, a tangled complexity that was dizzying, as if the symbols were continually seething up from underneath in a sea of something dark and dreadful.

The ever-deeper levels of the designs gave the man’s skin a three-dimensional appearance. The endless layers made it hard to tell just where the surface of the skin actually was in all the floating elements, lending the flesh a shadowy, somewhat hazy, somewhat ghostly aspect.

The way the underlayers were lighter than the ones on top of them made each symbol distinct and recognizable, regardless of how many layers down in the design it lay, or how tightly packed they all were. All the different symbols, linked designs, and complex elements varied in size. There seemed to be an endless variety to the patterns within the designs, but each of those symbols contributed meaning to the larger, circular elements.

The man’s hands and wrists, from what Richard could see of them where they emerged from his black coat, were completely covered with the same kinds of designs. Even his rather long fingernails appeared to be tattooed beneath, with the designs visible right through the nail itself.

His neck above his tight collar, like everywhere else, was covered with the designs ringing his throat. His face—every part of his face—was covered with the same sort of emblems. There were hundreds, if not thousands, on his face alone. When he blinked those terrible red eyes, Richard saw that his eyelids were tattooed as well. Even his ears, every fold and as far down inside as Richard was able to see, were completely covered with the symbols on top of circular symbols on top of yet more of the symbols. There were so many circular symbols that, in a way, it almost looked less like simple tattoos and more like they were a manifestation of black thoughts boiling to the surface from within.

While the man’s bald head was covered over with the same kinds of designs, one of them, larger than all the rest, dominated them all. The bottom edge of that large circle crossed over the bridge of his nose, going out over his cheeks to each side beneath his eyes, and then up and around just above his ears to cover the rest of the crown of the skull. Inside the circle was another, and between them a ring of runes.

A triangle sitting within the inner circle crossed horizontally just above the man’s brow. Smaller, secondary circular symbols floating outside the points of the triangle that broke the circles covered each temple with the third at the point of the triangle on the back of his head. The way it was laid out made it appear as if the man was glaring out with those haunting red eyes from within the circular symbol itself, as if he were glaring out from the underworld.

In the center of the triangle, toward the front of the man’s skull, was a backward figure nine.

Richard recognized not only all the designs, but that one in particular.