The Fealty of Monsters: The Fealty Of Monsters, #1

Praise for

The Fealty of Monsters

Grotesqueries abound in THE FEALTY OF MONSTERS—and when Ladz is the one conducting the horror, you know it’s worth your time. This is one revolution best witnessed from the splash zone, so buckle up, put on your poncho, and get ready for the multiple blood baths to follow.

— T.D. Cloud, author of OSSUARY

"With the dark gothic fantasy sensibilities of Berserk, Castlevania, and Bloodborne, Ladz’s first volume of THE FEALTY OF MONSTERS is thrilling, gory, and queer as hell. A must-read."

—Morgan Dante, author of

A FLAME IN THE NIGHT

With prose as sharp and glittering as broken glass, Ladz weaves an unflinching tale of gothic gruesomeness, showing that the most dangerous monsters live where we least expect it—in the hearts of us all.

—K.M. Enright, author of MISTRESS OF LIES

THE FEALTY OF MONSTERS is just as sexy as it is terribly thrilling. Within a fantasy world full of political intrigue and strife, Ladz creates beautiful characters who fit inside it seamlessly. Characters who are neither good nor evil, but always keep the reader guessing, painting a fascinating air of mystery throughout the whole book. If you want horror, vampires, and alluring beasts, you need this book!

—S.S. Genesee, author of the

ALL TOMORROW’S PHOTOS Duology

you are the proletariat in petrograd for the october revolution. you go to kill the czar but—oh wait! the vampire.

—AO3 user, jonphaedrus

With THE FEALTY OF MONSTERS, Ladz has built a world with foundations in Russian history but enhanced with an incredible dose of the gothic, macabre and brutally sexy. This is dark, bloody aristocratic politics with machinations so deep you won’t trust a single character. A staple work of dark fantasy!

—Brent Lambert, author of

A NECESSARY CHAOS

"[THE FEALTY OF MONSTERS] is a decadent and sordid novel which also asks the most urgent question of our time:

what would you do to stop a war?"

—Noah Medlock, author of A Botanical Daughter

The last days of the Russian Empire refracted through a blood-spattered, and gold-plated, lens into horror, magic, intrigue, and the best kind of scuzzy carnality. What else could you possibly need?

—Elijah Kinch Spector, author of

KALYNA THE SOOTHSAYER

Contempt for vampires, specifically the monstrous hybrids called bestiapirs, chills the air for one year after the massacre of 1917. Sasza is one such vampire working in stealth among the Odonic Empire’s diplomats, alongside his father Władysław Władek Czarnolaski, the Imperial Magician. Their wavering political certainty begins to be tested when a retaliatory war against the Vampire States rears its noble head, and Sasza’s friendship with the Crown undergoes metamorphosis into an alliance befitting beasts. An ominous, unsettling novel that knows how to scare.

—Pom Poison, creator of

LITTLE DEATH

The Fealty of Monsters: Volume 1

Illustrated by häxan

Ladz

Robot Dinosaur Press

Robot Dinosaur Press is a trademark of Chipped Cup Collective.

www.robotdinosaurpress.com

The Fealty of Monsters Volume 1

Copyright © 2024 by Ladz.

All rights reserved.

Publication history

First Edition: March 2024

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this work are either products of the author’s or authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Book Cover & Interior Illustrations by Soren Häxan (https://www.thornapple-press.com/)

No AI generated content was used in the creation of this book or its cover.

ISBN Data

eBook ISBN: 9798223465096

ASIN: B0CLKZ7JBC

Paperback ISBN: 9798989398706

Contents

Author's Note

Dedication

Prologue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

Compendium

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Illustrator

About Robot Dinosaur Press

Author's Note

This is a work of fantasy heavily inspired by the history of the fall of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the Twentieth century. I use the word inspired because this work is not meant to be a faithful retelling of events, political or otherwise. If you want to experience the rabbit hole fell down, please see the bibliography.

There is a compendium of characters, places, and terms at the end of the work for your reference and perusal.

Trigger Warnings

Blood, gore, body horror, blood drinking, needles, emetophobia (blood), mosquitos, patricide, infidelity, explicit sexual acts and situations, dubious consent, age gap relationship between adults, urination (non-sexual), self-harm for magic use, depiction and discussion of alcoholism and drinking, depiction of a panic attack, mentions of war, mentions of sedition

To Koren –

Thank you for enabling all this

Prologue

Summer 1917

The Żyła river separates the Kingdom of Waza and the Empire of Odon with its tall, jagged cliff-like riversides and rushing waters just as sharp. The few places of safe crossing answer to either crown directly, and one such port city is known as Daszek, renowned for its scholarship, funded and ruled by House Jackiewicz.

This city of academic rigor has not one but four universities, and its population dwindles over the summer when students return to familial estates or explore more foreign affairs. Except for one week, during a celebration called the Inventors’ Fair. This summer, however, the student body has expanded after the decree allowing non-aristocrats to attend institutions of higher learning, provided they can afford it or have proved their mettle with grades and auditions. While once only aristocrats studied, they are now joined by a new cohort mostly belonging to the upper classes.

To help orient these droves of new students, the Jackiewiczes put more resources into the Inventors’ Fair than in a typical year. Daszek teems with craftsmen, scholars, and teachers from across the Odonic Empire arriving to show off their wares and research to their counterparts traveling in from the Kingdom. Deals are made between titans of industries, new experiments are displayed, and deeper discussion about the relationship between the workers and their technology both new and old take place at various forums and smaller conferences.

While some of the proletariat have been allowed to participate in the institutions of higher learning, those with the knowledge but not the pedigree are excluded from these conversations and presentations that might affect the future of their work. Though they know the mechanisms and technology best, some can’t afford to get certifications, like Jan and his father, autocar mechanics working Daszek’s outskirts.

After a long morning of tuning vehicles, they both have their shirts wrapped around their waists. Sweat cascades down Jan’s father’s fuzzy front like a babbling waterfall. Meanwhile, Jan’s exertion pools in the grooves of undefined muscles, a body which looks soft but beneath hides work-honed strength. Hot air exchanges one stink for another—bodily odors swapping with the heavy air released from perspiring trees and the evaporating water splashing below. The iron keeping the workshop’s boxy frame aloft captures this heat.

The marshlands to the south offer no reprieve, only mosquitoes, hungry and breeding.

Jan’s father slaps one of the buzzing nuisances, slamming down the fifth and final autocar’s hood. Its black surface glistens like tar. Sometimes I wish these parasites would bring in their cars more than once a year.

Jan shrugs as he wipes off the insect guts and polishes the hood once again. The aristocrats who are their steady customers arrive in sleek cars which run on the conversion of self-administered magic to energy. It’s a cleaner form of transport than coal, but its use confers a similar mess over time. All magic leaves a small residue, and the repetition of the vehicle activation builds up. Cleaning and exchanging the battery is a process called tuning, and it’s the bulk of a mechanics’ work.

For Jan and his father’s rough hands, these exchanges aren’t difficult. But neglect breeds problems which settle and fester unless one seeks out solutions. With autocars being the preferred mode of transportation for those who would rather not interact with the proletariat on mass transit, the work was steady. The men’s informal training mattered little in terms of whether they had autocars to work on or not.

Do you think it’s stinginess or laziness? Tata asks.

Stinginess? Jan knows he’ll have to balance their accounts at the end of the week. But he also has a good memory for patterns and hasn’t noticed anything which would warrant the question.

"See, they could bring their autocars more than once a year, but it’s clear they never do. Sweat drips onto his thick, black mustache. Imagine the money we could be making teaching them."

The window on their office door has empty spaces reserved for certifications they do not have. The perfect time to ask arises. Tata, I was thinking: perhaps I could get trained in teaching and mechanics? I think it would be good for the business.

And then what? I do all the work myself? You want to leave your father alone like that? He throws his son a flask.

Jan takes a cautious sip. It’s not water. I’d be studying here, Tata. I can work on the weekends—

I’m just being a little sensitive, son. Work is drying up anyway. He takes the flask back.

What do you mean?

What I mean is, we can close up shop early. That was the last of today’s appointments.

Jan purses his lips to one side. Are you sure?

You do our paperwork. You tell me. There had been no calls for last-minute tune ups. "I’ve also heard from the union that people are traveling less, but what I really think is that they just don’t want to work with people like us anymore."

Then let me get a certification, Tata. Then we’ll get new business and—

If you want to waste our money on exams, so be it. Tata grunts. As if seven generations of business isn’t enough proof that we have the skills.

This is exactly like Tata. Stubborn to a fault, right for the most part, except for things like longer term planning. I do; I truly think it’ll be better for us.

Will getting a certification fix the fact that aristocrats now take their own trains, far away from what they’re calling the ‘new rich’ and the rats like us?

Where are you hearing this?

The union!

Jan never knows what his father means by the union, but there have been no missives sent which suggest anything like what his father says. You know, if I do get certified, I can probably get a job servicing those trains and keep this business afloat. I won’t abandon you, Tata.

His father places a wet, meaty hand on Jan’s shoulder. Let’s put this discussion away. I need a hearty dinner and some rest.

Tata speaks in an affect that’s much softer than Jan is accustomed to. The last time he sweetened himself in this way, it was because Jan had just lost his best friend, as if, in his duty as a single father, it was his job to play the role of the disciplinarian and the support. He uses that same voice now, with the same promise of physical care to distract from more rooted ills.

If that’s what you want, Tata.

They would just be on time for all the other working people making their way home or out to restaurants to eat their midday meal, to get the energy required for the rest of the day. An appetite, however, abandons Jan. His heart thrums in his chest, and it’s not the damp, still air of the workshop constricting his vessels. Closing early sets the next twelve months on the wrong fiscal foot.

Jan tidies up the shop, putting away their tools and oils while his father changes into cleaner, more civil clothing, leaving his soiled shirt and trousers behind on hangers in the back. To get home, they need public transit. Though they typically do not use their own autocar to get to work, Jan should have found it suspicious that in the days leading up to the Inventors’ Fair, Tata would leave their schedule up to the whims of the tram. He’s accustomed to late nights and the flexibility of coming and going whenever.

Luckily, the tramway stop closest to them sits across from the shop in the middle of their quiet street. The summer sun beats relentlessly across Daszek’s cobbled outskirts. Maple trees line the sidewalks, shielding them in shade. There are no spaces for autocars because most of the residents cannot afford vehicles of their own, and the tramway weaving through the city provides more than enough access to most districts and neighborhoods.

After shuttering the shop for the day, Jan and his father wait for the tram, sweat mixing with the healthy layer of engineering muck still slicked across their arms.

And they wait.

And they wait.

And they wait some more.

It seems we are walking home, son. As Jan’s father says this, a tram rolls up from around the corner. Its white frame and russet brown body crawls along its rail, pulled along the electric wire suspended high above the street. It stops with a swoosh. They get on, drop the requisite coins for the fare, and home they go.

Several women off to their afternoon shifts sit next to each other, leaning into each other’s fans despite the flat steel petals spinning in metal cages along the ceiling. With the windows open, air at least moves, lifting the humidity and some of the smells. The men don’t dare sit on the shiny resin-coated wooden seats—the sounds of their pants unsticking and the remaining thin layer of moisture cause enough embarrassment.

Their apartment complex lies close enough to Daszek’s Centrum to warrant this commute to the residential outskirts. It takes several stops, long enough to get lost in the hypnagogic hissing left behind by the moving vehicle. Jan rests his head against the thin metal pole, using his knuckles as a pillow. His father stands across from him, resting in the same position. There are those who enjoy reading or chatting on their journeys, but neither mechanic relishes in that distraction. It’s the one time, Jan finds, where he has his mind all to himself, to pluck at meandering thoughts or ignore them altogether.

Despite the earlier argument with Jan’s father, it’s a quiet ride in Jan’s mind.

The tram’s halting stop throws him from his reverie. His legs stumble, and he snatches the pole. He’s taken this route enough to know they’re between stations. He glances at his father, who has furrowed his brows as they wait for some kind of announcement.

The conductor speaks into the public address radio. Attention, we are being held up by tram traf—

A mass hits the side of the tram with such force, those seated become unseated, and those standing find themselves slamming face-first into the tram’s windows as the vehicle collapses onto its side. The cables feeding the vehicle energy snap. It shrieks off its rails. Jan flies, falling on top of his father, his elbows driving into the older man’s back. In the cacophony of the tram derailment—the shouting, the scratching of metal against pavement—Jan doesn’t see what became of his father’s face. Blood stains the glass. His father does not move.

Head throbbing, Jan rolls himself off his father. The conductor emerges from his station and dashes through the tram, hopping over tangled bodies to get to the emergency hatch. He shoves it open. Passengers leave. Jan helps the conductor get others out before he secures his own exit.

He leaps off the top, only to find the other passengers lying in slaughtered heaps. Arms lay far from their crushed torsos, splayed like meat at a butcher’s shop. Blood seeps into the urban streets’ grooves.

Jan does not get the chance to wonder what hit the tram so hard as to cause a derailment and why he hadn’t heard panicked sounds of violence. Large hands grip the top of his head and his shoulders. The vertebrae holding his skull snap. Four more hands curl around his limbs, tearing them off.

He dies before he can realize that the thing severing his head was neither human nor beast, but something else entirely.

ONE

Five Months Later; Winter 1917

I.

Her Highness Gita Iwanowicz’s erotic yowling interrupts Sasza’s morning coffee. He chokes on the bitter beverage, brown drops dirtying the luxurious parchment upon which the imperial aristocracy prefers to send their weeks’ ignored correspondences. The bed’s thudding against the ceiling had been distracting enough, but it’s a sound muffled by the rest of their two-bedroom townhouse. The Czarnolaski residence is a solitary structure separated from the main structure of the Imperial Palace by several kilometers of lawns, trees, and a large pond. The only way to get into the Imperial Grounds’ main boulevard is up the cobbled driveway. They have no servants or staff, so Sasza is the only other body to hear it and be bothered.

Moreover, the problem with the shouting isn’t that Her Highness engages in intercourse and that she wants everyone within hearing distance to know it.

The problem is that the man groin-deep in the empress is not the emperor, but Sasza’s father, Władysław Czarnolaski, the Imperial Magician.

No one quite knows what the role of Imperial Magician entails. It was a new position carved out for a man whose well-woven connections got himself and his son into the Iwanowiczes’ good graces. It had been years, however, since Władysław had taken one of his allies to his bed chambers. More often than not, it had gotten him in trouble. In those earlier trysts, Władysław only had himself to worry about. It seems he doesn’t worry for his offspring anymore.

Lucky for the safety of their status and security, Sasza had already been laying the groundwork for functioning as a more disciplined Imperial Magician. Most of Władysław’s correspondences have already been handled by Sasza, especially after the tragedy during the summer’s Inventors’ Fair known as the Jackiewicz Incident. The Jackiewiczes took blame for the attack. Their defenses were unprepared; to stave off the unseen foe, they unleashed a fiery torrent upon Daszek’s streets, incinerating all who got caught up in the infernal maelstrom. To their merit, they had also taken responsibility for recovery efforts, including reparations to the city itself and for those who had lost loved ones.

Sasza has been asking for weeks on their behalf if the upcoming Winter Solstice Ball can collect donations to honor lives lost and Daszek’s reconstruction. He feels guilty for not having been there; he declined the invitation to attend the Inventors’ Fair, but in hindsight, he might not have made it out alive. Regardless of the regret, the emperor could at least address the simple request, but he hasn’t. Sasza has tried to garner support for a more thorough investigation, using Władysław’s pens and the Czarnolaski seal. None came.

On his own, he gathered the phrase Abyssal Flock and a list of suspected dissidents, most of whom had never even been near Daszek. He suspects his father might know something, but Sasza has never mustered the courage to ask, lest it be taken as an accusation of treason.

Władysław bellows, a man gasping in the throes of that little death. Sasza drags his hands through his hair white as silver snow, hoping the silencing ward he had placed upon the house remains. Casting a spell to dampen all sound coming from their residence is asking a lot of Sasza.

Not only does it require a lot of magical energy, but it also requires him to reach deep into his knowledge of the protolanguage’s vocabulary, which not only binds together the languages of the Vampire States, the Odonic Empire, and the Kingdom of Waza, but acts as magic’s catalyst. Hardly spoken aside from contemporary cognates, its syllables and word segments are used only in casting. The more complicated the spell, the more linguistic manipulation it needs. Warding a singular room to make it silent to those beyond it, for example, takes a single thought and a snap from an experienced magician like Sasza. But entire buildings require more syllables, more gestures, and greater intention.

His third cup of coffee does not summon the focus he spent.

A third cigarette, however, might. As he lights the stick, the wooden clock hanging