The Poison Princess (12 page)

“No, my princess,” Scarlett said, smiling
widely. “You don’t understand. Your sister and the craggy hand
demon are connected, just as we are. He needs her to live, so he
would do everything in his power to keep her alive.”

For the first time since recovering from the
toxic blissroot’s effects, Ruby felt a bit of reluctant optimism.
“Leina is still alive?”

“She is, my princess.”

Ruby stood. “Then I have to get back to
her.”

Scarlett joined her and nodded.

“How do we get out of here? Is there a
path?”

“There is the stream,” the horned woman
suggested. “I haven’t followed it to its very end, but it goes
quite far.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go.” Ruby started to
move, but hesitated. “I have to ask. Why is there a pile of dead
snakes over there?”

“Oh. They got used up.”

“Used up? What does that mean exactly?”

“You need poison, princess. It needs to flow
through your veins.”

“So… you’ve been feeding me snakes?”

“Just the venom.”

“You’ve been feeding me snake venom,” Ruby
stated for her own benefit.

“Yes, my princess. Though, if you don’t mind
my saying, you wouldn’t need to go through so much, if you’d stop
losing so much of it.”

“As you put it, I’m the poison princess.”

“You’re never going to not be the poison
princess. That doesn’t mean you need to slobber it out all the
time. Get ahold of it.”

The princess kept hearing Scarlett give her
advice on what she had inside her. She seemed to know much about
her, but Ruby knew almost nothing about the horned woman. “Who are
you to me?”

Scarlett smiled in response. “I thought that
was clear. I am the servant; you are the master. I am the prisoner;
you the warden. I am yours to lead, and you are mine to
follow.”

“That sounds like a slave.”

“I am willing. I have made this decision, as
have you. We are bonded, Ruby. Now and forever.”

“You have to realize that there’s no future
here, Scarlett.”

The horned demon smiled coyly. “What’s wrong
with the present? You’ve given me life here. I want to repay your
efforts.”

“Then you will help me? Even though I’m
promising you nothing?”

“With anything, my princess.”

Ruby picked up Sniggle, placing him on her
shoulder. “Then let’s see where the water takes us. Let’s save my
sister.”

Ruby and her demon servant walked along the stream for days. During
the princess’ time under the influence of the toxic blissroot,
Scarlett had traveled quite a distance in search of a path leading
out of the caves. They’d passed that point two or three days back.
Everything ahead of them now was fresh for them both, and still,
neither knew which way they were going. They could have been
getting further away from Lavidia or closer. There was simply no
way to know that far underground.

Along their travels, the princess had focused
much of her efforts into controlling the flow of poison from her
mouth. Scarlett had mentioned that she had been forced to feed a
great deal of snake venom to Ruby in order to wean her off the
toxic fruit. They’d passed a few of the tips of white blissroot
falling part way out of the rocky ceiling, and she still had an
urge to reach out and grab them. Once, she had even done so out of
eleven years’ worth of habit, but her demon servant had stopped her
before she could make that mistake again.

Scarlett had caught a snake the day prior,
swimming along in the water and had been keeping it around for when
Ruby would inevitably exhaust herself again. The demon carried the
reptile along in one hand like it was the most normal thing in the
world. In her other hand, Scarlett carried the large fang of
Sythys. The need for snake venom was why the princess was so
concerned about controlling the flow of the poison from her mouth.
She was far from eager to swallow the snake’s toxin anymore or
worse yet, to have it bite her and inject her with its venom.

If she could force herself to change the
color, consistency, and effect of the substance oozing up from her
throat and create life in the form of Sniggle and the other imps,
then surely there was more she could do. Whether that included the
ability to stop it from constantly leaking out of her or not was
still a question she was trying to answer. She hoped it was.

Because of her distraction in pursuing this
endeavor, Scarlett led the way, carrying the purple imp, Sniggle,
on her shoulder, who was sleeping yet again, as he always seemed
to. The demon had not been at all like what Ruby would have
expected from a creature of the nether realm. She had come on very
strong on their first couple meetings, but since being granted
form, she had been much more subdued. Everything she had done had
been for Ruby’s benefit. She had nursed her back to health and
asked for nothing further in return. Growing up, the princess had
always tried to do what was expected of her, and thinking of a
woman in a romantic fashion had never really occurred to her.
Seeing the woman walk in front of her in the tight, form fitting
black dress, made her reconsider such thoughts. Everything about
Scarlett seemed aimed exactly at the goal of arousing Ruby, so she
had to think that she had denied a large part of who she was for
all of her life to that point. If the circumstances of their
meeting had not been so dark, the princess thought that a normal
relationship could have been possible. Such as it was though, she
was too focused on saving her sister and dealing with her own
toxicity to give a relationship much practical thought.

And so, she focused on clogging whatever
source it was that so consistently secreted the poison up through
her throat, into her mouth, and in such proportions that it
constantly fell from her lips, covering and coating her body in its
slime. Ruby tried to locate something deep inside her, somewhere in
her chest that was creating and pushing this substance up and out
of her. There had to be an origin point, and she was determined to
find it.

Feeling her mind downward through her own
body, Ruby searched. She tried to swallow the poison repeatedly
seeing where it went, seeing if she could follow its path and reach
down to where it started. So far, the task was not going according
to her hopes. She needed a distraction, so the princess hurried
forward to talk with her demon servant.

Scarlett turned her head, as she approached,
and asked, “Having any luck?”

“Maybe a little,” Ruby answered. “Mostly, I’m
making myself just wish I could vomit all this filth up and that be
the end of it.”

“You’re going to figure it out,” the demon
woman reassured her confidently.

“You seem to know a lot about my condition.
Why is that?”

“It’s simple magic is all. Given where I’m
from, I just know a bit about it, I suppose.”

“And you think I can control it?”

“The magic of the spell can be controlled,
and you’re strong… So, yes. I think you can control it.”

“I wish I had your confidence, Scarlett.”

“In a way, you do.”

Ruby squinted her eyes. “What does that
mean?” It was a question she felt like she was asking
constantly.

“Everything you feel, I feel as well, and it
works both ways,” Scarlett explained.

Ruby thought about that for a moment. “If I’m
in pain, then so are you?”

“I suppose that’s true, but in a more
optimistic light, every pleasant sensation you experience, I feel
it too. Think of it as a pleasure loop.”

Ruby blinked a couple times and then replied,
“That seems a little…”

“Masturbatory?” Scarlett offered with a
devilish grin.

“I wasn’t going to say that, but… yes, I
suppose it is.”

“Our shared sensations aren’t yet fully
realized though. We have not finished our complete bonding
process.”

“When will that happen?”

“It just takes time and intimacy. If you
wanted to hurry and cement our bonds, we could give this pleasure
loop a try.”

“I was just thinking about borrowing a bit of
your confidence,” Ruby replied.

“I guess we’ll have to work up to the
pleasure loop then?”

“I think so, Scarlett.” Ruby thought about
what the horned woman had told her, when it dawned on her. “If we
share this connection, and my sister and the craggy hand demon are
the same, then by hurting him, I will hurt her?”

“I’m sorry,” Scarlett offered.

“You’re sorry?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you. Saving your
sister will not be a simple task.”

“Then you’re saying there is a way to stop
the demon without hurting her?”

“Anything is possible, my princess. It’s just
a matter of how far you’re willing to go to get the results you
desire.”

“You know there is no boundary I’m not
willing to cross.”

“I know,” Scarlett said, barely above the
volume of a whisper.

“So how do I do it?”

“That’s complicated magic. That level of
knowledge is beyond me. You’ll need someone far more capable to
give you that answer.”

“Hm.” Ruby thought about that and resumed her
slower pace behind her demon servant. The majority of the princess’
knowledge was limited to her own kingdom, and she suspected that
everything she had known there was now gone. Eleven years had
passed under what she had no doubt was the merciless, destructive
leadership of the craggy hand demon, so she had little expectation
anything she knew still stood or had survived. The wizard she had
been most familiar with had been Durin, who died trying to save
her. Who or what could possibly be left?

No, she thought. She would need to look to
sources outside her kingdom’s knowledge. Lavidia was not alone in
the world, and she was sure that somewhere out there was the
information she needed. It was just a matter of finding it. She had
been taught a little about Elythine, where her dream had taken
place. Aside from the dream, she had never actually visited their
lands and never met anyone of prominence from there. Given what her
father was going to announce that day eleven years prior, Ruby
wondered what had happened to the royal family of Elythine. Had
they been killed along with her own family? Did they escape the
craggy hand demon’s wrath? She didn’t know. What she did know was
that they were supposed to have a higher understanding of magic
than even her own people. Maybe they would be an option, if she
could make it there.

She also considered a place called simply,
the Cloister. It was a large, secluded temple far to the west of
Lavidia, where monks studied in solitude. Very little was known
about the men and women that lived there except that they were
exceedingly knowledgeable about the powers of the nether world.
They researched the demons more than anyone else she had heard
about, so they might have the exact answer she sought on how to
unchain her sister from the craggy hand demon.

There were options out there in the world,
but they all felt so very far away. Ruby would have paced if she
hadn’t already been walking. She found it difficult to not turn
about face and walk the other way every few feet. Something in the
repetitious act helped her think and clear her mind, and the
princess needed that now. Her capacity was hindered with all that
had happened to her since she bit into that poisoned strawberry.
What she knew was that she had to get out of that cave, and the
stream just seemed to go on forever. Thinking about it made her
feel hopeless and frustrated. She turned her mind back to the task
of shutting off the poison valve hidden somewhere inside her body.
With her resentment about her loss of time and the cavernous prison
mounting within her, she felt that anger build and expand in her
chest. As had been the case several times now, that loss of control
over her emotion led to a new understanding and revelation. Raising
a hand to the very center of her ribs, she could feel that exact
lever that she searched for beneath her fingertips. Swallowing a
gulp of the poison, she unlocked that potential, and the ooze
stopped pouring forth.

Ruby stopped walking, holding a hand under
her lips, and there was nothing. “Scarlett!” she exclaimed. “I did
it!”

Her demon servant looked back to her, along
with Sniggle on her shoulder. She smiled and said, “I knew you
could do it, my princess.”

The purple imp ignored her and continued to
snooze.

“You were right,” Ruby replied.

“Can you start it back up again?” Scarlett
asked.

Ruby thought about that same fictional lever
in her chest, and she twisted it in her mind. The purplish black
sludge resumed pouring forth out her lips. The princess twisted it
back in the other direction. It stopped once more. She reversed it
again, and the poison started up at her command. Off. On. Off. Ruby
felt power in her control over the strange chaos magic that rested
inside her. The power felt good. For the first time in a long time,
she allowed herself a big smile, exposing her purple stained
teeth.

Scarlett returned to Ruby and took her hand.
“There is light at the end of this tunnel, my princess. We are
almost there.”

A
dark and dreary city, Gloomport was a dangerous port of harbor,
much more so if you were to find yourself trapped there. Like much
of the world beyond her castle, Ruby had never visited the city,
but that was where she found herself at the end of that stream.
Gloomport was an underground city at the very edge of the
continent. The sea washed up into the deep cove, where the water
met the rocky ground of the city. The ground was a combination of
rock, dirt, and occasional cobblestones, all of which seemed to be
covered in the salty spray of the sea water. The cavern that housed
the city was far larger than the princess would have ever imagined
without seeing it first hand, housing hundreds of buildings and
many more people.