The Poison Princess (40 page)

After traveling around in what felt like
circles, they came to a crossroads of the underground tunnels. In
each direction was a shambling horde of the life-stealing wights.
Some were so shrouded by darkness that all the women could see was
their sets of glowing red eyes in the distance.

“We can’t fight them,” Scarlett said.
“They’ll just reconstitute themselves.”

“I know,” Ruby replied. “We need to find the
way out.”

“Which way is it?”

“Don’t know. Anything you could do with magic
to guide us?”

“Maybe. I think it just sapped my physical
strength. Should still be able to cast a spell.”

Ruby turned around to see more of the undead
corpses walking up behind them. “If you can, do it. We don’t have
much time.”

The horned demon pulled her arm from around
Ruby’s shoulder and placed it just below her lips. She blew cool
air into her palm that formed into a bright pink ball of swirling
energy, and she then tossed the glowing orb forward. Scarlett
nearly fell after discharging the energy, but her princess caught
her and steadied her, throwing the demon’s arm back over her
shoulder. Ahead of them, the pink energy ball danced back and
forth, apparently trying to decide the correct path itself. It
swirled around in a circle, darting into a particular hallway a few
feet and then retracing back to the intersection where they
waited.

“You sure that thing is going to help?” Ruby
asked.

“Just give it a minute,” her demon replied.
“It’s clairvoyant energy. It can find the best path, but it needs
to work it out first.”

The princess checked each of the hallways to
see how close the wights were getting. The closest ones would be on
them in under a minute. “We’re not big on time.”

The pink energy seemed to fizzle, swirling up
into the air, before exploding in a bright beam down one of the
hallways. It scraped nearly against the ceiling, leaving a glowing
trail that illuminated the corridor it had traveled down.

“Follow it,” Scarlett instructed.

That was easier said than done. Every
direction had the shambling corpses, and the one the pink energy
had selected as the way out was no different. Four of the wights
crept down that particular hallway. They would have to make it past
those undead creatures somehow, and Scarlett was too weak to cast
any more spells to push them from their path. Ruby was, for the
moment, on her own. Her poison, in and of itself, she expected was
useless against the already dead things, but perhaps, she thought,
there was still use in it. The princess wrenched open the lever in
her chest, causing the toxic sludge to pour forth from her mouth.
The goal was not to kill the already dead wights, but to push them
from her path. The poison rushed up her throat, into her mouth, and
past her open lips. It exploded out of her, flooding down the
hallway to her front and causing the weak bodies to tumble
backward. Knocking them over wasn’t sufficient though. They could
still reach out and grab her as she passed by. Ruby needed them to
be pushed from the path altogether. She kept forcing the poison out
her mouth, watching as the bodies slid down the drenched
corridor.

Overhead, the pink light turned right, so
Ruby followed it, clamping the lever in her chest shut. She had to
jostle Scarlett to keep her moving. The wight’s drain still seemed
to be weakening her, and the magical expenditure on the clairvoyant
light had only complicated things. The princess, however, wouldn’t
let any further harm come to her demon. The hallway the light
guided her down was clear. All the corpses seemed to be shambling
somewhere behind her for the moment. The light looped around a
corner, followed by another quick turn. The pink light illuminated
a set of stone steps leading up above. Just like the ones they had
broken to get down into the undercroft in the first place, these
were blocked by a heavy slab.

Ruby leaned Scarlett against the wall and
helped her slide down into a seating position. “Wait here.”

The horned demon had not the energy to reply.
She merely nodded, struggling to keep her eyes open.

The princess gripped her war hammer and
turned back to the stairs. She placed one foot on a lower step and
left the other on the ground. It was awkward to position herself in
a way where she was able to strike the slab from below, but she did
the best she could. She spit more of the acidic venom onto the
mallet of her weapon to help eat away at the stone cover and then
looked back to see if there were any wights to have followed her.
Nothing yet, but their shuffling sounds were not far.

Ruby turned her attention to breaking the
slab, trying to ignore what was coming for her. She swung the heavy
hammer upward into the ceiling overhead. The awkwardness of the
strike was more than she would have preferred. The attack barely
made a dent in the stone, and her poison had nowhere to seep into,
dripping back down onto her and the steps. She tried again, but the
repeated effort and lackluster results only cemented in her mind
the thought that she needed another plan for getting through the
barricade. The princess dropped her war hammer to the ground with
an echoing thunk and climbed up the steps until she could reach the
stone overhead with her empty hands.

Her palms rested flat against the hard, cold
surface, and she attempted to push the incredibly heavy slab up.
Even with the strength she received from the poisonous magic inside
her, Ruby was nowhere near strong enough to even budge the stone a
little. There was nothing else though. She looked back to the
hallway behind her. The glowing red eyes were there, marching
slumped towards her. She looked to her demonic companion, who had
fallen unconscious. Ruby leaned her head to the side, placing her
shoulders against the heavy rock and pushed up again on the stone.
It might have moved a little, but the princess may have just been
kidding herself. She delved into her body, trying to determine how
much poisonous energy she really had left. The release of the
deluge down the hall had nearly emptied her out. She couldn’t do
that again.

Ruby stepped down off the stairs, breathing
heavy from exerting her energy against the heavy slab but having
nothing to show from it. Her lips and chin were covered in purple
sludge from the earlier release, and the rock dust that had fallen
on her painted her face a grey color and caused hot burning tears
to slip down her cheeks. The princess reached down and grabbed the
war hammer from the ground, stepping between the now unconscious
Scarlett and the oncoming wights.

Adopting a snarling visage, Ruby swung the
war hammer across the head of the first undead creature to step
into her path. Its head followed a similar trajectory as the other
she had knocked off, and its body slumped to the ground, but she
knew it wouldn’t last. She brought the hammer’s mallet hard against
the next wight, hitting this one in the shoulder and nearly
knocking its entire torso from its hips. It tumbled to the ground,
already beginning to reconstitute itself. A third strike went into
the brittle knees of another of the animated skeletons, sending it
hard on top of the other creatures. She continued in this vein,
causing a heap of bodies to pile up at her feet. Their weight on
top of one another seemed to be the only thing keeping them from
standing back up. Despite her efforts, there were hundreds of
glowing red eyes lining the dark tunnel.

The princess was exhausted, and she had to
take a step back, which gave the wights that she had already
attacked time to rebuild their broken bodies and stand once more.
One of the undead creatures made it into her little room of
sanctuary, and she stepped forward again to meet it. Ruby swung her
hammer against its skull, knocking it off, but she couldn’t
maintain the attack. Her body fell to the floor, and she dropped
the weapon, trying to catch her breath.

Several of the wights flooded into the room,
ignoring Scarlett but surrounding Ruby’s crumpled form. Leaning
down to her, their cold, skeletal claws wrapped around her arms and
held her up. She could feel the energy draining from her body at
their touch, just as they had done to her demon. The blue light
rose from her skin and into them. In front of her, the wight with
the crown atop its brow strode forward. It was by far the most
decomposed body she had seen, and the only conclusion she could
come to was that it was the body of her ancestor, King Cyrus. The
undead thing stepped close to her, almost growling in her face with
its fleshless, featureless skull. The wight king wrapped its bony
fingers around Ruby’s neck, causing the same glowing blue light to
rise from her flesh and into the king’s open mouth. Her eyes
fluttered slowly shut, as she felt the energy leave her until it
seemed there was nothing left.

What they drained from her wasn’t simply
energy and life, however. It was everything that remained of her
once mortal existence. The wight king carved out her emotions and
devoured them like they were fine delicacies, consuming them with
what almost looked like a delighted smile on its bony skull. All
that she could yet feel was what the dark poison had enhanced
inside her - rage, lust, hate, greed, and violent cruelty. The
wight king had cleansed her of her humanity. The terrible thing
before her had purged her of weakness. An unrelenting dark power
was all that remained.

Ruby screamed, full of rage, her eyes widened
and turned midnight black, while her body trembled with unknown
power. The chaotic energy swirled inside her chest, and she made a
conscious decision that she would not allow herself to become a
victim. Rather than turning that lever in the direction she had
become so familiar with, the princess threw it in the opposite. Her
mouth became a vacuum, sucking in all dark desires, all malicious
power, and everything that made this wight king and its followers
refuse to stay dead. The red glow from their empty eye sockets was
pulled toward her, ripped out of their skulls, and the energy
flowed past her lips. The cruel, red energy was stored inside her
chest, granting her even more strength, which she used to pull in
the rest. The wights at her side fell limp to the ground, their
bones and armor clattering as they landed. The princess managed to
stand all on her own now, her vigor restored.

The wight king’s followers were next, rapid
beams of red shooting down the corridors and into Ruby’s body,
filling her with even more malevolent rage. She shouted, needing
some way to channel such ferocity. The skeletons behind the wight
king collapsed, until the undead king was the only one remaining.
The princess stepped forward and saw fear in its glowing eyes. She
grabbed it by the neck and did to it as it had done to her. Ruby
sucked the energy from it, allowing the blue wave it had stolen to
flow back into her. With a final snarl, Ruby pulled the last bit of
red energy from the wight king’s glowing eyes and allowed the
corpse to fall to the undercroft floor. As its head slammed into
the ground, the crown slid off and clanged against the hard
stone.

Ruby turned her attention to Scarlett. She
leaned down and kissed her unconscious demon, allowing some of the
red energy to flow through Scarlett’s lips and further inside her
body. Her eyes shot open, and the princess leaned back.

“What happened?” the horned demon asked.

Ruby stood back up. “We won.”

Scarlett looked over to see the hallway of
lifeless bodies. “That’s… that’s… How did you do it?”

“Poison, it seems is not the only thing that
sustains me. They were full of a dark energy, so I took it for my
own.”

“You’re…” Scarlett saw a red glint in her
princess’ eyes. “You’re so beautiful…”

Ruby smiled and turned back to the stairs.
She raised her hands to the stone slab once more. This time she
channeled the stolen energy of the wights, and shifted the blockade
to the side, allowing them to pass up and into the castle.

“We’re almost there. All I can think of is
snapping the craggy hand demon’s neck.”

Scarlett stood and joined her master at the
stairs, picking up her war hammer and handing it to her. “Then I am
sure you will, my poison princess.”

The stairs of the undercroft led up to an
interior area of the castle that, in her days, was largely
abandoned, so Ruby had little fear that anyone would have heard the
commotion of the fight with the wights. Just like at the other end
of the crypt’s tunnel, the stairs led directly into a little
chamber that was also sealed from the other side, but that wouldn’t
stop the princess and her demon. Ruby had already revealed the
strength the stolen red energy had given her, but she was now
curious if Scarlett had benefitted as well.

With a nod to the door, she told her horned
demon, “Break it open.”

Scarlett wore a sly smile and placed both her
hands to the door, just as eager to test this new power flowing
through her. The red energy pushed down through her arms and into
the heavy bronze at her fingertips. The sight was similar to when
the craggy hand demon had cast spells. There were no flashy spell
effects; whatever he had set his mind on simply happened invisibly.
Scarlett’s attempt to unbar the door was just the same. The bronze
slab simply pushed forward, the wooden planks on the other side
being instantly splintered and broken at her mental command.

The horned demon shifted to the side of the
doorway, smiling to her princess and gesturing to her that she
could now move through. Ruby did so, flinging the war hammer onto
her shoulder and checking the hallway to ensure they were alone.
Her suspicions were validated, as the halls were unoccupied, and
the only light coming in was from the sunlight penetrating through
open windows. Extremely familiar with the layout of the castle from
playing many games of hide and seek there as a child, Ruby knew the
best path to every location Leina and her craggy hand demon could
be. It was midday now, and she suspected the throne room to be the
most likely place to go. The direct route was left, through a
lengthy hall, and up a set of stairs that would lead them to a main
hallway that connected most of the castle together.