The Poison Princess (22 page)

The princess glowered at Slip. “You don’t
talk to her.”

“Fine,” he answered, raising an eyebrow.

Having put the rogue in his place, Ruby
nodded for Scarlett to go ahead. The demon kneeled under the grate
and climbed up to the pipe. Jumping up to the tunnel, she had to
get on her knees and crawl forward a bit to get properly into the
tunnel.

“Mm,” the rogue muttered from behind her,
staring at the demon’s bending figure.

“You don’t even look at her,” Ruby
threatened.

Slip shrugged. “Whatever you say, darling.
You’re next.”

The princess followed her demon’s lead and
climbed up into the pipe. Once she was there, she turned and held
open the grate for Slip to climb up, and he joined them inside.
After he was in the pipe, he turned and helped her softly let it
fall back down on the metal tube, as to not alert anyone nearby of
anything out of the ordinary. From there, Slip took the lead,
guiding them through the sewage-covered tunnels. Thanks to the muck
she’d been exuding, Ruby found herself rather at home in those
sludge filled tunnels.

She recalled some of the lessons she’d heard
about the kingdom and city. Elythine had been rather advanced a
decade past. She suspected they hadn’t made much additional
advancement in the years of her slumber, however. The sewer system,
though disgusting to be inside of, was a rather ingenious idea to
help dispose of waste. The concept was not fully formed, but Ruby
was impressed with the forward thinkers of this once powerful
kingdom.

Slip continued leading the pair of women
through twists and turns of the sewer, until they finally arrived
at a ladder leading up. He patted his hands on the railing, and
said “This is you. Now, how about my payment?”

“As I said, payment on delivery,” Ruby
replied. “You do not see the gold, until I see Hendrik.”

The rogue approached her and was about to say
something, but the princess stopped him.

“There is nothing you have to threaten me
with. Do as you are told, or you will never get your precious
gold.”

Slip bit his tongue, sucked his teeth, and
turned back toward the ladder. Along the way, he passed Scarlett,
and his hand slid against Scarlett’s butt. The act might have been
innocent enough, as the demon hardly even felt it, but after his
earlier ogling, Ruby was not willing to let it go unanswered.

The princess rushed forward, twisting Slip
around and grabbing him by the neck. Empowered by her poison, she
choked his throat while pushing him against the metal ladder of the
tunnel. He clawed at her hands, but she was too strong with the
rage of jealousy flowing through her. Rather than leak from her
mouth, poison began to seethe through the flesh of her palm, right
into Slip’s neck. His skin quickly dissolved, his whole body
turning into mush, as he screamed and then gurgled. In a mere
handful of moments, the rogue was dead, and what remained of his
oozy body was in a pile below the ladder.

“What was that about?” Scarlett asked,
genuinely surprised but wearing a dark smile.

Ruby glared at the man’s goopy corpse. “He
touched you. No one touches you. You’re mine and no one
else’s.”

Scarlett smiled wider at her master. She
loved hearing her princess talk like that. “I am yours and no one
else’s.”

Ruby’s breathing slowed back to a steady
pace. “Good.”

“I must say though… I like this side of you.
It is very…” She bit her lip. “Arousing.” Scarlett put her hands on
Ruby’s hips, pulling her close, but the princess had to stop
her.

“Now’s probably not the best time for that.
Someone might have heard us.”

“Rats,” the demon said.

Ruby picked up the rogue’s cloak and flung
off the poisonous sludge and chunks of Slip’s discarded flesh to
the sewer floor with a jerk of the fabric. She then tossed it
behind her and over her shoulders before raising its hood over her
head. There was something heavy in one of the pockets of the coat,
and her curiosity led her to inspect the contents. Inside, Ruby
found something she didn’t expect to be there, something that
shouldn’t have been there. It was her pearl brooch.

“What the…” she said, putting one hand on her
chest where the brooch should have been and showing the item to
Scarlett. “When could he have taken this?”

The horned demon shrugged.

Ruby pinned it back to where it had been and
said, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Go ahead.” She gestured
toward the ladder for her companion to go first.

Scarlett nodded and then climbed up the
rungs, as the princess looked up at her demon pet, enjoying the
view just as Slip once had. Ruby followed her up, where they found
themselves in a small, unoccupied room. The chamber was made of
stone and only lit through narrow windows at the top of the room.
Whatever it had been built for, it appeared to now be out of use.
There was a single door leading out of the room, so Ruby moved to
it to see where they were.

She twisted the knob and pulled the wooden
door toward her. A guard in her own kingdom’s colors was walking
down a hall of cages away from her. Ruby opened the door wider and
peeked out to see a spiral staircase to the side and another
hallway lined with cages.

The princess turned back inside and whispered
to Scarlett, “Come on.”

Ruby grabbed her demon’s hand and pulled her
out of the room and towards the spiral staircase. They quickly but
quietly ran up the steps. Along the way, they passed a few doors
leading to more prison cells, but she had every expectation that
she would find a famous figure such as Hendrik at the top of the
tower. Following that reasoning, the pair of women continued up,
until there was no further that they could travel. They saw no
additional guards along the way, but they heard shouting beyond
some of the doors they had passed. She suspected that it would be
best to not linger there. She had to find Hendrik and get out of
the tower as fast as possible.

They stood in front of the final door, which
was locked with no keys in sight. This would not stop her. Ruby
gripped the door and exuded an acidic mixture through the sweat of
her palm. The poison spread to cover the entire metal portion of
the lock in the door, until there was nothing left but the wood.
She stuck a finger through the hole where the metal had been and
pulled it back. What she saw behind the door was not what she had
expected to find.

When the princess heard the name Hendrik
from the Oracle’s prophecy, it was not the first time. Her great
interest in the world of Nabiria at large during her youth had led
her history tutor, Art, to tell her a bit about Elythine and its
wizards. Of those wizards, Hendrik was by far the most famous and,
in Ruby’s time, considered to be practicing the pinnacle of
spellcraft. The princess recalled that Durin was quite envious of
Hendrik’s intellect and saw him as an ideal that he could strive to
become.

The feat for which he was most famous for was
helping drive back a horde of goblins that had united under the
banner of what they called their goblin king. Naturally a fairly
unorganized lot, the goblins had never posed a potential problem
despite their vast numbers spread throughout the various kingdoms
in dark places and hidden hovels. This goblin king, however, had
managed the impossible feat of bringing these vile little creatures
together to do his own bidding. That bidding, of course, was to
conquer the nations of man. At first, no kingdom truly paid the
threat the attention it deserved, resulting in several small
villages being completely wiped out.

It was then that Hendrik stepped forward. He
was, at the time, a relatively unknown wizard, but he came with a
plan that he claimed would wipe out the goblin horde in one fell
swoop. Goblins, as a whole, were known to both fear and revere, of
all things, owls. They had formed the semblance of a religion
revolving around the hooting bird, and to a goblin, it was a
terrible slight to ever harm an owl. Hendrik, then, suggested
bringing owls to the battle and painting images of owls on the
soldiers’ armor and shields. The little creatures then refused to
fire upon the men, fearing they would hurt and anger the owls.
Hendrik supplemented this tactic with his own spellcraft, creating
illusions of owls swooping down over the battlefield and scaring
the goblins off. With the army scattered, the goblin king was
easily dispatched, and the conflict came to an abrupt end.

Ruby had heard such stories from Durin, and
she was eager to meet the clever wizard. The final room of the
tower was a large, single unit that was not furnished at all like a
prison cell should be. Among the furniture in the room were five
small beds, several comfortable looking chairs, various tables with
books or alchemical beakers and flasks sprawled out in disarray
over them, a strange fountain with blue energy spraying up into the
air and dissipating there, an altar with a silver colored orb
floating several inches above it, a stuffed raven perched on a book
cabinet peering down at the chaos of the room, and a window that
was open with no bars blocking it whatsoever. The most important
things in that room, however, were the five little men running
about the room frantically working on various tasks. Little isn’t
quite the right word. You see, each one was little more than a foot
tall. This had led to an abundance of stools and stepladders in the
room that they used to get them all to the appropriate heights they
needed to be at for their assorted undertakings.

Each of the little men looked very similar.
You couldn’t say that they all were exactly the same, but they
looked like they could be brothers at the least. They all had the
same dark skin, and their hair looked very similar, though each
wore it differently. One with a mustache had shaved the hair on his
head completely off, another had shaved off everything except for a
single, tall streak down the center of his head, one with a full
beard had let it grow wildly in a giant uncontrolled puff of hair,
another kept it very short and had a bit of growth on his chin, and
the last of the little men had molded it into braids of some sort
without any real weaving - the strands were just matted and fell
limply to his forehead. They were all dressed similarly as well,
but different enough that they could be distinguished by their
preferences. Their clothing looked to have been custom made for
them given their small stature, and every one of them had on a
different color of the similarly crafted fabrics. Red, blue, green,
orange, and black were all represented among the strange men.

Ruby wasn’t quite sure what to make of all
this. “Hendrik?” she asked tentatively.

“Yes?” each of them said in unison, turning
their head from their activities to face her.

“You’re… all Hendrik?” she asked.

“Mmm,” the one with the bald head said to the
others. “This must be the sister.”

The others nodded in agreement and finished
what they were doing, hopping down off their stools and step
ladders and chairs, each of them approaching the pair of women.

“Close the door,” the same one told
Scarlett.

The demon did as instructed, and each of the
little men lined up in a semi-circle around them.

“You know me?” Ruby asked them.

“I saw that you would come!” squeaked the one
wearing orange clothing who had wild, puffy hair.

The princess was at a loss for words. She
didn’t even know why she was really there. An oracle had told her
she would go there, and now these little men who all claimed to be
Hendrik said that they too knew she would come. She was having more
than a little difficulty with the situation.

The one with the mohawk spoke up with a harsh
voice. “Clearly, she needs a proper introduction.”

“I’ll do it!” the one with wild hair
exclaimed in his high pitched, almost squealing voice.

“No, you won’t,” said the little Hendrik in
red with neatly trimmed hair in an almost smarmy voice. “Yes, we
are all Hendrik, or at least we used to be. We separated ourselves
in an attempt to further our academic progress.”

“Though that’s met with mixed results,” the
bald one chimed in.

Clearly, the overly tidy and smarmy Hendrik
did not appreciate the interruption, but he continued regardless.
“To make things easier, we have taken on our own titles. You may
call me Master.”

The bald one in blue spoke again. “I am
Prime.”

“Overlord,” said the Hendrik in black with a
mohawk.

“My name is Supreme,” said the one wearing
green clothing and with the hair in divided little locks. “And he
is Mad.” He pointed to the one wearing vivid orange and with wild
hair.

“Mad?” Ruby asked.

“That’s me!” he replied in his squeaky voice.
“I saw that you were coming! That was me!”

“He sees things,” Prime offered. “We’ve each
studied different fields, since our split. His efforts have been
toward scrying, though it has… altered his mind a bit. Thus…
Mad.”

“And each of your names identifies you in
some way?” Ruby asked.

“Some more than others,” Prime said, looking
to Master and Overlord.

“Why are you called Prime?” she asked.

“He believes he was first,” Master explained.
“Hendrik Prime, as it were.”

Prime was clearly not on good terms with
Master. “And what about you? Master? What’s that supposed to
mean?”

Master leaned forward and smiled at Prime. “I
thought it was quite clear. It means I’m better than you.”

The two stared at each other with ill intent
in their eyes. Ruby cleared her throat in an attempt to dispel the
tension. “What about Overlord?”

He smiled. “Everyone has to have goals in
life. Mine is simply to rule over everyone.”

“Right,” she replied, a bit horrified by his
forthrightness. “And Supreme?”