The Poison Princess (25 page)

Ruby was crying once again, and the quiver
returned to her voice. “You’re like him. You’re from the nether
realm. How does it work? How did he destroy my sister?”

Scarlett was offended that she would compare
her to that kind of creature. “My princess, while I am from the
same place as him I am nothing like him.”

“How did he do it?” Ruby was determined to
get her answer.

“It’s part of a spell.”

She felt a glimmer of hope, though she knew
better than to rely on it. “Then, does that mean it can be
reversed?”

“The spell feeds on their bond. If we sever
that connection, then it is possible all the corruption he has
caused to grow in her will recede.”

“Possible? You mean it’s possible it won’t?
That my sister might never be the same?”

Scarlett didn’t want to hurt her princess any
more than the vision already had. “I’m sure you can save her. Even
the… Hendriks… rude though they were, seemed to think you could
save her.”

Ruby looked up at her demon. What Leina had
said howled in her head. “That’s not what she said. She said I
couldn’t save her. After what she’s been doing for the past decade…
maybe she’s right.”

“The corruption inside her would say anything
to keep you from destroying it. You can’t trust it. It only wants
to hurt you. That’s what such sorcery feeds on - negative
emotion.”

“Then it certainly got a meal from me.”

Seeing her master in pain was hard for
Scarlett. She wished she could do something to repair the damage
that the dream had caused. Again, she thought about harming the
Hendriks, but that would help her not Ruby. “What did she say to
you, my princess?”

“I couldn’t possibly repeat it…” She tried to
push away the words in her head. “But it was clear that the
corruption you speak of has taken over.”

“Those little Hendriks said that the spell
would allow you to see her without that corruption though. Did you
not get the chance? Did they lie to you?”

“It was a short lived conversation. The filth
inside her took over, and I saw the extent to what the craggy hand
demon did to her.”

“But don’t you see? That proves that she is
still in there. There is still something to save.”

Maybe she was right, the princess thought.
She looked over to her companion’s hopeful eyes. She never would
have thought a demon could be something quite like Scarlett.

“I won’t let you give up, Ruby. We will do
this together. We will crush the craggy hand demon and save your
sister.”

The princess wrapped her arms around the
demon. “Thank you, Scarlett.” The embrace was comforting to her,
and she could already tell how reliant she would become on her.

“Come,” Scarlett whispered into her princess’
ear. “Let’s go to the Cloister. The answer to your worries lies
there. I’m sure of it.”

Ruby released her grip from her demon and
nodded. Scarlett then grabbed the princess’ hand and guided her
back to where she had talked to the young man about transport to
the Cloister. Since she left, he and an older man had prepared a
horse and strung a four-wheeled cart behind it with a bit of
supplies piled in it.

The young man then approached the pair of
women and said, “It’s a long journey. My father is going to need
some payment for my time before I leave.”

Scarlett looked to Ruby, and she nodded in
compliance. The demon then did the same trick as before, retrieving
a gold bar. This one, however, was half the size of the former, cut
perfectly along its shorter length. She then handed the half bar of
gold to the young man.

“I imagine that should suffice?”

“Y-Y-Yeah. That’ll do.” The young man then
handed the bar to his father, who was just as hypnotized by the
chunk of shiny metal as his son. “Well, I believe we are set up if
you’re ready.”

“We are,” Scarlett replied.

The pair of women climbed up in the back
section of the cart where there was a hard wood bench to sit on,
while the young man sat up front and took the reins. He waved
goodbye to his father before jostling the straps and whistling at
the horse who responded by starting into a mild trot. The journey
to the Cloister would be a long one, and it would take some time,
but the answers that Ruby sought would be there. For the sake of
her sister, they had to be.

Scarlett fidgeted in her seat, scratching at
the fabric of her dress. Turning to Ruby, she asked, “You mind if
I…”

“Leave it on,” the princess said,
interrupting her companion.

“It’s just that it’s so much more
comfortable. I don't know how you stand it.”

Ruby looked over at the horned demon. “Well,
I'm not a nudist for one.”

“I'm not a nudist. I just don't like
clothes.” She continued fidgeting but did as her master instructed
and left her dress on.

The journey to the Cloister had been ongoing
for over a week now. The whole thing would have been faster, but
the young man, who they now knew to be named Edwin, was not like
them. He had to eat, drink, and sleep. In truth, he slowed them
down, but neither Ruby nor her demon knew the path to the monastery
as he seemed to. Along the way, they had mostly camped out in the
wilderness, but they did pass through a small city named Agath and
stayed in an inn there one night. It was the first time the women
were able to share a proper bed together. The expenses of the rooms
were once again covered by Scarlett’s ability to pull currency out
of thin air.

Over the journey’s time, the princess was
eventually able to prevent herself from thinking about all the
awful things her sister had said. Instead, she concerned herself
with the path that lay in front of her. She needed to get to the
Cloister and convince the monks there to help her. Assuming they
would, she wasn’t quite sure what she would find there. There had
been a mention of something that could separate a demon from its
host, but she’d heard very little details.

Scarlett, meanwhile, had helped her princess
in whatever way she could along the trip. Though she had worried
that what the Hendriks’ had said about the darkness inside her
would ultimately drive a wedge between the two; that had not been
the case. Rather, the two women continued to increase their bond.
After a few days, the demon had been able to convince Ruby to
continue with their physical relationship as well. The nights while
Edwin slept were often filled with the two women’s intimacy. The
night in the inn had been a personal highlight for her.

Their days tended to be far more tedious. The
heat beat down on them, as the sun moved along its path, and there
was little distraction on the road. There was the occasional
traveler passing in the other direction, they’d sometimes see men
and women working in fields near the road, and they’d even once
seen a pack of dire wolves on the horizon, but nothing ever came of
it. Despite the oft-cited stories of dangers on the roads, the pair
of women had not seen anything to back up all of those tales. As
you might imagine, that didn’t last forever though.

Among the dangers of the road were wild
animals desperate enough to attack humans, highway bandits looking
to make an easy bit of coin, and savages that lived away from the
civilization of the kingdoms and cities. None of that took into
account all manner of other strange creatures that they might have
encountered away from the safety of the human nations. When she was
a child, Ruby never would have suspected that she would meet an
enormous talking serpent or a being quite like Lorelai.

On that particular day of traveling, however,
both women got a pair of firsts in one go. Passing a sprawling set
of trees on their right, they first heard and soon saw a very
noticeable commotion just off the road. A vicious horde of little
goblins clung on top of a troll, stabbing him with small daggers
and spears.

Ruby had heard stories of trolls in her
studies, but they were a wholly new thing for Scarlett to behold.
The creature was more than twice either woman’s height with long,
thin arms, but short stout legs that seemed incapable of supporting
its massive, chunky body. His face was composed of a long, drooping
nose, hazy, yellow eyes, and a wide mouth with two thick, flat
teeth protruding out from his lips. The teeth had been stained
green, presumably by the beast’s heavily plant based diet. The
troll’s skin was a soft brown color, and rather than clothing, moss
covered his form. He wasn’t simply wearing the moss though; the
plant was actually growing from his bark-like skin. As the princess
had learned from one of her teachers, trolls were herbivores and
spent much of their time searching for and eating the mushrooms,
fruits, and various leaves of most forests. They spent so much time
in this effort, that often the plants eventually became entwined
with their own skin and started to grow there. This seemed not to
bother the troll, despite the intense growth all over his body. The
goblins climbing over and stabbing him were an altogether different
matter.

They laughed obnoxious little sounds. “Chee
gah ha!”

The troll swatted at them with his long arms,
while he ran in circles and howled uselessly. The princess had less
experience with goblins, but Scarlett at least had seen them from
her home in the nether realm, when she was allowed glances through
the barrier. Each of the nasty, vile little things was only a bit
taller than the Hendriks they’d left behind in Elythine, but they
were so thin, you’d think the troll might break them in half just
by swatting at them. The troll’s flimsy attacks, however, were
proving that to not be the case. All the goblins wore poorly
crafted leather tunics with the bones of their kills littering
their garb and each had a hood covering their heads. All that the
women could see were glowing orange eyes gleaming out from their
shadowed faces. Each wielded shoddy little weapons, improvised of
forest found implements. As they stabbed and poked the innocent
troll, the goblins cackled and gibbered inanely.

“Chee gah ha!”

Both sides of the conflict were too involved
in the struggle to have taken notice of the cart traveling along
the road. Ruby, however, took issue with the peaceful troll being
murdered in such a violent way. Perhaps it was all the dark things
she had done being listed off by the Hendriks that made her want to
push the scales back in the other direction. She didn’t overthink
it. Instead, she acted.

“Stop the cart,” she told Edwin.

“What?” he asked, clearly having had every
intention to sneak past them.

“We have to help him.”

“I really suggest we don’t get involved,” he
urged.

“Trolls are supposed to be harmless.”

“Goblins aren’t!” Edwin argued.

She turned to her demon. “Can you do anything
to help?”

Scarlett thought about that. “Hmm. Your goal
is to save the big thing?”

“Yes.”

“Probably not. I’m more the blunt instrument
type.”

“Stop anyway,” the princess told Edwin. “I
won’t see any more innocents harmed.”

Before the young man could bring the horse to
a stop, Ruby had jumped from the side of the cart and begun to make
her way toward the struggle. Unwilling to let any harm befall her
princess, Scarlett soon followed behind her. Edwin waited in the
cart.

While walking toward the skirmish, Ruby began
to work the poison around in her chest. Having a dark idea, she
twisted and shaped the toxin to suit her current needs. When it was
ready, the princess turned on the lever, but held the venom in her
throat, keeping it from spewing out. Meanwhile, she pursed her lips
together like she was trying to whistle. When she was ready, she
let a tiny portion of the poison out, which had built up to a high
pressure, and it passed through her narrow lips. What this resulted
in was an almost blow dart like velocity of the poison, which she
fired at one of the goblins that was jabbing a sharpened rock into
the troll’s back. She choked back the rest of the poison and
watched as the infected goblin became hers just as Wesley once
had.

“Chee gah eh?”

This possession, however, worked a little
differently. When she had taken control of the Underlaw leader, she
had simply infected him, keeping his mind and body alive. With the
new poison cocktail, Ruby nearly instantly killed the vile creature
and then directed his undead movements like a puppeteer. She made
him sentient and autonomous almost like Sniggle or the other imps,
except this creation didn’t require the exceptional amount of
poison, having a body to form the toxin around.

Instantly, the creature’s skin turned from a
dark green color to a pale, sickly green. Oozing blackness covered
the goblin, as little tendrils slid out of his skin, through his
clothing and flopped about pointlessly. His little, beady eyes were
blotted out with inky splotches, and he began to spew out poison
almost like the princess once had, the ooze dripping from seemingly
nowhere and just appearing from the darkness under his hood. He
covered his dagger like rock with the sludge and jumped on top of a
fellow goblin, stabbing him with his venomous weapon. The second
creature was affected similarly to the first, with black filth
covering his form and poison dripping from his lips.

Both poisoned minions stood and continued to
stab their fellow goblins with the toxic weapons. Each died almost
instantly from the venomous cocktail Ruby had created, and their
bodies rose almost immediately back up, under the princess’
control. The experiment was going well. She didn’t feel like she
was using up her reservoir of poison, as she directed them, because
they continued to have their own separate, individual thoughts that
she merely influenced rather than directly controlled.

The infection spread quickly through the
group of a dozen or so goblins, until Ruby had taken control of
them all. When she did, she ordered them to step back from the
troll and stop attacking. They continued their annoying cackling
and gibbering, however. The troll was altogether baffled by the
turn of events. He flapped his arms about and felt around himself
for any more goblins to swat away, and when he didn’t find any,
turned his whole body one way and the other, only to find them
surrounding him in a circle but not attacking. For perhaps the
first time, the creature spotted Ruby and Scarlett.