The Poison Princess (41 page)

Motioning to Scarlett that it was safe, Ruby
set down the long hallway toward the stairs up to the main level.
Most of the area was unused, but there was one particular room
along that hallway that the princess knew was still rather
important. She wasn’t sure what had changed since Leina took over
the kingdom, but unless she had grown wasteful, the archives of
magical treasures taken from the great serpent Sythys would be
locked inside that vault. Ruby found it unlikely that either Leina
or the craggy hand demon would have had much use for what was
inside. They already had control over the entire kingdom with no
one but her threatening that, and the demon seemed powerful enough
without baubles to supplement himself. The princess’ growing greed,
however, drove her to a curious enough state to want to look
inside. Perhaps, she told herself, there would be something inside
to help her against the craggy hand demon
.
The vault door
was sealed with a combination of locks, both mundane and magical,
but neither of those would serve as a challenge for the princess or
Scarlett.

“Little help?” Ruby asked.

The horned demon inspected the door and the
magical seals present. She placed her hand against the metal
surface with her fingertips, reading the energy radiating off.
“What’s inside?”

“Scores of treasure. Magical artifacts,
mostly. Things that Sythys once hoarded.”

Scarlett smiled. “Before your people tricked
him?”

“He certainly won’t be needing them now.
Think you can get past the magic seals?”

The horned demon pulled her hand away from
the door and snapped her fingers. Each of the magically implemented
locks swung open in unison. “Won’t be a problem,” she said with a
smile.

“Remind me to thank you properly when this is
over,” Ruby replied.

Scarlett smiled and bit her lip, thinking
about her princess and all the ways they’d already found to please
one another. Ruby, meanwhile, grabbed the single physical lock
slung through a metal bar over the door and yanked it off like it
was nothing. She tossed aside the bar and swung open the vault
door. Walking through the doorway, the princess saw all manner of
powerful magic relics.

Before her father had died, he showed Ruby
some of the items contained within the vault. They weren’t only
things that were taken from Sythys’ stash all those years ago. Some
were obtained in the many years since as well. The serpent had
collected a great number of gems, some of which contained simple
magical properties and some that just sparkled. Many of the magical
jewels had since been made into necklaces or rings or inlaid on
armor or weaponry. Sythys really hadn’t known the difference
between the magical rocks and the mundane, and much of what he
collected wasn’t even usable by him. He had simply been greedy for
treasure.

The king had showed Ruby an impressive
library of tomes and manuals that rivaled what Durin had collected.
The books had been acquired from various dangerous sorcerers over
the years, and they were kept there to prevent them from falling
into the wrong hands.

A piece of one of those mad men actually
resided in the vault as well. One of the former kings had sent his
men to stop the sorcerer from a nefarious scheme, and in the
confrontation, his hand was severed off. The rest of his body was
never recovered, but the court wizards claimed that his power still
resided in the limb. It was sealed inside a bottle filled with a
potent alchemical combination aimed at limiting that power.

That wasn’t even the only severed body part
in the vault. The skull of a mighty demon had been stored there as
well, as it too continued to show the presence of magical energy
long after the creature’s death. The skull was placed inside a
large wooden box and sealed with arcane rituals.

Among the most peculiar items stored within
the castle’s magical archive was a pouch of dust. Everyone that had
ever investigated it said there was enormous potential there, but
despite great efforts, no one had determined what it could do.
People had swallowed it, poured it into open wounds, used it in
alchemical concoctions, and tried channeling spells through it, but
nothing had ever come of it. To that day, no one understood it, but
it was kept hidden in the vaults to prevent anyone from ever
finding out its true potential.

Somehow, Sythys had acquired a golem during
his time hoarding valuable items. No one knew how to operate the
giant thing, so the rock construct had remained stored within the
castle archive for as long as the room existed. To protect the
other items, a rumor was spread that the golem watched over the
vault, but in truth, it wouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop
intruders.

The snake also had kept a large horn
fashioned from some great beast that was too big for a normal sized
human to feasibly use. The expectation was that Sythys had never
used it either, but when Cyrus and his people found the horn in the
serpent’s things, they worked together to hold up the horn, so they
could blow through its hollow body. What followed was the worst
thunderstorm in recorded history. They didn’t attempt to blow the
horn again.

One of the most interesting items Ruby had
seen in the vaults was a lantern that was said to expose all
magical illusions for their truth. If someone had cast an
invisibility spell, the radiance of the lantern would shine through
it. Occasionally, her father had put the magical lantern to use,
testing the truthfulness of various diplomats’ intentions. It had
on two separate occasions saved him from an attempt at subterfuge
from other nations.

Though her father had allowed the princess to
see many of the things held within, there was always one that he
kept from her. It was a mirror that was of immense power, and he
had kept it covered by a sheet at all times. Given his absence and
her lack of restraint, Ruby decided to finally peek under the cloth
and see what the mirror’s power was. The princess approached the
hidden mirror and grabbed the dark sheet, pulling it back and
throwing it behind her.

The cloth had not just covered a simple
mirror, as it turned out. The artifact was a folding double mirror
that was angled in such a way that one person could stand in front
and see both reflections staring back at them. Each mirror had an
intricately crafted trim in the form of a long-bodied dragon that
was biting its own tail as it looped back around the other side.
One dragon was black, while the other was white.

“What is it?” Scarlett asked.

“I have always wanted to know the answer to
that,” Ruby replied, stepping forward and seeing the pair of
reflections in each mirror.

The counterparts looking back at her were not
what she would have expected. In the black dragon mirror, Ruby saw
herself, but in the white dragon’s reflection, she saw her sister,
Leina. Her own image was covered in both her poison and someone’s
blood, her skin was paler than she had ever seen it, and the red
glint in her eye was stronger. Leina, on the other hand, looked as
she did when the dream had briefly shown her free of corruption -
clean, pleasant, and healthy. Both wore the same crown on their
heads, depicting them as the queen of Lavidia. Her sister’s was
clean, while the one on her reflected brow was covered in the same
dried poison that was splattered all over her.

Scarlett stepped up behind Ruby and saw
herself reflected only in the black mirror. Leina remained the only
person in the glass of the white dragon mirror. The horned demon in
the black reflection wrapped her arms around Ruby, eyeing the
original pair of women curiously and wearing a sly grin.

“I repeat my question,” Scarlett said. “What
is it?”

The princess looked from one mirror to the
other and came to the realization. “Possible futures…”

“A scrying… mirror?” the horned demon asked
with a raised eyebrow.

“Apparently.” Her eyes continued to bounce
back and forth, not truly believing what she saw.

Scarlett pointed to the white mirror, where
neither of them reflected back. “Why aren’t we in that one?”

“Maybe… we die?”

“Hmph. Then I say we go with that one.” She
pointed back to the black dragon mirror.

“I agree with Scarlett,” the Ruby in the
black mirror said.

The image of Leina looked out of her own
mirror to the one with Ruby and the horned demon. “The decision
isn’t yours!”

“You… can talk?” the princess asked.

“Yes, sister,” Leina said.

“Right. Why is that?”

“You guessed correctly,” her sister answered.
“This mirror shows you possible futures. It allows you to look
beyond your choices and see the consequences of those
decisions.”

“Okay… then what choice are you supposed to
represent?”

“Whether you keep the poison inside you or
not,” her reflection answered.

“What do you mean? How am I supposed to get
rid of it?”

“The Oracle told you about redemption,” Leina
said. “This is it. The strange powder kept confined in this room
was created long ago for a single purpose. You.”

“Me?”

“It can cure the poison from your system,
returning you to the woman you used to be.”

“We,” the duplicate Ruby continued, “are the
consequences of that choice.”

“So you’re supposed to help me decide?” the
princess asked the reflections.

“That’s the idea, my princess,” the Scarlett
in the mirror replied. “I hope you pick us.”

“I can just… ask you questions then?”

“Yes,” Leina answered. “And we will attempt
to persuade you to pick what each of us believes to be the correct
path.”

“Easy enough.” Ruby looked back and forth
between the dragon mirrors before finally settling on Leina’s.
“Let’s start with the obvious. Why aren’t Scarlett and I in your
reflection?”

“Excellent question,” the reflected Ruby
mocked her sister.

Leina’s glance shot over to the alternate
mirror and then back to the real princess. “I’m sorry to say that
you died.”

“How?”

“You sacrificed yourself to ensure I
survived.”

“But you did die,” the mirror Ruby reminded
her.

Leina tried to ignore the comment. “You were
brave and honorable. You did what was best for someone you love,
and no one can ever take that from you.”

“And since I died, Scarlett died too?”

“Yes,” her sister replied.

The horned demon’s hand gripped around Ruby’s
shoulder unintentionally. She was not eager to return to the nether
realm. “You don’t need fixing,” she reminded her master. “You don’t
need that dust. You’re perfect the way you are. Nothing has changed
since that insolent little wood spirit tried to cleanse you of your
power.”

Ruby thought about it, trying to remove
emotion from the equation. “But we corrupted the whole forest after
that. Maybe there is something wrong with me.”

“You’re strong. You’re free. If you get rid
of the poison, all that will change.”

The princess thought about it but came to no
quick conclusion. She looked up to the black mirror to pose them a
question. “If I’m absent from the cleansed future, where is my
sister in yours?”

Her reflection’s red eyes met her own. “Leina
didn’t make it.”

“What happened?”

“Yes,” Leina agreed. “Tell her what you
did.”

The mirror Ruby gave her reflected sister a
hateful glance and then looked back to the princess. “I killed
her.”

“You killed her? Why would you ever do
that?”

Her reflection thought for a moment. “She…
was weak. The kingdom was better off without her. Besides, after
everything she did, it was what she deserved.”

The answer was harsh, but Ruby admitted to
herself that she had experienced those very same thoughts as well.
Hearing the words spoken through her own mouth, though, was
painful. “So, you’re saying that no matter what… either I die or my
sister dies?”

“Yes,” both reflections replied in
unison.

“What about the craggy hand demon? What
happens to him?”

The black mirror Ruby was the first to
answer. She smiled widely as she did. “You break nearly every bone
in his body. You make him bleed. You poison his body. You take your
time, and you enjoy every minute.”

“And in yours?” she asked Leina.

“He is dead as well,” she replied. “Though
admittedly, it was a much more difficult task in my world. You
weakened him, separated my connection to him, but he killed you. I
was the one that killed him in my world after seeing what he did to
you.”

“At least there’s that,” Ruby said. “He dies
either way.”

“His death means nothing if you’re not there
to enjoy it,” Scarlett whispered into her ear. “It has to be by
your hand.”

Ruby looked between the two mirrors. “Are
these futures determined? Is there no way to change them?”

“This is it,” her reflection answered. “You
can’t fight fate.”

Ruby looked to her sister in the white
mirror. “But I could save you and keep the poison. If I know what
happens, I can change it.”

“You must choose,” Leina replied. “You have
to decide what is important to you.”

“Your sister there,” the black mirror Ruby
began, “wants to trick you into choosing her. I, on the other hand,
don’t need to show you or tell you anything. You’ve already made
your decision. I am everything you want to be - a powerful and free
queen of Lavidia… not to mention, alive.”

“But you’ll be soulless if you keep the
poison,” Leina interjected. She pointed across to the black mirror.
“There is a block of ice where her heart should be. Is that who you
want to be? This is your chance for redemption. This is your
opportunity to set right all the ill that both you and I have done
in the past decade. Please, sister, you must do the right
thing.”

With that, the two reflections disappeared
and all that remained was the actual images of Ruby and Scarlett
looking back at them.