The Poison Princess (7 page)

“Wouldn’t that just be exchanging one prison
for another?”

Scarlett rested her head on Ruby’s shoulder.
“I wouldn’t mind if it meant that you were my warden.”

The princess started to wonder if she was
growing attached to this beautiful horned demon. She was obviously
attracted to her physically, but Ruby thought there might be more
to it. More than just her apparent lust. The princess wrapped her
arm around Scarlett’s shoulder consolingly, and the horned woman
wrapped her leg over Ruby again.

“How could you help me?” the princess asked.
She decided to be practical.

“I would do anything for you.”

“I understand that, but what specifically can
you offer me?”

“You mean aside from the greatest physical
sensation you have ever experienced?”

Ruby noticeably gulped and then breathed in
and out through her mouth again. “Yes, aside from that.”

“Well,” Scarlett said, one of her fingers
barely caressing the princess’ skin. “As a nether demon, I do
suppose I have access to certain information. I’ve seen things you
might find interesting.”

“Like what?”

Scarlett lightly giggled. “Tit for tat, my
dear sweet princess. I need your help before I can say
anything.”

“Very well. What about my… current condition?
Could you help me with that?”

“You mean the poison?”

“No, I was referring to the serpent slowly
digesting me.”

“Oh. Actually, those two problems overlap in
this instance. You won’t need my help for that.”

“But the creature seems immune to
poison.”

“Not entirely. He’s immune to some poison.
Have you already forgotten how you managed to hurt his tongue?”

“Oh, yeah. How did I do that?”

“Mmm. I forget how new you are to this.
Inexperienced. Naive. Innocent… Arousing.” Scarlett pounced and
climbed atop the princess, straddling her and tossing the sheets
behind her. Ruby immediately covered her chest with her hands, but
the demon seductress felt no such modesty, letting herself lay
bare.

“What are you doing?” the princess
demanded.

Scarlett leaned down on top of Ruby,
caressing her skin with her lips. “You are going to learn to
control it. To control the poison. You don’t need me yet, but you
will. And then, I will gladly come and fulfill your every
desire.”

The princess clenched her eyes shut, trying
to fight her attraction toward Scarlett, and she forced the dream
to slowly fade away.

Her mind returned to her body, constricted
inside the enormous serpent but somehow protected by the various
poisons in his system. She could see nothing but complete and utter
blackness. She could hear liquids moving, muscles pushing and
pulling, forcing her body to slide through him, and still the drip
of her own sludge from her mouth. Though the venoms inside him had
healed her, Ruby was barely able to move a finger because of the
tight quarters. His body continued to push her through his gullet,
but it was slow going. The princess feared that by the time he
finished digesting her, she would have succumbed to her
surroundings. She couldn’t imagine the poisons would keep her alive
forever. How she was even managing to breathe was a complete
mystery to her. If she wanted to survive the ordeal, she would have
to do something.

Inside her dream, Scarlett had told her that
she needed to control her poison. Though Ruby didn’t know exactly
what that meant, she did know that the blue-hued venom she’d
created had hurt Sythys once before. With that in mind, she focused
on recreating that specific strain. Without her sight, she couldn’t
tell what type of liquid was coming out from her mouth, so she had
no way of knowing for certain whether it was the same. She
continued in this vein for some time, not having any way to measure
its passage, but there seemed to be no effect from the serpent
despite the incredible amounts of poison she had pumped into his
system.

Ruby thought back to when she’d created the
dark blue poison. He’d called her a slave. It had made her angry,
so very angry. She belonged to no one. No one would tell her what
to do. Everything had happened so quickly. Ruby hadn’t even known
what she was doing. Her mind simply knew what it needed to do, and
the poison reacted based on her needs. Why then couldn’t it react
now? What was she missing? The questions rolled through her head,
before the princess finally realized what the missing component
was. Emotion.

Her anger had helped shaped that blue poison,
and it forced the strange magic that caused the sludge to leak from
her to change in its very nature. With that in mind, Ruby tried to
make herself angry once again -- angry like she had been before.
She thought about being called a slave. Focused on it. She
struggled to move inside the serpent’s body, frustrating herself.
The princess thought about her sister. She thought about what would
happen to the young girl in her absence, what that craggy hand
demon was using her for, what he would make her do, and what he
would ultimately make her into. Ruby would not allow that to
happen. No more, she told herself.

Though she couldn’t see a change, the
princess knew that what was spilling forth from her stained lips
was now different. She had succeeded in creating something new. She
continued to focus on her anger and on her needs of killing the
foul serpent that had swallowed her whole. Her attempts at a new
poison were met with the beast slowly beginning to shake with
little tremors.

Ruby could feel the giant snake writhe in
discomfort. It was working, but she needed more. Her mouth opened
wider, releasing more of the toxic substance, as she tried to fill
every inch of the serpent’s body with her noxious ooze. Sythys’
body constricted and coiled in response to the spreading poison. He
tried to fight against the venom growing inside him, but she did
not offer him any respite. The serpent wildly banged himself
against the rocks of the cave, trying anything to stop the poison
from within, but Ruby held strong. Despite being smashed against
the hard, jagged surfaces, she focused on her anger. She would win
this fight.

The conflict went on for some time, but there
was no end to Ruby’s rage or the poison she held within her.
Eventually, the serpent collapsed and fought back no more. The
walls of her living prison seemed to sigh, and went loose. The
princess was still quite confined inside, but she at least had a
bit of room to move now. She assumed that with the change, the
serpent had finally been killed, and so she tried to let go of her
anger. It was not a task that she found to be simple. She wanted
more. She needed to escape, so that she could find the craggy hand
demon and do the same to him. She wanted to slash and break and
kill. She lost herself in her infinite rage, and it felt so good.
Struggling to free herself only made matters worse, fueling her
anger and frustration at imprisonment. Ruby screamed and howled in
vain.

Then, there was a distracting thump at the
side of her fleshy cell. The confusion washed away much of her
anger, and the thump repeated from the other side of the serpent a
little bit closer. Ruby twisted her body to face where she believed
the sound was emanating from, and she wormed her hand free. She
mimicked the thumping sound as best she could from the beast’s
interior, and it echoed again from the outside. Someone or
something was out there. Maybe they would help free her, though she
couldn’t imagine anything else being alive in that pit.

Sythys had mentioned that all of her people
were his slaves. Was it possible another person had wandered this
far down? She didn’t have any answers, but she would need their
help to escape the serpent’s insides. The thought occurred to her
that it might be something worse than the giant serpent. Whatever
or whoever it was, she would face that challenge when she was out.
She had proven that nothing would stop her, that she could overcome
anything placed in her path.

Ruby thumped again at the inside of the
serpent, and she waited for the echoing response. There was none.
She began to panic. Had they left her? Why had they even made the
noise if they weren’t going to help her? Was it even real? Had she
imagined the whole thing? Was she so desperate to escape that she
had invented her own way out? She struggled once more to free
herself, but the quarters were too tight and far too dark.

A new sound then interrupted her panic. This
one was not a thumping noise, but rather it was quiet, hard for her
to hear. She stopped moving, trying to focus on the sound and
determine what it was. There was a soft noise, like something
scraping against another, but that wasn’t quite it. No, rather Ruby
realized that it was the sound of cutting, tearing. Whoever was
outside the serpent was cutting it open in an attempt to free
her.

The princess tried to wait patiently, but she
needed to be free. After several minutes of the sound, Ruby reached
out toward where she thought it was coming from. Using her fingers
as her eyes, she felt around for any openings. Piercing her nails
through some thin layer of the serpent’s insides, Ruby ripped open
a section big enough for her hands to fit through. She kept pushing
until she found what she thought was the final layer of the
serpent. On the other side of it was freedom.

Ruby felt around for the opening that was
being carved into Sythys. When her fingers met with an uneven
surface, she knew she had found it. She pried her fingers through
the small gash, and a tiny bit of light came through. On the
outside, Ruby heard some of the poison plop through and land on the
rocky ground below. The princess ripped and tore at the opening,
fitting her hands through and pulling it open with all her
strength. Everything was so wet and slippery, and she couldn’t get
a tight grip on anything. More of the toxins oozed out of the hole
that was increasing in size. She kept struggling and eventually
managed to squeeze her arms out of the gash. Ruby received no more
help from the person who’d cut the snake open. This was up to her.
One of her elbows made it to the other side, so she twisted her
arm, locking it against the serpent’s scales. Using it as leverage,
she pulled herself through. Her other arm was completely out now,
and her head was soon to follow. There was too much sludge and
toxins in her eyes to see anything clearly, but she continued
pulling herself out. She plopped to the hard ground in a puddle of
the serpent’s innards, gasping for air. Ruby twisted her body
around, so she was lying on her back, and lastly, she pulled her
foot out from the slit, which had been caught inside. The shoe was
no longer there, having been lost somewhere inside the beast.

The princess lay there, trying to recover her
senses. Her breathing slowly returned to normal, and she started to
feel better. Slop from inside the snake covered her entire body.
The dress was beyond ruined, being covered in blood, varying colors
of her poison, the swamp water of the Abyss, and now all the
disgusting viscera of the serpent. Ruby sat upright and wiped the
muck from her face, so that she could see properly.

Looking around, the princess tried to locate
whoever had helped her. She was completely surprised when she saw
that it was the disobedient little purple imp holding a sharpened
rock. It grinned up at her with the strange little swirling smile
and beady, catlike eyes.

“Maybe you’re not so useless after all,” she
told the purple imp.

It smiled wider, holding itself upright, as
if to congratulate itself.

“Well, I guess you could use a name,” Ruby
said. “Any ideas?”

The purple imp nodded and then took the
sharpened rock toward a puddle of the various poisons and liquids
splayed out on the cavern floor. It dipped the rock into the fluid
and then turned around to a clean bit of the cave. Scraping the
rock along the floor, it proceeded to ink a response to her
question. Turning back to the fluid as needed, the purple imp
eventually finished and pointed to his answer and then to
himself.

“Sniggle?” Ruby read aloud.

The purple imp nodded enthusiastically.

The princess thought the name was quite
strange, but it somehow suited the little poison creature. “Sniggle
it is, then.”

Ruby stood upright and took a moment to
examine herself. Whatever had happened with the poisons, while she
was inside Sythys truly had healed her. The giant wounds from his
fangs were gone, though the holes were still in her dress. Touching
a hand to her chest, she realized that the cracked and battered
ribs felt completely back to normal now. All the cuts, scrapes, and
bruises she’d sustained in her tumble down the tunnel were gone as
well. Her best guess was that whatever that spell had done to her,
now poison was like a restorative potion to her. When the craggy
hand demon sent her to the Abyss, he made a dire mistake. The trip
to such a toxic place had only made her stronger.

As true as that was, however, Ruby was still
trapped far below the ground with no way back to where she’d
entered. Looking down to her pet imp, she asked, “Don’t suppose you
know the way out of here?”

Sniggle shrugged his shoulders
non-committedly.

“Yeah. Figured as much. Come on. Let’s find
our own way out.” Ruby picked the imp up, placing it once again on
her shoulder. The princess kicked off her only remaining shoe, as
they set out to search the underground tunnels.

Ruby had been wandering around in the dim
light of the underground cavern for what seemed a very long time,
though she had no way to count its passage. She wanted to say that
it had been days, or maybe even more than a week, but that thought
was too depressing for her to admit to herself. Her excreted poison
marked her trail naturally, and she knew that she was walking in
circles thanks to it. The princess had taken every turn that she
had come across, but they always seemed to lead back to areas she’d
already visited. She was so lost now that she couldn’t even find
her way to where Sythys’ body was or the tunnel leading to the
surface that had collapsed. She didn’t know whether she had made
any progress at all, but for the first time since the chaotic spell
had altered her, Ruby was beginning to get hungry.