The Poison Princess (11 page)

Having acquired exactly what she needed, the
horned demon hurried back to where she’d left Ruby. A new source of
poison was exactly what would help her get over the addictive
effects of the toxin from the blissroot. Holding the snake in the
tooth, while simultaneously plugging the hole was rather awkward
and by the time she got back, Scarlett had pierced all of her
fingers with the large tooth, mixing some of her own blood with the
snake’s venom. That wouldn’t matter much, she hoped, as she sat
down beside Ruby who was tossing and turning in her sleep and
sweating in a great abundance.

Nudging Sniggle with her knee, Scarlett woke
him up. “Hold this,” she told the little imp, pointing her head
toward the snake.

Sniggle shook his head and waved his hands in
protest in front of his face.

“Do it,” she ordered him, unwilling to listen
to his complaints.

Scarlett removed the snake from the tooth and
held his neck to the ground near Sniggle. The purple imp then
reluctantly straddled the serpent and held it down, similarly, but
using his full weight to accomplish the same goal. With one hand
free, the horned demon turned to Ruby. She climbed on top of her,
straddling her not unlike Sniggle and the snake. Scarlett scooted
up, placed her legs over the princess’ arms, and pushed her
shackled hands up over Ruby’s head to keep them out of her way.

The princess was still rather delirious. Her
eyes seemed not to have taken notice of the woman sitting over her,
and that lack of awareness worried Scarlett. There was still a long
way yet to go before Ruby recovered. Opening the princess’ mouth,
the demon slid the fang gently inside and let her finger off the
tip, so the snake’s venom could pour out. The toxin mixed in with
Ruby’s own, but it looked like the substance was going down as it
needed to. Scarlett patiently waited until all of the venom had
seeped out of the bottom of the fang.

When it was empty, the demon stood up,
staring down over Ruby’s body. She looked no different. Her
condition hadn’t improved, but Scarlett knew they were now on the
right track. Brushing Sniggle to the side, she picked up the snake
and walked some distance away. She set the serpent down on a soft
patch of earth, and raising and slamming down the fang, skewered it
to the ground, causing an angry hiss to come from the snake. They
would need its venom again, and she couldn’t let it slip away.

Returning to Ruby, Scarlett laid down next to
her. She slid her head through her princess’ shackled arms,
wrapping them around her, rested her head on her princess’
shoulder, and wrapped her own arms and one leg over her body as
well, getting the poison all over herself. The horned demon would
make certain that Ruby recovered, and she would be there every step
of the way.

Ruby awoke in a haze. She couldn’t remember much at that moment.
Looking down at herself, she was completely naked except for the
poison she exuded from her mouth that now covered nearly all of her
skin, forming its own kind of clothing. Her wrists were sealed
inside manacles that were chained into a rocky wall. Beneath her
was the once yellow dress that she recalled having worn sometime
prior. Also laying on the dress was a little purple blob that she
knew called itself Sniggle. Beside the dress, several feet away,
was a pile of dead and discarded snakes next to a giant fang. Of
everything she saw, that made the least sense.

A barrage of dissenting memories filled her
head, each in conflict with another. She felt as though she had
lived two lives, and had to choose which one to continue with. For
whatever reason, Ruby had picked this one, where she was covered in
poison and filth, alone and trapped in the depths of a dark cavern.
As the moments passed, she came to realize everything that had
happened to her. She remembered eating the toxic blissroot, and it
leading to the false dream world that she had just woken up from.
Those memories began to fade, and the princess struggled to recall
how she had escaped from that place.

She was too tired to think about it anymore
though. Whatever else had happened since she ate the fruit, she was
chained to a wall. That meant that someone else was there, even
though she had no memory of such a person joining her. She couldn’t
even imagine how anyone else had gotten down into the depths with
her. The princess had seen no way out in all her time searching
other than the collapsed tunnel leading up to the Abyss.

Whoever it was, she felt she needed to get
free before they came back. Gripping the chain leading into the
wall with both hands and propping her bare feet against the rocks,
Ruby pulled back with all her might. No good. The metal was wedged
into the rocks too well. She fell back with an exhausted sigh,
still weak after waking from her slumber. The princess looked over
to the sleeping imp, and she wondered if it might be able to help
set her free.

Nudging at the little blob, she whispered,
“Sniggle.”

The purple imp rolled over out of her reach
and continued sleeping.

“Useless,” she remarked to herself.

She looked down to the manacles where she had
been inadvertently dribbling her poison. Perhaps, she thought, she
could use it as lubrication and squeeze her hands out. Spitting out
more of the ooze, she let it get in between the flesh on her wrists
and the metal of her restraints. Ruby placed her knee on the chain
and held it to the ground, while she attempted to pull her hands
through the iron hoops. No good. The metal was on too tight. The
restraints jutted into bone and scraped away flesh, as she pulled.
There was no way she was getting out like that without severely
injuring herself.

The princess wasn’t ready to give up though.
She had one more idea. Her experience with the giant serpent had
shown her in part what she was capable of. The poison that flowed
ceaselessly from her mouth could be controlled and changed at her
whim. What if then, she thought, she were to alter the poisons
property so that it would melt through metal itself. Focusing her
mind on the task, Ruby thought about something with extreme heat.
She’d seen the blacksmiths of her kingdom create works of metal
with the heat of a burning fire, bending it and shaping it to their
will. The princess focused her every thought on the idea of there
being some poison, some acid that could tear through the
restraints.

There was no change. Her failure angered her,
and she once again ripped at the chain attached to the wall. She
screamed at herself under her breath through gritted teeth. She had
to be stronger.

Closing her eyes and trying again, her mind
found what she was in need of. Opening her eyes once more, Ruby saw
that her mouth was dribbling forth an orange colored poison with a
very thick consistency. It almost looked like the metal in the
forges when it was malleable and tender enough to be shaped.

The orange poison dripped slowly toward her
manacles, and as it touched the metal, a steam emitted along with
an angry hissing sound. Ruby wrenched her head to the side, as the
steam floated up to her face and penetrated her eyes. When she
looked back down at her wrists, the metal restraints had been
completely destroyed by the poison, but her wrists were absolutely
fine. Even the wounds from pulling at the metal healed. The new
poison, however, had eaten away at the dress underneath her. She
realized it didn’t matter. There were a plethora of holes, cuts,
and disgusting fluids covering it. The dress had long since been
ruined.

At that point, she heard someone coming, and
not knowing who it could be, Ruby stood and rushed to hide behind a
nearby outcropping of rocks.

“Where is she?” a familiar deep and raspy
voice soon asked.

From where Ruby was, she saw a woman come
into view. It was the horned demon, Scarlett, who was, of course,
completely naked, but the princess couldn’t imagine what she was
seeing was real. The demon said that she needed Ruby to free her
from the nether realm. She hadn’t done such a thing, or at least,
she didn’t recall doing it. Frozen in confusion, she stayed there
and watched as Scarlett pushed Sniggle with her bare foot, rousing
him from his sleep.

“Some help you were,” she told the little
thing.

It merely shrugged its shoulders, having not
seen where the princess had disappeared to.

Ruby walked out from her hiding spot and
asked, “Scarlett?”

Sniggle uselessly pointed her out for the
horned demon, as Scarlett turned around.

“You’re up!” she cheered.

“You’re… here… and you’re… naked,” Ruby said,
staring quite intently at her demon’s body.

“I absolutely am. Come here. Let’s
celebrate.”

The princess backed up and replied, “No,
don’t touch me! I’ll hurt you!”

Scarlett ignored Ruby’s warning, and stuck
her hand, unharmed, under the poison dripping from the princess’
mouth. “You can’t hurt me, my poison princess. I’m a part of you.
Remember, we’re bonded, Ruby.”

That word from that mouth continued to be
like a drug to the princess. The sound of it turned her stomach
into a quivering mass of knots and the demon seemed to know it.
Despite what she thought was proper and right, Ruby wanted Scarlett
more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. She needed her.
The power the horned woman had over her was even stronger now that
she was standing before her and was quite tantalizingly tangible.
The nudity didn’t hurt either. Ruby’s eyes traced over every curve
of the demon she had somehow summoned to be her servant.

Ruby, however, resisted her baser desires,
backed up, and simply said, “You need to put your clothes back
on.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Uh…” One more look at her perfect body. She
forced her eyes away and shook her head. “Yes. Clothes. Now.”

“Rats.” The horned demon walked back to the
pile of clothes, slipped her little black dress over her head, and
squeezed her feet back into her heeled boots.

Confused by her surroundings and company, the
princess began to quickly pace back and forth in that dim cave.
“How did you get here?” Ruby asked, while Scarlett was still
dressing.

“You. You finally realized how much you need
me.”

“Did I? I don’t remember that.”

“I’m surprised you remember anything, my
sweet princess. You’ve been eating the blissroot for far too long.
It eats away at your memory.”

Ruby began to worry about the relationship
she had apparently forged with Scarlett. Demons were not an unknown
quantity in the world, but she herself was relatively ignorant to
them. They were not exactly among the top concerns a princess
faced. What little she did know involved a metaphysical tether
between the human and demon, forming a symbiotic partnership. What
this truly meant she had no idea. She would worry about that
later.

Ruby continued her path and shook her head,
her mind returning to the thought of eating the blissroot. “But I
only had one bite.”

Scarlett smiled at her princess, her eyes
following Ruby’s pacing. “Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

The horned demon pointed her finger along the
princess’ path. “The pacing. It’s adorable.”

“I’m not adorable…” With a huff, Ruby forced
herself to stop walking back and forth. “The blissroot… I only ever
had the one. After that, it was just the dream world.”

Scarlett frowned. “You only remember the
first bite. You’ve had far more over the…” She stopped herself.

“Over the what? How long has it been? Days,
weeks, what?”

“Well…” she looked to the ground and fidgeted
uncomfortably.

“How long, Scarlett?”

“Years, my princess. Eleven years. Every time
you ate strawberries in your dream, you were really eating the
toxic blissroot here.”

“That can’t be.” Ruby shook her head in
disbelief. Grasping for anything to refute this explanation, she
asked, “Why don’t I have really long fingernails or hair?”

“You’ve stopped aging.”

She winced and unintentionally resumed her
pacing. “How is that possible?”

Scarlett shrugged. “How is it possible that a
giant snake has lived for over five hundred years?”

Ruby couldn’t believe it - that so much time
had passed. She felt like only yesterday she had eaten the toxic
fruit. It was simply unfathomable to her that she could have been
lost in the dream state for such an extended period. When she
thought about it, she was able to remember how long her dream had
lasted on that side, though. Her best recollection was that it had
been about that long too. Maybe it was true then.

“And you saved me from it?” Ruby asked.

“Yes, my princess,” Scarlett replied.

“Why did it take so long?”

“Are you mad at me?” Again, the horned demon
shifted and stared down.

The princess was certainly upset, but she
couldn’t lay it at the feet of the one individual who had actually
managed to rescue her. “I’m not mad at you, no. It’s just… eleven
years is a long time.”

“I am sorry. I kept trying. The whole time
you were in there. You were… resistant.”

Ruby walked over to the dress bed mat and sat
down, staring into the distance. “What now? What am I supposed to
do now? Everything will have changed.”

“Not everything, my princess,” Scarlett said,
sitting down next to her and holding her hand in her own.

“What do you mean?”

“Your kingdom. It still stands. Do you not
want to go home?”

“It’s nothing without my family. I’m sure the
craggy hand demon has killed off everyone I cared for. Too much
time has passed.”

“Not everyone,” Scarlett said.

Ruby looked up at the horned woman. “What do
you mean? Who would possibly still be alive?”

“Your sister for one.”

The princess shook her head. “Surely the
demon would have…” She couldn’t actually say it. “...long ago.”