The Poison Princess (28 page)

Scarlett had compared herself to the demons
of the Cloister which made her feel powerful, but even from that
distance, she knew that she was nothing compared to the craggy hand
demon that had bonded with Leina. She couldn’t imagine what he had
done to Ruby’s sister to make him that powerful. She wasn’t sure
that she wanted to know.

“My princess,” Scarlett began, “your sister
and the craggy hand demon are among the army.”

Ruby looked stunned by the news. “What?
They’re here?”

The horned demon nodded with pursed lips.
“I’m afraid so. What are you going to do?”

The princess was silent for a moment, while
she thought. What could she do, you might imagine. If she were to
fight against the army, she would be putting not only herself, but
her sister in danger. If she didn’t fight, the monks would
undoubtedly be defeated. Hesitance and uncertainty froze her in
that moment. It wouldn’t last. An explosive crash echoed down
below, as a boulder slammed through the walls of the monastery,
launched from some mechanical contraption of war. The battle had
begun. Ruby didn’t know the correct course of action, so she did
the only thing she could think of. She ordered her infected goblins
to attack.

The dozen or so of the vile little creatures
stood up from their seats at the wall of the Cloister, picking up
their poorly made weaponry and cackling the same as they ever had.
They each rushed forward, soon meeting the Lavidia army in battle.
The soldiers slashed and stabbed many of the venomous little
things, but this had little effect on the already dead goblins. The
poisonous goblins had more luck, stabbing the men in the various
weak spots in their armor and infecting them with the possessive
poison. Ruby took control of them as well, turning the instantly
dead men on their comrades. Her wave of venomous control spread
quickly through the army, numbering nearly one hundred before she
even had time to think about it.

After years in Nabiria, corrupting and
torturing Leina’s good nature, the craggy hand demon was powerful,
however. Without even standing from his throne, the demon waved his
hand in an arc in front of him. Inside her bell tower, Ruby fell to
the floor, her connection to all those she had infected severed
instantly. Without her control, the dead bodies fell limply to the
ground. Already killed by the infection, the craggy hand demon had
simply removed the venom from them with a wave of his hand, forcing
their bodies to collapse where they were.

Scarlett leaned down and helped her princess
back to her feet. “My princess, we should go.”

“Not yet,” Ruby replied, wiping a streak of
poison that had slid down from her nose. “The monks haven’t even
sent their demons in yet.”

Scarlett knew nothing good would come of it.
The craggy hand demon was far too powerful for what the monks had
bonded themselves with. Nevertheless, she stood beside her princess
and watched as they were sent into battle. Despite her prior
expectations, some of the demons actually did fare quite well. If
Leina and her demon had not joined the army, the monks may have had
a chance. Things as they were though, she was not optimistic. She
began mentally preparing for the teleport spell to get Ruby out of
there. The sorcery of teleportation was quite complex, and it would
take much from her. Afterward, she would be wiped out almost
completely.

The monks’ demons tore through the lines of
the soldiers. Some of them were quite enormous creatures, standing
more than twice the height of a fully-grown man. They wielded
powerful weapons, and some even cast spells on the men. One
carrying a giant club swiped a row of the soldiers, tossing them
back and onto the others in the army. Farther to that demon’s
right, another aimed a beam of frost from its hands, covering more
than thirty men in shards of razor sharp ice crystals. Those not
cut by the fragments froze in place by the icy debris. Another
demon jumped up, landed in the crowd of iced men, and smashed them
with a large war hammer. It was obvious that Niada had sent her
most powerful demons out first, as they were clearing a wide swath
of men.

This too, however, would not last longer than
the craggy hand demon allowed it. He deigned to stand from his
slave-powered cart this time. He raised his red hand, fingers
forward, toward where the fighting was thickest. There was no
effect that flung forth from his fingers. No magical light or
energy. The monks’ demons simply fell and died at his command. Ruby
could see why she would need to know the true name for this
terrifying demon now. Scarlett, alternatively, worried about having
to go back into the nether realm to find such information.

The princess and her servant looked down from
the bell tower at the monks below. The men and women who had
controlled the fallen demons that had been fighting outside were
killed by their connections. As their demons died, so did they.
Whatever Scarlett had thought of their weak bonds, it was still
strong enough that they should share death in the end.

Convinced now that the monks stood no chance
against this force, the horned demon turned to her princess. “Now’s
the time, Ruby. We have to go.”

She frowned and looked to the ground. “I
think you’re right. We can’t stand against that without knowing his
true name.”

“Good. Hold my hand, while I work the
incantation.”

“Wait! Not yet. We have to cover our tracks.
The craggy hand demon can’t learn what we have planned.”

“What do you mean?”

“Niada. She knows what we’re going to do.
They’ll torture her to get every bit of information they can. We
can’t let that happen.”

“What are you suggesting we do? I don’t think
I could teleport three people.”

“No… I… don’t know.”

Scarlett knew what Ruby wanted to say, so she
said it for her. “We have to kill her.”

The princess looked up at her demon. The idea
had been in her head, but she couldn’t allow herself to say it.
Hearing it aloud made her feel disgusted, but she had no better
plan. She’d been working hard to keep the dark thoughts at bay ever
since she saw her sister. The princess could feel that insidious
poison growing inside her once again. She was less concerned with
quelling it now that she needed such a lack of emotion. She had to
take an innocent life, so that she might survive long enough to
save her sister’s. It was a deal she found herself willing to
make.

“Yes, I know,” the princess simply
answered.

Ruby ran down the spiral steps, followed by
her horned demon, toward the bottom of the tower in an attempt to
find Niada. Upon reaching the ground floor, the princess searched
the area she had first found the headmistress in. No one was there.
Everyone seemed to be outside in the monastery’s courtyard, so she
too headed in that direction.

When she arrived outside, she could see that
the fighting had finally entered the Cloister’s walls. Lavidia’s
warriors were clashing with the monks and demons that yet remained.
The hard metal of the soldiers smashed against whatever weak
implements the monks had on hand. Screams and yells replaced the
serene nature of the Cloister’s courtyard. The smoky smells, too,
had gone. The odors the princess inhaled now were from the battle.
Destroyed debris wafted about, and the scent of blood filled the
air. The Cloister was a place of absolute chaos. Ruby couldn’t find
Niada in all the confusion, and she would be lucky to find her
before a soldier sliced her open. She would have to find another
way.

“We must go,” her demon entreated. “If you
die here, it will all be in vain.”

“One last thing,” Ruby replied.

A monk stood in front of her, catching her
breath. The princess looked at her with pity and remorse for the
action she was about to take. Reluctantly, Ruby stuck the tip of
her finger in her poisonous mouth, coating it in the same infection
she had spread through the goblins and soldiers, and then pressed
it to the back of the woman’s neck. The innocent monk died
instantly, but Ruby took control.

The princess then turned to Scarlett and
said, “Okay. Get us out of here. She’ll do the rest.”

The horned demon nodded and took Ruby’s hands
in her own. She closed her eyes and muttered the incantation as
quickly as she could. Both women felt caught inside a tornado of
energy, almost like the toxic maelstrom that the princess had
manifested back in Gloomport. This, however, was a spiraling gust
of pure magic. Their dresses and hair blew with the wind, and Ruby
too, closed her eyes, as it was too painful to even try to squint
through the chaos. The energy soon subsided, and the pair of women
both opened their eyes to find they were at the base of the
enormous Rashtalg Mountains. Scarlett had done well, but the magic
expenditure exhausted the demon who toppled to the floor.

“Scarlett?” Ruby asked, kneeling down with
her demon.

“I’m alright,” she replied. “Just… need to
rest. Finish what you must.”

Her demon was right. She still had one thing
left to do before they could focus on climbing the mountain and
claiming the bracelets from the members of the Glow. She had to
infect and kill Niada. She closed her eyes, and her mind shifted
back to the battlefield that was the Cloister. She took full
control of the monk that she had infected before she left. Luckily,
the craggy hand demon was still quite far away, and he had not
removed the infection as of yet. She was certain he still could, so
her time might be short. She had to get to the headmistress as
quickly as possible.

Ruby found that when she had infected the
monk, she had also taken claim over the woman’s demon. Flipping
through the pages of the woman’s mind, the princess found that her
name was Ada, and her demon was Lonny. Ada was a middle-aged woman
with dark brown hair and wearing the same blue robes as the rest of
her fellow monks. Her face was covered in small freckles, as were
her bare arms, exposed through the folds of the blue fabric.

Lonny was a strangely lithe demon. It was
clearly built quite differently from a human, as the smallest
section of its torso was only about the width of a fist. Ruby
wasn’t quite certain if the demon was intended to be male or
female, as it had neither gender’s sexual characteristics. Lonny
was quite tall, and when it stood directly up, was a good foot over
most of the humans fighting nearby.

Lonny peered out over the melee, searching
for Niada. The headmistress was nowhere in sight. The princess knew
that if she were to find the old woman, she would have to expand
her search. She would have to make more sacrifices.

Dividing her mind in two, Ruby forced both
the woman and her demon to spit up the poison on their own hands
and charge into the melee. Both Ada and Lonny spread the venomous
infection through the battle even more quickly than the goblins
had. The princess’ spreading toxin killed and took over monks,
demons, and soldiers, but she still had yet to find Niada, the one
person who needed to die before the craggy hand demon found her.
Ruby was surprised to discover that she was willing to sacrifice
the whole monastery if it meant preserving her secrets. She tried
telling herself that it was in the monks’ best interest to let her
kill them rather than the death by torture at her sister’s hands.
It didn’t really help. With every additional death she added to her
toll, she felt the kind, generous woman she had once been slip away
from her.

After the possessive plague spread through
almost the whole of the Cloister, it became clear that the
headmistress was not there. Ruby paused her direct control, letting
the autonomous poisons direct the infected for a moment. She
perused through each of their minds, searching for a clue as to
where Niada had vanished to. She caught glimpses of the old woman
and her demon, Adamen, and slowly pieced them together to form a
moving picture of what had happened. The headmistress had left the
monastery, charging straight out with Adamen, to confront the
craggy hand demon. That could be disastrous for Ruby, she realized.
The closer her infected got to him, the more likely he was to
dispel her possession of them.

Lonny was the fastest demon she had thus far
inhabited, so Ruby chose it to follow Niada. The lithe demon ran as
quickly as it could through the melee, swiping its poisoned hands
across the skin of all those it passed. With each addition to her
poison army, the princess commanded that they follow after Lonny
and help it to take down Niada. The thin demon could now see the
headmistress and her own demon not far in front of her, but she was
quite near the rolling litter on which the craggy hand demon and
Leina sat. Niada wielded a spear of some design against all the
soldiers in her path, slicing them down and moving ever nearer to
her quarry. Ruby couldn’t allow this woman any closer to Leina and
her demon. If Niada were to kill either, she would kill both. If
she moved too close, Ruby’s infection might be washed away,
allowing the headmistress to be tortured for information. There was
no good choice for her. She had to hurry.

After clearing several soldiers from their
vicinity, Adamen lifted his master up in the air and hurled her
toward the craggy hand demon. Niada held her long spear in such a
way that a blow was imminent. The craggy hand demon did not shift.
Seeing her final chance to stop the old woman, Ruby forced Lonny to
spit forward a globule of the infected poison. The speed at which
it was pushed out was incredible. It rushed past the soldier,
monks, and demons towards its intended target. Before Niada could
strike her blow, the venom landed on the back of Adamen’s head,
infecting the demon and in turn infecting the headmistress. Ruby
gained control over Niada and forced her to drop her weapon. She
landed with a thud on the litter, next to the craggy hand demon.
Leina’s demon then looked down at the infected old woman and
snapped his fingers, causing the princess to lose her connection to
all of the possessed monks, demons, and soldiers.