The Poison Princess (32 page)

She was there though, inside the eye of the
craggy hand demon’s thought storm. His true name was but a perusal
away. She glanced with her mind at that secret he had guarded so
fiercely. She demanded the answer to her question.

What is the name of the craggy hand demon,
she asked.

Tyran,
a thought echoed back.

The craggy hand demon’s name was Tyran.
Scarlett knew his true name now, but she was trapped inside the
cage he had left for anyone too curious to come looking for him.
What good was this knowledge if she could not leave? The place she
found her mind wasn’t somewhere she could wake up from. She had to
travel with this thought back to where she had entered, which meant
she would have to make it back through all those traps again. The
small piece of her that remained worried she couldn’t cross through
that region of the nether realm again. Her princess needed her
though. Ruby needed to know the name Tyran. She would risk herself
for the woman she had bonded with.

Prior to fleeing the cage, Scarlett focused
whatever effort she still had to pull her thoughts back together.
The attempt was in vain, as the pieces that had been torn away from
her were scattered to the far reaches of the nether realm. Those
that had clung on to her mind weighed her down, distracting her
with nagging questions and ideas. They ranged from utterly trivial
to the metaphysical postulations that while interesting were
unknowable or unanswerable no matter how much thought was
given.

Who are you? When will this end? Is that
true? Can you help me? Am I bothering you? Would you like to play a
game? What is the meaning of this place? Help me! Is that me or is
that you? What’s happening to me? Will you be my friend? Are you
listening to me? How long have I been here? I need help!

Scarlett finally managed to push them away,
but it only resulted in her losing more pieces of herself. If she
had a body, she probably would have collapsed and caught her
breath. As she didn’t, she forced herself to press on. Her mind
shot up through the traps once more, scraping against the cloud of
distractions on her mental projection back to the physical realm.
Among the things she lost were her very reason for being there in
that insensible place. Ruby’s name was pulled violently and
maliciously away from her. She called after it with some thought of
her own, allowing it to peel off from her mind in an attempt to
retrieve it, but it was lost and muddled with the hundreds of other
thoughts it passed and was swallowed whole. The small piece of her
that finally made it past the traps that the craggy hand demon had
left to protect that name was no longer her. Scarlett was gone.

There was a
particular plant called a tribbage that some farmers grew on their
property in Lavidia. While it was not illegal to do so, Ruby’s
father had strongly opposed its use. When cut into small pieces,
placed in a pipe, and smoked, it would create a euphoric sensation
not unlike the toxic blissroot of the Abyss. The plant in Lavidia,
however, did not lead to death. Malaise, foolish behavior, and
laziness perhaps, but not death. It was just as addictive though,
and if one was weak enough, it could lead to terrible decisions.
The desire for more tribbage was all-consuming.

Ruby felt like that was what her horned demon
was to her. She knew Scarlett was bad for her, but that didn’t stop
the princess from wanting her, needing her. Five days had passed
since Scarlett went into the nether realm to find the name of the
craggy hand demon. Her desires had gone unfulfilled, as the
comatose woman on the bed could do nothing for her now. The
princess wished she hadn’t sent Scarlett. She just wanted her back.
Ruby had straightened her demon’s body out days ago, so that she
could lay with her on the bed. The mattress was small, and she was
forced to cozy up against her servant, but given their rather close
and intimate relationship, that was not a problem in her eyes.
Scarlett lay on her back, while the princess was on her side,
wrapping one leg and one arm over her demon’s body. Ruby’s nose was
resting in the long, orange strands of Scarlett’s hair, which were
tickling her nostrils and allowing her to breathe in the strawberry
fragrance that the demon somehow exuded. The princess’ fingers
caressed the silky smooth skin of her arm that even in her absence
retained its electric touch, but it just wasn’t the same without
her demon’s soft moans to accompany it.

Time had passed slowly, since Scarlett’s
departure into the strange realm that existed beyond her own. Ruby
didn’t know how to spend her days. She didn’t eat or drink. She
didn’t require sleep. She desired nothing but her own demon’s touch
and revenge against the craggy hand demon who had corrupted her
sister. Her nervous habit of pacing had reared its head, while she
waited. There on the room’s floor was a little trail worn along the
stones, where she’d walked. It consisted of a straight line with
two swirls at each end, where she had spun around on her heel to
turn back the other way. As a habit she had indulged for years,
there was a certain comfort in the act of pacing. For the moment,
however, she lay still on the bed with her demon servant and waited
away the moments.

The noise that echoed through the walls of
the monastery, however, was beginning to irritate her.
Blip.
The princess had tried to keep it from her mind, but after five
days, the sound was beyond ignoring.
Blip.
She hadn’t heard
it when they were searching the deserted monastery, but now that it
was just her in that abandoned cave in the mountain, there was
enough silence to make it out.
Blip.
The sound was of what
seemed to be a slow drip, like someone had left a faucet running
over a bucket of water.
Blip.
She clenched her eyes shut,
trying to ignore it, but the metronomic sound was beginning to
drive her mad.
Blip.
The more she tried to ignore it, the
louder it became.
Blip.
Her unoccupied mind focused in on
the sound.
Blip.

Ruby wondered what such a sound could be.
Blip.
Snow melting and dripping inside the crevices of
masonry?
Blip.
Some faucet that the monks had set up that
they left slightly open?
Blip.
It wasn’t just water, she
began to think.
Blip.
It sounded more like sludge, something
foul and disgusting dripping down on the marble floor of the
massive monastery carved inside the mountain.
Blip.
What
about the thing that killed all these monks?
Blip.
She had
been impressed with its power when she saw what it had done to
those men and women’s bodies.
Blip.
Their bodies were ripped
apart like they were nothing.
Blip.

That dark urge began to tick inside her,
matching the drop of the sludge.
Blip. Go.
It wanted so
badly to find the source and turn whatever it was into her slave.
Blip. Find.
She needed its power.
Blip. The.
She
needed its knowledge.
Blip. Power.
She needed to seed her
poisons inside it and consume its mind.
Blip. Go!

“I’m going!” she shouted at the dripping
sound.

Scarlett didn’t seem to respond to the sudden
noise.

Ruby apologized regardless and kissed her
demon on the cheek before standing up from the bed. While she had
rested and waited, the princess had hung the cloak she’d taken from
the rogue, Slip, on the doorknob. Ready to leave in search of the
sound and its corresponding power, Ruby grabbed it and flung it
behind her, slipping her arms into its holes. She flipped the hood
up over her head, so that the cloth cast a heavy shadow over her
pale face. Twisting the knob, she pulled the door toward her and
left her demon to fend for herself for a while. Her greed for power
would not be sated, until she had in her grasp whatever dark thing
had destroyed this place.

She walked slowly down the hall, listening
for the drip.
Blip.
The sound was still there for her to
follow, but it was a little bit quieter, though the difference was
barely noticeable. She exited the long hallway and made her way
back to the large open chamber that connected everything together.
Ruby hadn’t explored all the rooms, as once they’d found the
archive room, they’d stopped their search. Scarlett had insisted
that something awful was behind the power source she detected.
She’d said it was something old and dangerous. The princess had
heeded her words for the past five days, but the prospect of a
power to claim proved too tempting to resist.

Stopping in the great hall, she listened for
the sound.
Blip.
Ruby closed her eyes and tried to locate
the source.
Blip.
Her body turned to face the origin of
where she believed the dripping noise to be coming from.
Blip.
Not opening her eyes, the princess began to move
toward the sound.
Blip.
She started to realize that the
sound was above her, and that she would have to take the stairs up
that she had so far avoided.
Blip.
For the moment though,
she kept her eyes closed to identify the direction of the sound and
determine which door she should travel through.
Blip.
Ruby
opened her eyes having decided the path forward.
Blip.
There
was a rather large set of double doors at the very top of the
stairs that she found herself facing.

The princess ascended the stairs and
approached the tall and wide doors. They were made of a thick,
heavy-looking metal and were engraved with strange symbols and
sigils, the likes of which she had never seen before. A sudden
realization crossed her mind - these doors were different from
everything else in the monastery. It looked as though everything
there had been built specifically around this set of doors. The
princess’ questions about the Glow’s monastery grew. Did the monks
find something hidden there? Did they go there with that specific
purpose? Clearly, it had not ended well for them. She ran her
fingers over the cold, molded designs with a mild curiosity to
their meaning but not so much that they would heed her progress.
Finding the hand holds for one of the doors, she tugged back at the
immense and heavy door, opening herself to a large cavern.

A terribly musty odor assaulted her sense of
smell upon the doors opening, but there was very little to be seen
at first. The unlit cave was nothing elaborate like the rest of the
monastery had been. This was simply a hole dug in the rock of the
mountain, but that wasn’t to say it was empty. As her eyes adjusted
to the dim room, she saw the most horrible abomination the princess
had ever laid her eyes on situated at the center of the room. The
amorphous, blob-like thing was massive, reaching nearly to the
ceiling and sides of the enormous cavern. She could only imagine
the depths it reached back to, as the creature was too big to see
around. Ruby had difficulty distinguishing between the cave and the
beast itself, as whatever constituted its skin was covered in rocks
and jutting sections of stone. The room was not illuminated like
the rest of the monastery, so Ruby had to watch closely, as certain
parts of the room breathed and snored. She spotted the glint of
dripping saliva at one part of its body - a section she wouldn’t
have thought to be its mouth. Jagged, awkwardly overlapping teeth
accompanied the saliva, confirming that to indeed be an orifice.
That was not the only mouth and set of teeth she found, however.
She spotted three or four potential sets of teeth, each dripping
the same disgusting sludge from their mouth. One pile in particular
caught her eye, as a dribble slipped from its mouth and landed with
the familiar
blip
sound that had been driving her mad for
days.

Somehow, all of this would have been fine
except for the centerpiece of her discovery. Attached to what
looked like a long, sinuous cord (that struck her to be similar to
a newborn’s umbilical cord) was the form of a man leaning against
the creature. The long cord crept out from some unseen place of the
beast’s mysterious body and slithered into the back of the man’s
head. His skin was a pasty blue kind of color, partially
translucent, and the veins of his body and some of the movements of
his organs and muscles could be seen through the thin layer of
flesh. Tattered rags that were reminiscent of the monks of the
Cloister barely covered the man’s body. Could it be one of the
members of the Glow, she asked herself. Her curiosity and her need
for more power overwhelmed any fear that she may have had hidden
deep inside her.

Her feet began to move forward, the leather
of her soles bending to the uneven nature of the wet cave floor.
Blip.
She stepped over some fluid soaked limb with little
bumps like an awful case of measles or some pox marks from a nasty
infection.
Blip, blip.
The metronomic sound of the dripping
echoed in the cave.
Blip, blip.
She wished it would just
shut up.
Blip, blip.
Ever since her poisoning, it had been
so much easier for things to get under her skin.
Blip, blip.
She was even more irritable without Scarlett by her side to soothe
her bad nature with a little physical relief.
Blip, blip.
Ruby was finding herself giving into the darkness once more.
Blip, blip.
No matter how much she fought and pushed it
back, it always returned for more.
Blip, blip.
The thing
always seemed to have a second wind… or third, or fourth, and so
on.
Blip, blip.
She just couldn’t keep up the struggle.
Blip, blip.
She ground her teeth together, demanding with
her mind that the noise be silent.
Blip, blip.
Her anger at
the sound was winding her up more and more with each incessant
drip, until she could take it no more.
Blip, blip.