The Poison Princess

by J. Stone

  The horned demon looked forward to see that the line of trees ahead seemed to be the beginning of a large forest. Scarlett was not familiar with the lands of Nabiria like Ruby was, so she didn’t know where they were or what she could expect to find inside. There was little elsewhere to look though, so the demon lifted Ruby once again and carried her to the tree line. She propped her against the trunk of a rather tall and thick tree that was out of sight for anything or anyone that might come by while she foraged for poison.

  “You wait here, my princess,” she said, brushing the hair from Ruby’s face. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Though not eager to leave her princess alone there, she moved deeper into the forest. Walking through the woods, she saw that much of the forest had been knocked to the damp floor. Scarlett was still dripping wet, and she realized that she wasn’t very fond of it. She clicked her fingers and her whole body, including her dress and hair was completely bone dry. That didn’t last terribly long, as water continued to drip from leaves overhead, and she kicked up water and mud on the back of her calves with each step.

  She hadn’t strayed far from the beach, but the sea air already drifted away. The odor of the woods had taken over. The smell reminded her of the rotting wood of the Black Wave but still fresh. This was certainly better. The various leaves, fruit, and other vegetative life colored the forest with other colorful scents that she took in as she walked.

  She wasn’t sure what she would find in there, but she hadn’t seen anything hopeful yet. Maybe there were venomous snakes, poisonous toads or even birds somewhere in the woods, but life in general seemed to be hiding following the storm. After an hour or so of slowly walking around the damp woods in vague circles, Scarlett caught sight of something promising. Holding strong despite the rainfall was the glinting sheen of a spider’s web in the distance. Walking closer, the demon was surprised to see that the webs only grew and grew in quantity. At this point, she realized that the webs weren’t the gossamer fibers they should have been. These were thickly woven threads stretching across large, open areas. She thought that it must have been hundreds of the presumably large arachnids building these webs, but she still had yet to see any crawling along their vast surfaces.

  Scarlett followed the webs, going to where they were denser. This eventually led her to a dark, damp looking cave. The demon peered inside but there was little she could make out. There was something that felt off about the whole situation. There was no life in those woods, and it no longer seemed to be because of the storm. By now, she should have seen something. There had been no sound beyond her own footsteps and the dripping of water onto lower leaves, the ground, or fallen logs. That coupled with the fact there were all those webs but no spiders to accompany them made her wary. Despite her concerns, Scarlett knew that this cave was the only hope for her princess. She had to keep going.

  The demon moved forward, stepping onto the rocks of the cave and pausing there a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. Giant, sprawling webs lined the cavern walls and ceiling and even parts of the floor. As she started moving forward again, she was careful where she stepped, not wanting to get stuck on the webs. A little further in, the demon started to see very large things wrapped inside the webs. Whatever was inside them was much too big for normal spiders to have done. Her best reckoning was that the contents of the webs were the various small animals that should have been out in the forest. She didn’t let this development stop her, but then there was a webbed figure that matched her own size.

  “That can’t be good,” she muttered to herself.

  Scarlett stepped toward it and raised her hand to the webbing. With a thought, she made her fingernails grow to sharp points, become hard, and stiff. Running one through the web, she sliced open the thick and sticky material. Grabbing both sides of the tear, she stretched the milky white webbing, exposing what was underneath. A young woman’s pale face stared back at her with open but dead eyes.

  “And here I thought there were none left who were so foolish that they would wander into my home,” a sweet feminine voice echoed through the caves behind her. The accent was strange and foreign to her ears, but there was a poetic sound to her every word, no matter how mundane. The words almost sounded like she was casting a charm spell but without the trouble of sorcery.

  The demon turned to view the beautiful yet monstrous form that the voice belonged to. The cave opened into a large chamber dominated by a web stretching from ceiling to floor and dangling mid-way down its length was a strange hybrid of woman and arachnid. The creature had six black, hairy, spider-like legs, protruding from a bulbous black body entirely covered in tiny bristles. At its back was a spinneret for creating and weaving all the silky webs that covered the cave and forest. Also protruding from the body was a human like torso from the navel up. The skin was an ashy grey color, and she wore no clothing to conceal her beautifully formed breasts. Her face looked just like a young and attractive woman’s, except she had two fangs protruding out from her lips. Framing her lovely face, her ebony black hair fell down in long strands to her shoulders, ending in what looked to be bones braided into the hair.

  Scarlett admired this monster almost as much as she had the sea creature. “Aren’t you a gorgeous thing?”

  “Hmm. You’re not like the others, I see here,” the spider woman replied in her lovely poetic voice. “They have such fear. You are absent of such a thing. Who are you that you have come to my home?”

  The demon chose to be direct. “I came for your venom.”

  The spider lady laughed a sweet sound that echoed through the tunnels. “And I am sure you shall have it. Nevertheless, conversation is so rare for me. Why don’t we talk a bit before I wrap you in my web and store your meat for a special occasion?”

  “I don’t have time to waste on you. Give me your venom, or I will take it from your corpse.”

  The smile on her face faded, as she continued to descend from the web and approach Scarlett. “Don’t threaten me, little girl.”

  “I think you will find I am anything but a little girl.”

  “Your defiance is charming, my dear, but it will not save you.” The spider woman was off her web and approaching Scarlett in the cave.

  “No, but this will.” With a flourish of her hand, the same scythe she’d wielded in Gloomport was made manifest.

  The demon was about to move forward to attack the beast, when the spider woman’s front legs pushed her upright, exposing the spinneret at her backside. The stinger looking appendage pointed toward her and sprayed her hand and scythe with the sticky silk, pinning her in place. Scarlett yanked at the webbing, but it held firm. Another spray of the sticky substance coated her feet as well, holding her steady to the cave floor.

  The spider lady approached and grabbed Scarlett’s free arm with her two human hands, holding it up to her mouth. “You wanted my venom,” she said with a sweet smile. “I told you that you would have it.”

  The spider woman then bit into the flesh of the demon’s wrist, injecting a heaping dose of her venom. Scarlett could feel the poison flow deep into her, as her stomach hardened and twisted, and the venom swirled around inside her. She tried to fight the toxin, as it froze her in place, restricting control over her own body, but it was simply too powerful. She couldn’t fight that much venom.

  If it had been the princess’ poisons injected in her, Scarlett would have built in tolerance. Alternatively, if it had been Ruby to suffer this spider woman’s bite, she would have been fine, but the demon’s bond was still not as strong as it could be. Therefore, even though she had a resistance to poisons, she did not have her princess’ immunity. The development wasn’t entirely bad news though. The spider woman had injected a great deal of poison into Scarlett’s system, and though she wasn’t certain it would work, she was hopeful that some of that poison would transfer to Ruby and revive her. It seemed like a long shot, but the demon recognized her situation. She wasn’t going anywhere. Her magic was growing b
ut still too weak to pull anything else through the folds of space, and even if she had, she didn’t have the control over her body that she would need to use it. She was stuck and would have to hope that some of the poison made its way to her princess.

  The spider woman sliced through her own webs so that she could pick Scarlett up off the cave floor. The scythe was cut free, and it fell with a clang to the rocks below. From there, the monstrous woman spun and wrapped her demon prey in more of the silks, covering her entire body but leaving her head free. The spider creature then placed Scarlett up against a wall and spun more webbing, pinning her in place.

  “Now then,” the spider lady said. “How about that conversation?”

  “Who am I to deny you?” Scarlett said dryly. Anything to delay her. Ruby needed to wake and recuperate. Stalling was her only tactic. If the spider woman wanted to talk, she would talk.

  “How right you are. Now, it just seems polite that I ask your name.”

  “Scarlett. And you are?”

  “I suppose I’ve had many names in my time. Currently, those who venture too close have come to calling me the grey widow.”

  “That’s not really a name. More of a title. You don’t have a proper name?”

  The spider lady thought for a moment. “Once, I suppose I did.”

  “And? Tell me what it was.”

  “Awfully demanding for someone in your situation, aren’t you?”

  “You wanted a conversation,” Scarlett reminded her. “That’s all.”

  The creature thought for a moment. “Lorelai. That was my name once.”

  “Lorelai? That’s a lovely name.”

  “Thank you.” She kind of spit the words out, not really meaning them, but only speaking them out of polite form. She was a strange creature and not only for her appearance.

  “Much better than grey widow anyway.”

  “Mmm, perhaps, but I don’t believe it would have the same impact on the locals.”

  “You’re probably right about that. Do you live alone here, Lorelai?” Scarlett asked, looking around her dark surroundings.

  “I can’t really say that I do, no. I have so many guests staying in my home these days.”

  “I saw. You realize there’s nothing left in the forest, right? You’ve scared everything off.”

  “I had to accumulate a healthy store of food, didn’t I?”

  “Why? What for? If you live alone, what could you possibly need with all this food?”

  “I never said I live alone. Soon, I will have a large family to feed. I have to think of them now.”

  “Family?” Scarlett dreaded to even ask, but she had to give Ruby more time.

  Lorelai smiled and disappeared out of the demon’s sight for a few minutes. When the spider finally returned, she held in her human arms a wrapped web. It was bundled tightly together, and she held it like a mother might hold their child. She looked up from it, to Scarlett’s eyes. “But one batch of my children, you see. Soon they will hatch. How hungry they will be.”

  “How many… children will you have?”

  “Hundreds if we are lucky,” Lorelai said with a smile.

  “And when are you… expecting?”

  The spider lady smiled and tongued one of her venomous fangs. “Very, very soon.” She took the egg sacs back where she had retrieved them from and soon returned to the demon. “You know what, Scarlett? I know I said I would store you for a special occasion, but on second thought, I think I should very much like to try your meats now, while they’re still fresh. If you taste at all like you look, I bet you are delicious.”

  Chapter 19. Sex and Violence

  Ruby’s eyes fluttered open to find herself in a wooded area. Her energy was largely restored, a sensation of warmth spreading from her wrist. Even her weakened fingers now felt fully healed, but she had a general malaise after being without fresh poison for so long on the Black Wave. She was uncertain how she had arrived there, and she caught no one else in her sight. Using the tree trunk to brace herself, the princess stood and surveyed her surroundings.

  Turning around, she saw that there was a sandy beach that met with the sea. Far in the distance, the dark storm clouds that they had escaped were still raging on, but directly over her, the skies were clear and calm. The storm had ravaged the woods that she found herself in as well, as many of the trees were split and wrenched from the forest floor, and those that survived had lost many of their branches to the ground. There was no sign of life in that forest which seemed odd to her. No animal sounds whatsoever emanating from deeper inside.

  Where was Scarlett, she wondered. Her demon servant had stayed faithfully by her side for everything so far. The princess now completely trusted her to do what was in her best interest, so there was no question of abandonment. She could see a pair of footprints leading through the sand of the beach to where she now found herself. Those had to have belonged to her demon. She turned back to the forest. Though she didn’t know how, Ruby knew that Scarlett had gone that way.

  There were surely traces of the demon’s path through the forest, but she had no training of such skills. No, that wasn’t how she was tracking her servant. She just knew. She felt like she was the one who had walked through that forest, but the memory was disjointed. Fragmented. Each piece only told a small sliver of the whole story, but she put the pieces together in an attempt to end in the same place that Scarlett had.

  The next clue she had was spider webs. She knew that her horned demon had gone towards spiders. She had sought to bring back poison for the princess. A little further into the forest, and Ruby realized the remainder of the story. Looking upon the cave entrance, she knew that Scarlett had gone inside and found a half woman-half spider hybrid named Lorelai. She was in danger.

  Ruby immediately broke into a sprint toward the cave, hurrying past the spider webs stretched across trees and shrubs. She entered the cavern, immediately meeting the darkness that had once been so familiar. After all those years spent in the tunnels beneath the Abyss, the princess felt at home there. Running through the cave, her bare feet slapping against the wet rocks, Ruby rushed toward her servant. She began to pass the large animals trapped in the webs, and she saw the webbing that Scarlett had cut open containing the young girl. Turning the corner, the princess slowed to find Scarlett trapped where she knew she would be. The demon smiled at her.

  “Where is she?” Ruby asked.

  “She heard you coming,” Scarlett replied. “She’s hiding somewhere. Be careful.”

  Ruby was confident, however, that the spider woman posed her no real danger. “No need.”

  The princess casually walked toward her demon, knowing she would be safe from whatever toxin Lorelai tried to inject her with. Before she had made it more than a couple steps, a spray of webbing covered her bare feet. Overhead, the spider crept down from the ceiling, to a wall, and then finally to the floor.

  “Your feet are so loud, little one,” Lorelai said with that same sweet voice that nearly entranced its listener. “Have you come to save the other?”

  “I have, Lorelai” Ruby replied flatly. “Or do you prefer grey widow?”

  The spider woman looked baffled. “How do you know my name?”

  “I think it’s best if you just hurry and bite me. Your children will need all the food they can get, isn’t that right? Better store my meat for them.”

  “You know too much, little one.”

  “All the more reason to silence me,” Ruby egged her on.

  “You want my venom as well? So be it.”

  The spider woman approached the princess, who willingly held out her arm for Lorelai to bite. The grey widow pierced her venomous fangs into Ruby’s wrist just as she had done to the princess’ demon. Poison flowed from the spider lady’s fangs and into Ruby’s arm. Her eyes fluttered with pleasure. The venom felt so good. She felt whole with its embrace. Lorelai began to let up on her, but the princess stopped her. She placed her free hand on the back of the spider woman’s head
, forcing her to stay there and continue pumping toxins into Ruby’s body.

  “More,” the princess demanded of the spider woman.

  Not yet understanding what she was dealing with, Lorelai obliged, continuing to inject more of her venom into Ruby’s body. With every surge of toxin, the princess felt her strength grow. She felt powerful, but she wasn’t even close to satisfied yet. Again, the spider woman thought she was done and attempted to release her bite on Ruby's wrist.

  “More!” the princess shouted, echoing through the chamber. Her hand held steady at the back of Lorelai’s head, holding her in place.

  Still, the spider lady failed to understand what was happening. She bit down in a third place on Ruby’s arm, further flooding her system with poison.

  “So good,” she moaned softly. The toxin made her feel wicked, but she enjoyed the sensation.

  Lorelai, however, seemed to finally notice that something was wrong and managed to wrench her head free. She backed up, wiping the dripping green venom from her lips, while Ruby smiled a satisfied grin.

  “Is that all?” she asked in a vaguely disappointed tone.

  “How are you still standing?” the spider lady asked.

  Ruby spit down some of her own toxin to the ground, burning off the webbing from her feet. She then casually walked over to where the webbed scythe had fallen and picked it up, wiping a bit of the silk from its handle. “I’m the poison princess,” she finally answered.

  Though taken aback by the princess’ resistance to her poison, Lorelai did not give up. She raised herself once more, spewing forth her webbing at Ruby, but it was met with more of the same poison, melting through it as though it meant nothing. The spider lady slowly backed up toward her webbing and began to climb upward. The princess continued forward and spit her poison up to the ceiling where the web began. The whole thing tumbled to the cave floor, Lorelai falling with it.

  The spider lady landed with a thud at Ruby’s feet and stood to face the princess. She was clearly experiencing fear for the first time in such a long life. Everyone who she had ever come in contact with had surely succumbed to her webbing and venom. This woman standing before her was an anomaly, and she made it patently obvious that she knew not what to do with her.