by J. Stone
“Don’t let them touch you,” she warned.
Ruby nodded. “We need to keep moving.”
The horned demon picked up her torch, but folded the scythe back into the void, not having the strength to even hold it anymore. The princess helped Scarlett upright, and they headed back down the hallway. The wight’s body once again began to repair itself via the magical energy the elf necromancer had imbued it with centuries earlier. The other undead shuffling caught up with it, and the undead thing stood to join the mob of cadavers. Though not quick, the wights were persistent.
Ruby left her torch on the ground, not having enough hands to carry it, the hammer, and to support the weakened demon. Scarlett’s light would have to do for them both. The undercroft was practically a labyrinth, and neither woman knew which direction to travel. They picked their hallways at random, hoping to be going toward the castle rather than back to where they had started. As they moved, they began to hear more of the wight’s groans and shuffling, scraping sounds. The tombs were full of bodies, and it seemed that they had all returned from their graves at the necromancer’s order.
After traveling around in what felt like circles, they came to a crossroads of the underground tunnels. In each direction was a shambling horde of the life-stealing wights. Some were so shrouded by darkness that all the women could see was their sets of glowing red eyes in the distance.
“We can’t fight them,” Scarlett said. “They’ll just reconstitute themselves.”
“I know,” Ruby replied. “We need to find the way out.”
“Which way is it?”
“Don’t know. Anything you could do with magic to guide us?”
“Maybe. I think it just sapped my physical strength. Should still be able to cast a spell.”
Ruby turned around to see more of the undead corpses walking up behind them. “If you can, do it. We don’t have much time.”
The horned demon pulled her arm from around Ruby’s shoulder and placed it just below her lips. She blew cool air into her palm that formed into a bright pink ball of swirling energy, and she then tossed the glowing orb forward. Scarlett nearly fell after discharging the energy, but her princess caught her and steadied her, throwing the demon’s arm back over her shoulder. Ahead of them, the pink energy ball danced back and forth, apparently trying to decide the correct path itself. It swirled around in a circle, darting into a particular hallway a few feet and then retracing back to the intersection where they waited.
“You sure that thing is going to help?” Ruby asked.
“Just give it a minute,” her demon replied. “It’s clairvoyant energy. It can find the best path, but it needs to work it out first.”
The princess checked each of the hallways to see how close the wights were getting. The closest ones would be on them in under a minute. “We’re not big on time.”
The pink energy seemed to fizzle, swirling up into the air, before exploding in a bright beam down one of the hallways. It scraped nearly against the ceiling, leaving a glowing trail that illuminated the corridor it had traveled down.
“Follow it,” Scarlett instructed.
That was easier said than done. Every direction had the shambling corpses, and the one the pink energy had selected as the way out was no different. Four of the wights crept down that particular hallway. They would have to make it past those undead creatures somehow, and Scarlett was too weak to cast any more spells to push them from their path. Ruby was, for the moment, on her own. Her poison, in and of itself, she expected was useless against the already dead things, but perhaps, she thought, there was still use in it. The princess wrenched open the lever in her chest, causing the toxic sludge to pour forth from her mouth. The goal was not to kill the already dead wights, but to push them from her path. The poison rushed up her throat, into her mouth, and past her open lips. It exploded out of her, flooding down the hallway to her front and causing the weak bodies to tumble backward. Knocking them over wasn’t sufficient though. They could still reach out and grab her as she passed by. Ruby needed them to be pushed from the path altogether. She kept forcing the poison out her mouth, watching as the bodies slid down the drenched corridor.
Overhead, the pink light turned right, so Ruby followed it, clamping the lever in her chest shut. She had to jostle Scarlett to keep her moving. The wight’s drain still seemed to be weakening her, and the magical expenditure on the clairvoyant light had only complicated things. The princess, however, wouldn’t let any further harm come to her demon. The hallway the light guided her down was clear. All the corpses seemed to be shambling somewhere behind her for the moment. The light looped around a corner, followed by another quick turn. The pink light illuminated a set of stone steps leading up above. Just like the ones they had broken to get down into the undercroft in the first place, these were blocked by a heavy slab.
Ruby leaned Scarlett against the wall and helped her slide down into a seating position. “Wait here.”
The horned demon had not the energy to reply. She merely nodded, struggling to keep her eyes open.
The princess gripped her war hammer and turned back to the stairs. She placed one foot on a lower step and left the other on the ground. It was awkward to position herself in a way where she was able to strike the slab from below, but she did the best she could. She spit more of the acidic venom onto the mallet of her weapon to help eat away at the stone cover and then looked back to see if there were any wights to have followed her. Nothing yet, but their shuffling sounds were not far.
Ruby turned her attention to breaking the slab, trying to ignore what was coming for her. She swung the heavy hammer upward into the ceiling overhead. The awkwardness of the strike was more than she would have preferred. The attack barely made a dent in the stone, and her poison had nowhere to seep into, dripping back down onto her and the steps. She tried again, but the repeated effort and lackluster results only cemented in her mind the thought that she needed another plan for getting through the barricade. The princess dropped her war hammer to the ground with an echoing thunk and climbed up the steps until she could reach the stone overhead with her empty hands.
Her palms rested flat against the hard, cold surface, and she attempted to push the incredibly heavy slab up. Even with the strength she received from the poisonous magic inside her, Ruby was nowhere near strong enough to even budge the stone a little. There was nothing else though. She looked back to the hallway behind her. The glowing red eyes were there, marching slumped towards her. She looked to her demonic companion, who had fallen unconscious. Ruby leaned her head to the side, placing her shoulders against the heavy rock and pushed up again on the stone. It might have moved a little, but the princess may have just been kidding herself. She delved into her body, trying to determine how much poisonous energy she really had left. The release of the deluge down the hall had nearly emptied her out. She couldn’t do that again.
Ruby stepped down off the stairs, breathing heavy from exerting her energy against the heavy slab but having nothing to show from it. Her lips and chin were covered in purple sludge from the earlier release, and the rock dust that had fallen on her painted her face a grey color and caused hot burning tears to slip down her cheeks. The princess reached down and grabbed the war hammer from the ground, stepping between the now unconscious Scarlett and the oncoming wights.
Adopting a snarling visage, Ruby swung the war hammer across the head of the first undead creature to step into her path. Its head followed a similar trajectory as the other she had knocked off, and its body slumped to the ground, but she knew it wouldn’t last. She brought the hammer’s mallet hard against the next wight, hitting this one in the shoulder and nearly knocking its entire torso from its hips. It tumbled to the ground, already beginning to reconstitute itself. A third strike went into the brittle knees of another of the animated skeletons, sending it hard on top of the other creatures. She continued in this vein, causing a heap of bodies to pile up at her feet. Their weight on top of one another seem
ed to be the only thing keeping them from standing back up. Despite her efforts, there were hundreds of glowing red eyes lining the dark tunnel.
The princess was exhausted, and she had to take a step back, which gave the wights that she had already attacked time to rebuild their broken bodies and stand once more. One of the undead creatures made it into her little room of sanctuary, and she stepped forward again to meet it. Ruby swung her hammer against its skull, knocking it off, but she couldn’t maintain the attack. Her body fell to the floor, and she dropped the weapon, trying to catch her breath.
Several of the wights flooded into the room, ignoring Scarlett but surrounding Ruby’s crumpled form. Leaning down to her, their cold, skeletal claws wrapped around her arms and held her up. She could feel the energy draining from her body at their touch, just as they had done to her demon. The blue light rose from her skin and into them. In front of her, the wight with the crown atop its brow strode forward. It was by far the most decomposed body she had seen, and the only conclusion she could come to was that it was the body of her ancestor, King Cyrus. The undead thing stepped close to her, almost growling in her face with its fleshless, featureless skull. The wight king wrapped its bony fingers around Ruby’s neck, causing the same glowing blue light to rise from her flesh and into the king’s open mouth. Her eyes fluttered slowly shut, as she felt the energy leave her until it seemed there was nothing left.
What they drained from her wasn’t simply energy and life, however. It was everything that remained of her once mortal existence. The wight king carved out her emotions and devoured them like they were fine delicacies, consuming them with what almost looked like a delighted smile on its bony skull. All that she could yet feel was what the dark poison had enhanced inside her - rage, lust, hate, greed, and violent cruelty. The wight king had cleansed her of her humanity. The terrible thing before her had purged her of weakness. An unrelenting dark power was all that remained.
Ruby screamed, full of rage, her eyes widened and turned midnight black, while her body trembled with unknown power. The chaotic energy swirled inside her chest, and she made a conscious decision that she would not allow herself to become a victim. Rather than turning that lever in the direction she had become so familiar with, the princess threw it in the opposite. Her mouth became a vacuum, sucking in all dark desires, all malicious power, and everything that made this wight king and its followers refuse to stay dead. The red glow from their empty eye sockets was pulled toward her, ripped out of their skulls, and the energy flowed past her lips. The cruel, red energy was stored inside her chest, granting her even more strength, which she used to pull in the rest. The wights at her side fell limp to the ground, their bones and armor clattering as they landed. The princess managed to stand all on her own now, her vigor restored.
The wight king’s followers were next, rapid beams of red shooting down the corridors and into Ruby’s body, filling her with even more malevolent rage. She shouted, needing some way to channel such ferocity. The skeletons behind the wight king collapsed, until the undead king was the only one remaining. The princess stepped forward and saw fear in its glowing eyes. She grabbed it by the neck and did to it as it had done to her. Ruby sucked the energy from it, allowing the blue wave it had stolen to flow back into her. With a final snarl, Ruby pulled the last bit of red energy from the wight king’s glowing eyes and allowed the corpse to fall to the undercroft floor. As its head slammed into the ground, the crown slid off and clanged against the hard stone.
Ruby turned her attention to Scarlett. She leaned down and kissed her unconscious demon, allowing some of the red energy to flow through Scarlett’s lips and further inside her body. Her eyes shot open, and the princess leaned back.
“What happened?” the horned demon asked.
Ruby stood back up. “We won.”
Scarlett looked over to see the hallway of lifeless bodies. “That’s… that’s… How did you do it?”
“Poison, it seems is not the only thing that sustains me. They were full of a dark energy, so I took it for my own.”
“You’re…” Scarlett saw a red glint in her princess’ eyes. “You’re so beautiful…”
Ruby smiled and turned back to the stairs. She raised her hands to the stone slab once more. This time she channeled the stolen energy of the wights, and shifted the blockade to the side, allowing them to pass up and into the castle.
“We’re almost there. All I can think of is snapping the craggy hand demon’s neck.”
Scarlett stood and joined her master at the stairs, picking up her war hammer and handing it to her. “Then I am sure you will, my poison princess.”
Chapter 38. Sythys’ Treasures
The stairs of the undercroft led up to an interior area of the castle that, in her days, was largely abandoned, so Ruby had little fear that anyone would have heard the commotion of the fight with the wights. Just like at the other end of the crypt’s tunnel, the stairs led directly into a little chamber that was also sealed from the other side, but that wouldn’t stop the princess and her demon. Ruby had already revealed the strength the stolen red energy had given her, but she was now curious if Scarlett had benefitted as well.
With a nod to the door, she told her horned demon, “Break it open.”
Scarlett wore a sly smile and placed both her hands to the door, just as eager to test this new power flowing through her. The red energy pushed down through her arms and into the heavy bronze at her fingertips. The sight was similar to when the craggy hand demon had cast spells. There were no flashy spell effects; whatever he had set his mind on simply happened invisibly. Scarlett’s attempt to unbar the door was just the same. The bronze slab simply pushed forward, the wooden planks on the other side being instantly splintered and broken at her mental command.
The horned demon shifted to the side of the doorway, smiling to her princess and gesturing to her that she could now move through. Ruby did so, flinging the war hammer onto her shoulder and checking the hallway to ensure they were alone. Her suspicions were validated, as the halls were unoccupied, and the only light coming in was from the sunlight penetrating through open windows. Extremely familiar with the layout of the castle from playing many games of hide and seek there as a child, Ruby knew the best path to every location Leina and her craggy hand demon could be. It was midday now, and she suspected the throne room to be the most likely place to go. The direct route was left, through a lengthy hall, and up a set of stairs that would lead them to a main hallway that connected most of the castle together.
Motioning to Scarlett that it was safe, Ruby set down the long hallway toward the stairs up to the main level. Most of the area was unused, but there was one particular room along that hallway that the princess knew was still rather important. She wasn’t sure what had changed since Leina took over the kingdom, but unless she had grown wasteful, the archives of magical treasures taken from the great serpent Sythys would be locked inside that vault. Ruby found it unlikely that either Leina or the craggy hand demon would have had much use for what was inside. They already had control over the entire kingdom with no one but her threatening that, and the demon seemed powerful enough without baubles to supplement himself. The princess’ growing greed, however, drove her to a curious enough state to want to look inside. Perhaps, she told herself, there would be something inside to help her against the craggy hand demon. The vault door was sealed with a combination of locks, both mundane and magical, but neither of those would serve as a challenge for the princess or Scarlett.
“Little help?” Ruby asked.
The horned demon inspected the door and the magical seals present. She placed her hand against the metal surface with her fingertips, reading the energy radiating off. “What’s inside?”
“Scores of treasure. Magical artifacts, mostly. Things that Sythys once hoarded.”
Scarlett smiled. “Before your people tricked him?”
“He certainly won’t be needing them now. Think you can get past the magic seals?�
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The horned demon pulled her hand away from the door and snapped her fingers. Each of the magically implemented locks swung open in unison. “Won’t be a problem,” she said with a smile.
“Remind me to thank you properly when this is over,” Ruby replied.
Scarlett smiled and bit her lip, thinking about her princess and all the ways they’d already found to please one another. Ruby, meanwhile, grabbed the single physical lock slung through a metal bar over the door and yanked it off like it was nothing. She tossed aside the bar and swung open the vault door. Walking through the doorway, the princess saw all manner of powerful magic relics.
Before her father had died, he showed Ruby some of the items contained within the vault. They weren’t only things that were taken from Sythys’ stash all those years ago. Some were obtained in the many years since as well. The serpent had collected a great number of gems, some of which contained simple magical properties and some that just sparkled. Many of the magical jewels had since been made into necklaces or rings or inlaid on armor or weaponry. Sythys really hadn’t known the difference between the magical rocks and the mundane, and much of what he collected wasn’t even usable by him. He had simply been greedy for treasure.
The king had showed Ruby an impressive library of tomes and manuals that rivaled what Durin had collected. The books had been acquired from various dangerous sorcerers over the years, and they were kept there to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.
A piece of one of those mad men actually resided in the vault as well. One of the former kings had sent his men to stop the sorcerer from a nefarious scheme, and in the confrontation, his hand was severed off. The rest of his body was never recovered, but the court wizards claimed that his power still resided in the limb. It was sealed inside a bottle filled with a potent alchemical combination aimed at limiting that power.