by J. Stone
The horned demon gritted her teeth, knowing what was coming, but she was still unable to move with the craggy hand demon returned to power. Leina dropped to her knees and slid the curved blade into Scarlett’s body. She pulled it out, still wearing the maniacal smile, and shoved it back in. Scarlett wailed in pain, while Ruby was forced to watch her demon slowly and painfully killed right before her. The princess struggled to stand, to defy the magical power that held her to the floor, to fight past the burning hot pain in her gut, but she could do nothing. Blood sprayed out of the horned demon’s body in spurting streams, as Leina began to slash instead of stab. Scarlett’s cries soon ceased, as her life slipped away.
The queen seemed not to notice and simply enjoyed watching the blood fly out, watching it pool beneath her victim, watching Scarlett’s body rip and tear at her touch. The corruption inside her was too deep that Ruby now thought it could never be overcome. The princess regretted giving up the poison inside her. It had been a mistake. That naive, idealistic decision caused Scarlett her life. Ruby’s horned demon was dead, and her irredeemable sister was covered in Scarlett’s blood. The princess felt that anger and hatred inside her, but without the poison, it was weak. It was useless.
Leina turned her head and looked up at the craggy hand demon. “Did you like it, my master? Did I fuck her well?”
“Yes, my little flower,” he replied with a soft smile. “Now, then. Let’s go see your sister, shall we?”
The queen nodded enthusiastically, and her demon held his hand out, helping Leina stand up. Hand in hand, the pair walked toward Ruby, who was still held in place by the craggy hand demon’s powerful sorcery.
“You’re going to die,” the princess told the demon through gritted teeth. “I’ve seen it. You don’t win.”
He adopted a little condescending smile. “And how do imagine that is?”
“My sister is going to kill you.”
The craggy hand demon turned to Leina, placing his hand on her cheek. “My little flower would never hurt me. Isn’t that right?”
The queen stared adoringly into his eyes. “Never, my master.”
“She’d do anything I told her to do. Wouldn’t you, my little flower?”
“Anything, my master. Let me prove it to you.” She squirmed on the spot in anticipation. “Give me a command. Please.”
“As you wish…” He thought for a moment about what he wanted her to do. Another smile graced his face, as he decided. “Cut off one of your sister’s fingers.”
Leina smiled wide and kneeled beside Ruby’s body.
“Leina,” the princess began, beads of sweat beginning to form at either temple. “You don’t have to do what he says. You can fight him.”
“Silly sister,” Leina said, pulling Ruby’s hand away from her body and laying it flat on the ground. “I don’t want to fight him.”
“Leina…”
Her sister laid the blade down against each finger in turn, not sure where to start. She looked to Ruby’s face, still wearing her wicked smile. “Which one?”
The princess just shook her head, remembering the pain that had come when she temporarily lost four of her fingers in Gloomport.
“I know,” Leina said cheerfully. “Let’s start with your thumb!”
The dark queen pulled Ruby’s thumb to the side, clear of the others, and then placed the blade down, so that it rested on the skin. She looked up to her sister’s face one more time. “Now, then. This is going to hurt, dear sister.”
Leina cackled a little and then plunged the blade down, passing through flesh and blood, through muscle and bone with a crunch, until she hit the stone floor on the other side. Ruby howled in pain, the sound echoing throughout the halls. She wished that she could move - that she could do something to stop the pain, stop her sister, and stop the demon. Anything. The queen’s craggy hand demon overlooked the mutilation with a pleased expression on his face. Leina picked up the severed appendage, stood, and showed it to her master.
“Here you are,” she declared. “I told you I would prove myself.”
He took the thumb and nodded to her. “You’re such a good little girl.” The craggy hand demon paused, looking at the bloody appendage. “Bring me the rest.”
Leina’s eyes lit up, and she eagerly dropped back to the floor, where she continued her work. Ruby’s screams and the sounds of her bones being broken and severed muffled almost all thought she was capable of. All she was able to do was experience the pain of the torture and the anger and rage from her sister’s betrayal. She cursed herself once more for giving up the poisonous power she once had access to. It had been a waste after all. Choking down on her rage, Ruby thought back to the question she had answered time and time again,
Do I do what is right, or do I do what I want?
For the past decade, the princess felt like the darkness inside her had been forced upon her by the miscast spell that had attempted to save her life. She felt like it had guided her decisions and caused her to go down paths she never would have otherwise. Ruby could forgive herself for those transgressions, because there had been something twisted gnawing its way through her mind. What she did in that moment, however, was unforgivable. Rather than the darkness simply rising up inside her against her will, Ruby now chose to reach down into the filth and pull back the darkness that she so desperately desired. She had finally made the decision. Right and wrong were no longer concerns to her. Ruby’s dark desires had control. She was beyond redemption now. Death was all that remained of the Oracle’s prophecy.
The poisonous lever inside her had never left. Choosing to tap into those terrible emotions restored it to what she now realized was its rightful place. Her malevolent energy flowed once more, and a terrible hate overwhelmed her senses. There was an explosion of poison, knocking both Leina and the craggy hand demon away from her. The wounds in her gut healed, her skin grew pale, and the same dark thoughts permeated her mind, as the poison spread. The sludge poured out of her severed fingers, reaching out and reconnecting with the bloody digits that had dropped to the stone floor. Her hands were repaired, but the craggy hand demon was up, and he was no worse for wear from the poison explosion.
He raised his hand to perform some additional sorcery, but Ruby was a step ahead of him. She globbed a ball of venom in her mouth and spit it into his face, temporarily blinding him. The princess stood and ran over to her war hammer, as a layer of toxic sludge oozed out from her. This time, it was not limited to coming out her mouth. It secreted out of her skin, covering her entire form in a purplish-black layer of the filth. The sludge dripped off her, and she picked up the weapon. Turning back, Ruby saw that the craggy hand demon had pulled out a weapon of his own. It was an enormous, two-handed sword that looked almost like a butcher’s knife, elongated over the length of the huge blade. Ruby stepped forward to meet him, while Leina, on the other hand, had made her way over to her throne, where she eagerly watched the show begin.
The demon swiped the huge blade across the room, making Ruby dodge backward. The princess swung her war hammer in reply, but he raised his wide sword, using it as a makeshift shield, so that it just clashed loudly into the metal. The craggy hand demon wasn’t just brute strength. He had great magical powers that he had already shown off during the battle at the Cloister. He wasn’t above using them against Ruby, either. The demon somehow generated an electrical current that shot through the metal of his blade, into the war hammer, and finally into the princess’ hands. The current then launched her weapon out of her hands, colliding into the wall and falling with a thud to the floor.
The craggy hand demon raised his enormous sword over his head preparing to bring it down on Ruby. Without her weapon, the princess briefly thought that she was unarmed, but she quickly dismissed that notion. She had great and terrible power festering inside her. She simply had to use it. Lifting her hands to meet the huge blade falling toward her, Ruby released a wave of toxins that ate away the metal of the colossal sword before it could slic
e her in two. All that was left of it was the hilt, which the craggy hand demon still held in his hand. He looked at it with a scowl and tossed it to the side, sliding on the cold stone tile of the throne room.
Ruby recognized that he was no less dangerous without the weapon, and that she had to continue the fight. The princess rushed toward him, wielding nothing but her own dark energy, while the craggy hand demon began to shape some spell between his hands. A yellow ball formed there between his two palms, as they rotated around the energy. When Ruby was close enough to him to pounce on him and release her poison, he unleashed this yellow energy on her. The blast exploded out in a long, straight beam directly into her chest. The princess instinctively raised her hands, covered in her dark purple sludge. The poison served as a buffer between herself and the crackling energy he had launched toward her, but the beam continued to push her back toward the edge of the room. Her feet slid against the cold tile, while she tried to fight against the force of the blast with little success. She gritted her teeth, and her eyes glowed with the red light of the wights from the undercroft, as her rage grew inside her.
Her hands began to form their own ball of energy, hers composed of the dark purple toxins she was so comfortable with. As the poisons wrapped over each other, forming layers upon layers, her slide into the wall slowed, and she started to fight against the yellow beam. Ruby’s rage grew and with it, so did the ball of venom manifesting between her hands. With every passing second, her anger grew more and more uncontrollable, and the poison grew larger. Eventually, the princess stopped entirely, and she pushed back against the energy of the craggy hand demon. The purple sludge became its own beam, and tainted the bright yellow beam, pushing toward him.
The demon, however, had more strength still inside him, and he refused to let her win this contest of power. He shook with ferocity, pushing the poison back toward her, as Ruby began to slide once more toward the wall. Leina, meanwhile, laughed and clapped enthusiastically from the safety of her throne.
The princess’ rage had overtaken her, and there was no more logical thought rattling around inside her head in that moment. Using everything that had happened to her in the past decade, Ruby exploded once more, channeling all that anguish and hate toward the craggy hand demon. Both her poison and the yellow beam suddenly ceased, as the craggy hand demon was knocked back.
The princess, however, was not concerned with him. Now, she focused all her anger on her sister, on Leina. She had wasted more than a decade on the thought that her sister could be saved, and seeing her now, Ruby knew that Leina wasn’t worth saving. While the craggy hand demon was momentarily distracted, the princess rushed toward her sister. Horror washed over Leina’s face, as she stopped her giddy laughing.
Ruby grabbed her sister by the head and smashed it into the back of the stone throne. Leina’s eyes went wide, as her skull crashed into that hard surface. Blood splattered out onto Ruby’s fingers, and she pulled her sister’s head back toward her before smashing it into the throne once more. Leina’s hands tried to claw at Ruby’s wrists, but the poison princess was far too powerful in that moment. Her rage had overtaken her, and there was no stopping the terrible wrath she felt. Leina’s skull was smashed against the back of the stone throne more than a dozen more times, before Ruby even realized what she had done.
Shivering, the princess removed her bloody hands from her sister’s crushed skull. To Ruby, the time she spent staring at her sister’s lifeless body seemed to drag on for ages, but in reality, it was only seconds. She turned back to find the craggy hand demon and ascertain his fate, but to her surprise, he was still alive and kneeling over Scarlett’s body. He smiled wickedly at her, showing her the bracelets he now wore on his wrists. He had severed his own connection to Leina to save himself from death.
“Even if you kill me…” he said. “I win.”
The princess looked back to her sister’s dead body once more before returning her eyes to the craggy hand demon. There were no words left for Ruby to speak. Only action would serve her now. The princess walked over to where he still kneeled, kicked him onto his back, and straddled over his body. He hardly even fought her. Ruby plunged her thumbs into his eyes. His smile faded, as he screamed in pain. Eventually pulling her thumbs out, she put a knee into his cheek, twisting his head to the side. With all her strength from the darkness inside her, Ruby grabbed the craggy hand demon’s ear and wrenched the flesh from his face. More wailing and mewling. The princess turned his head back toward her and pried his jaw open, unhinging it with a loud pop.
Ruby reached her fingers into his mouth, grabbing his slippery tongue. He tried to fight back, attempting to bite her fingers with his broken jaw, but it was useless. She pierced the tongue with her fingernails, and placing a knee into his throat, Ruby yanked back and pulled out a chunk of the pink muscle. Blood pooled and gurgled in his mouth, as she tossed aside the tongue.
She wasn’t done. She needed more. Ruby forced open his mouth, spitting the vile substance inside. She increased the flow, so that he couldn’t cough it out or swallow it fast enough. Every once in a while, she would let him turn his head and get his breath back, only to repeat the act. She had mutated the poison, so that it would physically hurt him but not contribute to killing him. Ruby took her time, and she enjoyed it, just as the black dragon mirror had told her.
The princess eventually stood, allowing the craggy hand demon to perform some guttural wail as he caught his breath. He rolled side to side on the floor, his hands pawing at his broken face, while Ruby picked the hammer back up. She stared down at him, trying to decide if she was done. Not quite, she told herself. The princess proceeded to beat everything that was left out of the mutilated figure on the ground. She crushed his body for hours with her hammer. Her hands, face, and dress were splattered in his blood by the end of it.
Finally finished, Ruby dropped the hammer and tried to catch her breath. She looked over to Scarlett’s body, mere feet from where she had taken the craggy hand demon’s life. Seeing the body of her bound demon brought on a lack of control, and the toxic sludge dripped from her mouth like it had when her journey had started, beginning to pool and congeal beneath her.
The red glow returned once more to Ruby’s eyes, as she thought about Scarlett. The mirror had shown her a future where the horned demon was still alive and by her side. That future, she decided, was hers for the taking. Ruby approached her demon, allowing her poison, fueled by the red necromantic power she’d stolen from the wight king, to drip down on her servant’s body, into her grievous wounds. The sludge pooled there in those wounds, and Scarlett’s body began to knit itself back together at her command. Before long the red faded from Ruby’s eyes, having been fully transferred into her horned demon.
Scarlett coughed and sputtered, sitting upright and staring about the room in a state of panicked confusion. “What… What happened?”
“You died,” Ruby said turning and walking toward the throne. “I brought you back.”
“Where’s the craggy hand demon?”
Still walking toward the throne, the princess pointed back to the splattered remains. “Dead.”
“And… your sister?”
Ruby approached the throne and grabbed what remained of her sister. She tossed the corpse out of the seat, so that it landed on the stone floor and tumbled down the couple steps leading up to the throne. “Dead.”
Ruby sat down in her throne, with the poison still flowing freely from her lips. Her horned demon stood and walked over to Leina’s body, where she picked up the crown from the woman’s tangled bloody hair. Scarlett returned to the throne, placing the crown on the princess’ brow.
“My queen,” the horned demon added, kneeling in respect.
The poison queen looked out over the throne room and all that she had wrought. Her eyes lingered on the bloodied remains of the craggy hand demon and then to her own sister’s lifeless body. Her decade-long task had succeeded, but the darkness had taken her sister from her. She forc
ed herself not to care for the death of Leina, her body still warm on the cold steps of the throne room. Ruby’s mind was concerned with the kingdom she now ruled.
That same question returned to the forefront of her thoughts - Do I do what is right, or do I do what I want?
For the first time in her life, there was no longer a debate regarding the answer to that question. Smiling, the purple poison slopped forth past her curled lips. The age of poison had begun.