by J. Stone
The sensation was nearly overwhelming. Ruby began to realize that there was truth to what Scarlett had told her. Her hidden desires were being brought to the surface and changing who she was. Since the spell had been cast, Ruby had killed four men, lusted after what she could only imagine was a demon from the nether realm, grown to hate another, and now craved power and possessions. The princess could hardly recognize what she was turning into.
With her mind wandering, Ruby lost track of time, and she grew more fearful of what she would become if she didn’t get a handle on her changes. Her breath quickened, as did her pace. She wanted to be free of the depths, and she became careless with her steps. The princess chose a loose rock, and her foot slipped forward. She stumbled but managed to fall backward rather than forward, thinking that she would be safer that way. Unfortunately, that was not the case, as Ruby had reached the rocks that were damp and therefore slippery. Landing hard on her backside, the princess slid forward, eventually hitting another crop of craggy and uneven rocks. With the speed at which she found herself traveling, she was launched into the air, and when she once again hit the ground of the steep cave, she began to roll. Tumbling through the rocky outcroppings of earth, Ruby slammed against jagged edges and hard flat surfaces. Through the terror and agony, she thought she heard the breaking of bones, and she could feel some of the rocks penetrate, slash, and tear open her skin. Before she blacked out from the terrible pain, an idle thought ran through her head about what had happened to the purple imp that had previously rested on her shoulder.
Her eyes opened to see a trail of poison leaking far away from her mouth, stretching out into the dimly lit cave. The substance ended in a large puddle that had grown substantially since she was knocked out from the fall. Every inch of her body ached in pain, but she knew that she must have broken her ribs on the way down. Every wheezing breath ended with a terrible pressure and what felt like a knife jutting into her chest. The princess knew nothing of how to bind such a wound, nor did she feel she had the energy to even stand.
Groaning, Ruby looked around, where she saw the outlandish, glowing mushrooms of the subterranean tunnels first hand. There was a comfort in seeing again. What she didn’t see, however, was all of her imps, black or purple. They were simply gone. She didn’t have the energy to try to connect with them and see through their eyes, so the princess simply assumed that she was once again alone.
Ruby believed that she had passed out once more, when she felt that time had slipped away from her. She was awake for the moment though, and she needed to act. She would not give up despite her horrendous pain. Her thoughts drifted to Leina. Her sister still needed her help, and she would not let her down. Bracing her arms against the cold, wet surface of the ebony rocks, Ruby winced but ultimately managed to lift herself partially upright, resting on her battered and tender knees.
Looking beneath her, the princess realized what had happened to all of the black imps that she had created. During her tumble, they had all grouped together to form a softer surface at the bottom, which she had landed on. They had broken her fall and possibly saved her life. What happened to her disobedient purple imp was still uncertain though, as she saw no sign of it underneath her or anywhere nearby.
Unable to ignore the pain from the pressure on her knees, the princess next forced herself to stand. Leaning against the nearby wall, she used it as leverage, and upon raising herself up, her head went dizzy. She nearly fell again from the effect, but the princess held steady. Ruby then took the time to examine her wounds. Scrapes and bruises, both small and large, littered her arms and legs, but none of them worried her like the broken ribs. Leaking from each of her cuts was a trace sampling of her blood, but mostly they were full of more of the poisonous substance. Ruby had no idea whether that was a good sign or not.
The princess started to feel as though she might pass out again from the pain in her chest or at the very least throw up. The thought occurred to her that she might not even be possible of retching anymore. Gently placing one hand just below her ribs and using the other to brace herself against the rocky wall, Ruby began to move. Whatever was down there had to be worth it. When she had started down the steep tunnel, she hadn’t even considered that she would have to make it back up after she’d found what she was after. Now, it was all she thought about. She felt doomed by her shortsighted avarice.
Regardless, she had no choice but to move forward through the cavern. Leaning her shoulder against the rocky wall, she left a separate trail of her injuries along it - one that was distinct from the poison spewed along the cave floor because of this new one’s red tinge. Each step was a crucible, testing her resolve and determining how much she could endure. Her chest trembled in pain at every breath, and she knew it was only a matter of time before it all became too much.
The path ahead of her was distorted and twisting; or rather, that was how her disoriented eyes saw it. Her head pounded loudly between her ears, throbbing in protest to what the rest of her body was experiencing. Ruby soon came to an opening in the wall, but didn’t realize it. Leaning against the rocks, she slipped into the chamber and fell to the floor when her shoulder met with the gap. She released a soft groan, as she splattered her poison and blood onto the hard ground.
Her eyes were fuzzy, but she looked up to find a strange sight. The chamber itself appeared to be moving in a writhing, twisting knot. Ruby forced herself to stand, and she cautiously approached one of the undulating sections. Every step toward it increased the temperature, as it seemed to be giving off immense heat. Raising her hand to inspect it, only too late did the princess realize what she was seeing in the dim light of the underground chamber. Her fingers felt the scaly surface of an enormous serpent, coiled and sleeping far below the earth. Ruby’s touch roused it from its slumber, and it rigidly snapped to attention. The serpent’s body slapped her away, and the princess slammed into the wall of the cave.
Chapter 5. The Serpent and the Fruit
Ruby recalled her history lessons growing up. Some of her teachers had focused on hard facts and figures, but a man named Art had taught her history lessons, including the stories of her kingdom and the world at whole. He was a rather eccentric figure that really just liked to weave tales, so the young princess sometimes had difficulty distinguishing the truths of history from the exaggerated yarns of folklore. One specific story had been about a giant snake called Sythys.
Sythys had been a mighty serpent that had collected powerful treasures and artifacts, hoarding them in the region that was now Lavidia. Ruby’s ancestors, who were at the time led by Lavidia’s eventual first king, Cyrus, came to the land, fleeing the tyrannical empire to the east, wishing to settle there. At the time, their people were living in the region that Ruby now found herself, the Abyss. In those days, however, it was not a sick and wasted land. The region was not as lush or livable as what the great serpent had claimed, and so Sythys and the princess’ ancestors quickly came into conflict with one another. After warring for some time, it became clear that Cyrus and his people could not best Sythys in combat.
The future king changed his tactic. During their time in that land, Cyrus’ people had found that there was a strange fruit, which came to be known as blissroot, which grew in scarcity beneath the earth. If ingested, the spicy tasting fruit would cause general elation and bliss to the imbiber, but it was also exceedingly toxic. Everyone who had eaten it died shortly thereafter. The blissroot was not only dangerous if ingested though. It also released a strange gas when plucked from the ground. Though not deadly in small amounts, the more the fruit was removed from the earth, the more the gas would spread and contaminate the nearby wildlife. Given this knowledge, Cyrus came up with the plan to make peace with the giant serpent, offering it a gift of the poisonous and more importantly, addictive, fruit.
Sythys met with the future king and humbly accepted their surrender as well as the peace token. Fearing that the serpent would not eat the blissroot on its own, Cyrus had a pair of lambs roa
sted and then drenched in the fruit’s sweet smelling juices. Ruby’s ancestors watched in anticipation as Sythys swallowed one of the lambs whole. The serpent’s eyes lit up instantly, and it strangely cocked its head to the side.
The beast quickly gobbled up the other as well, and everyone waited for the eventual death that had come for all the others to eat the blissroot. Cyrus had underestimated the creature’s physiology though. The toxic fruit did not harm Sythys. The sense of joy that came with the blissroot, however did affect him. The serpent demanded to know what the lambs had been coated in that tasted so sweet. Eagerly, Cyrus showed the serpent to the only known source of the fruit in the caves below his people’s homes.
Sythys proceeded to devour all the blissroot he could find in those dark depths. With each bite, the toxins were released throughout the land, slowly befouling them into what existed in Ruby’s time. The serpent dug deeper into the earth, sussing out more of the fruit and growing more and more addicted to its spicy taste and the sensation of bliss that came with it. Having tricked the beast from its home, Ruby’s ancestors left the now poisoned Abyss for Lavidia. In the serpent’s absence, Cyrus and his people claimed not only the land as their own, but also all of Sythys’ treasures. Beneath the castle, an archive was built to house all of the powerful artifacts that they had stolen from him.
The story that Ruby had heard had been only one of many regarding the nature of the Abyss and the origin of her royal line in Lavidia, but she never would have guessed that to be the one with truth on its side. It had been far from the most reasonable, and many scholars seemed to have dismissed it entirely. Even her teacher, Art, had his reservations about that particular story. None of that seemed to matter now, as the enormous serpent stared down at her.
The serpent’s voice snapped Ruby back to reality. “What isss thisss?” it hissed. “A sssnack for me, yesss, yesss?”
Ruby groaned and looked up to see the enormous form of the beast hovering above her and peering down over her. Its breath was strangely hot on her skin, and extreme heat seemed to radiate off the serpent’s body unnaturally. The massive beast slithered eagerly toward her, and the princess could see that each of its scales were as big as her hands, and they transitioned in color between dark red and abyssal black in a spiral pattern. Its eyes were pale, milky white and its forked tongue a soft pink hue. Horned ridges appeared just behind its eyes, disappearing into a white mane of hair that streaked down its backside, finally ending far from its head.
“Who… who are you?” the princess stuttered from the ground, noticeably shaking. She was either too afraid or too weak to stand. She wasn’t sure which.
“Sssurely, you’ve heard of me, yesss?” the serpent replied.
Ruby stared, wide-eyed, at the serpent, fearing the answer would be the snake of her story, but she shook her head side to side unable to accept the possibility.
“No?” it asked, mimicking her head movement at a much larger scale. “How isss that posssible?”
“I don’t… understand. How… how would I know you?”
“I am feared!” the serpent roared, exposing its terrifying fangs to the princess. “I am known! I dessstroyed kingdomsss, yesss!”
Terrified of the enormous creature and beginning to tremble, Ruby tentatively asked, “Well… what is your… name?”
“My name, yesss? My name isss Sssythysss! All know me!”
Dread was all she felt then. How could such a beast live down there and for so long? “I do know your name, but it’s… not possible. How long have you been down here?”
“Not long, yesss. I jussst came down to partake in that ever ssso sssweet delicasssy of the blisssroot.”
Ruby looked around. The conditions of the cave proved that Sythys had been there a very long time. Perhaps the fruit had addled his brain and memory over the years. “...But that was over five hundred years ago.”
“You lie!” Sythys shouted back at her. “It hasss only been a ssshort while, yesss. I wasss about to leave. Return to the sssurfasss. I jussst need one more bite… Yesss, one more.”
The serpent turned around, scouring the underground chamber. Soon, it found what it was looking for in a curved, white fruit hanging part way out of the rocks overhead. Snapping forward, Sythys grabbed the bottom of the blissroot in his jaws and slurped the rest into his mouth. Starting at his head and quickly traveling all the way along his lengthy body, a chill ran down Sythys’ form. Beginning to recover from the hit she’d suffered when she was knocked back by the creature, Ruby stood. Her legs were still shaky, and her ribs bellowed in pain at her. The serpent then jerked back to face the princess.
“Now… where were we?” Sythys asked.
“You said you were about to leave,” Ruby replied.
“Yesss, yesss. Sssoon enough. Firssst, I think we ssshould get to know one another a bit better.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What isss your name?”
“Ruby. I’m Ruby.”
“Ruby, yesss? Good. Good. I ssshould know my ssslavesss namesss, yesss.”
“Slave? What are you talking about? I’m not your slave.” The princess felt her trembling cease, as something hardened in her spine. A cold sensation flooded her body, and she was still.
“Yesss, yesss. You come from Sssyrusss, yesss?”
“Cyrus? Yes.”
“Then, yesss. Ruby isss my ssslave. All of Sssyrusss’ people belong to me. Part of treaty, yesss. You are mine. My ssslave.”
A dark anger began to rise through the princess. “I belong to no one.”
“Ssslave, yesss,” the serpent hissed, its tongue flapping mere inches from her face.
Ruby casually moved both her hands under the flow of poison from her mouth. As she did, the color of the toxin turned to a dark blue, though she had made no conscious effort to create such an effect. Her anger had taken over. Once her hands were thoroughly soaked in the substance, the princess replied to the serpent’s assertion. “No.” With both hands, Ruby grabbed the slithering tongue that was nearly licking her face. The poison soaked into the pink tongue, staining it a dark blue color in almost no time at all.
Sythys lurched back, escaping Ruby’s grip, and he banged his head against the ceiling of the cavern. The cave echoed the trembling roar of the noise throughout its tunnels. He howled a hissing scream like a kettle left on the stove for too long, as the plague infected his tongue. Wildly throwing his head from side to side, the serpent attempted to cleanse itself of the plague in its mouth. Its whole body writhed from the pain and flopped about uselessly. Though the poison had certainly injured the serpent, Ruby realized it wasn’t enough to put it down. A surge of adrenaline shot through her system, and she did the only thing she could think of. She ran. Ignoring the pain in her chest, the throbbing in her head, and the weakness in her legs, Ruby ran.
The earth deafeningly shook with each bang of the serpent’s body against the cavern system. In the distance, the princess could hear chambers collapsing from the ruckus Sythys was causing. The ground beneath her feet proved hard to navigate, and the wooziness brought on by her injuries was not helping in the matter. Ruby moved at the quickest pace she could manage toward where she had found herself when she regained consciousness. Escaping back toward the surface was all she knew to do. She retraced her steps and soon found the dark path leading up, but it would be for naught.
Pounding against the twisting curves of the cave behind her slithered the enormous serpent. Each hit against the walls vibrated the entire structure of the tunnels, and Ruby was knocked off her feet, landing painfully on her side. Ahead of her, the princess watched as heavy rubble collapsed and covered her only exit. There was no way out, but that didn’t matter. She stood up. She kept moving. Ruby found another path leading away from the serpent. The princess made it as far as she could, but she was ultimately met with another dead end. Ruby raised her hands to the wall, searching desperately for anything to help, but it was not to be. There was nowhere left for
her to run. Behind her, the beast banged into the walls, taking the same turns she had taken. With one final slam, Sythys was at her back.
“Ruby isss food now!”
He gave her no respite. The serpent’s fangs pierced Ruby’s abdomen, injecting incredible amounts of venom inside her along with the massive wounds. Her body cracked and snapped from the force of the bite. Her ribs were no longer alone in their breaks. The beast then unhinged his jaw and began to slide the immobilized princess down his throat. The insides of Sythys were warm. The spicy blissroot fruit had made a lasting difference to the creature, and it felt hot enough that it should burn her skin at its touch. Instead, Ruby actually felt soothed by the warmth, as the serpent pushed her further into its long body.
The princess continued to spit up her own poison, while she realized the contents of the serpent’s body began to mix with her own secretions. The creature’s toxic laced stomach acid and her own poison wrapped around her like a cocoon or a warm womb. Ruby could see nothing, but she knew that the acid as well as the poison that the snake had injected into her was of no danger to her. The venomous cocktail embraced her and rejuvenated the injured princess. She could feel the bruises soften, the cuts and scrapes mend, the massive holes in her midsection stitch back together, and though it was beyond excruciating, Ruby felt her broken ribs snap back into place and harden there. Before long, the princess felt whole again, but it would do her no good. She was still trapped inside the beast’s stomach, and Sythys seemed immune to the effects of poison, having eaten the toxic fruit for centuries. She had nowhere left to turn, as her mind faded into the darkness.
