by J. Stone
Looking around, the princess tried to locate whoever had helped her. She was completely surprised when she saw that it was the disobedient little purple imp holding a sharpened rock. It grinned up at her with the strange little swirling smile and beady, catlike eyes.
“Maybe you’re not so useless after all,” she told the purple imp.
It smiled wider, holding itself upright, as if to congratulate itself.
“Well, I guess you could use a name,” Ruby said. “Any ideas?”
The purple imp nodded and then took the sharpened rock toward a puddle of the various poisons and liquids splayed out on the cavern floor. It dipped the rock into the fluid and then turned around to a clean bit of the cave. Scraping the rock along the floor, it proceeded to ink a response to her question. Turning back to the fluid as needed, the purple imp eventually finished and pointed to his answer and then to himself.
“Sniggle?” Ruby read aloud.
The purple imp nodded enthusiastically.
The princess thought the name was quite strange, but it somehow suited the little poison creature. “Sniggle it is, then.”
Ruby stood upright and took a moment to examine herself. Whatever had happened with the poisons, while she was inside Sythys truly had healed her. The giant wounds from his fangs were gone, though the holes were still in her dress. Touching a hand to her chest, she realized that the cracked and battered ribs felt completely back to normal now. All the cuts, scrapes, and bruises she’d sustained in her tumble down the tunnel were gone as well. Her best guess was that whatever that spell had done to her, now poison was like a restorative potion to her. When the craggy hand demon sent her to the Abyss, he made a dire mistake. The trip to such a toxic place had only made her stronger.
As true as that was, however, Ruby was still trapped far below the ground with no way back to where she’d entered. Looking down to her pet imp, she asked, “Don’t suppose you know the way out of here?”
Sniggle shrugged his shoulders non-committedly.
“Yeah. Figured as much. Come on. Let’s find our own way out.” Ruby picked the imp up, placing it once again on her shoulder. The princess kicked off her only remaining shoe, as they set out to search the underground tunnels.
Chapter 8. Dirty Water
Ruby had been wandering around in the dim light of the underground cavern for what seemed a very long time, though she had no way to count its passage. She wanted to say that it had been days, or maybe even more than a week, but that thought was too depressing for her to admit to herself. Her excreted poison marked her trail naturally, and she knew that she was walking in circles thanks to it. The princess had taken every turn that she had come across, but they always seemed to lead back to areas she’d already visited. She was so lost now that she couldn’t even find her way to where Sythys’ body was or the tunnel leading to the surface that had collapsed. She didn’t know whether she had made any progress at all, but for the first time since the chaotic spell had altered her, Ruby was beginning to get hungry.
Though, she really wasn’t sure that was it. She thought she was thirsty, hungry, or tired, but nothing sounded quite right. There hadn’t been much down there to eat though. Aside from the luminescent mushrooms guiding her path, she’d only seen a few insects and a pair of frogs. She continued to hear the stream of water, but it remained maddeningly out of her reach. Earlier, she had convinced herself that she didn’t need food or water anymore. Sleep seemed beyond her, despite repeated attempts and growing exhaustion. When she had been wandering around above in the Abyss, Ruby didn’t have any of these problems. Maybe the effects of the spell were starting to wind down, and she was returning to normal. The princess hoped for that, but she was not so naive that she thought it could have actually been true.
Her only companion through the rocky labyrinth was the little, purple imp that had named itself Sniggle, and he was of little help or solace. It offered no suggestions, preferring to lazily slumber on her shoulder. Unlike her, it seemed not to be bothered by the exhaustion over the past days. It needed no food or water, but it certainly slept enough. She was quite jealous of that. Her last dream was of the demon Scarlett, and despite her protests, the princess wouldn’t have minded seeing her again. Sleep, however, would not come to her, so she walked. She would find the way out, or she would die searching.
Above ground, in the Abyss, Ruby had used her poisonous abilities to send out a dozen little sludge-crafted imps in search of an exit. She’d considered doing that again, but she felt too weak. Despite that, she’d attempted to create one of the little creatures, but the toxins wouldn’t harden into anything useful. She would have to continue forward on her own.
Ruby’s goal had become finding the stream of water that she could hear somewhere behind the walls. The sick of the serpent still covered her, and she wished to finally clean it from her skin and matted hair. Though it wouldn’t matter because of the poison, she just wanted to be clean for a few minutes before the secreted sludge ruined it once more. There was one section in a particular hall that the princess kept coming back to. The water could be heard the best from there, and she had searched its corridors repeatedly in vain.
She stood in the middle of that hall, with her eyes closed, trying to focus on the sound. It swept through the rocks of the cave. It wasn’t just a small trickle; this was a full-blown stream. The water was so close. The sound was almost on top of her. Why then couldn’t she find it? Without moving, she mapped out the cavern’s twists and turns nearby. Every last corridor had been explored. A trail of sludge marked each one.
“Where is it?” she shouted, spitting poison from her mouth and jarring Sniggle from his slumber.
So disoriented was the imp that he managed to slide off Ruby’s shoulder and into a heaping puddle of her secreted poison at her feet. He splashed as he landed, and the princess looked down to realize how long she must have been standing there. The puddle was so great that it had begun to dribble toward one wall. The floor sloped, she realized. Sniggle too discovered this, and it walked toward where the sludge was drifting. The little imp looked up at Ruby and pointed in that direction.
The princess got down on her knees to see what it was pointing at. She grinned, when she realized where the poison was going. Ruby grabbed Sniggle and gave the slime creature a kiss, before sitting him to the side of the large opening at the bottom of the cave floor. The wall had jutted out and the light of the mushrooms had hit the rocks at such an angle that the opening was obfuscated without being down at the floor’s level. The crevice was big enough for her to slide through, and that’s exactly what she did. Ruby didn’t look before she squeezed through; she was too desperate for escape. It ended up not mattering much, as the other side proved quite safe for her.
From the new chamber, Ruby reached back through and snatched Sniggle, placing him back on her shoulder, where he resumed his nap. The new area of the cave was darker than where she had previously been, but ahead she could see a patch of the mushrooms illuminating a slow moving stream. The princess rushed toward it, eager to get clean after the long time she’d been forced to wear the serpent’s sick on her skin. She plopped Sniggle down on the ground and jumped into the waist deep water, not bothering to remove her dress first.
Ruby submerged herself in the water, running her hands through her dark hair and untangling the matted strands. Only coming up for occasional breaths of air, the princess tried to scrub all of the serpent’s viscera off her skin and clothing as well. The water was icy and frigid to the touch, but she didn’t mind at all. She felt good to get the grime off her after all that time slogging around in it.
The princess felt fresh and good for the first time, since she’d eaten that poisoned strawberry. The sensation was doomed to not last too long, as her poison quickly continued to dribble forth from her mouth. At least it was isolated to just her own sludge and no longer the snake’s as well, she told herself.
As good as the impromptu bath made her feel, Ruby still felt
some emptiness inside her. She wasn’t certain that it was thirst exactly, but she had to start somewhere. Pooling a bit of the water in her cupped palms, the princess raised it to her mouth and tried to take a sip despite the dripping poison. Though she managed to swallow the fresh liquid, it didn’t have the effect she would’ve hoped for. Rather than replenishing her, the water instead made her feel sick and worse than she had before the drink. She felt the liquid come back up, and she retched it out along with the poison. Ruby couldn’t even swallow water anymore.
The pangs in her gut were yearning for something else it seemed. Her only other guess was that the sensation was some twisted version of hunger. She hadn’t seen much to eat in the caves, but Ruby guessed that near the water was as good a place as any to find life. The princess pulled herself out of the water, her dress completely drenched and dripping with water and the fresh poison spilling down on it.
She started to move forward, but the soaked gown was so heavy that she thought it would only slow her down. Stretching her hands around to her backside, Ruby managed to undo the ties keeping her dress on, and after a time, loosened it enough to remove it. The princess slipped the straps off her shoulders and wiggled it off down to her feet, leaving her standing in only her plain, white chemise that had a stain of purple down its front where the poison had seeped through. Ruby laid out the soaked dress on the rocky floor, hoping to allow it to dry faster that way. Sniggle, meanwhile, who had been sleeping peacefully at the side of the stream, woke up and took notice of the strewn out gown. Naturally, he moved over to it and decided to continue his nap there on the softer palette.
While the dress dried and Sniggle slept, Ruby went in search of food along the underground stream. She feared eating the glowing mushrooms would be a mistake for some reason, so she was hopeful that she could find another frog. Eating a raw frog didn’t strike her as something she would have ever thought herself doing, but times were desperate. She needed sustenance, and that was the best she could manage. Without her long flowing dress, Ruby could move much faster and quieter, so she expected if she were able to find one, she would be able to sneak up on it. She had something of a chill and tremored a bit, but she was able to work past that.
The princess walked along beside the stream’s path for what she expected was a couple of hours. The way had been simple, and it would be impossible for her to get lost on the way back, so she didn’t worry about how far she had traveled. Eventually, Ruby came across where the stream widened into a small pond in the middle of a large, open cave. She was optimistic that she could find something alive in there. She was half right anyway.
Getting closer to the water, she discovered that the liquid was black and plagued. When she had cleaned herself in the stream, it must have washed down through the current, not filtering out the toxins at all. Dozens of fish had been killed and drifted up to the surface, floating and suspended at the top of the water. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought that she should feel guilty. Feel bad about the fact she killed all those fish. That she polluted the stream and pond and all the life in it. She didn’t. She didn’t feel a thing, and that was what worried her.
Ruby laid down at the side of the water and stretched out her arm to grab one of the fish within reach. Barely able to scrape her fingernails across the underbelly of the fish, she scratched at its scales enough to get it to begin to drift toward her. Eventually she succeeded, and she snatched it out of the pond. The princess flicked the excess water and poison off it and crawled back away from the water, crossing her legs and staring down at her catch. She prevented dribbling the ooze from her mouth on it, not eager to make her only food source any filthier than it needed to be.
The princess was not particularly hungry for the fish, as she looked down at it. She needed to eat, though. Knowing this, Ruby raised the fish to her mouth and bit into its soft belly, unenthusiastically. Tearing through its scaly flesh, the princess attempted to chew and swallow a large chunk of the beast. Again though, her system resisted this source of sustenance. She dropped the rest of the fish, as the chewed portion came barreling back out of her mouth. Scales, meat, and a bit of bone lay splattered on the rocky floor along with her noxious spit. She felt worse than she did before. She felt utterly empty, but still the ooze poured forth.
“What do you want?” she shouted, still spitting chunks of fish from her mouth and echoing the words throughout the cavern. “What do I have to do?” She stood up and yelled at the ceiling. “What!?”
It was then that she saw something hanging down from the rocky roof overhead - the curled, white blissroot fruit that the serpent had been eating for centuries. The fruit kind of reminded her of a much larger white banana. That wasn’t entirely a good thing. When Ruby had been a little child, she’d been given her first ever banana to try. Afterward, she’d broken out in a rash all over her body, and her eyes became red and agitated. From then on, the princess blamed the banana for the distress, assuming that she was allergic to the fruit. The truth, however, was that Ruby had eaten the banana immediately after she’d petted a cat for the first time. Cats, she had found, she really was allergic to, but in truth, she probably wasn’t allergic to bananas. She’d simply transferred the effects of that cat to the banana and had sworn them off. It was only later that she’d been told that there had been a cat involved in that event at all. That certainly wasn’t a part of her memory. Naturally, you might assume that with this additional information she would have gotten over her banana aversion. You’d be wrong. She still found that she was quite repulsed by the yellow fruit. This aversion was somewhat transferred onto the toxic blissroot hanging over her head. Maybe that was why she hadn’t even thought about what this white fruit had to offer.
She remembered the story about it being toxic. Maybe that was what she needed. Poison. It was after all who she was now, the poison princess, as Scarlett had called her. The one she’d seen in the ceiling over the pond, however, was too far up for her to reach. Looking around at the rocky roof, Ruby found that they were growing all over the place. She traced her steps back the way she had come, where the top of the cave wasn’t so far up in hopes of finding some lower hanging fruit.
Eventually, she did come upon one that was almost within her reach. She was just a bit too short to grab it, outstretched and on the tips of her toes. Surveying the area, Ruby saw a large boulder that she thought she would be able to shift. Rushing over, she crouched down and leaned against it, managing to push it closer to where the blissroot was extending down. Jumping back atop the rock, Ruby reached up and grabbed the toxic fruit. It was wedged into the earth pretty well, but she shifted and pulled at it until it fell out with chunks of earth alongside it.
The princess held the large fruit in her hands, as she stepped down off the boulder. The blissroot was warm to the touch, and she could smell the hot spices permeating off it. Overhead, the roots and vines of the fruit released the toxic gas, but it drifted up through the earth and away from the princess. Wiping away the dirt and rocks from the surface of the white blissroot, Ruby actually began to think that this was what she needed. She could feel it inside her. It was right. The princess bit into the fruit, taking out a large chunk and swallowing it almost whole. The fruit was exceedingly spicy, but it was good. Everything was good. She felt restored. Ruby breathed a sigh of relief and turned to sit down, leaning against the rocky wall. Everything was going to be fine. She had what she needed.
Chapter 9. The Other Road
Ruby woke up with a sense of Deja vu. She felt like that day had already come once before, even though she knew that was nonsense. Her father had an important announcement that day regarding the future of their kingdom, and though she was afraid of what it would mean for her, she was still a willing participant. She roused herself from her comfortable bed and prepared for the day.
An attendant entered her room to help her, but Ruby didn’t quite recognize the young woman. She must have been new. At the same time, the woman struck her as someone
she somehow knew, though she ultimately conceded that she did not. She had long, orange hair that ended in ringlets, and the princess thought, at first glance, that the woman’s eyes were red. When she looked back, they were an ordinary green, so she shook her head, laughing at her own imagination.
“Good day, my princess,” the woman greeted her.
“Hello,” Ruby politely replied.
“Did you sleep well?”
The princess thought about that for a moment, when she realized she didn’t really remember going to bed the previous night, nor did she remember any dreams. That was odd for her, as she recalled almost all her nightly visions. She shrugged it off and answered. “Yes, it was fine.”
“That’s good, my princess. Shall I help you get ready?”
Ruby nodded. “Please.”
With the attendant’s assistance, Ruby slipped into a fancy yellow dress. Afterward, the woman helped weave her light brown hair into a braid of crowns. When she was ready, the princess left her quarters and the servant, walking toward the dining hall. Inside, she found one of their court wizards, Durin, drinking a big heaping of wine. When he saw her enter, he wiped the red liquid from his face and beard with the sleeve of his grey robe, staining the fabric. Again, the princess couldn’t help but feel that all of this had happened once before.
“Princess,” the wizard greeted her.
She shrugged the sensation off. “Hello Durin. How is the food this morning?”
“I can’t say. I’ve only just tasted the wine. I’ve left the strawberries for you to try.”
