by J. Stone
“It was a short lived conversation. The filth inside her took over, and I saw the extent to what the craggy hand demon did to her.”
“But don’t you see? That proves that she is still in there. There is still something to save.”
Maybe she was right, the princess thought. She looked over to her companion’s hopeful eyes. She never would have thought a demon could be something quite like Scarlett.
“I won’t let you give up, Ruby. We will do this together. We will crush the craggy hand demon and save your sister.”
The princess wrapped her arms around the demon. “Thank you, Scarlett.” The embrace was comforting to her, and she could already tell how reliant she would become on her.
“Come,” Scarlett whispered into her princess’ ear. “Let’s go to the Cloister. The answer to your worries lies there. I’m sure of it.”
Ruby released her grip from her demon and nodded. Scarlett then grabbed the princess’ hand and guided her back to where she had talked to the young man about transport to the Cloister. Since she left, he and an older man had prepared a horse and strung a four-wheeled cart behind it with a bit of supplies piled in it.
The young man then approached the pair of women and said, “It’s a long journey. My father is going to need some payment for my time before I leave.”
Scarlett looked to Ruby, and she nodded in compliance. The demon then did the same trick as before, retrieving a gold bar. This one, however, was half the size of the former, cut perfectly along its shorter length. She then handed the half bar of gold to the young man.
“I imagine that should suffice?”
“Y-Y-Yeah. That’ll do.” The young man then handed the bar to his father, who was just as hypnotized by the chunk of shiny metal as his son. “Well, I believe we are set up if you’re ready.”
“We are,” Scarlett replied.
The pair of women climbed up in the back section of the cart where there was a hard wood bench to sit on, while the young man sat up front and took the reins. He waved goodbye to his father before jostling the straps and whistling at the horse who responded by starting into a mild trot. The journey to the Cloister would be a long one, and it would take some time, but the answers that Ruby sought would be there. For the sake of her sister, they had to be.
Chapter 25. Pack Hunters
Scarlett fidgeted in her seat, scratching at the fabric of her dress. Turning to Ruby, she asked, “You mind if I…”
“Leave it on,” the princess said, interrupting her companion.
“It’s just that it’s so much more comfortable. I don't know how you stand it.”
Ruby looked over at the horned demon. “Well, I'm not a nudist for one.”
“I'm not a nudist. I just don't like clothes.” She continued fidgeting but did as her master instructed and left her dress on.
The journey to the Cloister had been ongoing for over a week now. The whole thing would have been faster, but the young man, who they now knew to be named Edwin, was not like them. He had to eat, drink, and sleep. In truth, he slowed them down, but neither Ruby nor her demon knew the path to the monastery as he seemed to. Along the way, they had mostly camped out in the wilderness, but they did pass through a small city named Agath and stayed in an inn there one night. It was the first time the women were able to share a proper bed together. The expenses of the rooms were once again covered by Scarlett’s ability to pull currency out of thin air.
Over the journey’s time, the princess was eventually able to prevent herself from thinking about all the awful things her sister had said. Instead, she concerned herself with the path that lay in front of her. She needed to get to the Cloister and convince the monks there to help her. Assuming they would, she wasn’t quite sure what she would find there. There had been a mention of something that could separate a demon from its host, but she’d heard very little details.
Scarlett, meanwhile, had helped her princess in whatever way she could along the trip. Though she had worried that what the Hendriks’ had said about the darkness inside her would ultimately drive a wedge between the two; that had not been the case. Rather, the two women continued to increase their bond. After a few days, the demon had been able to convince Ruby to continue with their physical relationship as well. The nights while Edwin slept were often filled with the two women’s intimacy. The night in the inn had been a personal highlight for her.
Their days tended to be far more tedious. The heat beat down on them, as the sun moved along its path, and there was little distraction on the road. There was the occasional traveler passing in the other direction, they’d sometimes see men and women working in fields near the road, and they’d even once seen a pack of dire wolves on the horizon, but nothing ever came of it. Despite the oft-cited stories of dangers on the roads, the pair of women had not seen anything to back up all of those tales. As you might imagine, that didn’t last forever though.
Among the dangers of the road were wild animals desperate enough to attack humans, highway bandits looking to make an easy bit of coin, and savages that lived away from the civilization of the kingdoms and cities. None of that took into account all manner of other strange creatures that they might have encountered away from the safety of the human nations. When she was a child, Ruby never would have suspected that she would meet an enormous talking serpent or a being quite like Lorelai.
On that particular day of traveling, however, both women got a pair of firsts in one go. Passing a sprawling set of trees on their right, they first heard and soon saw a very noticeable commotion just off the road. A vicious horde of little goblins clung on top of a troll, stabbing him with small daggers and spears.
Ruby had heard stories of trolls in her studies, but they were a wholly new thing for Scarlett to behold. The creature was more than twice either woman’s height with long, thin arms, but short stout legs that seemed incapable of supporting its massive, chunky body. His face was composed of a long, drooping nose, hazy, yellow eyes, and a wide mouth with two thick, flat teeth protruding out from his lips. The teeth had been stained green, presumably by the beast’s heavily plant based diet. The troll’s skin was a soft brown color, and rather than clothing, moss covered his form. He wasn’t simply wearing the moss though; the plant was actually growing from his bark-like skin. As the princess had learned from one of her teachers, trolls were herbivores and spent much of their time searching for and eating the mushrooms, fruits, and various leaves of most forests. They spent so much time in this effort, that often the plants eventually became entwined with their own skin and started to grow there. This seemed not to bother the troll, despite the intense growth all over his body. The goblins climbing over and stabbing him were an altogether different matter.
They laughed obnoxious little sounds. “Chee gah ha!”
The troll swatted at them with his long arms, while he ran in circles and howled uselessly. The princess had less experience with goblins, but Scarlett at least had seen them from her home in the nether realm, when she was allowed glances through the barrier. Each of the nasty, vile little things was only a bit taller than the Hendriks they’d left behind in Elythine, but they were so thin, you’d think the troll might break them in half just by swatting at them. The troll’s flimsy attacks, however, were proving that to not be the case. All the goblins wore poorly crafted leather tunics with the bones of their kills littering their garb and each had a hood covering their heads. All that the women could see were glowing orange eyes gleaming out from their shadowed faces. Each wielded shoddy little weapons, improvised of forest found implements. As they stabbed and poked the innocent troll, the goblins cackled and gibbered inanely.
“Chee gah ha!”
Both sides of the conflict were too involved in the struggle to have taken notice of the cart traveling along the road. Ruby, however, took issue with the peaceful troll being murdered in such a violent way. Perhaps it was all the dark things she had done being listed off by the Hendriks that made her want to push the scal
es back in the other direction. She didn’t overthink it. Instead, she acted.
“Stop the cart,” she told Edwin.
“What?” he asked, clearly having had every intention to sneak past them.
“We have to help him.”
“I really suggest we don’t get involved,” he urged.
“Trolls are supposed to be harmless.”
“Goblins aren’t!” Edwin argued.
She turned to her demon. “Can you do anything to help?”
Scarlett thought about that. “Hmm. Your goal is to save the big thing?”
“Yes.”
“Probably not. I’m more the blunt instrument type.”
“Stop anyway,” the princess told Edwin. “I won’t see any more innocents harmed.”
Before the young man could bring the horse to a stop, Ruby had jumped from the side of the cart and begun to make her way toward the struggle. Unwilling to let any harm befall her princess, Scarlett soon followed behind her. Edwin waited in the cart.
While walking toward the skirmish, Ruby began to work the poison around in her chest. Having a dark idea, she twisted and shaped the toxin to suit her current needs. When it was ready, the princess turned on the lever, but held the venom in her throat, keeping it from spewing out. Meanwhile, she pursed her lips together like she was trying to whistle. When she was ready, she let a tiny portion of the poison out, which had built up to a high pressure, and it passed through her narrow lips. What this resulted in was an almost blow dart like velocity of the poison, which she fired at one of the goblins that was jabbing a sharpened rock into the troll’s back. She choked back the rest of the poison and watched as the infected goblin became hers just as Wesley once had.
“Chee gah eh?”
This possession, however, worked a little differently. When she had taken control of the Underlaw leader, she had simply infected him, keeping his mind and body alive. With the new poison cocktail, Ruby nearly instantly killed the vile creature and then directed his undead movements like a puppeteer. She made him sentient and autonomous almost like Sniggle or the other imps, except this creation didn’t require the exceptional amount of poison, having a body to form the toxin around.
Instantly, the creature’s skin turned from a dark green color to a pale, sickly green. Oozing blackness covered the goblin, as little tendrils slid out of his skin, through his clothing and flopped about pointlessly. His little, beady eyes were blotted out with inky splotches, and he began to spew out poison almost like the princess once had, the ooze dripping from seemingly nowhere and just appearing from the darkness under his hood. He covered his dagger like rock with the sludge and jumped on top of a fellow goblin, stabbing him with his venomous weapon. The second creature was affected similarly to the first, with black filth covering his form and poison dripping from his lips.
Both poisoned minions stood and continued to stab their fellow goblins with the toxic weapons. Each died almost instantly from the venomous cocktail Ruby had created, and their bodies rose almost immediately back up, under the princess’ control. The experiment was going well. She didn’t feel like she was using up her reservoir of poison, as she directed them, because they continued to have their own separate, individual thoughts that she merely influenced rather than directly controlled.
The infection spread quickly through the group of a dozen or so goblins, until Ruby had taken control of them all. When she did, she ordered them to step back from the troll and stop attacking. They continued their annoying cackling and gibbering, however. The troll was altogether baffled by the turn of events. He flapped his arms about and felt around himself for any more goblins to swat away, and when he didn’t find any, turned his whole body one way and the other, only to find them surrounding him in a circle but not attacking. For perhaps the first time, the creature spotted Ruby and Scarlett.
The troll pointed at the pair of women and smiled with his mossy, green teeth. “They stop attack. You do?”
Ruby nodded. “Yes, they’re under my control now.”
The troll clapped his hands together, his long, thin arms flapping wildly as he did so. “Magic! Magic you do?”
Scarlett chuckled at the troll’s strange excitement and speech pattern.
“Yes,” Ruby replied. “I suppose I do a bit of magic.”
“You teach? You teach Gormp?”
“Uh… I’m not sure I can.”
“No?” The lumbering troll frowned. “Mean goblin pack attack Gormp frequent. Need defense self. Not safe.”
“I wish I could help more…”
Scarlett saw this as yet another opportunity to both play with her newfound magical prowess and increase her sway with the princess. “I think I can give you something to keep the goblins at bay.”
“You can?” Ruby asked with a light smile.
The troll’s frown reversed into another mossy grin. “You, yes? Magic too?”
“Magic indeed,” Scarlett said. The demon then reached into the unfathomable depths of space and pulled out a small whistle with a leather cord, allowing it to be worn as a necklace, sized perfectly for the large creature called Gormp. She approached the troll, shimmying past the circular line of goblins and held out the item. “Just blow into this end.”
“Oooh.” The troll took the arcane artifact and stared at it with his mesmerized, yellow eyes. Soon, he worked up the courage to give it a try. Holding it to his pursed lips, the troll blew into the metal noisemaker. The sound emitted was almost exactly like that of a hooting owl. Neither Ruby nor Scarlett was particularly bothered by it, but the same could not be said for the goblins.
They cried out in unison, “Chee gah ahh!”
Each of the goblins flailed their arms and wailed their inane screams with their wide-open mouths hidden under their cloaks. They fled from the sound immediately, hurrying toward Ruby and hiding in a long line directly behind her. The troll stopped the hooting whistle and smiled with his big mossy teeth again. The brave goblin at the front of the queue grabbed the princess’ dress and timidly peaked around. When the troll spotted him, he again screeched into the whistle, causing the little creature to tuck back behind Ruby and cower there with his brethren.
“Gormp thank!” the lumbering troll said to the demon. “You magic good!”
“My pleasure,” Scarlett told him, taking an elaborate bow. She couldn’t say that she had really done it for him. Admittedly, she had no real concern one way or the other for the large, mossy creature, but Ruby seemed to have taken to him. For that reason alone, she had given him the whistle. She would vie to increase that bond with whatever gesture she could. Scarlett turned and walked back to join her princess.
“Thank you,” Ruby told her, when she returned, wrapping her arm around Scarlett’s and locking it at the nooks to their elbows.
“Gormp need go home now. You thanks!”
“You be good, Gormp,” Ruby told him.
“Gormp very good now!”
The troll turned and walked back into the woods, continuing to happily blow into his hooting whistle. When he had cleared their sight, Ruby and Scarlett turned back to the cart, where Edwin still waited, quite in shock by what he had witnessed. As they walked back, so too did the infected goblins.
Their cart driver looked down at all the goblins surrounding around the cart. “I’m not sure we have enough room for your… pets.”
“They can walk,” Ruby agreed with a nod.
She and Scarlett climbed back up into the cart, while the goblins lined up behind it in a little formation. They looked more like children playing a mock war game than anything resembling real soldiers, but that was what they were to her now. When the women were situated inside, Edwin jostled the reins and got the horse moving at a steady trot.
Ruby leaned forward and asked, “Do you know how much longer it will be before we arrive at the Cloister, Edwin?”
“If we don’t have any more unscheduled stops, we should get there either tomorrow or the next day.”
&nb
sp; The princess leaned back against the wooden bench with her demon at her side and her little infected goblin skirmishers following along behind. Her confidence in the road ahead of her was growing, as she got more comfortable with her powers and those of the demon she powered through their bond. All that remained was to find a way of separating the craggy hand demon from her sister. The answer resided at the Cloister, she reminded herself, and she would have it soon.
Chapter 26. The Cloister
Edwin’s estimation of their travel time had been just about right. Though they didn’t arrive that next day, it had been very early on the following morning that they spotted the tan walls of the monks’ home. The almost cream colored walls were roughly twenty feet high, and behind them, little could be seen other than a few thin pillars of smoke drifting into the air and a tall bell tower.
The princess had seen a painting that depicted the Cloister’s impressive grounds sprawled out at the edge of a forest, but the sight in person was just as staggering to behold. No one was yet visible, though she was optimistic that she would find the help that she sought within the monastery.
Scarlett, meanwhile, could feel a powerful energy behind those walls. There was a metallic taste in the air, and she had the sensation of being back home amongst other nether demons. The princess had told her that they studied the nether realm, but she wouldn’t have expected to actually find any of its inhabitants tethered to human hosts there in Nabiria. Her keen senses had detected several of her fellow demons behind those walls. This caused her intrigue into what this monastery was to grow immensely.
They soon arrived at an open arched gate, where Edwin stopped the horse and cart. He hopped out of the front seat and swung open the wooden door for the pair of women in the back. The horde of infected goblins trailed behind and piled themselves to the side of the gateway waiting for further instructions. Once Ruby and Scarlett were out, Edwin pushed the door back and latched it closed.
“Here we are,” he said, turning around to them.
