by J. Stone
She shook it off. The once horned demon grabbed every thought that she could still recognize as hers and pushed the rest away. She wouldn’t let this place change her. She had a mission. Her princess needed her, and she would not get lost in the silent noise of thought. The craggy hand demon. He had a true name, no matter what he went by in Nabiria. Here it existed for all to know and see. All that mattered was how deep the demon had buried it amongst the collective. He couldn’t have hid it exactly, only protected it, and disguised it. She could find it easily enough if she could just focus on the objective. Knowing what she was after would allow her mind to travel the realm to where it was stored.
While she still had the wherewithal to keep herself on task, Scarlett focused on the scant images she had of the craggy hand demon. She thought of his power, the aura he had exhibited at the Cloister. She thought about what Ruby had told her of him. She thought about what she knew of Leina, and what the craggy hand demon had done to her. She focused her every mind’s muscle on the true name.
Distractions were a weapon in the nether realm. She remembered them so well. She had to fight off anything that was superfluous to get at the meat of the matter. Like birds chirping in the ears she used to have, minds, thoughts, and other individual entities poked and prodded at her own. They wanted to be heard, acknowledged. They needed to exist, and that meant being paid attention to. There was a barrage of thoughts the closer she got to an answer, calling out to her, begging to be heard, crying out for help.
There was a barricade of these distractions placed strategically around the answer to her question. Scarlett pushed past the rogue thoughts left behind to guard the true name of the craggy hand demon. She could feel some stick to her mind and latch on, while others tore off pieces of her and disappeared with her own thoughts. If sound had existed there, she thought, this little plot of the mindscape would be deafening. The demon wouldn’t let anything stop her though. She kept moving her mind forward past the distractions and nagging thoughts. When she finally arrived at a place that looked to contain what she was looking for, she almost forgot why she had come in the first place. There was so little of her mind left. The craggy hand demon had designed this, she realized. These traps were left, so that even if someone found his true name, their mind would collapse under the weight of the others. The victory of finding his true name was intended to be so devastating that it was tantamount to a defeat. She had almost nothing left of what she had entered the nether realm with.
She was there though, inside the eye of the craggy hand demon’s thought storm. His true name was but a perusal away. She glanced with her mind at that secret he had guarded so fiercely. She demanded the answer to her question.
What is the name of the craggy hand demon, she asked.
Tyran, a thought echoed back.
The craggy hand demon’s name was Tyran. Scarlett knew his true name now, but she was trapped inside the cage he had left for anyone too curious to come looking for him. What good was this knowledge if she could not leave? The place she found her mind wasn’t somewhere she could wake up from. She had to travel with this thought back to where she had entered, which meant she would have to make it back through all those traps again. The small piece of her that remained worried she couldn’t cross through that region of the nether realm again. Her princess needed her though. Ruby needed to know the name Tyran. She would risk herself for the woman she had bonded with.
Prior to fleeing the cage, Scarlett focused whatever effort she still had to pull her thoughts back together. The attempt was in vain, as the pieces that had been torn away from her were scattered to the far reaches of the nether realm. Those that had clung on to her mind weighed her down, distracting her with nagging questions and ideas. They ranged from utterly trivial to the metaphysical postulations that while interesting were unknowable or unanswerable no matter how much thought was given.
Who are you? When will this end? Is that true? Can you help me? Am I bothering you? Would you like to play a game? What is the meaning of this place? Help me! Is that me or is that you? What’s happening to me? Will you be my friend? Are you listening to me? How long have I been here? I need help!
Scarlett finally managed to push them away, but it only resulted in her losing more pieces of herself. If she had a body, she probably would have collapsed and caught her breath. As she didn’t, she forced herself to press on. Her mind shot up through the traps once more, scraping against the cloud of distractions on her mental projection back to the physical realm. Among the things she lost were her very reason for being there in that insensible place. Ruby’s name was pulled violently and maliciously away from her. She called after it with some thought of her own, allowing it to peel off from her mind in an attempt to retrieve it, but it was lost and muddled with the hundreds of other thoughts it passed and was swallowed whole. The small piece of her that finally made it past the traps that the craggy hand demon had left to protect that name was no longer her. Scarlett was gone.
Chapter 31. Blip!
There was a particular plant called a tribbage that some farmers grew on their property in Lavidia. While it was not illegal to do so, Ruby’s father had strongly opposed its use. When cut into small pieces, placed in a pipe, and smoked, it would create a euphoric sensation not unlike the toxic blissroot of the Abyss. The plant in Lavidia, however, did not lead to death. Malaise, foolish behavior, and laziness perhaps, but not death. It was just as addictive though, and if one was weak enough, it could lead to terrible decisions. The desire for more tribbage was all-consuming.
Ruby felt like that was what her horned demon was to her. She knew Scarlett was bad for her, but that didn’t stop the princess from wanting her, needing her. Five days had passed since Scarlett went into the nether realm to find the name of the craggy hand demon. Her desires had gone unfulfilled, as the comatose woman on the bed could do nothing for her now. The princess wished she hadn’t sent Scarlett. She just wanted her back. Ruby had straightened her demon’s body out days ago, so that she could lay with her on the bed. The mattress was small, and she was forced to cozy up against her servant, but given their rather close and intimate relationship, that was not a problem in her eyes. Scarlett lay on her back, while the princess was on her side, wrapping one leg and one arm over her demon’s body. Ruby’s nose was resting in the long, orange strands of Scarlett’s hair, which were tickling her nostrils and allowing her to breathe in the strawberry fragrance that the demon somehow exuded. The princess’ fingers caressed the silky smooth skin of her arm that even in her absence retained its electric touch, but it just wasn’t the same without her demon’s soft moans to accompany it.
Time had passed slowly, since Scarlett’s departure into the strange realm that existed beyond her own. Ruby didn’t know how to spend her days. She didn’t eat or drink. She didn’t require sleep. She desired nothing but her own demon’s touch and revenge against the craggy hand demon who had corrupted her sister. Her nervous habit of pacing had reared its head, while she waited. There on the room’s floor was a little trail worn along the stones, where she’d walked. It consisted of a straight line with two swirls at each end, where she had spun around on her heel to turn back the other way. As a habit she had indulged for years, there was a certain comfort in the act of pacing. For the moment, however, she lay still on the bed with her demon servant and waited away the moments.
The noise that echoed through the walls of the monastery, however, was beginning to irritate her. Blip. The princess had tried to keep it from her mind, but after five days, the sound was beyond ignoring. Blip. She hadn’t heard it when they were searching the deserted monastery, but now that it was just her in that abandoned cave in the mountain, there was enough silence to make it out. Blip. The sound was of what seemed to be a slow drip, like someone had left a faucet running over a bucket of water. Blip. She clenched her eyes shut, trying to ignore it, but the metronomic sound was beginning to drive her mad. Blip. The more she tried to ignore it, the louder it beca
me. Blip. Her unoccupied mind focused in on the sound. Blip.
Ruby wondered what such a sound could be. Blip. Snow melting and dripping inside the crevices of masonry? Blip. Some faucet that the monks had set up that they left slightly open? Blip. It wasn’t just water, she began to think. Blip. It sounded more like sludge, something foul and disgusting dripping down on the marble floor of the massive monastery carved inside the mountain. Blip. What about the thing that killed all these monks? Blip. She had been impressed with its power when she saw what it had done to those men and women’s bodies. Blip. Their bodies were ripped apart like they were nothing. Blip.
That dark urge began to tick inside her, matching the drop of the sludge. Blip. Go. It wanted so badly to find the source and turn whatever it was into her slave. Blip. Find. She needed its power. Blip. The. She needed its knowledge. Blip. Power. She needed to seed her poisons inside it and consume its mind. Blip. Go!
“I’m going!” she shouted at the dripping sound.
Scarlett didn’t seem to respond to the sudden noise.
Ruby apologized regardless and kissed her demon on the cheek before standing up from the bed. While she had rested and waited, the princess had hung the cloak she’d taken from the rogue, Slip, on the doorknob. Ready to leave in search of the sound and its corresponding power, Ruby grabbed it and flung it behind her, slipping her arms into its holes. She flipped the hood up over her head, so that the cloth cast a heavy shadow over her pale face. Twisting the knob, she pulled the door toward her and left her demon to fend for herself for a while. Her greed for power would not be sated, until she had in her grasp whatever dark thing had destroyed this place.
She walked slowly down the hall, listening for the drip. Blip. The sound was still there for her to follow, but it was a little bit quieter, though the difference was barely noticeable. She exited the long hallway and made her way back to the large open chamber that connected everything together. Ruby hadn’t explored all the rooms, as once they’d found the archive room, they’d stopped their search. Scarlett had insisted that something awful was behind the power source she detected. She’d said it was something old and dangerous. The princess had heeded her words for the past five days, but the prospect of a power to claim proved too tempting to resist.
Stopping in the great hall, she listened for the sound. Blip. Ruby closed her eyes and tried to locate the source. Blip. Her body turned to face the origin of where she believed the dripping noise to be coming from. Blip. Not opening her eyes, the princess began to move toward the sound. Blip. She started to realize that the sound was above her, and that she would have to take the stairs up that she had so far avoided. Blip. For the moment though, she kept her eyes closed to identify the direction of the sound and determine which door she should travel through. Blip. Ruby opened her eyes having decided the path forward. Blip. There was a rather large set of double doors at the very top of the stairs that she found herself facing.
The princess ascended the stairs and approached the tall and wide doors. They were made of a thick, heavy-looking metal and were engraved with strange symbols and sigils, the likes of which she had never seen before. A sudden realization crossed her mind - these doors were different from everything else in the monastery. It looked as though everything there had been built specifically around this set of doors. The princess’ questions about the Glow’s monastery grew. Did the monks find something hidden there? Did they go there with that specific purpose? Clearly, it had not ended well for them. She ran her fingers over the cold, molded designs with a mild curiosity to their meaning but not so much that they would heed her progress. Finding the hand holds for one of the doors, she tugged back at the immense and heavy door, opening herself to a large cavern.
A terribly musty odor assaulted her sense of smell upon the doors opening, but there was very little to be seen at first. The unlit cave was nothing elaborate like the rest of the monastery had been. This was simply a hole dug in the rock of the mountain, but that wasn’t to say it was empty. As her eyes adjusted to the dim room, she saw the most horrible abomination the princess had ever laid her eyes on situated at the center of the room. The amorphous, blob-like thing was massive, reaching nearly to the ceiling and sides of the enormous cavern. She could only imagine the depths it reached back to, as the creature was too big to see around. Ruby had difficulty distinguishing between the cave and the beast itself, as whatever constituted its skin was covered in rocks and jutting sections of stone. The room was not illuminated like the rest of the monastery, so Ruby had to watch closely, as certain parts of the room breathed and snored. She spotted the glint of dripping saliva at one part of its body - a section she wouldn’t have thought to be its mouth. Jagged, awkwardly overlapping teeth accompanied the saliva, confirming that to indeed be an orifice. That was not the only mouth and set of teeth she found, however. She spotted three or four potential sets of teeth, each dripping the same disgusting sludge from their mouth. One pile in particular caught her eye, as a dribble slipped from its mouth and landed with the familiar blip sound that had been driving her mad for days.
Somehow, all of this would have been fine except for the centerpiece of her discovery. Attached to what looked like a long, sinuous cord (that struck her to be similar to a newborn’s umbilical cord) was the form of a man leaning against the creature. The long cord crept out from some unseen place of the beast’s mysterious body and slithered into the back of the man’s head. His skin was a pasty blue kind of color, partially translucent, and the veins of his body and some of the movements of his organs and muscles could be seen through the thin layer of flesh. Tattered rags that were reminiscent of the monks of the Cloister barely covered the man’s body. Could it be one of the members of the Glow, she asked herself. Her curiosity and her need for more power overwhelmed any fear that she may have had hidden deep inside her.
Her feet began to move forward, the leather of her soles bending to the uneven nature of the wet cave floor. Blip. She stepped over some fluid soaked limb with little bumps like an awful case of measles or some pox marks from a nasty infection. Blip, blip. The metronomic sound of the dripping echoed in the cave. Blip, blip. She wished it would just shut up. Blip, blip. Ever since her poisoning, it had been so much easier for things to get under her skin. Blip, blip. She was even more irritable without Scarlett by her side to soothe her bad nature with a little physical relief. Blip, blip. Ruby was finding herself giving into the darkness once more. Blip, blip. No matter how much she fought and pushed it back, it always returned for more. Blip, blip. The thing always seemed to have a second wind… or third, or fourth, and so on. Blip, blip. She just couldn’t keep up the struggle. Blip, blip. She ground her teeth together, demanding with her mind that the noise be silent. Blip, blip. Her anger at the sound was winding her up more and more with each incessant drip, until she could take it no more. Blip, blip.
“BE SILENT!” she shouted, clamping her eyes shut, leaning forward, and bending her fingers as though they were the claws of an animal about to strike.
Dozens of the beast’s eyelids peeled back, exposing eyeballs ranging from the size of her own to bigger than her whole body. It began to move, the crunching of rocks and rumbling of the mountain accompanying its efforts. The whole room trembled in fear, but Ruby held still. Tentacles dropped out from what she could only assume was its nose, shooting toward her but stopping some feet away. Each had two oval slits in them, and they sucked at the air, trying to determine what she was by her odor. One section that she felt forced to designate as its head raised, the eyes attached to that section blinking as though it had been sleeping for ages. Its lips snarled, and the skin of its face jerked back so fiercely that the bone of its jaw was exposed and covered in the same sludge it had been drooling so freely. The long tendril raised the man at the center of its form up, and he too opened his eyes. They glowed. He opened his mouth wide in a silent sort of scream. The glow came from there as well. It was a radiant blue light, just like the artifact that caused the
schism in the monks in the first place. Was it Daibhu? Had she found the leader of the Glow? What happened to him after all these years? Even in this beast’s awakening, Ruby was no more concerned with her safety. She needed the power that Daibhu had found.
Daibhu’s body pushed forward like a meat puppet on a stick toward her, while all the teeth, tendrils, and eyes came to life behind him. The princess had a singular focus, however. She needed the power he clearly had, even if this was what had become of him. The glow from his eyes and mouth grew brighter, as the cord sloppily pushed him toward her, hovering inches off the ground. The luminescence was not limited to his face, however. There, in his gut, glowed the same blue light, filtered by his sick, translucent skin. That must be it, she told herself.
The next act was one that she didn’t feel fully in control of. She spit a layer of her acid onto her right hand and then plunged it forward into the hovering body of what she assumed was the mad monk, Daibhu. Her strength, augmented by the poisonous power inside her, and the layer of acidic venom coating her fingers allowed her to easily penetrate the orb’s fleshy cage. The man’s gut was icy to the touch, not like any living body should have been. Daibhu shrieked a hollow kind of roar, as though the air were being sucked from his lungs. Ruby wrapped her fingers around the glowing orb inside his gut and yanked with all her terrible might. The spherical artifact came out covered in fleshy wiring and wrappings. A series of tubes circled its form, culminating in a thick cord that stretched back inside Daibhu’s stomach.
