by J. Stone
That was also the day that Ruby and her horned demon had become physically intimate. Though she shared a sense of companionship with Scarlett, the princess openly acknowledged that there was no real love there. It was entirely based around lust and need. The only thing they had in common was a sexual attraction, and there, in that cave, they finally succumbed to those desires. The monks of the Cloister had later warned her that such intimacy was dangerous for the human in that relationship, but Ruby never paid the thought much attention. Free of the haziness the poisons brought on, the princess began to wonder about such decisions.
There was no interlude to linger on such thoughts, however, as the mental images barreled forward, showing her other transgressions. It was because of the connection to Scarlett that her next victim suffered. Slip, the back alley thief with roaming hands, had been turned to slush for the simple act of touching the horned demon. Ruby murdered him in cold blood because of a jealous rage. Her chest was thick and heavy, her face was burning hot from the inside, and she hated herself for what she had done.
The only time she truly seemed to feel any emotion was not for any action she had taken but for what she had seen her sister become. When the Hendriks had allowed her a brief glimpse at the woman Leina had become in her absence, Ruby lost control of the cold demeanor she had maintained in the face of her own horrible decisions. The darkness had blocked off her ability to see herself for what she was, but that didn’t seem to translate over to the one person she still loved. Learning what had happened to Leina over the course of the previous decade broke the princess down to the point she actually could see past the poisonous thoughts of her own mind. She attempted to reclaim those pieces of her soul over the next few days, but it was a task she found herself incapable of performing. Her darkness had ultimately returned.
Ruby didn’t fault herself for the deaths of the goblins, as she had some of the others. She was already too numb from everything else she had seen to worry herself over killing such vile little creatures. The princess could not say that about the monks and soldiers she had killed in the Cloister. The poison inside her had kept her from counting the lives she took, but now she knew exactly how much carnage she had caused. Ruby had been personally responsible for the deaths of four hundred thirty seven monks, twenty-four of their demons, and seven hundred thirty two of the soldiers from Lavidia. Her body began to shake uncontrollably at this revelation. The princess started to feel like what she’d seen hadn’t even been her. These were someone else’s memories, and she was just an observer. That was the only way she could go forward and cope with such acts. She had to separate who she was with who she’d been. The disgusting things perpetrated by her dark half hadn’t been her. They were in the past, and she had to be better because of the awful decisions she had made. She swallowed the choking ball of contempt for herself, and the flashes of memories continued their incessant march in her head.
Rashtalg was next. She saw what she had put her demon through. Though the creatures of the nether world often received a great deal of derision, Ruby recognized that the demons were no better or no worse than a human. She had treated the one who had bonded with her shabbily, and she wished she could take those actions back. Despite this, Scarlett had stayed true to the princess through it all and even sacrificed herself in order to save Ruby from her own hubris and greed. The need for whatever the enormous creature in the mountain held within Daibhu’s body pushed her into an unwinnable situation. The toxic maelstrom would have consumed her along with everything in that chamber if the horned demon hadn’t escaped the nether world and saved her. Even then, she couldn’t let the glowing orb go. Her greed for power knew almost no bounds. It was only when she saw that the terrible creature would never give up that she shattered the untethered demon’s knee to give the beast a distraction and meal.
Ruby wished that her horrible actions had ended there, but the memories continued. She could feel the hot tears streaming down her cheeks, falling over the edge of her chin, as the sadness, guilt, anger, and regret tore at her mind. She knew that the Willow’s Wood would be next. She tried to shut her mind to what was coming, but the cleansing wouldn’t allow her to flee from what she had done there. She saw the innocent wardens of the wood broken, on fire, and poisoned. At one point, Ruby had thought she could use the darkness to do good, but after what happened in the forest of her family’s namesake, she knew that had changed. No longer was she a good person doing bad things for the right reasons. After Willow’s Wood, the princess had made herself into a villain, no different than the craggy hand demon that she had vowed to defeat.
The last of her viewings was the undead creatures and their wight king down in the undercroft. She had taken all the darkness and hatred that they had within them and took it into herself. Ruby had no idea how she had managed to make the decision to remove the poison with that dark red illness permeating her very soul, but she had done it.
The princess finished her catalogue of moral misdeeds and returned to her proper sense. When she finished, salty hot tears covered her face, while poison and vomit were in a pool of filth around her, but for the first time in over a decade, she felt clean. Though she felt horribly guilty, the weight of such actions was lifted from her shoulders, after the cleansing had forced her to relive every dark action she had taken in the past decade. She looked up at her demon and smiled, her teeth no longer covered in the dark purple poison.
“Ruby?” Scarlett asked with a raised eyebrow. “Are you okay?”
The princess nodded. “I’ve never been better.”
Chapter 40. Reaching Into the Darkness
Ruby could barely carry the war hammer now that she was no longer the poison princess. The sands had cured her of her darkness, but they had also rid her of the strength that came with it. She worried about her chances in taking down the craggy hand demon without it. She wondered if the poison was still there, inside her, deep down. Whether it was or not, it seemed beyond her grasp now.
The horned demon walked beside her human master down the hallway. She held the snaith of her scythe in one hand and left the other unoccupied. The bracelets that could separate a demon from their human were still stored in her pocket of space, and the princess would be relying on Scarlett to get them out and onto the craggy hand demon’s wrists. She wasn’t sure of their chances now that Ruby was no longer poisoned, but her connection to her princess meant that she had little choice in following her. She was ashamed to consider putting the bracelets on herself and becoming an untethered demon like the assassin, Astrid, but she ultimately decided that she couldn’t do that to Ruby. Regardless of her interest in self-preservation, Scarlett still had a certain affection for her human master, and she was going to stand beside her through whatever happened and suffer the consequences no matter what.
Ruby and Scarlett walked side by side toward the throne room. There were no guards posted along the way and no servants or attendants roaming the halls. The craggy hand demon knew they were coming, and the princess recognized this fact. He was simply allowing them to come to him, because he thought there was nothing to fear. Ruby sought to prove him wrong.
The princess led her horned demon through the halls, until they arrived at the entrance to the throne room. The golden, arching double doors were closed, but Ruby didn’t pause for even a moment. She pushed the doors, swinging them both open and causing them to crash against the walls inside the throne room, their noise echoing throughout the pillared chamber.
Seated in the king and queen’s thrones were the craggy hand demon and Ruby’s sister. They didn’t seem in the least surprised to see the pair of women, confirming her suspicion that he had known they were there. Leina looked much the same as she did when they shared their dream. Her face was pale, with the corruption clearly having taken over. The demon, too, had not changed since she last saw him. The cream-white mask was still strapped over his face, and he wore a long black robe with a hood. The red rocky flesh of his craggy hand crept out of the s
leeves of the black fabric, making his reality as a demon immediately apparent.
The princess strode forward with Scarlett following a bit behind. The masked demon on the throne stood as Ruby approached, causing them to both stop several feet away. Leina stood as well, wearing an overstretched smile across her pale face.
“My dear sister,” the queen began. “Whatever foolish thought has driven you here? The army we sent to collect your head in the Cloister and the assassin that assured me she would find you weren’t enough? You thought you should just press your luck and show up at my home?”
Ruby gulped and forced herself to look into her sister’s eyes. “I’m here to save you, Leina.”
The corrupted queen cocked her head to the side, still wearing the insidious smile, and she examined Ruby’s face. “I thought I told you… you can’t save me.” She raised her hands out to the side and up in the air. “This is who I am. I like it.”
“I’m going to kill this vile thing,” Ruby said, pointing at the craggy demon. “I’m going to save you.”
At that, the demon laughed. His frame shook, as the maddening laughter echoed throughout the large, empty chamber. Eventually, he stopped himself and spoke. “Our bond is complete. You cannot harm me without also harming your dear sister.”
Ruby turned and nodded to Scarlett. Looking back to the craggy hand demon, she glowered and said, “That’s where you’re wrong… Tyran.”
At the simple announcement of that word, the demon fell to his knees. His white mask fell off, and Scarlett retrieved the bracelets from the absence of space and placed the scythe back inside it. The princess rushed forward, dropping her war hammer, grabbing her sister, and tearing her away from the craggy hand demon.
Squirming, Leina shouted, “Unhand me!”
Ruby grit her teeth and fought back, holding her tightly in her arms. “This is for your own good, Leina!”
Scarlett kneeled down to place the bracelets over the craggy hand demon’s wrists. Still reeling from hearing his own true name uttered, he couldn’t fight back. She slipped the first bracelet over his normal, fleshy hand, and as soon as she did, Leina’s struggles against Ruby came nearly to an end. As the second bracelet was placed over the demon’s craggy wrist, Leina seemed to snap back to reality, cleansed of the foul taint.
“What’s… going on?” she asked no one in particular, looking about the room in a state of panicked confusion.
The princess let her sister go, and she nearly fell to the floor. She caught herself and stumbled forward a few feet.
“Ruby?” She glanced around, her expression telling the princess that she didn’t know what was going on or where she was, but she couldn’t find the words to ask any questions.
Scarlett, meanwhile, stood up, while the weakened craggy hand demon lay on the floor, reeling from the use of his true name.
The princess kneeled beside her sister. “What do you remember, Leina?”
Shaking her head and staring into the distance, Leina replied, “I don’t want to remember.” Leina continued to shake her head, even more fiercely now. She recalled pieces of her memory but refused to believe them. “No! That was a dream! That didn’t happen!”
“Leina.” Ruby reached out and touched her sister’s shoulder, but she flung it off.
“That can’t have been real.”
“I’m… sorry…”
Her sister backed up, continuing to shake her head. Her breaths were heavy and prolonged. She clutched at her stomach before falling back to the ground and retching up all over the stone tiles of the throne room.
“Leina, my little flower…” the craggy hand demon whispered to her from all the way across the room.
Both Ruby and her sister turned to face the demon. It was the first time she had ever seen the dark creature without his mask on. She had wondered what was under that cream-white disguise ever since she’d seen him eleven years prior. She’d expected that he was disfigured in some way or was just terrible to gaze upon. The truth, however, was much different. He looked completely normal. If Ruby hadn’t known that he was a demon, she would have thought his face to belong to a mortal man.
“Help me, my little flower,” the craggy hand demon said in a strangely soothing voice.
“Shut him up!” the princess shouted to Scarlett.
The horned demon nodded and kicked her prisoner across the face, blooding his lips and nose.
“Ignore him,” Ruby said, turning back to her sister.
Leina stared into his eyes. “I… I need him. He needs me.”
The princess moved between her sister and the craggy hand demon, blocking their line of sight to one another. “He’s in your past. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
A pale color washed over Leina’s face, and blackness grew in her eyes despite Ruby’s interruption of their connected vision. The princess studied her sister’s face, not seeing her reach for the dagger strapped to her leg, under the folds of her dress.
Leina leaned to the side and nodded toward the craggy hand demon. “You’re going to kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Then, you should kill me as well. I brought him into this world.”
“I’m not going to kill you, Leina.”
“Good. Then that makes this easier.”
The dark queen pulled the dagger out of its sheath and plunged it into Ruby’s gut. Both the princess and Scarlett felt the pain of the blade, as it tore through Ruby’s flesh and spilled her blood out to the stone tiles of the castle throne room.
“Leina… No…” the princess uttered.
Leina smiled, pulled the blade out, and jabbed it back in once more. “Does it hurt?”
“What… are you… doing?” Ruby asked, still thinking there was something good and decent inside her sister.
“He’s all I have. You’re not taking him away from me!”
The queen yanked the blade once more and tried to shove it back inside Ruby, but the princess’ hands blocked the way. The dagger’s sharp edges sliced into her fingers, but it hadn’t been pushed with enough force to cut through the bone, just painfully up to it. Ruby cried out in agony, and her sister laughed, allowing her the minor victory of stopping the attack. While the princess struggled with her sliced fingers and hand, Leina released her grip on the knife, letting Ruby grab the blade with her wounded hand. Ignoring the weapon, she simply sunk a finger into the injuries in her sister’s gut. Ruby dropped the knife and tumbled to the floor.
“How about that?” Leina asked, nearly smiling.
Across the room, Scarlett writhed on the ground, while the craggy hand demon was finally able to stand despite being weakened by his true name. His strength, Scarlett realized, must have been terrible. He moved away from the horned demon and toward Leina and Ruby. The dark queen saw this, removed her fingers from the princess’ wounds, and stood to join him, ignoring her sister bleeding on the ground. Leina walked to her craggy hand demon somewhere between the two women and pulled the bracelets off his wrists. With that, his magic power was fully restored. Even Ruby, without any sorcerous knowledge to speak of, could feel a terrible energy radiate through the room.
His face exposed, the princess looked over and saw the smile stretched across it. He raised his craggy hand and then brought it down, pressing it flat against the air. Both Ruby and Scarlett were pushed into the ground by his unseen force. The craggy hand demon retrieved the bracelets from Leina and returned to Scarlett. He put a boot under her body and flipped her over onto her back. The horned demon tried to conjure some magical attack against him, but he was too powerful. He was blocking her energy from coming together in any meaningful way. Kneeling down, the craggy hand demon slipped the first bracelet over her wrist, and then he slid the second onto her other arm with no delay. The horned demon’s connection to Ruby was severed, and neither could feel the other. The princess still squirmed from the painful but not lethal stab wounds, while Scarlett was finally free of that experience. She was, however, bound by the bracelets
and therefore quite weak and incapable of using magic.
The craggy hand demon then stood and reached into the unseen depths, just as Scarlett often did, and he retrieved a curved dagger. Looking to Leina, he asked, “Would you care to do the honors, my little flower?”
The dark queen smiled her wide grin, grabbing the dagger from her demon. “You don’t want to play with her first?”
“Your sister will suit my needs. This one will only get in the way.”
Leina looked down at Scarlett. “My sister’s whore of a demon. I’m glad we finally have this chance to meet face to face. It’s important to know the company your family members keep. I need to know whether you’re taking good care of her. Are you keeping her satisfied?”
The dark queen looked back to Ruby and the increasing pool of blood she was laying in. Leina’s smile widened, and she looked utterly mad standing above the horned demon. Ruby may have thought she could be saved, but Scarlett simply didn’t see it. She was vile even to her demonic eyes. The corruption that the craggy hand demon had sewn into her was far worse than anything she had ever thought possible. It was true that Scarlett liked the darker side of life, but this little creature had gone too far. Scarlett merely wanted a bit of fun, freedom, and pleasure. Leina, on the other hand, was sadistic and monstrous, getting pleasure from terrible acts.
The queen finally answered her own question. “She does look quite content. I worry she’s not treating you properly though.” She gripped the little dagger and showed it plainly to Scarlett. “Has she ever fucked you with one of these? No? Well, I think I can fix that for you.”
