The Poison Princess by J. Stone Read Free Book Online Page A

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,