The Poison Princess Read Online Free PDF Page B

escape. Flipping through each of their
minds and visions, Ruby recalled the stories she had heard when she
was younger. There were many tales involving the Abyss, but there
was one common thread running through each of them. Every story
insisted that there was some secret treasure or power at the very
center of the poisoned land. Each tale varied in what that specific
item was, but there was always something to be claimed. Whether it
was the source of the blight or that the blight was set in place to
protect the treasure was up for debate. Ruby considered these
stories. As a child, she had thought them interesting, but she had
never taken them seriously. Now that she was trapped inside and
growing more confident that she was indeed immune to its toxins, as
Scarlett had said, the princess grew more intrigued by the prospect
of this treasure. If she were to defeat this craggy hand demon,
Ruby knew she was going to need great power.
    As she looked through each of her imps, the
princess changed her focus from finding an exit from the Abyss to
finding the treasure hidden within its murky vastness. Some of them
had passed by the marked tree where she’d started, but she wasn’t
certain how far the others had traveled. After gazing through each
of the poison constructs’ eyes several times over, Ruby finally
found something she deemed worth investigating. A squat little imp
with three oversized eyes had found a cave in the middle of
nowhere. The cavern simply appeared as a small and almost
insignificant mound in the flat ground with a large hole leading
down. Ordering the imp to look down inside, Ruby peered into the
black void tunneling into the earth’s depths. There was little to
see, as the lack of light prevented her from seeing very far, but
she wanted whatever was down there.
    The princess returned to her own mind and
ordered each of her little creatures to converge on that point.
Standing, she looked down at the disobedient purple imp, and it
looked up at her.
    Leaning down, Ruby held her hand out for it
to climb on, and she said, “Well. Come on, then.”

Chapter 4. Darker Depths
    Ruby arrived at the tunnel having no idea how much time had passed.
The sky overhead still looked just as nebulous as ever. On her
shoulder sat the impudent little purple imp, too lazy to have
walked itself there. The majority of her other creations had
already arrived at the entrance to the cavern and were assembled in
a group, waiting for her. In the muck of the swamp, they
communicated to one another in wild, sweeping gestures and
dramatic, energetic facial expressions. Small-scale brawls had
broken out among a few of them, but they stood to attention like
obedient little soldiers, as the princess joined them.
    Walking to the mouth of the cave, Ruby peered
down into its depths. Her own eyes fared no better in seeing into
the cavern, as it very quickly and steeply descended into darkness.
Turning back to her assembled collection of impish blobs of poison,
Ruby picked one up at random and carelessly chucked it into the
wide hole. This new development startled the other imps, but they
were too dimwitted and dependent to do anything about it.
    The thrown imp made a sort of wailing scream,
as it descended down through the depths, bouncing off sharp rocks
and losing its loosely congealed form along the way. Each landing
included a squishy, gooey sound, as it splatted against the cave
rocks, plummeting ever downward. She tried to focus on its mind on
the journey downward in an attempt to understand and map the path.
The imp felt no pain from what she could discern, but it was more
than a little disoriented by the tumble. Everything it saw was
utter blackness, and the only sound was its own clumsy cries. As it
got deeper, the rocks started to get wet. In the distance, Ruby
thought she could even hear the trickle of an underground
stream.
    Eventually, the imp landed with a splat and
stopped after a little roll. Its vision was blurred and