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The Risen Queen
Part 4: The Grand Ascension

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“This isn’t how I imagined it.” Millicent looks back to the queen, now only lacking hair to complete her face. She feels her eyebrows knit together in frustration. “This all is too much for me!”

“I understand. Your independence is something still unknown to you. You don’t want to walk into the world alone.” A soft hand touches Millicent’s shoulder as the queen leans in. “You need a guide, a mentor.” She gives a blooming smile. “A partner.”

“Yes.” Millicent breathes out. “I do.” She tries, and fails, to look away from the deep red pools before her. She sinks into them, feeling a cool caress wash away her aches and pains. “Can you… can you be—?”

“We will gladly be your partner, Millicent Wagner. We will help you make your own name, your own legend.” The queen’s lips hang centimeters away from Millicent’s shaking ones. “With this kiss, we shall live ever after.”

Millicent feels warm, tender lips on her own. Her first kiss sends another bolt of energy through her body. She shakes, and then crumples, the queen’s hands digging into her back to keep her standing. Her eyes roll back as the kiss continues, sensation after sensation bursting inside her like so many fireworks.

The points on her back throb, pulse, and then burn. Something soft and warm slips over her naked body, leaving tingles in all those special places. The queen’s lips break their lock, and she steps back. Millicent’s legs regain partial control; she takes two steps back before bending forward. She retches once, twice, as those four points turn into piercing pain, the throb in her head spiraling upward, pushing back against her braincase. Something starts to break out…

With a loud, “YES!” the points break wide open. Four thin, shaking limbs slide out of her back, flapping hard in their birth-spasms. Her half-closed eyes see a white glow shine on the phasing walls that wasn’t there before. She then shuts her eyes as two pointed objects crawl out of her forehead. They wiggle as they extend into proper antennae, a complement to the pair that had already burst from beneath her jaw.

Millicent breathes in a whole new world of senses around her. The room is no longer empty, the air filled with flavors and hues she had never known before. It forces her doubts out as a final set of tears. They dig into her cheeks as they fall, not enough to cause pain, but enough to etch a pair of thin furrows into her cheeks.

Millicent’s smile grows so large it hurts. She opens her eyes and sees the queen, now with flowing auburn hair.

“I…” Millicent pauses to form the right words. “I had always wanted to see magic, like in the old legends. I read so much about it, it seemed almost real. But, you’re not really a faerie, are you?”

The Queen’s sigh whistles in Millicent’s ears, just as she feels those same ears shift and grow into some other shape. This does not impair her hearing, rather expanding it until her perception seems to fill the chamber. Every breath of air and heartbeat in the room is caught and catalogued in the back of her brain.

“Is that what you really believe?” Mab smiles gently, her red eyes gaining further definition. Millicent knows their shape so well now, has seen them every day in bathroom and rear-view mirrors. “Do you not truly believe that we are the very image of a faerie queen?”

She blinks, and the queen is now revealed for what she truly is; a reflection of herself, a mirror that reveals her truest self, her renewed form. A fusion of human and butterfly, a creature worthy of a fairytale, seated proud in the throne at the heart of this chamber.

Her throne, her realm, her mind, sacrosanct and free.

Millicent’s smile turns to a grin as her fingers feel the cool marble of the armrests. She then stands tall, wings extending outward. She stretches her arms out with them, feeling streamers of silk flow from the tips of her fingers, shooting forth and anchoring themselves in the crystalline walls of memory. The strings go taut, and with newfound strength she pulls on them. The room collapses in on her, until she is surrounded in darkness, a safe cocoon. She feels the sheer vitality flowing through her new body, and yearns to be born, to be free.

She brings her hands up, digging her fingers into the dark, and pulls. The action causes slash marks to form in front of her, cracks in the dark that lead to another place entirely. Undaunted, Millicent continues to tear the dreamed reality around her to tatters, until it is reduced to a veil of sticky shreds. She hammers this final veil apart, exploding from her cocoon into the enclosed space of an electrically-lit underground basement.

She lands on the floor panting, body slick and heavy with the juices of her birth. Her wings hang over her like wet sheets, already beginning to dry under the warmth of the lights. At last she rises, head held high and shoulders back, Queen of herself in mind and flesh and spirit. With a contented smile she feels the new muscles in her back pull her wings into a full spread.

Her hands glide over her transformed self, discovering clothing woven from her thoughts and over her form. A simple but regal gown that opens at the front and back parts for a pair of panties. The touch of her fingers on the fabric sends shivers through her entire being. These shivers let her realize that the ‘clothes’ are in fact an extension of her own flesh, as are the armored scales on her arms and the silken ribbons woven tight around her legs and feet.

Around her the lab smells deliciously rotten. Decay permeates the air, a surplus of the sweet stuff from which new life springs. Her transformation, she decides for herself, must have consumed every drop of nutrient-rich water in the feed system. The planters surrounding her are now filled with dead and withered flora, husks dried to brittleness by the lamp’s constant heat. She must have spent days in the cocoon…

An ache within her stomach halts those thoughts, and she bends over slightly. She feels exhausted, her body almost burned out from the change. She also feels hungry. Her antennae quiver as she senses her surroundings again. To one side she perceives a red glow. She turns to see a pair of red eyes shining, reflected in the black and darkened screen of the laptop.

Her stomach growls. She’s starving, so hungry she could eat a horse. Luckily, although the lab is dead, she knows the perfect place for such a feast…

A woman slips into the back door of Tanya Bellar’s greenhouse, carefully guarded against nature’s encroaching grip. The glass walls and roof show a cloudy night sky, the full moon peeking out at seemingly random intervals. What plants and flowers are here have grown beyond their assigned spaces, spilling out across the tables and floor, vines overlapping roots and stems in pursuit of greater nourishment, fed by sunlight and watered by humidifiers. There is no organization here, save the laws of photosynthesis, pollination and evolution.

The severed bolt lock to the back door hangs from Millicent Wagner’s fingers, her other hand silently closing the door behind it. She ambles to the closest flower pot and drops the lock in the fresh soil to cushion the sound. That matter dealt with, she turns to the greater collection of plants here. Blood-red eyes judge what is on offer, her pupils dilated in the darkness.

The moon drifts behind another cloud, and darkness descends. Fireflies twinkle like small stars, a miniscule light source, but Millicent can see just fine. She can taste and hear and sense everything around her with no problem. Most of the greenhouse’s other six-legged inhabitants are asleep, their day’s work complete, but a few still go about their business as Millicent passes on silk-covered feet. Her antennae guide her towards a scent as fine as wine, and she willingly follows the trail.

The denizens react to her presence, taking up an excited murmur of clicks and buzzes as she tiptoes over the vines and roots on the floor. She stumbles only once when a firefly shines its light very close to her face. She raises a hand, and the tiny bug briefly alights on one finger. She can feel its tiny thoughts, spoken in pheromones and chemicals, and answers in kind, sending the insect on its way with a smile.

Once at the desired flower, she sees its bladed red petals, and traces one finger up the elegant shaft of its stem. What smelled like fine wine from a distance is now much stronger, but no less pleasant. She reaches to touch the petals, but then draws back, feeling her new body telling her, guiding her, on how to properly feed. Her hand instead takes a grip on the table holding the cracked flowerpot in place while she opens her mouth. Fanged teeth glint for an instant, and then a red tongue stretches out from its confines, its flat blade tapering to a fine tip, in which there is a little hole.

The tongue moves left and right, its controller tasting the various scents in the air. It picks up on the flower’s aroma and darts forward, stretching far longer than any human tongue could achieve, a thin straw-like shoot projecting even further from the hole in its tip. This pierces the flower’s inner sanctum without warning, and Millicent sips out its bounty of nectar. The taste cannot be described in words, only sensations. Millicent pulls their tongue out after this single sip; to take more would ruin the feast before it ever begins.

She moves to another flower, this one possessing rounded orange petals, and tastes its juices; sour, with a sprinkling of spice for flavor. A third, smaller flower with a gnarled stem tastes thick and rich, the scent of dirt evident in the aftertaste. Millicent’s smile grows as she darts from flower to flower in the greenhouse in pursuit of every wonderful flavor. She marks all the tastes down, the two antennae on her forehead picking up the subtle differences with each new course, her quick little sips another voice in the nighttime orchestra of chirping crickets and humming fireflies.

CRASH!

Glass breaks apart, and Millicent freezes, the four wings on her back fluttering in surprise. She retracts her tongue with an audible “Slurp!” and retreats into the shadows as two figures enter through the greenhouse’s front door. She hears the shattered glass being ground underfoot, the owner of those feet speaking in an equally-gravelly, male voice. His female companion – Millicent tastes her fear and concludes that she is an unwilling companion - mutters half-understandable words through high-pitched sobs.

“We’re here,” the gravelly voice declares. “Now, tell me where the samples are. No more tricks!”

“I told you,” the second voice replies, “I don’t know where—” A meaty slap cuts her words into a cry of pain. Millicent crouches behind a sprouting tree and spreads her wings over her body. The thin membranes reflect the surrounding colors back out, hiding her from easy view.

“Don’t be daft!” the first voice growls. “Your husband brought all Apothecare’s stuff here, right? To this house?”

“Yes, he brought them to the home. But that’s all I know about them, really!”

“Bollocks! You’re his wife! You two were together for years before the expedition.”

The captive woman explodes in anger. “Is that all you care about? That expedition ruined my life, and the man I loved!”

Another loud slap, combined with a rough “Shut it!” quiets her back down. Again the graveled-voiced man makes demands. “Apothecare wants those samples to produce more drugs. Your fuckwit of a husband stole them from us; we have a right to reclaim them.”

“Don’t you dare talk about Timothy that way!”

Another slap, but this time there is no scream, just defiance. “Go ask his solicitor, Sir Reginald-whatever! He handled the execution of the will and the last rites on the estate, he would know better than me!”

“Yeah, like I’m going to go kidnap a peer of the realm straight out of the damn county town! The boss said you were there when Wilker read Wagner’s will, so you know just as much as anyone! Come on, spit it out!”

“Keep forcing me like this, and I won’t tell you anything!”

“Keep trying my patience and I’ll take my luck with your daughter!”

A shocked sputter, and then a screeching, “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Just fucking try me, now tell me where the samples are!”

“Kiss my ass, you wanker!”

“That does it!” he yells, and there is a mechanical ‘click’ as Millicent’s antennae taste the sting of metal and oil. The woman gasps in pure terror, which prompts Millicent to carefully look from around her cover. Her dark-vison lets her confirm several things at once. The woman is, in fact, Tanya Bellar, dressed much the same as when Millicent last saw her. Those clothes are dirty and stained with tears, and Millicent feels a furious buzz in her throat on seeing the purple bruises on Tanya’s face. Beside Tanya stands a man in a wrinkled black coat, a wild glint in his eyes as he presses a pistol to her head.

“Unless the next words out of you are what I want to hear,” he growls, “then I’ll have to mark you as another causality of our research.”

Millicent’s antennae go wild, dancing in the air as they read into the situation, flooding her mind with sight beyond sight. Both human’s hearts are beating very fast, and they reek of sweat under their clothes. Tanya’s scent carries strong tones of terror and confusion; the gun-toting man smells of anger and surging hormones. The phrase “another causality of our research” is easily paired with the violence bleeding through every whisper of his body language.

The man is Evil. Millicent can taste his complete lack of empathy and knows with a certainty that regardless of what he says, his plan for tonight ends with Tanya dead. But Tanya herself is innocent in all of this; even if she acted angrily towards Millicent in the past, she does not deserve this kind of death, her body dumped in the old railway cutting or the marshlands across the field.

Not all faeries are good, the old stories were quite clear on that. But to Millicent’s mind, Evil calls out to be defeated by Good, and the innocent must be spared – toyed with perhaps, but not discarded for sport. Millicent knows where she stands and seizes the initiative. While Tanya and the suited man are locked in a stalemate of silence, fear stonewalled by anger, Millicent dispels her cover and whirls around the tree towards them.

The man sees her, shouts, “The fuck?!”, and raises his pistol in Millicent’s direction. Tanya looks at her, recognizes her, and gets out an awestruck “Millicent?!” before the gun fires. The crack of the weapon’s hammer striking off the cartridge sounds milliseconds after her exclamation.

Millicent’s antennae calculate the disruption of air formed as the projectile erupts from the snout of the sidearm, telling her exactly where it will strike her. Calmly, almost casually, she raises a chitin-covered arm up in response, and the bullet glances off the hardened scales with an audible ting. The round fragments on impact and scatters its shards into the greenhouse wall.

‘Hollow-points…’ Millicent instantly guesses. The Evil man had loaded his gun with bullets designed to maim and destroy, where even a glancing shot would cause the victim to bleed out. Her teeth clench together behind her calm smile. If someone will bleed tonight, why not him? With that thought comes the sweetest sense of anticipation…

“What the heck?” The man stares in disbelief, his gun hand shaking. His anger shifts into cold fear.

“Hush.” Millicent’s voice buzzes in the air like a swarm of wasps. “Look into my eyes.”

She then splays her wings out to their fullest, the dots in their center growing into vivid ‘eyes’, and raises her arms up, releasing pheromones from her armpits. Millicent feels the scales on the wings’ surface flutter at her command, reflecting the moonlight in dancing patterns of shimmering colors, spiraling in towards the two ‘eyes’ at the heart of each pattern.

“Look into my eyes…” she orders again, her voice now lower, softer and alluring. She can feel her pheromones at work on their bodies, feel the heat as their faces flush and their minds succumb.

Focusing on her words, the two humans listen and obey, their vision drawn in against their will to the two huge eyes on her wings. Millicent slowly begins to flutter her back muscles, the slow, sensual beats of her wings spreading further pheromones, and intensifying the mesmerizing effect of the display.

Tanya and the man cannot resist, and gradually the wing’s ‘eyes’ draw their gaze and attention to Millicent’s real eyes. They glow like small stars, bottomless pits of red. Millicent slowly steps towards them, lowering her arms to her sides while keeping her wings wide open. Mirroring her motion like a puppet on strings, the man’s hands fall to his sides, the gun tumbling from his fingers as he and Tanya’s wills slip into a deep trance. There are no thoughts in their minds, just the stillness and peace of obedience, their bodies motionless and still, calm breaths drawing in more and more of the pheromones.

Millicent moves to the man first. Staring deep into his glassy eyes she swirls her hands around his wrists, spinning silk from her fingers to bind his palms together. Then she brushes her lips against his own in a soft and teasing kiss. Her moist lips are glossy with a variant of the hormones she had used to ensnare them, and despite his mindless gaze his body responds. His breathing becomes low and husky, and a painful firmness swells in his groin. Lost in a hypnotic sexual fantasy, he does not resist as Millicent places a hand on his head and pushes him down into a kneeling position, hands clasped together as if in prayer, or reverence.

As if petting a dog she strokes his head, which causes some of the tougher bristles hidden in the soft fur of her cuffs break off in his scalp, delivering venom just as the Imperatix Millicent had when she touched it. But rather than destroying his brain it instead opens it up, making it soft and malleable and open to questioning.

That would do, for now. With that done, she turns to the hypnotized Tanya, but refrains from using her more potent talents on the older woman. Words alone will suffice.

“Mother.” Millicent feels her emotions rumble inside her, desperate to say some specific words to this person. “What has this man done to you? Tell me everything.”

Tanya answers in a slow, sleepy voice, staring straight ahead past Millicent into a hallucinated red void. “He’s an agent… of Apothecare. He wants… your father’s research… thinks I know where it is.” She shudders, and tears begin to slowly fall from her eyes. “He hurt me…”

Seeing those tears breaks something in Millicent, and she reaches out, not to envenom or ensnare Tanya, but to comfortingly cup her cheek. The faintest hint of a smile graces Tanya’s lips, and she leans into Millicent’s touch as she continues her story. “He forced me back here. He said he’d kill me, and the rest of my family, if I didn’t show him where the samples were.”

“And, you know nothing about this?”

“Nothing.” Tanya slowly, forcefully turns her eyes to Millicent’s own. The action looks like it takes a lot of effort. “I… I don’t want anyone else in my family dead, I don’t… don’t want to see you hurt...”

Millicent feels a cold shiver race up her back. “You truly cared about me? You called my choices wrong, but you still cared?”

Tanya breathes out, “Yes.” That word, along with the readings from Millicent’s antennae, convinces the butterfly-woman that her mother is not lying. “I was… proud, to see you succeed… but could not say it…”

“Why?” Millicent almost whispers.

“I wasn’t… brave enough,” Tanya replies, almost dreamily. “Never as brave as you… or Timothy…”

“But you were always so cold…?” Millicent questions, a lifetime of memories under attack by these few sentences.

“Had to… make you strong… make it so you… could stand for yourself… not be… dependent…”

Her words, her scent, are heavy with truth, and underpinning them is something so strong and potent that the only word Millicent can give it is ‘love’. A mother’s love, albeit icy and distant, but still there, burning like the bright core of light within the cold, hard facets of a diamond.

“So proud… so proud… don’t want… to see you hurt… hurt by him… hurt by me…”

The tears are streaming from her mother’s eyes now, and for the first time she can remember, Millicent feels her heart ache for Tanya. “It’s alright Mum,” she replies with as much of her human voice as possible, eyes lighting up gently as she talks. Their glow glints on the furrows her final tears carved in her cheeks, so that it seems she too is crying, weeping red blood. “I’m here, I’m safe…”

A faint echo of comprehension enters Tanya’s expression, and the eyes appear to focus dimly on her daughter, though her words remain slow and sleepy. “Millicent… you’re safe…”

“Yes Mum… I’m safe, and nothing will ever hurt me again… I’m strong now, just like you wanted.”

Tanya’s head rocks forward sluggishly, an attempt at a nod. “You’re… changed… not the same…”

“Yes Mum, and it means I’ve got to go away.” The pain Millicent thought she would feel at that realization is but an echo of her expectations. Instead she feels free, ready to spread her wings are soar… “But before I go, I have a goodbye gift.”

Her free hand comes up to one of her breasts, gently folding back part the upper lip of her silky gown to expose the nipple. She gives a little sigh, a moan in the back of her throat as she begins to tug and pull at the rosy little bud, but does not break eye contact with Tanya, even as droplets of nectar begin to wet her fingertips, sending shivers through her body.

“This is the last time we shall meet, Mother,” Millicent orders, the words sinking deep into Tanya’s palpable mind. “When I release you, you will return home, remove all these fears and worries about the kidnapping from your mind, and sleep peacefully. When you awake, you will not remember anything about this night.”

As she speaks her fingers continue to milk herself, weaving silk as her digits tug and coax the sticky nectar, absorbing the fluid and encapsulating it. Apothecare were right in supposing that the mutagenic venom of the Imperatrix Millicent had medical applications, but they could not have expected this. This is something entirely of Millicent’s making.

Her entire body is now a living genetics facility, and the nectar she secretes from her breasts is her interpretation of the ultimate cure-all; a mass of retroviruses and gene-data that will ensure Tanya lives to the fullest of health and potential. She will be a little stronger, a little smarter, the aches and pains of aging washed away, her immunities boosted, and her body made impervious to degenerative diseases.

The thought of what Millicent could do with this power shows itself as an excited glow in Millicent’s eyes, though this might also be from the sheer pleasure she feels in kneading the nectar out of her body. With a satisfied sigh she pulls her hand away and tucks the nipple back behind its cover. She holds up before Tanya a smooth ball of silk, a little smaller than a golf ball.

“You gave me life, you raised me, you tried to make me strong…” Millicent preaches. “From mother to daughter, from daughter to mother, I give you back the same gifts you gave to me. Eat this Mum, and live well…”

She presses the ball gently between Tanya’s lips, encouraging her to take it. Tanya slowly takes it into her mouth and bites down. The “gift” is heavenly and rich with love and sadness, as bitter and sweet as their lives together. Tanya sags as she swallows the treat, and Millicent leans into her to keep her standing. Her arms come around her mother in a light hug, her wings enveloping and protecting them from the rest of the world.

“Goodbye Mum,” Millicent murmurs before she gives her mother her final orders, in a harder and commanding tone. “Now leave this place, return home and forget; you may return in time to reclaim the greenhouse.”

She unfurls her wings and steps back, allowing Tanya to stand by herself. A final tear rolls down her mother’s face, and when it falls to the ground Tanya’s expression returns to calm, unthinking trance.

“You will remember nothing from this encounter, but the face and name of Millicent Wagner, that she is safe and well, and that you love her very much.”

Tanya nods, and stands still for several moments. Her feet drag along the dirt as she slowly turns around and walks right out the broken hole in the greenhouse wall. Millicent watches her go with a grim feeling of sadness warring with the affection in her heart. Then, she turns to the entranced “agent”.

This time, there is no gentleness. She grabs him by the hair and hauls him upright with strength far beyond her small size. Her wings flare in anger, and her eyes burn.

“You.” Millicent bares her fangs, which does nothing to break the man’s trance. “Why did you come here?”

The man answers in the same tired tone as Tanya. “Orders. Apothecare wanted Timothy Wagner’s samples, the ones he took from the company. They sent me to get them, by any means necessary.”

“You would kill someone to get them?”

“Yes,” the hand that had held the gun twitches, and Millicent detects him trying to break his trance through sheer force of will. “Those samples belong to Apothecare. No one takes anything from us.”

Despite the fury brewing in her, Millicent holds back the urge for violence for now. She instead asks a clinching question based on what she had overheard earlier: “Did Apothecare kill Timothy Wagner?”

The man’s left eye twitches. Millicent’s wriggling antennae pick up a sudden surge of fear and adrenaline. She moves into the man’s field of vision and bores her eyes into his, forcing her will onto his, which crumples like a house of cards as he falls back into the void. He obeys Millicent’s silent request to the letter.

“Yes. Timothy Wagner was assassinated in his sleep a week ago… he was sick anyway, it only took a small addition to his medical IV to kill him.”

“Why not ransack the house for the samples after he died?”

“Too suspicious. We waited until the will had been read, and then we would get to the samples through the beneficiaries… his wife and daughter.”

Millicent feels an itching in her mouth, an urgent need. The nectar of the greenhouse’s flowers had taken the edge off her hunger, but she cannot survive on mere droplets. Her fathers’ logs had told her what else the butterflies fed upon, and as she ran a tongue over her sharp teeth she understood that she too could derive sustenance from the same source.

“One final question,” she purrs, smiling warmly as she anticipates what is to come. “Who was the agent that killed my father?”

Captivated by that smile and the red suns fixed over it, he answers without thought or self-preservation.

“It was me.”

“Thank you.” Millicent says, before she springs her mouth wide open and digs her fangs into his neck. She drinks eagerly of what little blood spills out, sweeter and richer and more vital than any nectar. Her long tongue then darts into the bite wound, its shoot penetrating through his jugular all the way to the heart, where it eagerly begins to drink straight from the wellspring of his life.

He shudders and moans, hands weakly stirring against Millicent’s iron grip. She then feels a second instinct kick in as the two tubes in her neck suddenly swell up. Something sharp and acrid courses within her, moving up through channels in her jaw, and through the hollow cores of the fangs now sunk deep into his neck. She has found her venom sacs.

The man gurgles something unintelligible as she drains him of blood, and simultaneously pumps him full of quick-acting venom. Every desperate beat of his heart sends fresh blood coursing down her throat and venom into his body. She feels a thrill as her antennae catch his panic and fear give way to a deathly arousal, as if the process brings him to orgasmic climax. She feels his major organs burst apart one by one, and as the blood she is drinking becomes laced with venom that has circled his body, everything that he was passes through and into her. The agent’s knowledge and skills go through the same exchange of genetic memory that guided Millicent through her transformation.

Names and faces and secrets fill her mind, details of the people who pull Apothecare’s strings. When she eventually pulls herself away from her victim’s throat, eyes blazing and stomach full, he gives a final cry of ecstasy before crumbling in her arms. Millicent calmly holds him tight as his clothes deflate, his soft tissues - skin and muscle and flesh - transforming into a mass of butterflies that burst in swarms from the wriggling sleeves and neck of his shirt and jacket, spilling from his shoes and the cuffs of his trousers. All that remains of the man are his white bones, gleaming as if picked clean.

The newly-born butterflies flutter about wildly in momentary confusion as the dead man’s clothes and bones fall to the tiled floor. Each one of them is based off the same template as the Imperatrix Millicent, but smaller in size, and all of them shine with the same gleaming red as her own eyes. Millicent gives a silent command and they flock around her like moths to a light source, their proboscises unfurling and retracting over and over in greeting. A few even land on her limbs and shoulders, and she smiles happily at them as they sup the spilled blood across her arms and hands, as if they are handmaidens washing her clean. They are a brand-new species, her little helpers.

Filiae Millicent – daughters of Millicent. Self-reliant and independent, but part of a whole. Non-venomous (unless she wishes otherwise), adapted to all climates, resilient enough to travel far and wide, her eyes and ears. Satisfied, she licks the excess blood from her lips and fangs. Her hunger is satisfied. One more step remains.

The agent’s silver gun, still loaded, glimmers in Millicent’s hand as she steps out of the broken hole in the greenhouse. It is the first time she has ever held a weapon that wasn’t a water-pistol, but her absorbed memories tell her this is a Volquartsen Scorpion, chambered for .22 Long Rifle ammunition. The details of how to clean and maintain it are forefront in her mind, as are how to best make use of the various accessories she found in the coat’s pockets, such as the silencer and the optical sight.

As she exits into the open air she breathes deeply, her wings opening wide, antennae tasting the night and all its flavors. Then she regards the gun, thoughtful. She is no longer human, and will no doubt soon make enemies from those who would want to hurt or exploit her. The Scorpion could prove valuable against such people…

She makes her decision, and strips the gun into its base components. Each piece then joins the assassin’s bones and clothes in a bag that she plans to drop to the bottom of the Humber Estuary. A number of the Filiae Millicent are in the bag as well, crawling over each scrap of metal and fabric and collagen, secreting an enzyme to wash away all fingerprints and traces of DNA.

A gun is a tool intended to kill, but Millicent wants to be more than a killer. She may be inhuman, set apart from mankind, but she intends to do Good, to emulate the more benevolent of the faeries. She will be kind to the deserving and innocent, and a storm of wrath upon the wicked.

The full moon gleams on the quiet dead-end street, the dew-soaked grass sparkling in answer. Millicent’s children flutter around her as she turns back towards the Wagner family home. She puts the bag down on the grass, clasps her hands together, and bows her head. Her lips silently move as she makes a silent vow before this tranquil scene.

‘Father… forgive me. I will give the story of your life a happy epilogue. I will give your name an everlasting legacy… and I will make sure that Apothecare fades into antiquity. I swear it.’

This done, Millicent Wagner picks the bag back up and turns from her old life. She spreads her wings, feels them catch the warm summer breeze, and quickly rises into the air. She soars above the forest canopy, her children all around her, the moonlight shining its grace upon all of them. She feels their curiosity, their amazement at the wide world around them. She smiles in return, self-assured and full of purpose.

Her story has only just begun.