Millicent's Double Edged Sword

[The_Godslayer]

//some kind of content warning. This one isn't too bad but the next one is.

Freeport 10

"Finding one she could not breathe without..."

---

Millicent.

It was a name she hadn't heard for a while. Most of her life, at least since she was orphaned, she had been Milly. Milly was an adorable damsel, often found in distress. She was the beacon of hope for day-to-day life in Freeport 10, and so when people wanted to attack day-to-day life on the Freeport, they attacked her. She had been kidnapped more times than years she had been alive. In her youth, that wasn't as impressive, but she had turned 19 this year, and suddenly that statement was becoming more weighty. It was sad, and it was harsh. Surrounded by people, yet somehow completely alone. That's just who Milly was.

Millicent, on the other hand, was a different creature entirely. Millicent carefully calculated everything about herself. Her smile, her posture, her clothing, her voice. She could be tied up in a dusty supply crate, maybe even kicked a couple times, and still be the prettiest thing you've seen in your life. Millicent reinvented those skills, and then she perfected them so that no one could best her at them. Finally, she built herself a perfect mask, a tool that bet the will of everyone who witnessed it. Then she named that mask Milly.

Millicent was the one that put Milly in harm's way, because it forced the people into action. Millicent was the one that kept up the illusion of absolute peace on the Freeport, because it made Milly a target. Millicent used Milly to really show the gap in happiness between the regular denizens of Freeport 10 and the refugees coming in from Malta. She wanted to be rid of the refugees, they simply took up too many resources for her people to live comfortably. And if her people weren't living comfortably, neither would she.

She made sure she shone as brightly as possible, because a bright light cut deeper shadows for them to wallow in. Shadows that they would lash out from, to unite the people of the Freeport against them. She was having the refugees orchestrate their own expulsion. But, at the climax of her plan, an unexpected variable appeared. Maxamillion Kress, another Zoner, one from the Omicrons. The Omicrons were a worse place. On Freeport 10, belief was the currency of law. In the Omicrons, power was the great equalizer. Maxamillion Kress was a creature that was overperforming in a foreign habitat. When belief speaks, truth goes silent, but when power speaks, even belief steps back.

Not only did Max bring her plans to a stop by rescuing her in a manner most violent, and not only did Max stabilize through force of unflinching and unforgiving violence the refugee crisis and security on the station, but he even had the audacity to forget her after they first met. He wasn't charmed by her. He was barely even impressed by her. And it destroyed her control over the people of the Freeport. Whatever darkness was eating him alive behind his eyes was snuffing out any spark that she laid in him. Millicent gave him every chance to fall for Milly's charms, but he didn't bite. So she took it into her own hands.

Eventually, it worked. It wasn't the head-over-heels obsession that she wanted from him, but after months, he was a little bit closer to her. There wasn't trust built on belief, like she wanted. She had to play by his cards. There was leverage built on power. He had the strength, the cruelty, and the apathy to bring Milly to a halt, to simply not engage with belief. But Millicent traded Milly's innocence for a leash on Max's guilt, for a sword tied above his newfound community, dangling by a single hair of a horse's tail. It wasn't a victory, by any means, but it was a stalemate that he didn't know how to navigate.

And that was how she had made it to her new day-to-day life. She spent most of the days in Max's room, trying to get closer to him. A few times, she'd made use of a chemical cocktail containing a large number of biochemical aphrodisiacs and a small amount of Nox to lure him to bed. However, she used the drugs sparingly. It seemed Max had never learned how to be gentle with a woman, and recovering from him takes at least a day.

He didn't tell her much about himself, and he kept most of his things either on his person or under lock and key. Today, however, she had her eyes on one of those personal belongings. An alien artifact that he seemed to be obsessed with. He never let it too far out of his sight, but recently he'd left it in the room with her twice when she had asked him to fetch a change of clothes.

"Hey, Maxy~, can you fetch that white long sleeve from my room? It should be in the second dresser drawer."
"You mean mine?"
"Yeah, yours!"

Max stood up from staring at his artifact on his desk. Milly had been sitting on his bed watching him watch it, waiting for her moment. But he seemed to hesitate, seemed to understand what she wanted, and seemed to consider taking it with him, just across that short distance. Was he glaring at her? No, it was more like he saw straight through her. Eventually, he stood up and made his way to the door, seeming to consciously decide to leave the artifact with her. "Fine. Back in a minute. Don't get into trouble."

She didn't even wait until she couldn't hear his footsteps anymore. Taking careful note of where and how the artifact was positioned and oriented, she reached out to grab it. But it was hard to reach towards it. In fact, it was almost as if, somehow, she didn't want to. Instinctively, she needed to avoid it. But she hadn't made it this far into life on instincts. Force of will, intelligence, and charisma. Those were her skills, not instincts, so she touched it.

At first, it was just cold. Horribly cold. But that soon became the least of her concerns, as the shadows in the room seemed to bloom, consuming her peripheral vision, and whispers started pouring out behind her neck. Worse still, she found her hand was stuck to the artifact. She couldn't let go, and the shadows were taking over her sight. Shadowy claws reached from the desk, grasping at her, causing Milly to backpedal until she tripped onto the bed. That was no help, though, as the darkness crawled up the edge of the bed, nipping at her calves and ankles. The only light left in the room was the faint glimmer from the artifact. Curled into the smallest possible ball she could manage, back against the wall, she waved the artifact at the encroaching shadow, keeping it back, if only just barely.

A voice... no, a collection of voices speaking as one, laughed at her. "Curiosity killed the cat, oh feline mine. I wonder if satisfaction will be enough to bring it back?" The voices were sickening in and of themselves, but, being unable to grasp her, the shadows found a different way to torment her. The world fell away around her, giving way to a vast, howling sea of black fog and mist. In it, reflections watched her. People she once knew, people she had at the very least seen, and herself. Silk threads bound them at the necks, hanging like wicked fruits from an evil tree. A tree that was herself, Milly, which in turn hung by the neck from herself, Millicent.

Blood was pooling in the void, draining from those souls that she had robbed of a future. Millicent's reflection looked at herself, larger than life, reaching out and daring her to resist her condemnation. Millicent's skin was cold. It had been a very long time since she had felt fear, but ghosts were not her strong suit. Things that couldn't be fought by someone else. Her reflection's giant hand had almost touched her, threads bound between her fingers, but with desperation Millicent put the fading light of the artifact between herself and her giant reflection.

The light from it seemed to only get dimmer, but her reflection stopped, instead pulling on the rest of her strings. Seeing the bodies flail, struggling and scraping at the threads around their necks put pins and needles in her skin. At this moment Millicent became aware of how badly she was shaking. The Milly on the string began screaming words that Millicent couldn't make out, certainly crying out for help. Millicent couldn't move at this point, as she couldn't tell which prospect was scarier: dying like that, or being stuck here watching this forever. She began really wondering what it felt like to die. What happened after her brain stopped working? It wouldn't feel like anything, would it? But she couldn't comprehend what not feeling was like, either.

The giant reflection of Millicent stepped aside, bringing Millicent's attention back. In the ocean of blood, a bridge of bones had floated to the surface, and from the shadows stepped something massive. A demon, to be certain. A crown of a few bodies that she recognized rested upon its head, and a scepter of a few more in its hand. People that Max had killed to maintain order. A cape of hundreds that she did not recognize flowed from its collar. In its mouth, it was chewing on a few more, their blood streaming down its jaws. All these people were alive, despite being broken, bent, stitched together, and in the process of dismemberment by massive fang.

"..." Millicent's voice failed her. She wanted to yell, to scream for help, to beg the creature that now towered over her to spare her life, at least, even though it seemed to have no intention of doing that. Instead, with her heartbeat in her throat and tears streaming down her face, she once again put the nearly-extinguished artifact between herself and the horrors reaching for her. This time, though, the demon grabbed it, trying to take it away from her. In a panic, she pulled it away, but the demon reached past where any shadow had reached and grabbed her by the collar. Millicent realized she didn't have a chance as the demon pulled her up. The metallic smell of fresh blood hit her nose. This was it, she died here. She was afraid to die here, honestly.

With its other hand, the demon grabbed the artifact. It was her only lifeline, but she didn't have the strength to resist it. This demon wanted her to die alone and hopeless. It wanted to take everything from her. It relished in her suffering, in her terror. Finally, her voice squeeked out, timid and distant: "h-help..."

---

---

"That's what I'm trying to do."

Max finally pulled the artifact from Millicent's grip, placing it back on the desk, and then setting her down as gently as possible on the bed. Millicent was in shock. What she had seen was certainly some level of real. Those people were real. The giant tapistry of dead that hung off of Max's shoulders was real, in some sense. The people in his mouth were real. She knew exactly what it meant. Being judged by herself for simply doing what was necessary to survive was painful. But what she had done was betrayed the trust of a man-eating demon, carrying the weight of hundreds if not thousands of people. She was sitting on that demon's bed, having toyed with and even drugged that demon, having given her body to that demon. She could just as easily end up another mangled body in its wardrobe.
"Did you see everything you wanted to see, Millicent?"
Hearing her name simply drove home how exposed she was, what kind of danger she was in. "Will... will you eat me too?"
The words seemed to sting Max slightly. Antagonizing him was certainly a stupid decision, wasn't it? "No. Not a big fan of human, personally. Maybe it's in the preparation, but frankly, I don't want to try again."

Max was between her and the door. She couldn't move her legs, and he could hear anything even if she could move. The only time he ever slept heavily was when she had drugged him, and she didn't dare to do that now. She couldn't even put together the energy to put on Milly. All she had was a shaken and scared Millicent. It was like she was a child again, but there was no community to appear and subdue the danger. It was just her and the killer in the room. So she pressed her back against the wall, and nearly burried herself beneath the bedding, leaving a small hole to watch him from.

Victory, at a cost greater than she could have ever planned for.

---

I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"