<div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;">Millicent Stokes</span><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 8pt;">Can't you smell that smell? The smell of death surrounds you...</span></div><hr/><br/>Millicent's sweat had begun to cool, causing her to shiver as she dozed. Behind her closed eyes battles were replayed across the back of her eyelids, the events made ever more horrible by the distortion of her own twisted perception. As always, it was strangely soothing, viciousness the only virtue that she possessed in abundance without Margolynn. Hip deep in the sewers of Row, the water stained red with the spilt blood of thieves, her lip curled into something halfway between a snarl and a smirk. Milly's eyes snapped open at the touch of Cell's slender fingers on her shoulder, and she sat bolt upright as if she had been jabbed somewhere particularly delicate with something particularly sharp.<br/><br/>She took another moment for herself, never entirely sure when she woke up just how much of what she was seeing could be trusted. She stared at Evangelista for a moment, resisting the urge to touch her to confirm what her eyes were telling her was true. Seated as she was, Millicent's eyebrow raised ever so slightly as she stole a glance at their guide's inner thigh. As pale as the rest of her, Millicent had an indecent thought that was sharply interrupted by something tugging at her arm. She turned to stare at her sister, who had a disapproving look on her tiny face. Milly rolled her eyes irritably, motioning to thin air, "Okay, let's get to work, shorty."<br/><br/>With her short hair matted to her cheeks, she used her broadsword as a crutch to haul herself up to her feet. The hinges of her chestplate whined as she snapped it shut and latched it closed, nodding to her invisible sister. Plenty of time to rest when she was dead. She used to say that a lot, but it upset Margo, so she had gotten in the habit of just thinking it. Folding her arms across her chest, Millicent inspected the door. She could see small handprints in the dust where her sister had tried briefly to open it. Milly pointed to the left door as she stepped up towards the right side.<br/><br/>Inhaling a shuddering breath as she strode forward, she gritted her teeth as she placed the palms of her gauntlets against the cool metal. A growl escaped her clenched teeth as she began to push. Next to her, her sister silently followed suit, her tiny hands leaving a fresh set of streaks across the dusty surface of the door. Millicent strained mightily for a few minutes without result, before losing patience. Taking a step back, she charged forward into the door, applying her shoulder with a terrific crash. Despite marring the surface of the door, it seemed to have no other result. She backed up again, charging it with a snarl. And again. And again, each time the sound of her armored shoulder against the metal ringing out like a bell.<br/><br/>A shower of dust and pebbles were dislodged as the door was forced open a few centimeters. She began to hit it with renewed vigor, but it remained stubbornly unmoved from her further efforts. Millicent drew her sword, shoving the tip into the slot. She placed a heavy steel shod boot against the door, trying to pry it open with her great blade. It was met with limited success, the door creaking another handful of centimeters before the tip of her blade cracked, sending her sprawling onto the ground. Angrily leaping to her feet, she impotently began swinging her sword against the door over and over. To it's credit the sword did not shatter, though it had little effect on the great door.<br/><br/>After a few minutes of useless fury, she took a step back, her chestplate rising and falling as she glared at the door. Margolynn had also stopped trying to push, simply watching her sister. She knew what was coming next. It wasn't hard to read her sister, given that she was just a figment of her imagination. Millicent was contemplating drastic and dangerous measures.<br/><br/>Margolynn was part of her dementia. A small, reasonably friendly part of it. The beast in the sea that Margo had called upon was one of a collection of unnamed phobias and painful events. Everyone had such things inside their psyches, that made them who they were. They were just decidedly less solidly manifest. These nameless horrors of the deeper subconscious were also part of Millicent's dementia. But there were other horrors, tied to mental scars that ran so deep they were more powerfully anchored to Milly's delusions. The things and events that held painful significance to the warrior. Like the first time she had been sold to a man for an evening's pleasure, or the time she had come across a cult that sacrificed their own flesh to appease a dark god, or the fearful dance she had danced after being thrown onto the pyre of corpses...<br/><br/>The horrors that were born of these scars had weight and power. And names...<br/><br/>She closed her eyes, loathe to remember the touch of her first lover. He had been a merchant, particularly keen to know virgin flesh. Speaking soft words of encouragement as his heavy frame pinned her tiny body down to the soft bedding, his scent burned her nostrils, causing her to gag. A mixture of the scented oils he sold, the garlic he had consumed earlier in the day and his own sweaty stench. It had clung to the mattress and afterwards she had been forced to clean and make the bed by the Madam. Even all of these years later, she remembered every nuance of that foul odor.<br/><br/>And it still made her gag.<br/><br/>Millicent opened her eyes, gagging and choking on the memory. Her eyes grew reddened and she heaved as if trying to dislodge a fishbone from her throat. To her senses however, black smoke trickled from her nostrils, a thick and horrible plume of corruption issuing up from her gullet and past her trembling lips. Yellow and indigo lights bobbed within the stream of smog that was tearing its way out of her stomach, too many eyes and appendages stretching out of the mass for it to be a creature that existed in a sane universe. Thankful for the dim lighting as she let out the last of him with a shuddering cough, she spat at the taste, the memory of the stench filling her nostrils more absolutely than it had that horrible night. Her spittle landed rudely against the side of it's face, and the beast seemed to smile a toothless grin, its tongue slithering past broken and pus stained lips to lap the saliva from its cheek hungrily.<br/><br/>Millicent snarled its name as a whisper, "Feteo..." The massively bloated thing made a sound halfway between a chuckle and a belch, pleased with her disgust. She kept her eyes on its upper body, finding its purple stained, greasy flesh less nauseating than what dangled beneath its distended belly. Margolynn gripped at the canvas of her skirt, her presence reassuring as always. Milly extended her hand, fingers splayed as she hissed a single word like a curse, "Penetrate."<br/><br/>Feteo clicked its toothless jaw at her playfully before turning to the door. From her current angle behind the monster, Millicent couldn't see its horrible member, but she suspected it was turgid. It always was. The thing thrust itself against the door sharply, causing the structure to shudder. It pressed its white knuckled claws against the door and rammed itself home again and again, its hips thrusting repeatedly against the crack. Millicent fought the urge to turn away as she watched its ass cheeks clench with each sickening charge, knowing full well she had to watch. If she didn't see it, the phantasm had no power. Her revulsion made him strong.<br/><br/>Opening by slow degrees with each thrust of the monster, Millicent saw sparks dancing across her eyes. They were not hallucinations so much as oxygen deprivation as she held her breath against the tide of nausea. A trickle of blood escaped her nose with the force of her concentration taxing her physically. As blackness began to bleed into the corners of her vision and unconsciousness threatening to pull her under, she did what she always did...<br/><br/>She screamed at it.<br/><br/>A great shuddering bellow that caused Margolynn's grip on her skirt to tighten. So rigidly had she held out her fingers, Millicent could feel a cramp spreading through her hand as she willed her monster to keep raping the door. Only when it became so painful she had to make a fist did she stop screaming and stagger to her knees. Feteo vanished from sight like a bad dream, though Millicent could feel him still squirming somewhere in the back of her head. Blessedly all she could smell at the moment was blood.<br/><br/>She lifted a shaking hand to her face, pulling back to examine the crimson that stained her fingertips. It was hardly the worst injury she'd suffered. Milly ignored the phantasmal beasts that swam in the shallows of the lake, splashing her face repeatedly with the cool water. After a moment, she turned to Margolynn, lifting her head up to the fire light, "Did I get it all?"<br/><br/>"Yes ma'am!" Margo chimed with a tiny thumbs up, helping Millicent up to her feet awkwardly. It was like watching the knight pull herself up an invisible step stool. Turning to the open door, the cool air trickling out of the darkness, Milly staggered with an exhausted gait towards it, "If there's another fucking lake on that side, I'm turning around and leaving this shit ho..." She frowned at the space next to her, sighing irritably at nothing as she was chastised for her language, "Pardon. I'm leaving this unpleasant place if there's another hurdle."