Chapter 1 - Mille Fleurs
"Thousand Flowers"
There were sixty-seven necklaces like the one she wore, but this one was special. By all appearances it had likely come from China; a mass-market factory specializing in quick-molding cheap metals for sale in bargain bins and dollar stores across an all too complicit global market. A small pewter-like cage bent slightly at the base and two carousel horses suspended by wires within; she had worn it for over a decade with no real memory as to where it had once come from. Still, she only ever thought of it as a gift. Tiny filigrees along the canopy were badly worn but the faintest trace of decorative music notes could still be seen along the rounding board and the initials ALM carved into the scenic panels behind a tiny horse in full capriole. She tugged at it absently as she once again turned her attention down the hallway. The room at the far end was quiet for the first time in days.
It had arrived under the custody of B.P.R.D. two days ago. A strange thing, a marred silver spear no less sinister for having been plucked from the Giants Causeway following a decisive battle with their resident demon spawn Anung Un Rama. No, no, Hellboy, as she was repeatedly reminded. At least, that's what she had heard. She had also heard another name. It was Nuadha, the epithet Airgeatlámh, the Silver Hand, meant to honor the weapon that now sat tied to an iron cornerstone behind a Plexiglas vault door. Someone had told her that the enemy they fought had born that name as well. While that may have been true, that's not what they should have called the weapon he carried. She intuitively knew the names of things. She always had. And often and oddly to her own detriment but this one the officers of the B.P.R.D had never gotten quite right.
The spear had another name, Claidheamh Soluis, Glowing Bright, but she felt that its wielder must have known well enough about the nature of names to never speak it where others could hear; hence the confusion. But the strange spear was only the first addition. Later that same day came a crumpled statue: a fair lady collapsed and unblinking with her hair tossed far over her shoulders and her hands laid out at her sides, fingers curled upwards. It was as though she had fallen and frozen in just such a way, so intricate were the details. She thought it a strange choice for a sculptor particularly in a medium of alabaster, which didn't seem quite appropriate for the somber subject matter. Stranger still that the agents clad in black suits were so quick to shut the delicate lady away in another vault further down. While the B.P.R.D. certainly had its taste for rare and exotic artifacts, she couldn't even begin to imagine what such a statue could offer their already rather bizarre collection; the veritable cabinet of curiosities that made up the Washington D.C. headquarters. She considered asking Abraham, as he was usually well versed in each item currently catalogued but something about his demeanor towards just this particular statue stayed her tongue. He seemed to cry (and yet she wasn't even sure he was physically capable of producing tears) as he visited the statue each morning and evening. Each time she saw him pass the statue's velvet-draped pedestal, she thought it was as though he stood vigil at a tomb.
Two days after that, everything changed.
It was the scream that woke her. A kind of gasping, choking, sound more like the first grateful breaths of a drowning than an actual shriek. She scrambled from her small bed and crept into the hallway, ducking back against a set of concrete pylons so as not to be immediately run over by a wave of agents and a few white-coated lab technicians. She peered out, thankful that the wide supports hid nearly all of her small stature. Everyone seemed to be gathering at the entrance to the statue's room and she watched as the agents hastily unlocked the vault door, pushing it aside against the pace of the automatic servos to gain entrance just that much faster. More agents quickly arrived, followed by more than a few of B.P.R.D.'s resident menagerie. She saw Hellboy and Liz, Abraham shortly afterwards, and finally Director Manning, the latter already barking orders that appeared to go largely unacknowledged. Barefoot, and clad only in a thin nightgown, she slid along the wall towards the commotion. For a moment, she thought she heard something like a sob, but it was quickly drowned out by exclamations of shock and cries of both terror and surprise from the assembled mass. Her brow furrowed and she briefly contemplated climbing onto one of the glass hallway display cases to get a better look.
"Someone get a blanket! Quick!"
"Where's Doctor Schulz? Someone get Dr. Schulz!"
"Let me through! Out of the way!"
"Oh my god, how is this even possible."
Reaching upwards towards a pipe along the wall just over her head, intent on pulling herself above the height of the crowd, she stopped short as a lancing pain unexpectedly tore through her head. She gasped as she fell back against the cool concrete, her hands flying to her forehead as a wave of nausea saw fit to accompany the searing heat making its way along her jaw and down into her shoulders. Thinking she might even cry out through the undeserved assault, she bit down on the side of her thumb just enough to keep her vision anchored to the present. For a moment, she thought she might faint. But just as it had come upon her, it left, the ringing in her ears fading to a dull throb before finally fading out all together. Dazed, she hugged the wall, wiping at her face in irritation as she tried to calm her breathing. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. As she still lingered in the hall, she absently checked herself for injury, but found nothing.
Suddenly, Abraham burst through the crowd and in his arms he carried what she thought must be a young woman in a flowing white dress, her face hidden in his shoulder and her arms wound tightly around his neck. As he passed by, she noted small white feet barely visible from beneath the hem of the sheer linen skirt. She also caught a glimpse of an unmistakable pattern of spirals and lines on pale hands, curving up and around an equally pale neck ending just shy of a delicately pointed ear. "Fionnuala Ní Lir Fiálainech," she whispered before catching herself, tilting her head towards the floor in momentary confusion and bringing her hand unconsciously to her tug at her necklace. She tried to shake the distractions from her mind. Was this the statue? Had the alabaster lady come to life? Was that why they kept it in a vault? Galatea and Pygmalion be damned if that didn't make any sense.
Cautiously, she followed the entourage parading down the hallway. Finally, clear of the main vaults, she ducked unnoticed into the library where Abraham and at least a half dozen others fussed about, doing everything from pulling books off of shelves, to lighting the central fireplace, to brewing tea. The lady now sat in one of the high-backed leather chairs, looking for all the world completely lost and bewildered. Her golden eyes darted back and forth surely in some kind of desperate attempt to take everything in. Abraham, for his part, remained firmly rooted at her side, speaking in a kind of low grumble while lightly palming first her cheek and then her trembling hands.
"You know what this means, Abe." Hellboy shouldered his way through the doorway, crossing his massive arms across his chest and setting his chin into a stern glower.
The room fell suddenly quiet as Abraham blinked up from the armrest, "Yes." He replied hesitantly, the shaking of his voice only partially due to the shock and stress of it all. "But... Red...How?"
"How is the least of our concerns right now I'm afraid." Manning interrupted. "If she's back, you know who else probably is too. We need to…"
He never made it through the rest of his thought before the lady in the high-backed chair suddenly spoke up. "Kill me. Please."
The room was momentarily aghast. "I do not understand now how this has come to pass, I do not know why I am restored but you can be most certain that my brother now breathes this life once again as well." Her voice became emphatic, "I made my peace with the truth. I do not regret my actions and my decision was rightful. Please. I cannot endanger this world so again. I cannot be the reason for your deaths. I would have this moment be fleeting. I am grateful to see you all once more, but…. please…."
She trailed off, her face falling into her hands. The crowd erupted.
"She's right, we just can't risk it…"
"You CAN'T be serious! We're not murderers!"
"Hey, back off! Everybody calm down."
"If you think for one second I'm letting any of you…."
"It won't matter." Somehow she had managed to pick just the right moment, when the collective argument had paused to take a breath, to be heard above the din. The lady in the high-backed chair turned to her with a stunned expression.
"It won't matter." She hastily repeated. "How do you know you won't just come back again?"
She had pieced together the basics of the problem over the last several moments from several days' worth of gossip and the uncontrolled outbursts of the milling assembly, though she was still unclear about the details. The alabaster statue was the lady in the chair; Nuala everyone called her (it was close enough). She was the one who had sacrificed herself to save the B.P.R.D irregulars currently gathered around her, somehow killing both herself and the enemy they had been sent to overthrow. Victory by suicide if she recalled correctly; so, her current suggestion probably shouldn't have been as surprising as many were making it out to be. In the end, while she didn't quite understand how this sad and trembling woman's suicide had saved the day at that point, she really didn't want to see it repeated right here in the library under the watchful eyes of St. Mercurius. The angel of two swords may have been a martyr but he had at least seen fit to earn the satisfaction of conquering his enemies first.
"She's right." Abe was quick to take advantage of the opportunity, implicitly addressing the group at large though keeping his attention securely on Nuala, "Without knowing how the Prince has managed to reverse his death, and consequently yours My Lady, I'm afraid that simply killing you again might not, uh, successfully end in the result you are inferring."
Nuala seemed almost crestfallen, soft strands of hair catching on her lashes, wicking up tentative tears into tiny, dew-like, droplets. But before she seemed ready to completely dissolve, her eyes suddenly snapped up to the young woman who had spoken through the crowd.
"I don't recognize you." She said by way of a question. With an occasion's pause, Nuala finally took in the odd girl hovering near the edge of Abe's overly large aquarium tank. Draped in a loose nightgown, her spindly frame was angular but proportionate. She seemed to be no more than a teenager, but her wide beryl eyes, thin tapered ears, and skin the image of white cracklewear immediately gave her away as something other than completely human. The exposed parts of her face and arms, covered in a delicate network of uncountable fine cracks and lines, had an almost gossamer quality, reflecting the filtered blue light of the water tank with bits of shimmer and tilted glow. Her snowy white hair was a bit of a mess, combined with the nightgown a likely result of being roused from bed unexpectedly, but still fell in ropy tresses and small braids to her waist. But most notably, as Nuala searched her face for any tell-tale fae trait she might recognize, she could also make out some kind of small, reddish, mark on the girl's forehead hidden mostly under the hair that framed her face. Her fingers worried constantly at a small necklace throughout.
"Ailith." She finally offered. "My name is Ailith. I saw you…. when you came in…" but before she could elaborate further, the room took over once again and she was dislodged from the conversation. By the time she (and almost everyone else) was ushered from the room, she surmised that B.P.R.D was going to be in lock down for a while and that the entire complex now awaited an assault by a magical army of some sort or another. Prince Nuada. That's who they said was coming. They said he would come to retrieve his sister and his spear, if not to launch an all-out quest for vengeance against those who had stolen and destroyed his crown and therefore his chances for a decisive victory against the banality of the human world. And if he didn't, they were going to find him. One way or the other, it was only a matter of time before he appeared.