Cenerea, 3rd planet from the star Letria. Regalius, The Homeland,

Central Region, Just Outside Of The Capitol City,

The Arcturan Estate, Current Day

Wendy was afraid and although she wanted to, she could not tell her husband, because it was something Jay could never know occurred. If she was right, what was going to take place would definitely break his heart; however, she understood it was an activity that had to occur for their plan to advance. Her long conversations with Jinah and Geneticus made it very clear there was no way around it. She was going to have to perform The Twelve. It was difficult, but Wendy did manage to convince the A.I. to keep everything a secret from her husband.

Geneticus did admit it did not like that part of their bargain one bit. G had become nearly as close to Jay as it had with Wendy, and even more so than Harold, it appeared. The machine reminded Wendy that lies are what put this tragic chain of events into motion in the first place. As true as that sentiment might have been, she knew it might take another falsehood or two to end its steady advance. She just hoped the A.I.'s theory about what actually transpired during the trials were true. That it was only a show. If it wasn't, her 'dream' of becoming the queen of the Arcturis Clan might end today.

"Daughter, are you ready?" Mother Arcturis asked.

The scientist in Wendy tried to rationalize her activities as necessary. It was strictly to get from point Alpha to point Zeta. She even tried to convince herself that it was Elle's body not hers. Again, she found no comfort in the illusion. "Yes. Let's get this over with, mother," she said nervously.

Elle's mother and seven of her sisters, all dressed in red rather revealing robes, surrounded her. They placed bright crimson masks on their faces. Each mask bore different expressions symbolizing the first Arcturan's struggle with controlling her emotions and eventually overcoming their grip on her. When Wendy read of this part of the ceremony, it reminded her of Geneticus' emotional programming, only in reverse.

Mother Arcturis produced a tattered blue gown for Wendy to wear, snapping the former Scientist General back to her strange reality. Wendy removed Elle's slutty dress and pulled the frayed material over her head. This part of the ritual signified Queen Beherit's fateful trip to the king's bed as a farmgirl.

"Follow me, daughters," the older woman said.

The thinly clothed sisters surrounded Wendy, creating a three by three procession with Mother Arcturis in the middle front and 'Elle' in the very center. They quietly made their way through the Clan's large ornately decorated mansion. It was strangely empty and eerily silent. The sandals on their feet lightly echoed through the large open space.

The women stopped as their mother raised her hand. They were now staring at a large dungeon-like door. The two lead sisters, one wearing a mask of fear and the other a mask of anger, stood on each side of Mother Arcturis. They turned in unison and removed their necklaces. They presented them to the family matriarch with a bow. She accepted the offerings, taking the pendants from her daughters, grasping each one separately in her two hands. She pressed the two metallic objects together to form a key, inserted it into the door's lock, and turned. There was a click followed by three thuds as heavy security bolts retracted allowing the door to swing open rather easily. The door squealed, exposing a stone spiral staircase leading into an unknown darkness, figuratively and literally. Mother Arcturis separated the necklaces and handed them back to the two masked girls. They returned to their places in the formation once more. The nine women resumed the slow journey to Wendy's destiny with the Motherhood.

Three by three, they journeyed into the dimly lit void until they reached a torch lit, perfectly round room with some sort of door on its far side. The light made it difficult for Wendy to be sure what it was made of. The walls, however, were clearly large stone blocks. The stuffy air smelled of mildew and something else that Wendy could not place. Wooden racks with various assortments of torture devices lay in different areas of the chamber. Chains hung from the ceiling, some with cuffs, others with hooks. Wendy gasped. The procession stopped dead center of the room and as they did, the women quickly turned toward Wendy. She tried to remain calm.

"Remove your tattered clothes my daughter. Let the old you fall with them to the floor."

Wendy disrobed as commanded.

"You must now realize you are only an empty vessel of what was. Beherit understood this as she listened to the guards provide her with the first of The Twelve. The true mother of our family knew that for her to survive she had to leave her old ideas of who she was behind. The sweet farm girl would have to become something new. Something better, something stronger. Now, take this pure white gown and let the new you take control as the material covers your skin. You must become someone else. This will be the beginning of The One."

Wendy already had this part down, she realized. She was now very adept at pretending to be someone else in someone else's body.

Elle's sisters turned their backs to her and shouted, "The One!"

"Daughter, you are now on your own just as the young Beherit was walking to the king's bedroom. No one can help you with The Two, you must do that and the rest of The Twelve on your own. You must learn Beherit's secrets. Go through that door daughter and return to me a queen. Return to me when your dress is no longer white, but red!" Mother Arcturis turned from Wendy just as her sisters did.

Wendy swallowed hard as she approached the door. Her hands were quaking as she reached for its handle. She pulled and it opened with a creak. She peeked in. Dim light from several torches illuminated a long corridor with ten rusty metal doors evenly spaced apart, five per side. Each room supposedly containing one man with a strange fetish. Wendy understood from the rumors she was supposed to find out what the man wanted, give it to him and then kill him. However, this was all speculation. No one truly knew what transpired after any Mother Arcturis initiate entered the door to the morbid trials. None of them ever wanted to talk about it when they got out, either. Wendy had no idea how she was going to play down her failure to complete the challenge if Geneticus was wrong and the tests really imitated the actual murders performed by Queen Beherit. She was not capable of such atrocity.

Her hands shook fiercely as she placed a sweaty palm to the door handle of the first room on her left. Perspiration covered her face and her white cloth dress clung to her body. She gripped the metallic ball and turned. The young woman quickly released the handle to place her hand over her mouth, stifling a scream that wanted desperately to escape her throat. She beheld a horrifying vision of a poor naked man bound to a rack. It looked like he was tortured to death. Wendy began backing out of the horrific scene only stopping when she noticed a brilliant white card propped up against the disemboweled corpse. "Fuck." She said, realizing that it was probably part of this messed up ritual.

Wendy's sandals made a slurping sound as she tread carefully across the blood-coated floor. She focused only on the clean white card lit by the room's flickering lights. Unfortunately, with no Gil Mitchell to catch her this time, she slipped and landed on her bottom in the middle of a large pool of blood. One of her hands found its way into the man's entrails piled up on the floor next to his body and the card. She gagged as she extracted her fingers from the sticky organs. The Motherhood's newest inductee slowly stood and wiped her hands on her white gown leaving red and brown streaks down the untainted material. "Well, Mother, it looks like I will return with a red-stained dress after all." She frowned as she felt her stomach churning.

She returned her focus to the white card. It had the word, 'Elle' written on it. Wendy waited until she was out of the room and in the hall before she opened it. "Dearest Elle, you have just completed The Two. Congratulations." Wendy flipped the card over and back again, to make sure she was not missing anything. "What the hell is this?" she wondered. "This makes no sense." 

Walking to the next door, she found another card with her name on it. This gory scene involved not just one man, but two lying together in a bed. Their arms and legs bound together and their throats cut. The men's blood splattered faces distorted in pain. Wendy closed her tear-filled eyes and turned away. She blindly reached for the card, felt it as her fingertips reached its resting place on the top of one man's head. She snatched her hand back and fled into the hall.

Wendy leaned against the filthy wall and covered her nose and mouth with the bend of her arm. "Breathe," she told herself, taking in a deep breath of putrid air. She closed her eyes and realized she was going to have real nightmares when she went to bed that night. She removed her arm from her eyes, opened her eyelids, and looked down at the card in her blood-covered fingers. She exhaled.

"My lovely daughter, you are by now wondering what is going on. I will tell you more with each card you retrieve. Congratulations, you have completed The Three." Wendy did not know how much more she could stomach. Thankfully, she had not needed to kill anyone and now she realized she might not have to. Still, she understood how evil this ritual was turning out to be. She inhaled another death-scented breath of damp air trying to convince herself to go into the next room. It seems her task was to endure the horrors in each room and extract the white cards to piece all of this wacky shit together.

The third door opened with a brilliant white light that blinded Wendy upon opening it. She swiftly lifted her hand to her face, smearing blood on her forehead. The act provided little relief from the luminous flood pouring out of the doorway. She squinted to find the room was empty except for a man dressed in a formal white uniform sitting at a white acrylic table. There was a silver cup in front of him. His hand was resting next to it on the table. He looked like he was thinking about something. Across the room was a large snowy pillow on the ground with various sex toys lying next to it. The redhead walked in and touched the man on the shoulder. She jumped back narrowly avoiding his body as it fell lifeless from the chair and tumbled to the ground. An envelope loosed from his jacket in the fall and skidded over to Wendy's bloodstained feet. She knelt and picked it up.

"Elle. You have just finished The Four. Just so you know, this poor bastard only wanted to watch women pleasure themselves as he sat drinking. It was sad really, but I think Cenerea is better off without useless men like that. Oh well, I promised you more with each card. The Twelve is more than a legend it is a lesson. It is a story of love. Beherit did not kill each man for power, she did it for a much greater purpose."

Wendy was growing less horrified and more agitated. She realized she was going to have to endure each of these fucked up scenes and fish out one card after the next just to get to the end of this nightmare. She did understand one thing very clearly, though. No one was going to die by her hand today. Mother Arcturis had apparently beat her to it. As to why, she was just going to have to find out. "Okay, next," she thought.

"My darling Elle, I am so happy you have completed The Five. As promised, I will tell you more of the story. As the queen killed, she acquired more land and more wealth. She brought in the strongest most powerful warriors from each of her new lands for her defenses. She studied each warrior closely and if they met to her standards, she brought them into her family."

Each room was more bizarre than the last. In six, there were clothes from several women strewn about, but only the body of one man hanging from the ceiling. He had a ball in his mouth and gag over it. He had evidently bled to death from somewhere that Wendy realized should stay a mystery. The woman was sick with the thought of all of this wasted life. She quickly snatched the card off his back and stepped out into the hall.

"Dearest child, you have now completed The Six...The Seven...The Eight." On and on the disgusting tragedies continued until Wendy removed the final card from the grip of one very large, sweaty man in a University Security uniform. Correction, half of a uniform since his pants were missing. His nametag said 'Pete'. The rotund man was apparently choked to death with a pair of women's underwear.

Wendy opened the final card and began reading.

"Congratulations, my dearest one. You have made me the proudest mother on Cenerea. Hopefully, you have realized that what Queen Beherit did was not for her. It was for her daughters. Just as I have done for you and one day, you will do for one of your children when it is their time to assume your throne. The One, King Arcturis, was killed because he was abusive to his brides. Queen Beherit had volunteered that night to take the place of another wife who was injured so badly from his anger and brutality she quite possibly could have died. The farm girl turned queen vowed this was never going to happen again. She bore the abuse for all of the wives, in return, giving as well as receiving. In the end, the king was killed, not by Beherit, he was killed by his own warriors. Queen Beherit had promised them marriage to her daughters and a place in her royal family in exchange for their loyalty and their sworn protection of their wives. The Twelve is not a test. It is not a rite of passage. It is love."

Wendy sat on the floor in her blood stained dress. "That is the most fucked up thing I have ever read," she thought to herself. "I get it, but, couldn't you just buy a damn card that said I flipping love you?" Wendy stood to brush herself off, but then stoppedas she realized the futility of the action. She picked up her collection ofcards and started for the door at the end of the hallway. "One, two, three...Eleven. Shit. There is only eleven including The One.Where the hell is The Twelve?" she wondered as she opened the door on thefurthest end of the hallway. Wendy assumed it was the exit. 

"Hello, Elle. I see you have returned to me with a red-stained dress." Mother Arcturis stood in the center of a small room made of the same stone building materials as the adjacent hallway and chamber. This one had two doors. The one Wendy stood in and one on the opposite wall directly behind the family's queen. The open space was lit by an actively burning fireplace. Wendy could see there was no furniture in the room, only Elle's mother.

"Yes, mother I have stained this dress as commanded."

"Toss those cards in that fireplace over there. You cannot leave this room with those. Their secret and the secret of every Mother Arcturis are now in you now and they will stay there until it is your day to be The Twelve."

Wendy tossed the cards in the fire and then froze when she heard that last sentence. "Mother?" she inquired with her back turned, facing the flickering fire.

"Yes dear. I am The Twelve. I am dying anyways, honey. It is time for me to get out of the way and let you take care of your sisters and your future daughters before I am unable. I have taken some poison, just in case you were unable to finish The Twelve with me alive"

"I am tougher than you know, Mother."

"I know. Queen Beherit would be proud of the strong woman I see standing before me in her crimson dress like her beautiful hair. She would be so proud, because I know that you and your slave will one day rule this land. You will see the rise of Arcturius once more." Elle's mother began coughing and doubled over.

Wendy ran to Elle's mother and grabbed her, leaning the Arcturan queen back into her arms. She gently lowered her to the ground. The matriarch wheezed as she gazed up into the face of the young woman she believed was Elle, blood trickling from the edge of her mouth. Wendy felt something pressed into her hand. She lifted it up to examine the object. It was a knife.

"Plunge it into my heart, dear one. Release my love for you and take it for yourself." Mother Arcturis whispered as she grabbed Wendy's hand and turned the knife's point toward her chest. She placed the tip above her heart and smiled. "It's okay, my child. I love you." She applied pressure to her daughter's hand. "You can do this..."

"Wait. I have to tell you something first, you evil bitch."

"What? Why would you say that?" she coughed, her eyes wide.

"Because, I know you killed your own brother, Gil."

"How? How could you know that? No one knew that but two other people and one of them is dead." Mother Arcturis' breathing was becoming more and more labored. She struggled weakly to get up. Wendy pulled her back down.

"You mean, Harold. Harold Bouri?"

The woman gasped. "How do you know these things, Elle?"

"You killed the man I loved! The man I wanted so desperately to marry!"

"Why are you saying this to me? This is insane, daughter!"

"Because I am not Elle, I am Wendy Powell and your daughter Elle is dead, Jinah," she hissed.

"That is impossible. Y-y-you have lost your mind, girl!" the old woman stammered.

"Now, it's your turn. I came back from the afterlife, took your daughter's body, and I am going to use it to kill you and end all of your plans!"

"No! You will ruin everything...my life's work!"

"Shut up!" Wendy growled. "I mean isn't this how you murderous Arcturan bitches do things?" She looked into the Arcturan's watering green eyes and pushed.

Mother Arcturis' mouth opened, gasping from the pain. She never took her gaze from Wendy's.

The matriarch relaxed as the life left her body, the green eyes still staring straight ahead. The scientist shuddered and removed her hand from the blade's handle to close Jinah's eyelids. Wendy lowered her head and began sobbing uncontrollably as she sat on the floor holding the lifeless body of Elle's mother.