Surely, she thought, this would not leave any of those abominations is useable condition.

"We did it, Ash," Netta said, resolute.

When Ash did not answer, and she searched through herself and found no trace of him to answer her, she felt her voice raise in a quaking shudder.

"...Ash? Ash!"

Focused as she was on the interior, Netta was surprised when she caught movement to her left, amongst all of the smoky haze created by the fireworks that Ash had shot out of her arms.

Looking in that direction, she almost missed the movement to her right. As she flicked her gaze around, the saw finally the shapes of robed figures closing in on her.

Netta felt a cold grasp on her heart as she watched the oncoming shapes advancing.

His voice, low, sounded in her head like the voice of a tired man. As I thought. They're controlled by one. They won't stop until she's dealt with - they might be regenerating, each time we cut one down.

Netta gulped and took a step back. She looked blindly at the robes figures descending on her. She was damned if she could figure at which one was Caspia, underneath the cover of the identical robes that they wore.

Instinctively, Netta spread her legs wider and tried to make as though she was about to ready another attack.

The others hesitated at once, the robes around them billowing in the wind. For a moment, they looked like what all but one of them were - dead.

I have one more thing that I could do, Ash blearily said. Her Familiar - she's burnt through it like the last one nearly did. She's all that stands in our way.

Netta clenched her teeth. Well, although I hate to say it, it's now or never.

There was another pause. Then, as if in retort to their secret conversation, two came at Netta from opposite directions, almost as though they were guillotining her.

Netta cried out, but could not dodge as they came to her grabbing her.

They seemed intent on carrying her, dragging her from where she had begun to make what looked increasingly like a last stand when she heard Ash roar in her mind. Their grips on her upper arms dug, clenched like vises.

An electric pain seemed to radiate out from Netta, and she cried out.

When she came to on the ground, she looked up and realized that the others had left her.

I'm sorry, Ash said.

It's alright, Netta said back. You saved me from them -

No, Ash said, his voice becoming softer. I'm sorry for what's about to happen.

There was no time to wonder what it was he meant. From the grouping of robed figures ahead, she heard one shout out, "This game is almost over. If you love these people so much, you should feel honored to die by their hand, no?"

Netta looked at them and tried desperately to place Caspia in that grouping amongst the corpses. She did not know what Ash was referring to, but she wanted so desperately to, even with her last breath, to strike a blast of energy directly through her Sister's heart.

"You hate me, don't you?" Caspia asked. Netta tried to pinpoint which of the three figures that she had narrowed it down to could be her sisters.

Caspia spoke again, sarcasm burning through her words with cruelty. "Always too good for the rest of us. Hera chose you as her pledge, and you exhibited all of the magical prowess of a sewer rat. Why, I bet that -"

GOT YOU.

About to ask Ash what he meant by that, Netta was overwhelmed in a moment by the feel of fire arching up her back, seeming to begin in the pit of her belly before it radiated downwards and then through the rest of her.

She gasped in pain, on the verge of collapsing.

And then the ground shook.

Somewhere, she could hear Ash yelling. She thought that she was hearing what sounded like an earthquake.

The sight of the thing, shooting from below the ground and ripping ahead of her, ripped her mind into pieces.

It came out of the ground, ripping the Earth around it like paper as it thrashed, blindly, sending reanimated corpses and one Witch, flying.

All around her seemed to be only screaming.

Netta had fallen back on the ground, splayed out. Somewhere, some remnant of Ash's voice ordered her to get to her feet.

It was as she was regaining her balance that she looked up and realized, as she saw the robed figures fleeing and getting hit by the monstrous thing, what she was looking at.

She recognized it, moments before the arm twisted in Its hole and reached over, seemingly blind, and grasped a hold of a robed figure, squeezed.

Netta stood, feeling her sense of reality distort, break.

RUN, An unfamiliar, but heartbreakingly memorized voice rang out in her mind.

It sounded like metal ringing against flesh, a shipful of people crying out against a wave about to crash on them.

Netta staggered back, stared up at It all before her, her earlier bluster - and her Sister - all but forgotten.

She stared at It, Its red flesh gaunt and tight against the shape of its arm, ending in a large hand that whipped around until It grabbed another form with ability unnatural to a blind limb.

It crushed the figure, the sound of it crying out muffled by the destruction that the thing caused. The movement sent a house that had been the home of a lone tree that had grown from the center and through the collapsed roof, crashing to the ground.

It was in a horrible moment that Netta understood what she was looking at.  And then she heard his voice, heartbreak playing in a mad duet with a rage that she was incapable of understanding, roaring at her. FLEE, DON'T LET ME KILL YOU.

Netta almost fell backward again. Then she got a sense of what the voice - surely not her husband's, not belonging to the voice of a being whose very existence was the antithesis of Ash's - meant.

The arm thrashed, and she heard a roar that pierced, syringe-like, through the walls of her mind.

The arm struck a dessicated tree and sent it flying at Netta.

Crying out, she leaped, just managing to dodge it hitting her. She was about to turn around when she felt the hand clapping on her shoulder.

"Well," a familiar, cold voice yelled out over the sounds of mass destruction. "I certainly did not anticipate this turn of events."

It had been snowing also the day that Netta had walked out of the back door of the cabin they were vacationing in.

The Coven was staying in the Rockies that winter.  Most of the Sisters were busy inside of the cabin, helping Hera with some magic that needed made. Because Netta had no magic to speak of, she was told that she could go outside to leave the others alone.

Netta did not argue, was relieved to have a chance to go outside. After all, outside lay the mountains, which she could explore on her own. She could go a few hours without the unwanted attention of her Sisters.

Eager to go, she almost missed the odd, mewling sound off of the path that lead away from the cabin.

Netta paused, stopping, thinking that she had imagined the sound. When she heard it - again - she followed the sound.

Even as she walked to it, a sense of terrible dread began to grow in her. She almost didn't push the overhanging branches of the great pine back to reveal the source of the sound.

When Netta did, she was repulsed - appalled - immediately by what she found.

Splayed on the ground, the yellow-striped kitten seemed almost as though it had turned robotic. It twitched, never seemed to stop letting out a wretched sound that reminded Netta, eerily, of weeping.

And crouching over it in her black coat sat Caspia.

Netta ran, crouching on the opposite side of Caspia, hands ready to scoop the poor creature up.

"Stop!"

Netta froze, her Sister's voice, angry, alone capable of making Netta do as she had said. She turned her gaze up, only then seeing the terrible expression on her Sister's face.

The girl's face had turned pale, matching the color of the snow around her. Her eyes seemed to bulge, their browns seeming to be filled with an infernal light.

Netta's mouth fell open. "Casp-"

The girl interrupted her, smacking her hands away from the mewling, writhing animal between them. When she spoke, it seemed to resonate from deep in her throat.

"Do not touch my subject. You will not - ruin my experiments."

Netta looked down at the cat, then had to look away, slamming her eyes shut at the terrible expression on the little thing's face. It twisted, contorted, wrinkling its features into a permenant, desperate grimace, shaking.

Still closing her eyes, Netta stuttered out, "W-w-what is - what are you-"

Caspia interrupted once more, her voice cold, her words coming out quickly. "You won't - you don't get to sabotage my experiments, the growth of my power. I don't care what anyone thinks of my power, how accursed it seems."

Netta dared, finally, to open her eyes. Still, her thoughts were haunted — clouded - by the sound the kitten made. It was a yowling sound, thick with mucus.

She gazed at Caspia, saw how the girl seemed to possess a tremble, how she seemed to be barely suppressing tears. Her face seem shaken between overwhelming anger - and sadness.

Netta said, "What are you talking about? What is your power?"

Caspia managed a shaking smile. "I can use death to bring back what's dead. Recently dead - is what I'm best at."

Recently dead -

Netta's gaze darted down to the poor thing. Terrible understanding came to her then, as she rose her gaze back up to her adopted Sister.

"You killed - you killed this cat, didn't you?"

Caspia's face wrinkled, then she snarled, looking herself almost cat-like. "I cannot - I can't seem to bring life back into them. I can only animate them, and they always come back in agony. But, how else am I supposed to practice my hateful power in secret? I wield the power of death - no one will love me if they discover what I am capable of."

What she said was true. Netta knew, of how in the Witch community, that Witches whose power was referred to as Death Arts were the most reviled.

All Witches, it was said, could do most magic, and in some way their magic could be used in fighting. All Witches, it was said, had but one focus, one specialty that was regarded as their Talent.

Death was a terrible one to have anything to do with.

For most Witches, it was regarded as a far better thing to never practice such a Talent, let alone make use of it.

To want to practice such a thing as resurrection...

Netta lowered a trembling hand onto the body of the writhing Kitten, felt how even underneath its writhing, there seemed to be no internal animation. She loathed to do it, but she rose her hand up its wet, cold body, pressed a finger over its chest.

The kitten possessed no heartbeat.

Netta rose her eyes back up to Caspia, saw the stilling, dark expression on her Sister's face. She wanted to ask, to beg why she was doing this.

Instead, it was her Sister who spoke.

"Want to damn me, Nettles? Your mother, my Master, told me to do this. To learn how to use my magic - for the good of the Coven. She ordered me to do this in secret so that the others needn't ever learn of this." Her mouth twitched in another, horrible, smile. "After all, terrible even though my power is, it's better than what you do, no? No magic - you may as well be a bloody human. A wretched rat, weak to the whims of our kind."

Netta stood up, feeling hot tears burning down her face. "S-stop - don't talk like that -"

As she ran off, she could hear Caspia calling after her, her voice teasing, hateful. "Weakling, weakling, run away, run away..."