She knew the sound of her older sister's voice from anywhere.

Netta turned around, unsure of what was happening.     

Ash? Was that thing Ash? Was her husband even the real Ash, or was the thing underground the real him? 

She tried, desperately, to find some aspect of him to draw magic from. When none came, she turned to face her sister.

Sia's spell-enhanced beauty seemed almost to make her glow. Her exquisite, thin brows and the full plushness of her lips, all painted on painstakingly with magic etched into her flesh, barely seemed to move more than a few muscles in her face were capable of.   

As a result, she looked at her younger sister with a look of disaffection and what seemed like boredom, even as her brown eyes seemed to bore into Netta, almost looking as though they had turned hollow, black.

Netta struggled, almost fell backward, crying out. "S-stay away from me!"

"Oh, come now - or what? Your feral friend's going to kill me? My dear, it looks to me as though that thing's busy killing puppets instead of being in any way possible helpful to Its Master. I'd wager that It's not able to tell the difference between squeezing the life out of one of Cassie's toys - or Its dear Master. Am I right on that order?" 

At some point when she had begun to speak, Sia reached for Netta's arm in a grip that would be considered in any other family to be meant as reassuring. 

Netta only grew cold, the loss of Ash's willpower and determination as much a source as the fire that he seemingly embodied.

"Let my arm go," Netta said, almost in a pantomime of what she thought she would do, if she just had the strength to mean it. As it stood, all she could manage was to try to jerk her arm free of her sister's grip.

Sia laughed. "Come now. That's not a kind thing to tell your dearest eldest sister, now, is it? Why don't you come with me outside of the perimeter of that crazed beast and we can talk reasonably-"

Another voice literally flew at them before a shape landed, as though thrown, smashing into the ground. 

Standing there, with her hood fallen completely off of her head, was Caspia.

The injured Witch looked from Netta before flinching, then looked squarely at Sia. "What are you doing? Kill her."

Sia turned to look at her, her head craned slightly to the side, as though examining a piece of art - or trash - that she could not comprehend. "Kill her? Why, for what for?"

As Netta looked at her Sisters, she knew that she should be feeling a boiling rage and wished, shaking with it, that she could feel the determination to simply act on it.

They stood in front of her, murderers, and all she could do was shake.

Caspia looked at Netta, her eyes sunken, hollow in their sockets, her face pallid. "Kill the root system and it'll stop the top from floweri-"

"You fucking idiot." Sia said, in the same tone of voice that an aunt would sweetly encourage her charge. "Do you seriously think that this milquetoast is seriously in any way in charge of the thing that's smashing your toybox to bits?"

Caspia turned to look at her one more time as despair seemed to contort her face. "O-oh Goddess - maybe, if we torture her, It'll -"

Sia sighed deeply and in a way that suggested that the effort she was expending was heroic. "It'll what? The creature's a rabid animal, does It even recognize Its bride from one of her Sisters?"

Netta tried then, hesitating only for a moment before she plunged herself into the place that Ash had once occupied in (usually) good humor in her mind. 

She found it empty, save for the tie that had been summarily severed. As she tried to make sense of what she felt, a force seem to pulse in her mind, in reaction to her trying to reach out. 

She fell back and away from it instinctively.

It felt as though she had tried to reach out for her husband's hand underneath a blanket and felt a heavy paw instead.

"I woundn't bother to try to reach that one, Nettles," Sia said. "It's too far beyond anyone's reach right now. A pity. I would have loved to have tried to cut It off of you for my own. I mean," she laughed. "would you just look at him, I can't even conceive of how big the rest of It is down there..."

"What'll we do now?" Caspia asked, her voice barely suppressing a tremble that shook the rest of her.

"I figure that I'll get out of here before I can get a chance to see the rest of It under there. It's probably not best to be here when It comes aground, wouldn't you agree, Nettles?"

"We're taking her with us?" Caspia sounded astounded.

Sia sighed. "Do you ever shut up? I will consider taking Nettles with us, away from that thing she's married to, if she admits to her wrongdoing." 

Sia stared at Netta, her eyes seeming to bore through her head. A smile began at the corners of her lips, and for a moment Netta saw only the shape of her grinning skull beneath her soft, perfect skin.

Netta began to tremble. 

In the distance, she heard a loud crash, followed by the sound of multiple voices of the damned crying out in an awful symphony as they were being destroyed.  

She clenched her eyes shut and wished that she were back in a warm place, where Ash surrounded her, both mentally as well as physically.

"Nettles," Sia said in a soft, almost sing-songy voice. "Think about what I'm offering you, Nettles. If you staaaaay here without any magic, he'll kiiilllllllllll you."

"And what will become of me, if I go with you?" 

Netta could not force herself to meet her older sister's gaze, so she looked instead at her feet. 

She had no place with any pride in her heart any longer. Her Coven were murdered.

Sia grabbed her by her shoulders, forced Netta's head up to look at her.  This close to her, Netta felt as though her lungs were being filled with the smell of her cloying perfume. 

"I offer you a chance to redeem yourself - as a true daughter of Hera. You can die here, or turn yourself to me." Her frown, which had been turning as she had spoke, broke, turning into an insidious grin. "You can trust in me, dear little Sister, or you can be crushed by your own creation."

Caspia broke in then, her voice a panic. "What - she tried to kill me, Sia, she killed Millie-"

"Shut up, wretch."

"E-e-excuse me?" Caspia's voice sounded like it belonged to a child who had never been struck before being punched by her mother.

Sia gave her an eerie, knowing look before she turned to look at the shocked Witch. "Your Familiar's energy was burned away in your last-ditch attempt to save your skin.  Do you know how much your life is worth to me, with no magic?"

Caspia trembled, her eyes burning with tears.  Finally, she managed to say, "S-Sia, what would your Mother say-"

"Shut up.  None of you adopted mutts knew our mother.   Every day you call and tell me or Beryl," she began to advance then on Caspia, her arm rising as she did. "every day you call and ask what to do next." Her voice rose in a high, mocking falsetto. ""Siiaaaa, why do I have to do this to the bodies", "Beryyyylll, I can't sleeeep, their voices scream at me when I close my eyeeesss" - do you want to know what I would do about those voices in your head?"

And it happened in an instant, Caspia falling backwards and Netta recognizing, only as she flew to the ground, that a bolt of energy that had looked like a bolt of ink, aimed at her head.

Netta gasped and watched her adopted sibling's face, thinking up until Sia had come up to her to grab her by her shoulders in an iron grip, that she would open her eyes at any moment.

"Y-y-y-you killed her!" Netta shouted it at her sister's face.

"So says the murderer of four of our adopted sisters. Oh well." Sia sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes. "I do suppose that that brings down the number of our adopted siblings drastically, to one. And that brings up back, full circle, to the question that I had asked you earlier."

Netta knew, somewhere, that she was right - that she had killed much in the way of her own kind. 

What right did she have to have the moral high ground?

Still, though, she recalled her trying to get Millicent to see reason, how she had hoped to not have to allow it to come to blood being spilled.

She thought, then, of those at the Christmas party, wondered how they had died.

When she felt the fire begin in her chest, she thought for a moment of hope that with it had returned Ash. As she reached for that feeling, like she was pulling a blade out of its sheath, she instead found that Ash was not her.

What she was feeling was anger, her own. 

And it burned, purifying her mind of her own feelings of self-preservation, giving her a resolve that seethed in hatred and indignation.

When she looked up into her sister's eyes, she felt the words coming out of her. They were not the words of the woman who had lived a spinster's existence surrounded, entombed by humans.

"I would leap into a fire rather than trust you."

Sia grinned. "Now you sound like Mother. Finally. Oh, well, if you want to die by Its hands, who am I to fight? Ah, I should mention, however - if you're not in the mood for suicide," she reached forward then and began to trace along the line of Netta's cheek with a distracted duet of fingers. "then I feel the need to inform you that I rendered your car unusable, if fleeing is on your mind. Sorry." 

She reached over with her other hand, this one traveling down. "My, what a pity, too. What a wonder living with magic in your veins has done to your body. Last I heard, you looked... dumpy. I had my doubts about how you had let that immortality gift kick in only once you hit your thirties - what man or woman wants an old maid - but hmmm..." 

Sia's hand cupped one of Netta's breasts, and a red rage took over Netta's mind.

Netta's hand snaked out and grasped Sia's in a tight grip. A sick satisfaction took her as she felt the crack in her hand as she twisted, breaking bone.

Sia cried out, and Netta felt an answering pain in her shoulder, sending her falling to the ground in pain.

"You worthless whore," Sia spat out. "I offered you a place at my feet and you took the street instead."

Even in her pain, Netta found herself shouting, "I would take the street again and again over that!"

Netta tried to get up, then found that she could not make her legs move.

Sia laughed. "Try it again - I locked your legs, you stupid, ugly bitch. Try to escape your husband without the use of your legs!"

Netta felt a ripple of energy, and she looked up to realize that her sister had gone.

As if in answer, Netta heard from behind her the cacophonous sound of what sounded like the Earth being ripped open.

Blind fear as Netta tried to drag her legs.  She did not dare to turn around, as much as her mind screamed to.

She gasped, her mouth fallen open as she tried to drag herself somewhere, anywhere, hoping to flee the Thing that roared.  

Its resurfacing aboveground had triggered the sky to turn black, the clouds above to begin an enraged swirling, the wind to begin to thrash what bare plantlife there was.

As she crawled, she spared a thought for how glad she was that she had thought to put some outer wear on. She had fallen down on top of some broken sidewalk, had crawled excruciatingly close to the police barricades.

Trying to focus on her pace, Netta accidentally dropped her palm onto a piece of broken glass. 

She yelled out before she had a chance to clamped her hand over her mouth.

She looked at her palm, saw the jagged piece of glass, lodged just shy of the tendon attaching her hand to her pinkie.  

Netta wondered, fearfully, if she should be right to be worried about It hearing her.

There was a moment of silence that seemed to last for too long.

Netta, as though she could feel eyes on her, turned around and saw a sight that would render a human insane. 

It seemed to tower in the greatest sense of the word, looking from where Netta stood at her height, like Its horns could slice open the angry sky itself.

Undeniably, It looked directly down at her.

She felt a sense of horror clench itself tightly around her, then she felt the Earth beneath her gave way, so that at first it seemed as though she was falling, falling down and away from the God that looked down at her.

And then the falling stopped. 

Netta, with her useless legs and horror-struck mind, could only comprehend the Earth disappearing from beneath her as the sky seemed to to come closer and closer. 

Looking down, she realized that the surface was soft to the touch. As her unhurt hand pressed down, she realized, with a jolt, that she was in the center of the palm of a massive hand.