Netta could not shake off the will that had possessed her. She looked down, could see her dominant hand grasping the knife, her feet moving.   She had begun to walk towards the shivering mass of the two bound Witches on the ground.

 Netta could hear their cries, their muffled pleas.

The yelling was overpowered by a soothing, authoritative voice.  "Neith, bend down and with that knife, make an incision on first the girl's arm and then cut that traitor's throat."

Amidst their screaming and thrashing, Netta bent down and made an incision on first the Ophelia's arm.

Her screaming rang in Netta's hollowed mind.

Next, she watched as her hands forced Erwinnia's head back, wielding a blade that had a small smear of the girl's blood still on the edge of it.

"Daughter, stop."

The sound of her mother's voice made Netta stop. She was holding the hyperventilating Witch's hair in her hand, was about to press the woman's neck to the blade.

"Drop her."

Netta did as she was told, the solid sound of Erwinnia's head smacking against the ground ringing, for a moment stifling Erwinnia's cries.

"Walk back to the table and sit."

Netta did it and as soon as she sat, she felt as though a fog that had been clouding her mind had lifted.

She gasped and dropped the knife onto the table.  "Goddess, no, oh, no -"

Sia said then, "Is this really a reason for dramatics? It would have been patently obvious to anyone with the ability to keep a coherent thought in her mind that you were born to obey Mother."

"What? What does that mean?"

Netta's trembling increased as she ran her hands up and down her pants, trying to rub off an evil influence as though she had touched something rotten.

"Now, Saorise," Hera said, smiling gently at her eldest daughter almost indulgently, but with her eyes dark. "was it your place to broach that subject?"

Sia looked down at her plate. "I apologize, Mother."

The sound of the two on the floor crying into each other, with the girl's cries muffled against Erwinnia's neck in an armless attempt at comfort, almost drove Netta mad.

Netta turned back to her Mother, almost wishing for sanity, for hope. When she looked in her mother's face, she found that Hera was smiling in a way that did not quite reach her eyes, an almost indulgent smile on her lips.

"Seeing as how my willful eldest has decided to tell you, then I must confess something to you. You were an experiment, in a sense. One that I was wracked with the guilt of watching become botched before my very eyes."

Hera raised her hands up to her head, despair for a moment written on her face. "I had invested much in your birth, then watched as all of your potential seemed to wither in front of me." Slowly, Hera smiled. "But now I see that out of all of the stimulation we subjected you to, we failed to give you something to care about, or any pride to draw from. Look at you now!" She laughed, a warmth in her eyes then almost motherly in its pride, its hint at unconditional love. "You're all I ever wanted in a daughter - powerful, unusual - broken to my will."

"I am not broken."

"What was that?"

Netta clenched her teeth together. "I am not broken."

"Ah, that's sweet." Hera tut-tutted. "Dear, pick up that knife and go cut the throat of the one that you care the most for."

"NO!" Netta shouted it, even as she felt her hands scrabbling for the knife.

"No? That sounds like the little girl that I used to watch cry as her Sisters pulled her hair out. I want to hear the Witch who knows her place - beneath her mother."

Netta bit back a cry as her hand closed around the blade's edge, tightened her hand as she tried to control herself.

The pain of the blade cutting into her lower palm was wretched and worked as an anchoring point for her mind.

"Please." She sobbed.

"Please what?"

"Please - don't make me kill."

"My dear, it's too late for that. If you want to stop having to kill, then I would appreciate it if you would crawl over here and kiss my feet."

Netta dropped the knife and crawled quickly underneath the table, moving on all fours. The pain of her wounded hand was like a searing, hot piece of metal being jammed into it. She did not care.

She walked to her mother and, unhesitating, took her mother's high-heeled foot in her uninjured hand.   She recognized the overwhelming scent of rosewater, gagging her.

She raised the foot to her lips and kissed it, then waited.

"Now, mongrel, crawl out from under the table and let me pet you."

Netta did as she told her and felt her mother's hand on her head, wincing at the awful weight of it.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see the two on the floor watching her with wide, wet eyes. Netta closed her eyes, tried to imagine a face that seemed to be leaving her memory, the shape of large, spindling horns fading away.

"That's a good girl. I never told you that, did I? Well, I'm telling you now." Hera thrust her hand into Netta's hair, her nails scraping roughly.  She had begun to dig rivets that made Netta have to bite her bottom lip to keep from crying out.

 "Tell me that you love me."

Netta's throat constricted and she had to bite the words out. "I love you."

"Now, call me mommy."

"I love you, Mother." In her mind, Netta tried to remember a warmth that filled her until it hurt. Someone had loved her, she thought, becoming less and less certain of that fact as the moments passed on her knees.

Hera chuckled good naturedly and began to return to petting her.

"Ah, now now - I told you to call me mommy. If you have difficulty listening to direction, then I can make it easier for you to obey me..."

"Mommy." She realized, as she felt the wetness covering her face, that she had been silently crying.

"Open your eyes. Look at me."

Netta gazed up at her, and tried to find a way to love those eyes that held her eternity like a fist coiled tight.

"Do you miss you mother's cooking?"

"Yes, mommy."

"Eat, my dear." Netta waited, then saw a welcoming spark in her mother's eyes.

Forgive me, she begged someone whose name was lost to her. There was someone, a person whose only remnant left in her mind was the smell of earth - of new life - and death.

"Good, Neith, good. Get to your feet and sit next to me. You've earned the right to sit at the table tonight -"

It was Sia who spoke up, her voice angry. "Mother, why does she get to sit closer to you, I want to be by your side always -"

"Silence!" Hera shouted and the house almost shook to its foundations.

Everyone was silent.

"You have provided me with little in the way of what my middle child has, now. I realize now that I should have raised you all as subhuman creatures, human or no. I will work to rectify that problem with you two. For now, Neith will sit and eat."

Netta did as she was told, as the plate in Calliope's empty seat was replaced with her previous one.

Feeling no hunger - quite the opposite, actually - Netta nevertheless began to eat, voraciously.

Beryl laughed at her. "Look at that bitch, eating like a starving mutt -"

"What did I just say, Beryl?" Hera's voice was deceivingly calm, but the sound of it was like her nails jamming into Netta's scalp. "I will not take either of you speaking in that way towards my servant. Neith, eat well and I'll tell you a story."

It all began with a Monster who possessed a head full of secrets. A Monster who happened to have a vested desire in having a role in turning a mechanism that would transfigure the world into Its antipode.

It needed the aid of a Witch, one whose single minded desire for greatness would allow her to see past the danger of the taboo, the unknown.

It was around the turn of the twentieth century that the black, curling smoke of the Monsters that the humans had created, spread.

 These were unmagical creations of mechanical, will-less energy who belched fire and smoke. The mortals, once seen as mere casualties in the middle of the war they could never understand, seemed to ascend to power with shocking speed.

The humans, it seemed, were no longer content with destroying only the magic that existed in their cities.

At this time, the Witch, with the advice of the Monster, took the aid of her ward, Calliope, in tracking and selecting five of their own kind.

For a season, they waited, the Witches they followed living the last Fall of their lives. With the coming of the first frost, there came the sudden - violent - deaths of those poor women they had tracked.

Their deaths - as was apparent, even to a human - were ritualistic. Carved into their flesh was the image of a a ring of horns, interconnected.   What had made them special - chosen - was their lack of connection to a Monster.

Each death represented a link in a chain that stretched as far back as the first time that a Monster had ever lifted Its gaze, wonderously, on a girl child.

 Their deaths transformed them into a vast chain that was being built, interconnected.

When they had finished -

Hera, her naked body slick still with the blood of the final sacrifice, laid the Monster down and sat astride It.

Having followed the knowledgeable, ancient Monster's instructions to a T, It gifted the Witch with a single gift.  Given to her was a second biological daughter unlike any Human daughter who had ever been born.

After the creation of the girl, all that was left was another five murders in order to gain the attention of the first of Its kind.

They would await for the girl to herald the coming of the once-King, and then she would be sacrificed to him.

And Hera would become Its immortal Queen.

"How?"

Hera smiled indulgently at Netta, reaching over to scrape her laquered red nails against Netta's cheek.

"Hush, child. In you sleeps enough deaths to provide more than enough to tear back the caul that blinds - Him. Your magic sung with each of those deaths, and now It's keening in Its cry, needing a Queen's touch to take It over from Its surrogate..."

Somewhere, Netta could make sick sense of what her mother was telling her, but she struggled to understand what she was being told.  She, a surrogate of some dark power - what did it mean?  Was it all just some manifestation of her Mother's madness?

Even thinking that she could make sense of it was enough to make her stomach feel as though it was about to turn in itself.

"Deaths? The others - they were meant to die?"

Her Sisters - all of Gardenia - almost all of Oleander -

"Why else would I have deigned to fatten such useless bovine as the cast-off remains of human's sex? They were fine harvests, imbued with hatred and a misplaced sense of trust."

Netta shut her eyes, wished then that she could keep them closed forever.

"Open your eyes." When Netta did not automatically obey, Hera snapped, "Open your eyes or kill one of your pets."

Netta snapped her eyes opened and gazed at her mother.

"Good. You shall make a fine sacrifice to the Once King, and with your death you shall break your bond to It."

Netta blinked, fear striking her. "My... bond to It? What are you talking about?"

Beryl giggled.

Hera gave her a soothing, pitying look.

 She said, "My child, It is no longer any of your concern any longer. You did well, and for that I thank you, carrying the King to me like a parasite, allowing him to stay strong as he feasted on your flesh and blood."

Netta had to turn her head away, fighting to not retch at what he Mother was insinuating.

 "No - I couldn't have - Oh, Goddess-"

She was interrupted by the sound of the two women on the ground, frantically yelling through their gags.

Netta turned, looked at them. She was surprised by the impression that the two were trying to tell her something, specifically something.

"Neith, look at your mother."

Netta turned her head away from the two to gaze back at her mother.

Hera smiled at her, reaching forward to run her graceful, long fingers along the shape of her daughter's face.

 "Everything I have done has been for the good of our kind. We have lived beneath the weight of humanity's ignorant, callous cruelty since the Silver Kite thought that she could control magic to make it go into hiding. However - there was a built-in failsafe for the way things have gone. Some call it the end of our world, but it is only the beginning, for those of us who have magic still in our blood. Under my authority, I will order the Monsters' King to raze the overgrowth of weeds, and in its place Its kind will grow, once more." 

Hera ran her fingers down to Netta's chin. "Witches needn't ever fear discovery, to be treated with the indignacy of the inheritor of some foul, rare genetic disorder. And there will be Monsters, enough for all Witches, and they will obey the will of their King as they have always been compelled to.    And their King will obey me."

Netta shook her head, took her Mother's hand off of her chin. "This is - madness. Mother, what've you turned into?"

Hera sighed, the disappointment clear in her face. She shook her head. "It's no matter. You were not born to understand the reason for your existence. Perhaps it was only cruel folly to explain this to you. But - your sorrow will end shortly enough. The enchantment I have wound on our home will soon work its way into you, sap you of every vestige of memory of your time with the Traitor King, then with the breaking of your will, you will lose your tie to It."

Netta sat back in her chair, shrinking. "Breaking... my will?"

"It's how it has to be, daughter. You cannot have control over It, if we are to sacrifice you to the King."