Netta found that while her hands were no longer under her control, she could speak. "What are you talking about?"

Her mother walked across the room to the small, pot-bellied stove that was on. Bending down, Hera opened the front hatch, peered into it before she stepped away, walking towards Netta.

Netta flinched, then felt a sense of rage beat through her that made her shake. She snapped, "What is all of this? What the fuck do you want from me?"

Hera smirked at her, her youthful features disturbingly ill-fitting for the knowing, cold expression in her eyes.

In a single, swift movement, Hera grasped onto the top edge of the photo album. Hera said, "I want you to understand why this is all necessary. I want you to have some... concept of what it took to bring you to life. What I went through that made me understand why this all had to happen."

Hera took a breath, then pulled, taking the book with her in a quick yank. She said, "I was the orphan of a far larger Coven - the kind that your precious Gardenia was, before I had them trampled."

Netta tried to jerk, the need to strike her mother coming, then leaving her in a single gust.

Hera's smirk seemed to grow, almost in understanding of what Netta was thinking. She said, "We lived in a calm, until the day that my Sister, Isolde, discovered through her research, that there had been a definite decrease in the abundance of magic in the world. We laughed. Magic would live forever - damned though it is, it always triumphed over the wills of the Humans. That was before the Humans started to plant the big, noisy machines everywhere." Hera's smirk started to disappear then, fading, even as the cruel glint to her eyes darkened.

"That's when the Familiars - our companions - began to fade. For everyone.

'Ours were the first Witches to ever witness the death of magic. We were camped out, traveling as we had since the magic had begun to die, when one of my Sisters was beset with grief. I had a chance - I should have killed her then, but I decided to hide her sickness. A day later, she was discovered by some humans, when she went on a killing spree, the influence of a Monster possessing her. The clergy - they cornered us, killed most of us. I watched all but one of the women I considered my family burnt alive. Calliope was the only one who managed to escape with me, and she too bore witness to the horror of both humans and Monsters."

Netta found herself realizing something. She said, "Callie - she knew what was going on, didn't she?"

Gazing up at her mother, Netta was overcome with the instinctual need - for her mother to refute what Netta already knew to be true.

Hera's lips lifted softly - as close to pitying as Netta had ever seen in her life from the woman. "I am truly sorry, but she knew what was to happen. She knew that most of the others would have to die. Then she knew that you would be forced back into the fold, lied to like the rest."

"Why."

Hera did smile then, looking down at the photo book. "She saw the very same thing I did on that night, two hundred years ago. She saw how we were hunted like cornered rats, how a Monster rendered one of us into a rabid animal. She knew what lengths we would need to go through, to protect what is left - as well as to build what needs to be created. A fresh start, with power returning to Monsters, and with us to assume control over the humans."

Netta stared at the madwoman who was her mother, then slowly said, "You talked, before, about the end of the world."

Hera paused, then smiled. "Nothing is so absolute so as to destroy us. Humans will die - many of them - but It'll re-awaken the magic, give us power."

"Not just humans," Netta interrupted, anger writhing in her mind. "You've killed our own kind. Our kin."

"Not I. Your sisters."

Netta felt it then, the hot, angry tears that began to wear their way down her cheeks. "You made them do it."

"I made no one do anything. Never. All I've ever done is recommend and advise, and you girls do whatever I I tell you to. I never killed anyone. Callie killed every Witch that we needed to create a pact with your father, and through the proxy of Saorise, Coven Gardenia became most of the catalyst that is needed to give us enough magic to complete the ceremony."

"Why them?"

"Hm?"

Netta felt as though everything in her body shook in a rage that she could barely keep out of her voice. "Why - did you need to kill them?"

Hera blinked, the expression on her face as though she were trying to think of how to patiently explain a simple concept. "They distracted you. Filled your head with false hope. They needed to die so that you had a chance to return to your family. Now, tell me, how would you feel if I said that there's another way out of this?"

Before Netta could answer, Hera walked across the room, back to the small stove. She glanced down at the book of photographs, her face expressionless before she turned her gaze back to Netta. In a single, quick movement, Hera flicked the book into the fire.

Netta twitched, the only sign that she wanted to jerk in response to the sudden, barbaric move. She gazed at the book, helpless as the flames enveloped it.

As she saw the ravenous flames enfolding the title, eating it, Netta lifted her gaze to her mother's face.

Hera smiled a patient, warm smile at her daughter. "Well. That's that, then."

Netta spoke suddenly, saying, "The dead - for some of them, that was the only sign that they ever lived -"

"-I think that if we asked them," Hera interrupted cleanly. "they would prefer that you hadn't killed them. This is the least of what's been done to your adopted Sisters."

Netta closed her mouth, lowered her gaze to the glowing light reflected from the flames on the floor. The tears fell down her cheeks, horrible in how they seemed to dampen the fire of anger that had held her true.

Hera's voice seemed to cut through the haunting reflection of the flames on the wood floor.

"Enough! There is no time for weeping over the loss of simple photographs. You need to make a decision, based on everything that I've put before you. Everything that you've been taught over the last two months."

Netta turned, stiff in how little control she had over her body.

She gazed at her mother. For some reason, the sight of Hera's face, green eyes that she had once had, had given to her husband, felt like a hypnotic brightness that fought equally with the fire.

Netta opened her mouth, but could not say anything.

Hera's gaze sharpened and Netta felt a flinch begin in the back of her spine. It rose like a fire that she could not put out.

Her mother said, "Nothing that you've enduring has not been by accident. The cruelty you undoubtedly remember of me? I pressed for it, meaning to push you, to stimulate the potential that you would have otherwise never grown."

Netta could speak then, looking up, almost as though begging for sense, reason, from her mother. "You - had me exiled, you let me and the adopted think you had died, then you - you caused Gardenia to be slaughtered?"

Hera smiled, then chuckled. "You can count it all out. Yes. I... "caused" it all, but again, I never touched anything. I only spoke, planned. Like what I am doing here."

Netta barked it out, her voice harsh. "What do you want from me?"

Hera leaned over, slammed shut the door on the stove shut. "You can become my sacrifice, or you can opt to stand by my side. I will require one of your kind, to give me my magic."

"Either way, I will be a slave or dead." Even Netta was surprised by what she said.

Hera laughed, a barking, indelicate sound. "Astute! But cynical. You are getting ahead of yourself, you are making base assumptions over what I have planned for well over a hundred years. My child, you are the first I wish to save from the destruction to come." When Netta opened her mouth to speak, once more Hera interrupted well before she could start. "I know that after all that you've gone through, that you deserve a catharsis to the pain that you have undergone for your whole life. If you consent to be with me - save all of us, our world - then I will give you your sisters."

It took Netta a moment to understand what her mother was saying. When she understood, she felt as though the world was falling out from under her. Or, perhaps, she was falling into it.

"You - would let me kill - Beryl and Sia?"

Hera held her hands far apart, aloft. "Let you kill - that is close to what I mean, although not exactly. I mean to let you take you vengeance on them, whatever that may mean to you. I would let you take you sisters to task for what they did to you - the damage they caused to your dignity over the years."

For a moment, Netta thought that she would be sick. She wanted to hunch over, to grasp a hold of her face, but her body was not her own and she remained, as though pinioned like a suffocated butterfly. She could feel how her eyes bulged out of her head.

Hera laughed. "If you could only see your face right now - you look devastated." She held her fingers to her mouth, as though to conceal a playfully coy smile that grew on her red, red lips. "You know all too well the life and death nature of the game that's been played to this point. You did care for that Coven that I watched you play with, my little cuckoo. I went into those woods as often as I wished, watched you and those women - your fake family. Their murders - they haunt you, don't they?"

Netta stared, helpless, at her mother. Finally, she said, "But you - you killed them."

Hera rose her hand to her forehead, a tired look on her face. "As I have said before - I never killed anyone, I only suggested to others that they commit such acts for their own benefit."

"And then you made someone else kill them."

Hera's smile began to fade as she examined her daughter. "Don't continue to be stupid. Stupidity does not suit the ugly or the weak. I have told you outright what I want - what I will have - and you continue to remain stuck on the middling detail of what has been done and cannot ever hope to be undone. What I offer you, in secret, is not only a place by my side. Not only an ability to live in immortality by my side. I will give you the two who have destroyed what you treasured."

Netta stared up at her mother as her mind fought to grasp onto what Hera asked of her - ordered her.

The voice came in her mind, a hushed, familiar voice that belonged to her father. Don't trust anything she says, Netta.

Another spoke up - the rough, heavy voice of Ash echoed in Netta's mind. I won't see you subservient to her, not ever again.

Hera spoke, as though in direct answer to a voice that she could not possibly have heard. "Do not mistake this for what it isn't. I am offering you a chance to either live or die. If you cooperate, you will have your dignity and your revenge."

A cry choked in the back of Netta's throat and she had to shut her eyes for a moment, overcome with emotion. "You'll never be able to control everything, Hera."

Her mother turned her gaze to Netta, seeming to weigh her down. "I don't need your agreement to take what I want, but by the time I am finished with the preparations, I'll let you decide which you would rather see tortured. Those impressionable Witches who've followed you this far, or the two responsible for the deaths of that little Coven of yours."

The sound of the door locking brought Netta into a sharp understanding that they had been trapped.  Shoved into the vast, enchanted space of the seemingly never ending storage room, Netta had been too deeply embedded in a state of shock to be able to understand what was happening

Netta reached into her mind, spoke to the two that she found there. Isn't there anything that either of you can do? Can't we find some way to break through the magic seal that they've made with the enchantment?

When they quietly, sadly, told her that they knew of no way to defeat the seal that had been made, she sighed and sat back against the wall. Netta had begun to wish in earnest that she had never been awoken from her dream.

Before she had been taken into this place, she had tried to summon on the vast stores of energy that she could feel, beating inside of her. As she tried to focus it, however, Netta was shocked to realize that she could not pull it loose, squashed almost entirely by the weight of the bondage of her mother's magic.

And now Netta was going to be killed - or worse.

She realized then that the ones that relied on her would undoubtedly find themselves at the mercy of a Witch incapable of compassion. Her skin crawled, her thoughts and anxiety so loud that they were louder than the voices of Ash.

Closing her eyes, she was snapped back to reality by the girl's voice.

"Did you hear me?"

Netta opened her eyes and looked up, weakly. Her gaze was met with the haunted, wide eyes of the girl who seemed to have regained something like innocence. The sight of the frightened Ophelia brought Netta back from the brink of her despair like a slap to the back of her head.

She struggled, wanting to smile, no matter how weakly, for the girl's benefit. "N-no dear. What were you saying?"

"I was saying - there's got to be something in here - something that can help us -"

Netta shut her eyes and felt the memory of Erwinnia's seemingly insane suggestion that she be the one to save the naive girl from a future that was like Netta's earlier life buzz in her mind.

She wanted to weep, to scream.

"I - I don't want to kill," she felt herself say, tears beginning to fall from her face.

Ophelia was in front of her, grabbing her by her shoulders.

"You're the only thing that can help us! Please, listen to me."

Netta looked up into the girl's luminous eyes. She could see the sheen of tears that were just barely kept in check but never seemed to fall. "I don't want to die here and neither should you. They killed my family, they, they -" it was then that she began to cry, eyes slamming shut in an effort to stop tears from falling.

Netta laid her head forward, resting it on the girl's shoulder.