There was nothing there but snow and the hollow skeletons of what was once the homes of families.

Netta hesitantly crawled the car to a stop just short of what appeared to be the left overs of a police barricade. She was just outside of the limits of a place that looked like the burned out corpse of some small town.

Ash's voice brushed, ragged, but soft, in Netta's mind. Does this seem...

It's what I should have expected.  This place, after all, looked like the best representation that Netta could have imagined of her ex-Coven members.

Netta walked out, feeling the comforting impression of Ash's overwhelming heat as it encompassed her. She had stepped over some fallen, heavily worn quarantine tape when she got her first example of why the town was closed off. Nearly tripping, Netta hit a piece of Earth that had torn loose from its whole, pointing a ragged ridge up to a cold, grey sky.

Netta almost pitched onto the almost barren ground that grew wildly between the stray patches of ill-looking grass.

She felt herself falling into Ash's ready arms as he caught her. 

Be careful! He waited until she had caught her breath and was able to stand on her own, gently holding onto her.  Ash lifted her chin up to look at him, green eyes flowing freely with worry. Are you able to walk right now?

What, are you planning on carrying me? When Ash was silent, Netta sighed and stepped away from him to look around at the town past the barricades. She turned to look back at Ash. Wait. Don't answer that.

The town looked like something out of a sick dream, a twisted, destroyed and dilapidated caricature. It was not just the part that she had tripped over. The ground was filled, like landmines, with cracks, fissures. As Netta looked at it in disbelief, she wacthed as a sudden, hissing breath of steam sprouted from a crack three feet away from her. This place...

Netta turned this way and that, taking in the sight of relative death for plant life on the ground, then took in the sight of creepers, even a full-grown tree, growing out from the walls, roofs of the abandoned buildings. What's happened here?

Ash spoke soberly. Humans. There was a catastrophe, then they abandoned this town. Watch your step, he added quickly when Netta took another hesitant step forward. I can save you from falling into the hollow space under the ground, but only if I'm not distracted.

What happened? What catastrophe? She walked, cautious, glad suddenly for Ashwood's physical presence as he appeared next to her.

There's a fire still burning down below. Ash was physical, but still he spoke in her mind. They thought that it was only - just - the coal, but there's also the rage of all of the dying Monsters, down below. They are trapped in their agony, fueled by blind rage and sadness.

Netta shivered and looked down at the ground. In spite of the internal heat that was directly influenced by Ash, she thought that she could feel a heat radiating out from the ground. They - your kind are capable of that? She had almost said "ex-subjects", but stopped herself. Could not conceive of Ash in that way, even from what she did, indeed, know of him.

My dear, Ash said, putting on a nasal voice. I am magic incarnate, I can do as I wish. 

Did he purposefully pretend to have not felt her trepidation over thinking of him in that way? Netta had taken another uneasy step forward, then heard Ash add, I wouldn't bother with that hood if it falls down again. Most like if this is an ambush, then they've already seen your face just now.

Netta paused to consider what he meant by her not being recognizable, then touched her face briefly. It came to her in a moment, as she had forgotten it, that her face, her posture, even her voice - Ash had changed her.

Are you okay with that? Even in her mind, she felt it then - a probably unintended softness. A hesitancy.

Netta felt a ghost of a smile flutter at her lips. I've never been happy as the Neith I was before.

And, now... There it was. An almost innocent - hopeful - begging of something that he should not have had the right to ask for. She could sense that in him, the fragile desire for acceptance.

An answering shudder wracked through Netta's body. I'm never bored now, to say the least.

Ash's happiness, wordless, radiated through her as surely as his warmth did.

Careful, Netta walked delicately until she had reached the end of the empty and cracked road. From there she took in more of the town.

The air smelled sulfuric and it looked out of time, with how the snow seemed to only cling to the tops of buildings, to what remained of the dying, dead trees. Without realizing it, she thought, I don't want to die here.

Ash answered immediately. I'll never allow that.

There's nothing that I can do if I'm outmatched, Ash. I just want you to know, now... Netta could feel her steps faltering until she was standing still. If I die and I guess that means you die with me, then it's like fate, right? It's almost as though I was meant to do this with my Sisters, and I guess what I want to say is - I'm sorry that a nice guy like you got involved with a Witch like me. Maybe, maybe if I had eloped with you when we were younger, then... maybe...

Enough, Ash's voice sounded powerful, but underneath it was impossible to miss the confusion, the pain. you don't understand. I'm so sorry, Neith, so sorry, but there's still much you don't understand, the least of all being that I'm not a nice guy, the second being that I will not allow you to die -

The blow hit the back of Netta's head, and it was only because of something that seemed to block the full strength of it that Netta did not get knocked out cold - or die.

Somewhere, something was roaring, a rabid, feral animal's bloody sound. Netta felt her ears ringing from the sound, and she wracked, wincing, as she tried to focus, her hands on her ears before she realized that the sound was reverberating from somewhere in her mind.

Gasping, she felt her eyes frantically dance around, trying to find what it was that had struck her. As the roaring receded, she clamped a hand to the back of her head, trying to assuage the pain searing into her mind. She looked and looked for an agonizing ten seconds that felt as though they were stretching into a hellish eternity.

And then the form seemed to shoot from out of nowhere and dove at Netta.

Shrieking, Netta shot her hand out towards it and felt as a blast of energy sung through her, echoing off of the figure as it blasted to the ground. Shuddering from the reverberations of the roar and the magic that had rippled out from her, Netta stared at the fallen shape.

She was readying herself to hit at the figure again with what she recognized to be an energized manifestation of her misery, dread, anger.

She kept her arm out, trained onto the figure, daring it to move. When it did not, she felt a passing moment of regret. I wish she would have put up more of a fight.

Ash did not answer and she walked up to the robed figure. With a well-placed kick, Netta threw the down-faced, prone figure onto its back.

Looking up at her was the still, crumpled face of Calliope Oleander.

Netta had fallen onto the ground, so that when the movement whirled around her, she had to look up at the dangling, robed figures. Looking up, she watched, dazed, as they spun around her like a slow parody of a merry-go-round.

This seemed to go on for an eternity, until something struck her like a bolt of lightning crashing through her harried, confused thoughts. His voice was like a clap of thunder. Get to your feet, Witch! Now!

Netta obeyed, even though her legs were shaky, unstable. As she did, the spinning stopped.

The woman's voice came in an almost hush, shadowed beneath the gloom of the hood that was pulled low over her face.

"You made a heady power out of simple desire." When Netta didn't answer, she heard a low chuckle. "What sort of desire do you succumb to, for your power to be so dark, so accursed?" There was a long pause, then the woman snapped out, "Well? Sister, don't you have anything to say to your family?"

Netta recognized that voice, even as rasping as it had become. "My family," Netta felt the words come out of her dried mouth, almost felt as though they were tumbling out of her on their own accord. "is not among you any longer. I wield my corruption - and my love - to protect the innocence of my new family."

As she said the words aloud, she felt as though she were unleashing something true inside of her, something that almost made her feel weightless. She managed a grimacing smile and tried to not look down at what she now understood to be the plaything of her youngest adopted sister  "Caspia. How do you think that your auntie would have thought of you using her corpse in such a manner?"

Caspia giggled. "You haven't seen anything yet, Nettles, so suspend your judgment - at least, until after the show is over."

Netta opened her mouth to say something back to her, then saw as the hooded figure next to the floating Witch threw its hood back. It revealed the face of the woman who had accepted Netta into her family. It belonged to the woman who had been the one that had told her that it was alright to succumb to love for Ashwood.

Her knees seemed to collapse in front of her until Netta was prostrate before the matriarch of Coven Gardenia, almost as though she meant to worship the partially cleaved-open face of her beloved Coven Sister.

As though in an orchestrated movement, there was a cascade along those who surrounded Netta, with each's hood falling backward to reveal the familiar, but mutilated, faces of the members of Coven Gardenia.

Was madness descending, finally, on Netta?

She was a Witch who knew, somehow, that the essence of the magic that resonated in her was in itself rooted in such rich soil as madness.

A voice was speaking in her mind, alien. You wolf in sheep's clothing, It said, what sort of a Witch gorges on the meat of her sisters, until her stomach is distended, taking of the degraded pleasures offered by a demon, offering him the pig's ear of her love as though it is the finest silk and gold?

Somewhere Netta felt the recoiling horror of hearing something speaking with Calliope's voice, playing her vocal cords like an instrument. She looked down in time to see Calliope's corpse throw itself upwards at her, springing with a sickening parody of life as it wrapped its arms around Netta.

Her repulsion blew out of Netta, throwing the force using Calliope high into the air. She heard its manic laughter and it flew away, felt its energy wound itself around her heart.

Up! A purer voice screamed.

Netta obeyed, managed to roll away in time to not be killed by a thing dressed in Morgan's pitiful flesh.

As she rolled away and got to her feet, she could not dodge the cruel voice that spoke with Morgan's voice and none of her well-meant sarcasm or wit. You have killed more than we needed to. Our bodies - on your conscience falls our deaths.

"NO!"

Would we have been killed, spared as we were, following the sacrifice of Anais?

It was Wu, in an angry voice, that spoke next. They came for us hours after your departure. They cut through us. They tortured, they revelled in our breakage, in the severances of our spirits from us...

And then something, using Lucia's voice, spoke with the cruelest, most despicable parody of all of the voices. Murderess. You murdered my family with your selfish behavior, your inability to give into fate -

Ash's voice rang out above the litany, a blade that slashed, mercilessly, through the spell that had been woven around Netta's will. Do not lose yourself to these! They are the work of one.

Netta clung to the sides of her head as she felt Ash's voice in her head. It offered her no comfort, but what it did give her was worth vastly more in that moment than any comfort that he could provide.

When she stood up again, feeling the magic coursing up her arm like black flames, she was holding her jaws in a feral smile that was the exact likeness of Ash's.

The reanimated corpses shook at the sight of her.

Finally, it was Caspia that spoke aloud, her voice a shudder. "H-h-hey, Netta, you don't - what are you going to do with that? You have to cut through all of these people first before you can get to me, I hope you understa-" With the fling of her hand, Caspia caused one of the puppets to fly at her.

Instinctively, Netta tore into it as the energy in her arm seemed to morph the length of her arm, into a blade that sang through the corpse that flew at her. Netta watched as it collapsed, saw, with sorrow, that she had cut Ember down. She hoped only in that moment that the poor corpse would not be transformed into a weapon once more.

She heard the yell in her head and obeyed it instinctively; she leaped up as another dove at her, low, trying to grab her and throw her to the ground. She breathed heavy as she crouched low, looking up at the figures as they seemed to be waiting for her next move.

You must let me help.

Netta shoved a lock of her hair out of her face and attempted to calculate what they would do next. You already are. She paused. How?

As if in answer, Ash reacted, as the figures above all rose in unison as though to fall on her like a house of cards.

Netta's arms felt as though they had come alive with fire as it licked at first her fingers until her shoulders seemed to be burning. With a cry, she rose her arms up as though beseeching the heavens.

The sight of the two columns of flame that came out of her hands was astonishing, as Netta opened her eyes to behold it as it tore into the corpses.  Netta gasped. "H-h-h-h-how?"