Surely, Netta thought, this would not leave any of those abominations is useable condition. "We did it, Ash," Netta said, resolute.

When he did not answer, and Netta had searched through herself and found no trace of him to answer her, she felt her voice rise in a quaking shudder. "...Ash? Ash!"

Focused, Netta was surprised when she caught movement to her left, amongst all of the smoky haze created by the fireworks that Ash had caused to shoot out of her arms. Looking in that direction, she almost missed the movement once more. As she flicked her gaze around, the saw finally the shapes of the 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 thing that was barely keeping the vestiges of humanity wrapped around him like a molding blanket. 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 her ex-Sister Caspia, underneath the cover of the identical robes that they wore.

Instinctively, Netta widened her stance and tried to make as though she was about to ready another attack.

The others hesitated as one, the robes around them billowing in the wind. They looked so much like marionettes in some children's street performance.

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, with what she has left. But I don't know what she's capable of, especially cornered.

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, bloodied, mutilated hands spread wide like albino starfishes. They seemed intent on carrying her, dragging her from where she had begun to make what looked increasingly like a last stand.

Netta heard the 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 you're about to see.

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.

"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. "Always too good for the rest of us. A natural child by Hera, 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 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.

As she overcame the pain, she realized that the ground was shaking. Somewhere, she could hear Ash yelling.

Netta thought that she was hearing what sounded like an earthquake.

The sight of the thing, shooting from below the ground, tore her mind into pieces. It ripped the Earth around it like wet 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. Something forced her 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 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 over them.

Netta staggered back, stared up at It all before her, her earlier bluster - and her ex-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, crashing to the ground.

Netta 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 lover's, 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, Netta 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 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, 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 - by what she found, so that she had frozen in place.

Splayed on the ground, the yellow-striped kitten seemed almost as though it was a puppet under the control of another will. 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, was 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 permanent, desperate grimace.

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 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 her 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..."

She knew the sound of her older sister's voice from anywhere. Netta turned around, unsure of what was happening. Had her mind, finally, broken?

Ash? Is that thing Ash? Is my lover even the real Ash, or is 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 thin brows and the full plushness of her lips, all painted on painstakingly with magic etched into her flesh, barely seemed to move. They gave her the look of a cold statue, even as her eyes seemed to bore into Netta, 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? 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.

"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. 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 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. It was as though she were examining a piece of art - or trash - that she could not comprehend. "Kill her? Why, for what for?"

As she looked at her ex-Sisters, Netta festered with a boiling rage. Netta 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 niece. "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, 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. 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 lover's hand underneath a blanket and felt, instead, a heavy animal's paw.

"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.

Sia sighed. "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 tied to, if she admits to her wrongdoing." She turned, stared at Netta. Her eyes seeming to bore through Netta's head. Slowly - creeping - a smile began at the corners of her lips. For a moment Netta saw only the shape of her grinning skull beneath Sia's soft, perfect skin.