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 knew that what controlled the bodies of the women she had once loved could now be only some form of infernal power, but to hear that power, controlling their vocal chords, felt as though it were rending Netta's mind to pieces.

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. If you staaaaay here without any magic, It'll kiiilllllllllll you."

Somehow, she found her voice. "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. Her lover had become transformed into - into -

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 to bursting with the smell of her sister's cloying perfume. "I'm offering you a chance to redeem yourself - as a true daughter of Hera. You can die here, or turn yourself into me." Her seemingly gentle smile, which had been steadily creeping up her cheeks 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 and who had just been punched by her mother.

Sia gave Netta a bone-chillingly, knowing look before she turned to look at the shocked Caspia.

"Your Familiar's energy was burned away in that last-ditch attempt to save your skin, was it not?" She did not wait for the shocked Witch to answer her, continuing, "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 arms 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 backward and Netta recognizing, only as she flew to the ground, that a bolt of energy that had looked like a spray of ink had crashed against her forehead. Caspia fell to the ground, looking like a marionette whose master had just thrown it to the ground, her limbs crashing to the cracked ground without any will or strength.

Netta gasped and watched her still, 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, awaken from her nightmare.

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

"So says the murderer of... hmm... what was it? Three? Two?" Sia shook her head. "I forget which ones you killed and which ones had "nasty accidents"." 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 felt shock rippling through her. She knew that she had murdered her Sisters, but she knew, recalled, how she had - once - tried with all of her might - to talk them out of fighting her. Had her older sister really just admitted to killing her adopted once-Coven Sisters off?

And who remains of the adopted girls?

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

When she felt the fire begin in her chest, Netta 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 with 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, Netta felt the words coming out of her. They were not the sentiments 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? I'll be here to pick up the ashes -"

Her hands moved so quickly that Netta could scarcely track the movements, felt their odious weight on her neck. For a second, a weak Netta thought that her sister meant to strangle her.

Sia pulled away, as quickly as she had placed them at Netta's throat. In her hands she brandished the God's Chain that she had un-affixed from her younger sister's neck. She brandished it like a trophy, her magic enabling her to tear it loose from Netta's neck, intact. "It's no matter when you die, only that I have found how you're supposed to die. It's his tie to you, isn't it? Your wedding band." She spat the word out, her eyes glittering, hateful. "It's become bonded to a physical object, has It not? It must be a half life that It's living, needing to exist through the proxy of an object. I saw the way you were clutching this, feeding It with your blood. Like some half-starved bat with its heifer."

Netta looked away, astonished to hear a truth that she had known herself, but had repressed. Ash's reliance on the chain being on Netta, her compulsive need to clutch it when he had not been present, his weakness when she was not close to it - Ash lived because of the chain. To think about the chain being Ash's tie to the material world - it brought a disquiet to Netta's mind, every time she looked at it, she thought, unerringly, of the man who had given it to her.

Wondered if, somehow, the Human man had known the giant that had been slumbering inside of its links. Where he could have, possibly, come across so dangerous an artifact.

"I wonder who "he" is." Sia rose the chain to her chin, tapped it. "It's possible that he's - no." She shook her head, smiled. ""He" would not need a proxy to live. But, this one - he could provide as a gateway of sorts, yes. Maybe this one's mere presence is keeping him from making an appearance. It's no matter now, however, as I should mention - if you're not in the mood for suicide," she reached forward 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."

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.

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. "we've tried with you, but you'll never be worth anything."

Netta cried out in pain, angry at herself, angry at her wretched, monstrous sister. She 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 heifer. Try to escape your husband without the use of your legs-" Sia stopped talking, her voice rising in a scream. She moved so quickly that Netta scarcely saw her sister drop it, until she saw the chain on the cracked ground.

Sia looked at Netta, her features twisted in what looked more like rage, clutching the hand that had held the chain. "It burned me." The look in her eyes was accusatory, almost darkening her eyes. "Fine." Her mouth twisted into a grin, terrible, sharp. "I'll leave for you to decide your fate. Break the link and kill the thing, see if you can crawl to help. That is, if you can stand the thought of withstanding the pain of separation. We'll be waiting."

Netta had looked down at the chain, then felt a ripple of energy. When she looked up, she realized that her sister had gone. As if in answer, Netta heard from behind her. It was 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 at her to. 

Netta gasped as she tried to drag herself somewhere, anywhere, hoping to flee the Thing that roared.

Its resurfacing aboveground seemed to have triggered the sky to turn black, the clouds above to begin an enraged swirling, the wind to thrash what bare plant life there was like a child thrashing its toys in a blind rage.

Soon, would Netta be no more than a toy in the thrashing hands of a large, mindless thing, or would she be crushed as it blindly searched?

As she crawled, Netta 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 closer 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 clamp her hand over her mouth. Netta 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 laid, pitifully on the broken ground, as though Its madness-inducing, spiral of horns could slice open the angry sky.

Undeniably, It looked directly down at her.

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

The ground had finally broken and she was being swallowed by the Earth. The same Earth that had once created creatures so terrible that they crushed Human villages beneath their feet in the naked moon light, had pulled ships beneath the guillotine-like waves above their unspeakable forms in the great, ancient oceans.  

She would in moments meet the fires that burned beneath the ground, hopefully would not feel for long, not before her body would be broken by the ground further below that she would surely strike.

Who, or what, would be waiting for Netta, as her consciousness passed from the physical realm?

And then the falling stopped.

Netta, with her useless legs and horror-struck mind, could only comprehend the opened, screaming mouth of the Earth disappearing from beneath her as the sky seemed 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.

Netta could feel her heart as it thumped against her chest, seemed to only hear her blood pounding in her ears, crashing in a merciless maelstrom all around her.

She saw Its body as It raised her - how Its skin was not quite blood-red, not fully, at least, but was darker in some spots, lighter in others. Wine red, rose red, the red that rode the horizon in a broad wave with the sun's setting. It was hairless, as though Its lineage were alien. Its shoulders were broad, muscle outlining every aspect of Its frame.

The hand rose her to Its face, revealing an angular one crowned by an almost chaotic set of horns that spiralled haphazardly. It was lipless, looking like a skeleton in many aspects - or the personification of death.

Its eyes were nonexistent, she saw, pits of black that seemed to offer no comfort, no humanity.

Terror gripped Netta, and she blindly clenched her hands to her chest. As she did, she felt a sudden warmth from her neck. She looked down, saw what looked like something glowing at her with a light that had to be magical in source.

She reached down, touched the chain that she had, thoughtlessly, stuffed into the right pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. What came to her, first, was the thought of what her sister had told her. Break the chain and it would surely kill Ash, but she would be soon to follow. If exposure did not get to her first.

We'll be waiting for you. What could she have meant by that? How could Netta go anywhere, if she died?

They're crazy - my sisters are insane. And I'm meant to die. I was always meant to die.

She had begun crying, didn't know when it had begun, could only feel the wet, cold covering of them on her numb face as one of her hands swept up, found the skull kerchief on her face gone, ripped off as she had crawled around, helpless, on the ground. She looked back down at the chain that she held in her hand.

The chain no longer signified her Father, or an illicit tie to a Monster that felt utterly alien to the thing that held her. She recalled the woman who had nodded at it when Netta had shown it to her, had alluded to it being the start of something, somehow, beautiful. A haven of warmth in a never ending storm.

It was now also symbolic of the lives that had been ripped from a world that was already without enough loving, warm families. Without thinking of it, Netta's shaking hand clenched around it, so tight that it hurt.

The chain, she finally realized, was glowing. Its glow was the same as it had possessed when Ash had taken her that night when she had found him at his temple, but with a different light.

Brighter, less gentle. A berserker's bright, hypnotic.

Netta leaped as she felt a rumble in the being holding her - it sounded like the Earth groaning, of tectonic plates shifting, scraping. Forced her gaze up, recalling in her shock what she was being held by.

She looked up, saw the way that It looked down at her, Its skull-like mouth hanging open.

Netta knew that she logically should have been frightened. Instead of that, she felt an utterly depraved sense of sensuality.

It seized her as she recalled the hunger, plain in Ash's face, every time they had sex. It was raw, and to Netta, it seemed angry, as though his inability to control himself were a weakness that damned him and empowered her in a way that he loathed. Was some attestment to a curse that she had heard whispers of, felt assured of at least some of the truth of them whenever she touched him, felt him jolt as he was unable to not be astonished every time she, willingly, touched him.

But it belonged to a being who should have been divorced, utterly, from the one that held her.

It was the farthest thing that should have been on her mind. Still, the shocking sensuality of her memory arced through her, undenied. Managed to beat past the rage, the sorrow, the fear.

Bold, she looked up into the pits where the monster's eyes should've been. She held the chain in her bloodied, cold-stiffened hands with the same determination that Perseus had once brandished his shield with.  Netta felt a sudden flutter in her stomach at the thought of how chain links so small had once held so large a soul inside of it.  

There was no time for a second guess, to wonder if once transformed into the being that had once killed so many Humans if It would feel any obligation at the sight of the chain that still imprisoned it to the small Human.   There was no time to fear that she had made a terrible error.

Netta heard a throaty, heavy growl erupt from the beast, saw Its lips split to reveal heavy, sharpened teeth.