Netta closed her eyes and found that she could see no difference in the darkness behind her eyelids. "Your King - The Traitor King? "

Tristan paused, then laughed humorlessly. "I wouldn't... call him that. Not to his face. Well, maybe you can. I don't know what sort of a rapport you two have had. His presence - it burns so brightly that it blinds me when he's near."

The realization - it breathed out of her, bringing sorrow and confusion with it. "This King - you're saying that I've been... intimate with your King?" Goddess, but the memories - they seemed to flow through her, teasing her with images engendered by that name. 

Ashwood.

She knew, somehow, the answer to her question before he said it. "You already knew all of this, full well, even if you don't want to see it - believe it. You wanted to play house with your childhood friend, not accept something so vast into your life. And Ashwood - he's a good deal more than a childhood friend, Neith."

Netta's face burned in embarrassment. She wanted to cry. She could not conceive of knowing a Monster from legend as old as the beginnings of Human civilization - older, still - and in an intimate manner.

"It's my understanding that the two of you were quite happy together," Tristan added hurriedly. "And you seem to have knocked some humility and empathy into him for good measure."

Netta laughed, a manic sound. "I'm glad that the legendary - the legendarily wrathful - King of all Monsters has turned over a new leaf." She hesitated, then asked, "Tell me, truthfully, if you care about what will happen to me if I give myself to your King. Was I always just meant as some sick offering to this creature?"

When he said nothing, Netta could not stop the tremble that began in her bottom lip. She knew, somehow, that he would not lie to her - not wherever it is that they were.

And besides, Netta could recall how someone had once told her that Monsters did not - could not - lie.

Their truths could be seen as kindly, sincere. But the truth, as Netta had grown to see, was cruel to behold. The irony of it all made Netta shake. She didn't know if it was from the need to suppress laughter, or from yet more sobs.

Finally, she managed to say, "Very well. What am I to do?"

Tristan said, "If you keep walking, you'll start to go through the layers of boundaries that Hera's magic has placed in you. He'll be there, at the end of it all. He is - enraged, most like. She's likely had him forget you. But she can't sever your ties, that will be something that will take prolonged effort to do, much more even than she thinks. 

"She was careless with making sure that I was truly ever dead, had likely forgotten that I was ever a problem for her to consider.  She likely never thought that I would be here to help you. To tell you to tread into the place where Ashwood lived when he is banished from the physical realm very carefully.  I think she half expected him to kill you on sight, when you try to flee him, if you should find him on your own. 

"She thinks he's some intelligent and dangerous animal, but at the end of the day she'll always think he's just an animal.  She may be right on one thing, however.  If you should flee when you see him, his instincts, unbound by his lack of any memories of your time together, could lead to him killing you.  However, that is not the only danger.

"He was always a prideful sort, and no matter how much trespass he affords you, there are just some things that you cannot erase from a man's character. There is little I can forecast in terms of how he will react to your entry into whatever his Banishment looks like, but I do entreat you to be careful. He... always reacted to kindness in kind." Tristan paused, then added,  "Whenever he was not senseless in a rage."

Netta hesitated, terrified by what her father was suggesting. This creature - it was powerful enough to kill her? Still she could not bring herself to accept her fate quietly. 

"What if I don't want to go?"

His voice, encased in a sigh, rang in her mind. "You'll die, before all of the rest will, surely. Hera means to use you, one way or the other, and seeing as how you can't give her what she wants - what I told her you could do - she will punish you. And everyone you hold dear. And then she will call Ashwood forward, and with him having forgotten you, she will instruct him to devour you. And he will have no choice to obey her, having pledged no allegiance to you, in his mind."

When Netta felt an anger - unexpected, potent - twist through her, she heard her father laugh. Tristan spoke, revealing his ability to listen into her internal monologue. "Thinking of cutting your own nose off to spite me - hm. Fitting for her daughter."

Netta walked silently, relieved to not hear her father's voice any longer. She wondered about the creature that was her father, as well as which, her mother or father, was a more reprehensible creature.

If Tristan were listening to her, he gave her no indication of it. She walked through the true manifestation of the yawning lonesomeness in her mind.

"Somewhere up ahead is where you should hit the first one."

Tristan sounded uneasy and for a brief moment, Netta felt pitied him. She pushed that feeling aside. The hurt that she had felt at him not denying that he did not seem to care what would befall her returned in full force.

He spoke once more. "I know I'm not what you expected..."

"That's putting it lightly, Tri- Da-" Netta stopped, pulling her lips into a tight frown before she sighed. "I don't even know what to call you anymore."

He paused, then said. "If it helps to repair whatever damage I've caused - I can see now how all of this seems, ah, awful unfair to you, it's just that I didn't see it going this far -"

"Get to the point, please."

"-right. Well, my name - it's Thornleaf. You can call me Thorn, if you wish. I am - was tasked with being the Great King's harbinger.  Before, long ago, I was Ashwood's retainer."

Netta said nothing, thinking for a moment of how she wished that this was not happening. "Who were you before you met Hera?," she asked, her curiosity not yet broken by despair.

"Well, that's a tough question to answer -"

Annoyance over Thornleaf's answer bubbled to the surface and she snapped out, "Just answer it." Netta regretted snapping immediately afterward, and quickly added, "I'm sorry."

Thornleaf sighed. "You have a right to be angry at me, I suppose. But... I thought I did the best I could. If you believe differently, then I have to admit to a loyalty to my kind - even over even my affection for you. I was once the closest thing that Ashwood would have ever called a friend." He paused, as though waiting for a reaction from her.

Netta sighed.

Thornleaf continued. "I was a troublemaker before I met him, and he was the only one who looked past my reputation and saw that I was quite talented in the darker side of mischief."

Netta felt her jaw clench as she imagined the world that her father claimed to inhabit. Goddess, my people - Humanity - they were subjected to a genocide. And my father is now claiming that not only was he one of the perpetrators of the atrocity, but that the Monster that I called my Familiar was the orchestrator of it.

"You mustn't stop," Thornleaf insisted quickly. "you've come so far -"

"Relax, I was only wondering if I've lost my mind." Would it be a far better thing, at this point?

"Just as well, if you want to hit the wall, then you have to trust in what I tell you. Now, as a hybrid of a user and a creator of magic, you-"

"I - I can't really be half Monster, am I?" Netta sounded desperate, even to her own ears.

"That's not going to be a problem, is it? Because in my opinion, your mother's people are a good deal more of an issue -"

"I just - I can't believe it... It makes no sense." Netta stopped walking then and gazed around her at the blank walls of the caverns of her mind. At the center of which was the lair of a great, horrible dragon.

"Sacrifices must be accounted for, if anyone's ever going to be successful."

"Oh - oh no - I'm alive because of murdered Witches... I really am a Monster." Netta said the term once more and tried to see how she felt about it in relation to her. She found, perhaps due to what she had so recently endured, that it did not seem real. None of it did.

Netta touched her face, wondering if she were touching her real face then or if this was her imagination. Perhaps this had all been some aspect of her imagination. A dream, a bad dream that besmirched her memories of her beloved father.

Thornleaf's voice sounded tired when he spoke. "I can assure you, I have a will and a psyche that has far outlived the over a hundred years that you seem to be thinking that I've lived. If you want to wallow in pity and self-hatred, then you'll have plenty of time to do it. After you've finished the job on Hera and her two offspring."

Goddess, I can't exist because of death, only to perpetuate death. That cannot be the reason for my existence.

"Neith!" Thornleaf's voice was sharp. Netta found her mind empty of her earlier thoughts as she heard the one thing that she had never once remembered from her childhood. Being spoken to harshly by her father. "I lived as the Familiar of that bitch that gave birth to you and I've waited, here, for you, waiting for you to do what you were conceived to do." He breathed heavily. His words seemed to be soaked in acid and they were biting, angry. "Listen to me, daughter - your role in this piece is to bring about a new world order with Magic in control, brought to new life."

Madness. The ramblings of a madman. How could any of this be real? How possibly could all of the devotion that I felt for the man talking to me have been founded on a structure of sand?

Netta clenched her hands into fists and felt a darkness surge in her. It was a feeling that seemed to rise ceaselessly, one that she felt overtake her - her Human self.

Turning, she seemed to see the outline of her father among the shadows. When she spoke, it was not in any language that was known to any Human tongue. She spoke in a voice that creeped and crawled, then soared, leaped, stabbed, embraced. "You will show prudence when speaking to me."

Netta began to walk, unaware when the ancient power in her sank away. She was aware only, with a disturbing certainty, of the fear that she had engendered in her father. She was almost sorrowful when she felt her father's consciousness abandoning her, retreating.

He said one more thing, then seemed to retreat into a place Netta knew, somehow, she could never access herself. "I cannot help you any further, daughter."

It was some time, as Netta wandered in the darkness of her own mind, before she heard the sound of the great voice. It seemed to rise all around her, as though it had captured her in its great, many arms.

TURN AWAY OR I SHALL DEVOUR YOU.

Netta felt her voice as it came out of her, the sound strangled by the tight muscles of her throat.

"Fearsome King - is that you?"

All around her there was a terrible growling, and it was like she was hearing all of the tremors of all of the earthquakes of the world all at once. TURN AWAY, STUPID GIRL. THERE IS NOTHING AHEAD FOR YOU BUT THE FULL PROMISE OF YOUR EVERY NIGHTMARE.

Netta had begun to cry, but she only knew it when she felt the wetness on her face, reaching up to brush it away. A sign of her crumbling sanity - as her fingers brushed at the wetness of her tears, she felt the lines of her mouth. Her lips had become transfigured into a grin.

She opened her mouth to speak aloud - then realized the futility of it. Netta spoke in her mind, no longer afraid of the raw, uncensored quality of speaking with her mind. I always found solace in my nightmares, they offered nothing worse than my living world gave me. She did not know the nature of the beast she knew was reaching out to her, but she spoke without guile, mimicking the nature of Monster - no, Magic - kind. She paused, but the thought crossed her mind, red and raw, before she could censor it. I often found something more than solace in my nightmares.  I can remember that.

The voice seemed to pause, then there came a note to it, softer but somehow insidious, dark. I can show you a nightmare, the likes of which you would have never before been able to comprehend.

Netta opened her mouth, wanting to challenge that voice. Before she could speak, however, she felt as though the world around her had become a melted world of over-bright colors. Yellow, red, orange - the colors seemed to engulf Netta, and she quickly discovered why.

She gasped, feeling the heat as it seemed to eat her, starting low on her body and sweeping up. Netta shut her eyes, and when she opened her eyes, she found that she was surrounded by flames. 

She screamed, tossing her head back. Then there came the sound of a roar, so horrible, loud, that she thought that it had killed her.

Her eyes snapped open, and in spite of the terrible pain, she found that she was gazing at a shape that seemed to embody all of the far horizons.

It was as vast as a mountain's range. Netta found that, although she first thought that the movement she perceived was because of the writhing of the flames, she realized that the great mass was moving.

Netta screamed, the found her scream joined by the roaring - the wretched, awful sound - of the thing in the distance.

When she reopened her eyes, Netta still felt as though she were being devoured by flames. When she gasped, almost crumpling to the floor, she discovered, dully, that she was alone. All around her was encroaching darkness. 

Netta shuddered, wrapping her arms around her. As soon as her hands touched her shoulders, she felt as the pain of the fire disappeared, leaving nothing more than a memory of it.

TURN AROUND.

Slowly, Netta turned, overcome with her fear of what she had witnessed - felt. She took a step back the way she came, all memories of what had come before that moment, gone, washed away. 

Almost as an afterthought, Netta turned around.  Her immediate fear and desire to run away was quelled by the sight of the set of massive wooden double doors that had appeared when her back had turned.

She took in a deep breath and felt a damnable shaking begin in her body, a tremble that she could not hope to suppress as she continued to gaze at the doors.