Running then. Netta thought that she had gone far enough from the wretched, crashing sounds that the golem had been making in Its search for her, could rest a moment.

If she ran far enough - in the right direction, Netta figured as she had taken a moment to gasp for breath - she might be able to escape it, find the entrance. If she was running in the wrong direction, however -

Ash's voice, sounding hoarse from desperate emotion, was blaring, non-stop, in her mind. Sometimes when she rounded a corner, Netta could have sworn that she saw the Monster in his full horned regalia, shouting at her, moments before he disappeared. Trying, desperately, to listen to him, wording what he said so as not be an order.

You can't keep running! The only way out of here is to kill that thing back there.

Netta felt a sob build at the base of her throat as she blindly rounded another corner, came nearly face to face for a split second with the body of her once-Familiar, now King. She shut her eyes, as though she could erase those accusatory, green eyes from her mind.

Still she ran, scrambling from one path to the next, not thinking of where she was running. It was only as Netta, exhausted, collapsed against a vanity that she realized that she could no longer hear the horrific, thunderous sound of the doll.

Netta felt her breath hitch in her throat as reality seemed to sink finally in through the layers of fear.

As though compelled to, Netta felt her head raise from where she was slumped on the surface of the long-forgotten, antique vanity. She stared into its mirror, heavily caked in a layer of dust that made it hard for her to distinguish her own features through it.

"Netta."

Netta jumped. When she blinked, the features - ones that she could make out, no matter how vague they seemed through the layers of dust - had been replaced with a different one. A longer, leaner face, with skin that almost seemed to be gold in color. A face that Netta knew all too well, complete with vivid green eyes that had been stolen from her.

Netta's hands tensed against the edge of the vanity's surface. "I can't do this, Ash. I can't do any of this - not without - without -" You.

Her Familiar - her King - was helpless, the weight of her mother's enchantment rendering him all but useless.

Did she imagine the softening she saw on the face, the way the intense brightness in those eyes seemed to dim, if only by a few measures? 

"Nettles... I wish things didn't have to be this way. I want - I would protect you, if only I wasn't bound like this." The muscles in the face tensed, for a moment rendering the face bestial, heavy with barely suppressed rage. "But you're not like them. You're one of my kind," the way he said it, in a breathy sigh, sent an utterly inappropriate shiver down Netta's spine. "and you must - you will - escape with your life. Even if I -" he seemed to become choked on his words, struggling for a long moment to recover before he continued. "I have to force you to save yourself."

Netta swallowed, felt tears burning at the edges of her eyelids. "If you force me, this relationship will never work again." I'll be his slave, in the back of my mind I will always wonder if I stay only because he wills it of me.

That face was still, until finally it seemed to drop a measure, features drooping. Ash sighed. "I suffered beneath the weight of your will, imposed on me in some measure. Why can't you do the same for me - when you need me?"

Netta stared at that dust-shrouded face, not knowing if she would prefer to more clearly see her lover's face or not. She said, "Maybe I'm not as strong as you, but I can't trust. Not like that."

Ash was silent for a moment, then when he spoke, his voice, hollow, seemed to ring both aloud and infected her mind. "Then I need you to kill, to rend."

Netta froze, recognizing the order, clear, in his voice. For a moment, she was filled with the blind, violent compulsion to obey him. She winced, ducked her head, struck her head, hard, on the surface of the vanity. 

The pain was shocking and it brought her out of the daze that Ash's words had worked her into.

Ash's voice, imperious and angry, burnt through Netta's mind. Careful!

Netta groaned, pressed a hand to her head where she had struck herself. Even through her daze, Netta managed out, "Nobody gets to control me."

Ash sounded as though he were about to say something to that, but it was the sound of a horrible, distorted voice roaring out behind Netta that stopped him.

"NOTHING YOU'VE EVER GONE THROUGH WILL EVER AMOUNT TO THE WEIGHT OF PAIN I HAVE FOR YOU."

Netta turned around in time to see the horrible, broken face as it emerged over the wall of stacked furniture on the opposite side of the path that Netta stood in. She watched as, horrified, the golem scuttled the beginning of its transformed body over the wall, knocking furniture down as it moved over it.

Her - Its - body had gone through a dramatic transformation, losing any vestige of humanity, keeping only the doll-like features in Its face, broken and increasingly cracked though they were. The rest of it seemed to have lengthened, its limbs increasing, multiplying so that it looked like a millipede.

Netta screamed, jerked with her back to the vanity.

Horror overcame her, almost destroyed Netta. She had never imagined, in the worst nightmares in all of her life, that this was something that a Witch could transform into.

Netta was not certain whose voice it was that spoke in her mind. And they call our kind Monsters.

It stopped moving, Its rapid, writhing movements that Its thin, scythe-ended limbs made, stopping. The creature - what was once Beryl and the doll that she had most coveted - stopped, almost in the center of the path. It would only take ten seconds, Netta realized, before the creature would be bearing down on her.

Netta swallowed, tried to will courage - sense - back into her mind. She heard herself speaking, could hear the panic cutting at the edge of her voice. "Please don't - no -"

The wretched thing cocked its head to the side, as though examining her. When it giggled, Netta realized that it sounded like a distorted, heavier version of the sound that Beryl so often made. "GONNA CRY NOW? WANNA CRY, CRY BABY? YOU PUT ME IN THIS SITUATION. MOTHER ALWAYS FOCUSED ON YOU, THE REST OF US WERE JUST MEANS TO SOME END. NOW, IT'S JUST YOU AND ME ON EVEN PLAYING GROUND." It began to move, scuttling in a horribly smooth, wave-like motion as it approached Netta.

Netta looked to her left, then her right. There was nowhere to run, and she was surely in the dead center of this endless labyrinth. She was lost, she was alone, she was - was -

The Thing was only a few feet from her, rapidly closing in.

As she gazed up at Its horrible, tortured face, Netta felt an anger begin to blossom in her. It was the only thing that made her, as though through base instinct, raise her hand, shaking, up, as though she meant to stop the Thing.

But there was no stopping the wretched thing that approached Netta, a broken amalgamation of pure willpower and twisted obsession. There was no stopping the movement of the Thing. Finally it lurched over her, springing down to claim Its prey -

It had been an hour since the two sisters had been locked in the storage room. There was a long, heavy silence that seemed to have descended in the neverending room, only to be broken by the sound of soft foot steps.

As Netta crossed into the open space before the entrance of the room, she looked up. She was unsurprised to find that she was not alone, to find the two robed women. Hera smiled, a maternal expression that instantly made Netta feel like a shadow had fallen over her. She fought the urge to back up, to find safety in the labyrinth that she had managed to escape.

Hera, softly, said, "You're magnificent. There's never been anything like you." She extended her hand, overturning it, her fingers parting. Welcoming her daughter.

Netta's fear began to tear away, exposing the anger that had been burning inside of her. "I just killed your fucking youngest daughter." She watched the faces of the two women, watched as Sia flinched. Netta saw how Hera's lips seemed to twitch upwards, as though she wanted to smile broader. Netta continued, saying, "She transformed into a terrible, wretched creature. She wouldn't have been able to return to her old body, not after what she had become."

Sia hung her head low. For the briefest moment, Netta felt pity for her older sister.

When Hera spoke, her voice sounded as though she was barely suppressing laughter. "So she became a Monster, did she?"

Netta shook her head. "No. Not one of my kind."

They were walking down a long hallway on the first floor that had not ever been in the house.

Netta walked behind her mother and her sister, her hands clasped behind her. She didn't want to look at them, envision the terrible power that must burn through them. She couldn't look at the walls she passed, either, at the old photos of dead women, their unsmiling, youthful faces. Still it hurt her too much, more than she could ever admit to, to look at them.

It was shameful to think about how she seemed, still, to not have the stomach to look at what she had done.

Ash's voice spoke softly in her mind. You're different from the rest. It's why I -

Hera's voice called out ahead of Netta. "Come, we'll get this over with. I believe that we've all earned a moment of peace, after the events of the last few months. Outside, it's a new year, that is what the Humans are celebrating. Tonight will mark the dawning of a new age for us."

Netta said nothing, only turning her head in time to look out of a window that they passed. It may as well have not existed. The only thing that Netta could see out of it was the rapidly falling snow that fell past the window, the pitch dark of night seeming to be engulfing. It was though they were in the belly of some great whale.

She looked ahead and was taken off guard when she saw the door in the distance. There had certainly not been one before, it was as though it had simply come into existence.

Hera's voice rang out ahead. "Ah, here we are, now."

The sound of the door closing behind them made Netta close her eyes, shuddering. When she opened her eyes, she discovered that the room they were in gave no question as to the intent that the room serviced.

An altar, made to look like an over-large throne, sat in the center of the circular room. The walls, the floor, all made of a dark, shining stone. A brazier, reminding Netta, horribly, of a night of pleasure spent (a lifetime ago, it seemed) as a sort of mock offering, burned from where it hung from the ceiling, casting the room in a barbaric glow.

And then, bound so that they sat on one side of the altar, were the unwilling house guests.

Ophelia snapped, her youthful face breaking into a look of complete shock, her relief at seeing Netta so obvious that it hurt. "You're alive! Please, stop this madness," she begged, trying once more to struggle, violently, against her binding. "They want to - to-"

Hera clicked her tongue against her teeth, striding over to the two crouched Witches, her robe trailing after her. She bent down, grasping hold of Ophelia's face in one of her hands. She squeezed the girl's cheeks, silencing her. "I don't know what sort of a home you came from, but if no matter how I punish you, you continue to disobey, then I'll see to it that your name will be erased, like the rest of your Coven Sisters."

Winnie, silent as she seemed to have been taken with sitting with her head down, suddenly shot her head up to gaze at Hera. With a voice that Netta could hardly recall ever hearing the woman speak in, she shouted, "Leave the girl alone! If you're going to threaten anybody now, threaten me, I'm the one who deserves it."

Hera, with her back still to Netta, sighed and dropped Ophelia's face before she turned to look at her ex-Coven Sister. "Yes," she said, the eerily sincere maternal tone of her voice dropping as she gazed at Winnie. "I suppose that you do deserve it. You deserve it, for abandoning our family, only because you thought I was dead."

Netta could not stop herself from speaking, even if she had wanted to. "Why would you pretend to be dead?"

Hera seemed to stare into Winnie's weakening features for a moment more before she sighed, standing back up. She turned to gaze at her middle daughter, a smile hitching, warm, on her face.

"I'm sorry I had to have you go through the ordeal, when you thought that I had died. You must understand - I was desperate to provoke the King to returning. I needed to push you to your limits - or what I thought were your limits. Ah, but to think, he's been here with us, all along. Well, not at the moment, no." Hera smiled sweetly, tilting her head softly. "We'll call him shortly, I'm certain you'll be shocked to see him, what we have planned for you."

When Netta was quiet, felt a surprising betrayal burn through her - an emotion Netta had not believed she could feel, any longer, for her Mother - Hera said, "You look upset, child." She stepped forward, swept her hand over Netta's face to push back errant strands of hair. "Make no mistake: you were a difficult quarry to capture, one that took careful planning. Oh, but it was worth it, to discover that you had as much a taste for blood as your mother. I almost wish -" Hera paused, the flinch that rippled across Netta's face seemed to bother her. Chuckling, Hera said, "Now, you don't have a problem with your mother touching your face, now, do you?"

"I would rather you fly back to whatever cave you were roosting upside down in." Netta moved, her every hope feeling as though it were itching up her arm, her fingers. Hopes, fears, hatred that ran so black and deep that it had transformed Netta.

She clasped the side of her mother's hand, felt as though her hand was growing hot, burning hot, from all of her rage, her sorrow. It would burn her mother, as she had her younger sister. Burn until there was nothing left, even of something as monstrous as what these women had become.

Hera wailed and jerked away from Netta, clutching her arm. For a moment as she sat on her knees, Netta thought that her mother would collapse and disintegrate before her eyes.

After a moment had passed, Hera's wailing seemed to transform. At first Netta did not hear the pitch difference, but as her mother took once more to her feet, turning to gaze at Netta, it became clear to Netta that the woman was no longer wailing in apparent agony.

Hera's wide mouth seemed to be open, like a wound, as she laughed. As her laughter died down, Hera swept a trembling finger across her cheek, brushing away tears.

"Oh, dear, I would apologize, but the fact of the matter is - I was waiting for you to try to kill me. Such audacity, pride, for a little Monster. And a little Monster would do well to consider the fact that It cannot lash out at Its Master."