Elle's POV:

So... I'm standing in front of this massive Cabin, I've got tears in my clothes, scars lining my arms, and the world seems like it's turned upside down. I've got no way of knowing if I can trust the man I'm with but considering I'm out of options this is my only way of finding my way out of the long drawn out rabbit hole I've fallen into. Three days ago I was waking up in my Dorm at Callaways. Now I've seen death up close, discovered a harrowing government secret, and traveled to another country to escape the clutches of people who want me for reasons that don't make any sense to me.

My name is Elle Argent, I'm eighteen years old, and I met the Illuminati.

The trees all whisper in a sky of silver. Leaves are turning gold here. It's getting rather cold here.

The door creeks open.

A man stands there, someone Tommy obviously knows. Both of them know the screen only in different ways. They hug. Both of them wear sweater vests and kahkis, both of them have soft features despite being men, both of them use subtle words. It's clear that this 'Kendall' fellow had no idea where Tommy's been for the last couple nights.

"I told you." Says Tommy, "I was off to do content in the UK. When I got there, I realized I didn't have my phone on me but the studio said the meet-up was cancelled due to bad weather. I figured I'd do a little digging for your friends while I was there."

Then Kendall looks at me, "Who are you?"

"Elle?" Says a familiar voice.

I run to him, "Charlie."

I hold him tightly, he's one of my closest friends. So, Tommy wasn't lying.

"Have they hurt you?" I ask, "Are they holding you against your will?"

He shakes his head, "No. Nick, Imogen, and I have been living here. What's going on back home."

I realize the group around me is totally out of the loop. If they do know anything it's not much. I have all the information. I have all the power. So I turn to the one Tommy referred to in the car as 'The Master of the House.'

"I have some demands, if you want me to talk. Trust me, you want me to talk." I say.

He nods, "Boys, I think perhaps you should go get Imogen."

Nick Nelson, who'd been leering by a group of potted plants, steps into the light of the corridor. He says, "She's not feeling well. Grief has her."

"Grief." I say as I look to him.

I study these two boys from my friend group. I had just spent the summer with them. We were alive, having fun, full of color. Somehow, in a tropical themed Cabin, they seem ancient. Victorian in a way. Drained of all the happiness the world has to offer.

"Clare?" Kendall calls out.

A woman in a maids uniform appears through an archway I hadn't seen before. She's kind and a bit older. I don't see any inappropriateness between the two of them. I see an employer who respects his help.

"Yes, Mr. Knight?" She says calmly.

He smiles, "Could you make some tea. We'll be in the dinning hall."

"Yes, Mr. Knight. Perhaps the fireplace could use some stoking? It's gotten rather chilly." She offers.

"That would be lovely." He nods.

I fall in behind Kendall and Tommy as the two of them lead me and the boys through the bend and beneath a staircase. Another front room appears and goes like it's a corridor and we enter into a kitchen. It's a nice kitchen, very clean. The dinning room is just beyond the next arch.

I take a seat next to Charlie, Nick sits beside him. The two older gentlemen sit across from us. My nerves claw at the inside of my chest. I've had a troublesome journey and this is not helping. They sit there in silence and I know. They're waiting for me to start.

"I need to know who you work for." I say looking at Kendall.

"E.I.P.H. The Evangelical Institution of Progmatic Health. In my youth however I was a in a band. Caught up in the dark entanglements of Hollywood." He tells me.

I nod. I keep my hands down on my lap to show that I have my wits about me. I wouldn't want to be admitted into a ward. They need to know that what I've seen was real and that I haven't developed schizophrenia.

"Why is Charlie, Nick, and Imogen here in your care?" I ask.

He shifts to get comfortable, perhaps knowing we're going to be here for a while. Then he says, "Imogen is my niece. I was contacted by some friends about a week prior to the floods. There's supposedly a contract that's been drummed up and all of the surrounding provinces were going to be ripped up to collect precious metals for AI technology. When asked to take temporary guardianship of my niece I agreed. The other two came with her."

I look at Charlie and I know why he's survived.

"They're entering a new phase in the process." I say. It all sounds so bazaar.

In a few days time the world will be sent into a constant overcast. Technology will have reached a new hiatus and the covens will come out of hiding. I know... I'm affiliated with one of my own.

"What do you need?" Asks Kendall.

I roll my shoulders and lean forward placing my open palms on the table, "Protection. You offer me a place to hide and I will keep your home invisible from those who seek to destroy us."

"How?" He presses.

The maid returns with a trey full of tea cups and a hot pot of herbal water. She trips and sugar cubes go flying in the air. All I have to do is look at her and the entire scene slows down drastically. I'm standing in front of her in a flash. I stabilize the silver trey back in her palms, adjust her posture, and collect all the pieces of the set to place them neatly back on display. I use the open pot and scoop all the hot water out of the air around her and set it calmly back in the center.

The moment it's over and she's recollected herself back at regular speed I look back at them all and say, "I'm a witch."

"No one will know you're here." He assures me, "Do you have anything else you need?"

I nod, "Since my studies have been interrupted and my entire Coven is gone I'll need a list of things collected and brought here to me so that I may continue learning. A teacher, as well. If you can find one."

They stare at me blankly like I've just revealed the most sacrilegious thing but I only shrug and retake my seat, "That's all."

As Clare pours my cup of tea I thank her. Then I ask, "Are you all ready to hear the story."

What I really want is a hot bath. To go lie down for a few hours and sleep. To get the blood off my stomach. Still, I don't want to miss anything important and I've got to get it out while it's still fresh on my mind...

"I woke up in my dorm a few days ago. The storm outside was pretty bad, I wasn't feeling well on account of it all. I had a horrid headache, my Estrogen pills were causing pain in my midsection, and I'd stayed up the whole night binge watching AHS because healthy witchcraft media is so limited." I begin, "I decided to skip first period. Professor Eisenburg was only showing the second half of the Titanic as an introduction to Film Studies and I've seen that movie a hundred times..."

I'd fallen asleep about halfway through an episode where Cordelia Fox has gouged her own eyes out for the second time and woke up around noon. My blanket had fallen off the bed and I'd gotten up to retrieve it. When I crawled under the bed to find it I met something. It could talk, it stood on it's hind legs like a person, but it was much to little, had no hair, and it's eyes were bigger than an owls.

It new my name.

"Elle." It said and I knew I was talking to a house elf.

These creatures are all but extinct in our time. Lightly referenced in Harry Potter (A facade of a witchcraft story by the way. Weak, and clearly written to support a straight, white man's view of my world) but otherwise never really heard of. I froze. I didn't know what to say.

"They're here." It said.

I asked, "Who?"

Then I heard the gun shots. Loud, repetitive, almost musical as they followed a pattern. People were dying. I hid under there, like a coward. All I could think about was how I had gifts to help and I was waiting in hiding.

A girl from down the hall came running into my room. I didn't speak. I didn't move. I just watched as she backed away. Her legs were inches from my face but I didn't dare breathe. A man in a suit came into the room.

She was crying. Begging for her life. I heard him mutter something in another language. I could see him but he couldn't see me. It was my magic. I knew because all the while they were in there my skin was vibrating.

He raised his gun as if to shoot her and I stared into that chamber. Something peculiar happened. I don't know for sure if it was me but his arms moved to point the weapon at himself. She choked out something, loud and strange, but he fired and his blood splattered all over a poster I had hung up of Joshua Hutcherson.

After a few moments a group of men came and apprehended her. They gave her something. It wasn't like a medicine or a needle in the neck. It was like a thin sheet of water that they threw over her body like a veil and she passed out. Her face was right in front of mine.

They dragged her out of there and when the door shut and they were finally gone I crawled out from under my bed. The creature that was with me climbed up onto the bed and said some very strange things to me. In my fear I listened.

"I'm going to take you with me. There are things you need to see." I took a deep breath and stilled myself as it spoke, "I need you to put this on."

It was an amulet, one I'm still wearing today, made of amethyst and bloodstone.

I reached out for it and asked, "Does Plithora know you're here?"

"Yes. Your protection was the last request my master made before she died." If they'd killed the leader of my coven I'm sure they killed the rest of them.

So I took the amulet and hung it round my neck. Then the house elf took my arm. We vanished into nothingness. It was like my body stood still while my mind disappeared. Only when I reopened my eyes I was somewhere new.

The side of a highway. Army trucks, tanks, rolling by us. Rain fell around us but didn't touch us. A warmth fell over me. A protection spell.

"Can't they see us?" I asked.

The creature shook it's head, "No... you have the protection of the stone. I cannot be seen by muggles and if any witches or wizards out here see me they'll probably just assume they're hallucinating."

"You said Plithora was your master? I thought House Elf Slavery was abolished." I say as more and more trucks roll on by. The world was cold, dark, and wet, like evil had already taken over.

"Some of us chose to stay. When Plithora presented Mali with clothes and offered him freedom Mali took the clothes but refused to leave. I love what Plithora stood for, how she taught her students. What I didn't love was the unknown. I'd always feared the things I'd never had. She let Mali stay and promised she'd take care of me, and she even paid me wages. Mali has a home of his own. Until the time comes that the muggle world destroys it for their own dark magic." He tells me.

"Muggles having magic? That's a laugh." I say but he didn't laugh.

He holds his long, bony hand out to me and says, "Come. Mali has much to show you."

I took his hand and we disapparated again. This time deep beneath the ground. The girl I'd seen be taken was arriving here as well. The rooms around the room I was in were sealed behind glass walls and I stood amidst other people in suits and white coats onlooking the things in each room. We were in an observatory of some sort. A place like the zoo.

I tell the people around the dinning table I sit at, "There were children in each room being... tortured. The screaming was so loud. I kept waiting for someone to spot me but no- they were too busy- studying- whatever it was they were doing."

Electricity rang out in technicolor. Young boys and girls were everywhere bleeding, jerking at their restraints, crying. The adults around them just watched as if they were plucking the wings off butterflies- some of them even laughed.

After being there for a few minutes, my body full of the pins and needles of anxiety, I took a lap around the room. I didn't recognize any of them but I felt all their pain. I was thinking this was a hoax, a bad dream brought on from consuming too much from the mind of Ryan Murphy, and then I had to stop.

There, on the other side of one of the walls, was James. From Truham, the boy who liked Issac.

"He saw me." I say, "As if the gemstone's blessing didn't work on him."

When he started freaking out the doctor testing him just assumed he was hallucinating. Hit him with a high voltage dose of Electro Shock to the temple. I watch his nose start bleeding before he passed out. The entire building lit up with this bright white light and then-

"POP!" all the florescent lights busted at the same time. A purple light, like the ones in a night club, radiated over the white coats, over the rooms. All of the children had passed out.

This is the most terrifying part because I'm not even sure it was real. All of them- the children- looked up in my direction. Their eyes weren't even their own eyes they were this mixture of blue and green than never mixed to create teal. They spoke in unison- not like the creepy way possessed children do in horror movies but more like in song. They said, "Mother Moon and Father Son do not like what has done to their children. This game has gone on long enough. If it continues... the ancient ones will have no choice but to reawaken. The one who will restore peace refuses his own power. Find him, heal him, teach him..."

I watched James mouth the words, "...get out of this place." and then gunshots went off all around where I was standing.

The creature took my hand and we disappeared. When I rolled out onto the gravel lot of a wet driveway I looked over to see that Mali had been injured. They'd shot through one of his hands. He smiled weakly as if to show me he was alright.

"Mali has been around for a century and has felt pains far worse than this. Come on, in you go. This is the house of Mother Deeds. She's been expecting you." That was the last thing the creature said before it vanished.

The power was out in this house. No running water but it was another coven so they found ways. They'd been able to use their powers to clean their clothes, cook, and keep themselves rather clean but none of them had particularly mastered water magic. These were earth witches. Most of their plants were dying because they relied on natural water for their needs. The water from the sky was tainted.

They'd gotten me into a bed. I slept for a few hours. I have no way of knowing what time it was.

The next morning I was greeted by a prophetic witch. Xanthippi was her name, and she seemed rather mad. My age, but her hair was already grey as used coal. Her clothes were just rags and she had these half moon spectacles perched on the edge of her nose.

She gave me a train ticket. Told me to be at a cafe in the city by nine. The only advice she gave me was, "Hold true to who you are. The story usually tells it's self. Someone, who like you uses the internet for their success, will be waiting as he has been turned away from a recent task."

The other witches of the coven warned me not to remove my amulet for any reason. They gave me a basket full of fruit and bread. Sent me on their way. This one little witch, she couldn't have been any older than five, cried as I left. I'd only spoken to her once and that was to help her mend a bird she'd found in the garden. Apparently I'm really good at mending broken bones.

The train ride was wrong. I had enough money in my pocket to buy a news paper and a cup of coffee at the cafe. I cried when I was alone in the bathroom after reading about the province going under. Then as I was walking out I saw Tommy at the payphone.

"Damn." He'd said.

Transnational signal hardly ever works in rains this bad. He'd wasted a whole dollar trying to call home. An American, here in London of all places. I recognized him but not for the reasons he's famous. I'd remembered seeing him at a com-icon the previous summer. Internet stars go where other stars are. When the amulet started to glow I knew. He was the one Xanthippi wanted me to find.

"When he said he knew where some of my friends were staying I felt excited. When he mentioned America that excitement dwindled a bit but I got on a plane with him anyway. The rest is just gas stations and a city of music. Tommy has nice road trip playlists and his car is clean so I can't complain much." I look over at Charlie, "Is it just the four of us? No word on Tao or Issac? Any of the others?"

Nick and Charlie share a heartbreaking glance and then Charlie lets himself weep, "Tao is dead."

And my whole world turns to ice.