Eventually, Neherenia discovered four powerful young women... somewhere. She promised them great magical power and the ability to never grow old. Being innocent children, they accepted. Neherenia gave them four Amazon Stones, which they could use to perform feats of magic, but that also served as conduits that allowed Neherenia to feed off their powerful lifeforce.
Using this power, Neherenia staged an invasion of Elysium, the world of dreams. She captured that beautiful land and made it into a haven of nightmares. She imprisoned Helios, its guardian, in an attempt to wrest the Golden Crystal from him that she had been denied long ago. Then Helios' spirit escaped...
Neherenia is vain. It is her single defining character trait. She believes she is entitled to power and beauty and all other things because of her position. She feels wronged that these things were denied her. After all, if people must die and suffer for her to attain her power, it is only the natural order of things. Like a spoiled child, any denial of her wishes is met with anger and swift punishment. She despises all things of the light, since it was the light she was banished from. If she were ever to escape, she would plunge the world into darkness to suit her macabre sense of aesthetics.
Neherenia has actually become quite old and ugly over the years of her imprisonment, though she refuses to accept this. In her mirror she always appears young and beautiful, at the height of her power. The version of herself in the mirror is the one she thinks of as real, while the old wasted version is what she sees as a minion or image she must use to interact with the rest of the world. This ruse is so elaborate that it appears Neherenia's real body is unaware of it, and the old wasted projection of her true form calls itself by the name Zirconia.
The extent of Neherenia's power is hard to judge, though it is not insignificant. She mainly relies on her minions due to her 'inability' to enter the real world. She is more powerful than Helios, and slightly more powerful than any single member of the Amazoness Quartet. In times of desperation she can forcibly extract power from the quartet at an accelerated rate, so long as they continue to hold their Amazon Stones.