In the desert, Redana walks.

The ship yawns and unfurls. The metal on the walls, well-welded, is gone; there is glass. There is glass and glass and glass. It drifts in dunes up and down the passages, crunching under Redana’s feet. The walls are warped. The labyrinth is here. She walks it, and her clothes are leopardskin and blood, and when she lets her fingers drift against the mirrors she flinches back because they are so cold, they burn.

She is bloody; she leaves smears on the glass, shivering, demarcated. Has she committed another sin? Her body burns where she embraced Mynx, held her so tight, in her throat where she screamed, in her fingers which made fists pressed against her spine. And did she pop? Or... no. That was when the curtain fell. Mynx’s voice follows her, but the words are meaningless: [i]Zenoy, Zanzenoy, Zenangelov.[/i] That is what the Coherent say to her when she pushes them aside, into the wastes: [i]Zenoy, Zanzenoy, Zenangelov.[/i]

She wanted to become the Nemean and tear Mynx apart for being a coward, but she saw the thought falling like a star, from outside herself, and she was afraid, and Mynx was afraid and knew her death, and there trembling on the edge of calling down that violence she called out, and what she called out was that Mynx was not the one who needed to be punished, Mynx was not the monster, Mynx was not, and she raised one hand to backhand the coward and her fingers interlocked and—

There is a statue that stands alone. The sky above is roiling, a nebula split in half by Nyx’s sword, so violently black that the pink within throbs. The statue is white, glass-scoured, blasted. The back has fallen out, worn away completely, leaving a thin marble facade smiling serenely out. Bees crawl in and out through the parted lips, brilliant black and all-consuming gold, cloyingly sweet to see. It stands in the middle of the road, and Redana cannot go around, cannot go around at all, because distance is boundless and mirrored on either side.

“I hurt you,” Redana says, pressing her forehead to the sandaled foot, the claws and the arch. “Because i am stupid. You were right, you were right, were you always right? By being [i]born[/i] I hurt you. Come back. [i]Come back.[/i] Please. Let me show you what I wanted. Just let me show you what I meant. Please. [i]Please.[/i] Let me [i]unhurt you.[/i]”

And she looks up, and Bella looks down, her eyes in the hollow mask painted circles nested forever in a thousand colors, black holes for falling into until the stars fail and the gods begin the game all over again, and her voice is the whisper of the bees passing in and out from her lips. [b][i]”Zenoy, Zanzenoy, Zenangelov.”[/i][/b] Thus she proclaims, and condemns blood-stained Redana to her punishment, by authority of Redana Nulla, Never-Empress of Tellus.

***

When Mynx catches up to her, Redana’s dug a groove in the shrine door (Dolce has the key) with her nails, which are too strong to break. She lies face-down on the floor, her manic energy all at once expended. Mynx lifts with her knees, asking her ward if she is [i]okay[/i], as if she can do anything about it, as if she did not do this somehow, and all Redana hisses through a clenched jaw is, simply, ridiculously, again: [i]Eloy, Elioyama, Sabakthani.[/i]

And together the three of them make their way to the infirmary.