She’s the only one who could keep up. Fleet-footed Redana, daughter of the gods, racing after that tumbling thunderbolt. Where it falls, rents and gouges tear into the roiling flesh of the monstrous mother of serpents. And where it falls, it does so without thought of itself.

Bella would have burned herself out in that awful armor, would have melted from the inside out. But that heart is still furious within her, burning, searing, as she dances with Hades on the edge of death. And Redana will not let that happen, will not let Bella tumble into the dark with a mocking, hopeless laugh on her lips. So she turns aside claw and jaw, the enemy from all sides; she uses the shield to crush, swinging it as if it was her answer to the awful assertion of this monster against the world, which is…

Something. There are things going on here that even the Shepherdess doesn’t understand, signifiers meaningless without their context. Mothers and monsters, killers and defenders. What is real in this moment is the frantic fight, the constant shift of attention, and even if she were Hera’s hundred-eyed guard she still wouldn’t be thinking fast enough to cover all the angles, to find the empty space between the many deaths of Sagakhan, no matter how hard she tries.

Then she catches sight of him between the writhing flesh, the necks and the teeth, with a shovel over one shoulder and a cigarette smouldering between his lips. He catches her eye, nods his head, gestures vaguely towards—

“Bella!” She vaults over a falling head, comes as close to the raging, roiling thunderbolt as she dares. “Follow me!”

She reaches out and takes her Bella by the wrist.

“Trust me,” she says, and for a moment they’re back on Tellus. I know what I’m doing, Bella. Follow me. Be with me. [i]Trust me.[/i]

Because there’s no way to kill a monster like this, save for the intervention of the gods. And there’s no way to force a monster like this to give ground, only to give chase. She gave up her cunning, thinking it a weapon worth discarding; now she’ll be outwitted by [i]Redana,[/i] of all people.

If Bella comes with her.

If.