She raises her knife for all to see, cuts her arm and bleeds into the cauldron. She presses along the arm to hurry the blood, sucks and spits into the brew, adds her mushrooms and moss and spoor. She cradles the spiders in her bloody palm and walks close to the men.

Slack cheeks, open mouths, fear and hatred too. Dark eyes. Jason as foreign as the rest, child-king.

Black globe of a pregnant spider revealed then thrown in. Medea stirs with a stick and the slick brown heads of the mushrooms well at the surface. She chants to Hekate in her own tongue. Destroyer, break the knees of these Minyae, make them worship and beg. Distort them tonight and make them see shapes of fear, let them know me as fear. Take the world they know away from them and leave them alone and whimpering.

She takes one of their bowls, dips it into the soup, makes sure there are several mushrooms. Then she fills the rest as they step forward. No man looks at her. They stand waiting until they are an army, each facing the fire, holding a bowl and waiting for a command. Every instinct in them the instinct of a slave. Jason is last, and he is no braver than the rest, looking down.

Medea steps to the altar, her back to the sea, flames before her and the men beyond. Hekate, she says and tips her head for them to drink, and every man does it. They drink and chew until each holds his bowl empty before him in both hands, facing her like fifty small shields. Medea smiles. They are too easy. Then she folds down over her knees, cocooned, silent, faceless, waiting. Let them be lost.

Fire and sea. Voices endless and opposed. Fire always coming closer, the sea forever receding. Wind awakening both. Hekate in fire, no steady pulse, no surge and fall but panic after panic and more voices beneath and more beneath those, all buried half in the ground and writhing above, muffled and consumed. Smaller gods just as greedy.

Shrieking overhead, and Medea smiles. There could not be a more perfect night for this. A night in which none may find shelter. All the world distorted.

She waits until she hears them retch, waits longer still for the visions to begin. They will be crawling now, and they will want to die, and everything will begin spinning from the inside. As they suck for air, every terror will be let in.

Moaning, sound of the terrified, and she rises to see them on the ground, clutching their bellies, writhing in dirt, an army collapsed. Poisoned and made new.

She steps down to the fire, takes a thick burning branch and throws it among them, watches them curl away. You will burn, she tells them in their language. You will all burn, for Hekate.