The bubble hung suspended in blackness. Ahead of them, at the far end of the blackness, a brilliant triangle of white light grew as large as her outstretched hand, and then stopped. For a moment there was no further action; the escort stood in silence, staring at the light ahead.

Rhita shivered. Something animal in her looked for a way out, hoping that some magic had suspended all this reality and provided her with a chance to escape. But she did not try. Left idle with her thoughts, she turned and saw an opaque wall behind them, covered with the sheen of an oil slick on black water, gold and silver and all the colors of the rainbow besides.

The wall stretched off above them in shadowy darkness. It was hauntingly, massively beautiful; it gave her no clues whatsoever as to where she was, or what would happen next. The silence terrified her; she had to speak to keep from screaming.

“I don’t know your name,” she said quietly. The escort turned to her, smooth face all attention, and she was oddly ashamed for even wanting to know such things about her enemy. The shame came in part from realizing that she could not hate this figure standing beside her; she wasn’t even sure what it was. To learn more, she would have to ask questions that might make her seem weak.

“Do you want me to have a name?” the escort asked pleasantly.

“You don’t have a name of your own?”

“My companions address me in a wide variety of ways. In this form, however, since I am to be viewed and accessed only by you, I have no name.”

His seeming obtuseness renewed her irritation. “Please choose a name,” she said, turning away from him.

“Then I will be Kimōn. Is this a suitable name?”

She had had a third school paidagōgos named Kimōn. He had been a round, pleasant man, gentle and persistent but not quick. She had felt deep affection for Kimōn as a young girl. Perhaps the escort hoped to play on that. And perhaps he doesn’t need to use any such obvious subterfuge. “No,” she said. “That isn’t your name.”

“Then what should my name be?”

“I will call you Typhōn,” she said. From Hēsiodos: the horrible being who fought with Zeus, son of Gaia (hence the escort’s human appearance) and Tartaros; a deeply buried monster of limitless evil…. That name might keep her on her guard.

The escort nodded. “Typhōn it is.”