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unknown danger—just a lot of drugs that cast further doubt upon the alchemist’s character.
    Korm pocketed four of the mushroom caps for himself, put the rest of Creeg’s possessions back in the bag, and waited for the dark skies to turn a lighter shade of gray.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    Korm finally reached the foot of the mountain to find Aebos and Epostian Creeg stopped short before him, marveling at a huge body stretched out upon the dusty ground. The stark white of its immense bones contrasted with the red dirt of the valley floor, reminding Korm of a sun-bleached skeleton of an ancient warrior revealed by the shifting sands of a desert. Clumps of flesh still clinging to the frame here and there and the jumble of indistinct organic matter within its chest suggested this warrior was more recent than ancient, however, and an army made up of creatures this tall could easily crush nations under its heels. The behemoth’s skull looked in many ways human, but was larger than that of an elephant. From the top of its head to the soles of its feet must have been twenty-five feet or more.
    “What in the Hell is that supposed to be?” Korm asked.
    “Could it have fallen?” asked Epostian Creeg.
    “Creeg hardly inspires confidence.”
    Aebos approached the skeleton for a closer observation, his posture displaying little of the caution that ran up and down Korm’s spine. “The bones would have been crushed,” Aebos said. “And they would have been jumbled and chaotic. This creature looks as though it fell straight on its back, as if it laid down willingly and died. The arms are out straight at the shoulder. No one lands like that and stays that way.”
    Korm turned from the creature to survey the route from which they had come. The last hour had been a careful hand-over-hand descent down a jagged cleft in the mountain wall. The cliffs stretched for miles on either side. No doubt the route they had chosen was the only viable path from the portal above down to the valley. That meant the giant’s corpse had been staged for all who trod the path from the Relentless’s portal. It was meant as a message, and its author must have been Juval.
    “I think the demon killed it,” Korm said. “But what was it, and what was it doing here?”
    Creeg scoffed. “The ship is ancient, and any number of creatures may have found their way into Juval’s realm, only to be killed. It’s possible this fellow has been here for centuries. It is also possible that the giant is simply a figment conjured by Juval to scare us back up the mountain. We should pay it no mind and carry on.”
    And so they did.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    Later, the trio came upon the first of the violet pools that spread across the valley like angry, bubbling sores. The alchemist marveled at the pool’s viscid liquid, which melted a wooden testing prod like a candle but did no damage to his bare hand. When Creeg knelt to gather some of the material for his own collection, Korm even thought he saw the alchemist take a sip from his slime-soaked sample jar.
    They saw little sign of life as they traversed the plain toward the burning building at the heart of Juval’s realm. Three times they heard a loud splash from one of the pools they had just passed, but upon turning discovered only ripples widening from the water’s edge. After a few hours of marching, the pools thinned out and finally disappeared at the verge of a sickly forest of diseased trees glistening with gangrene and pus.
    Korm and Aebos kept their distance from the hideous growths, but Epostian Creeg stepped right up to their trunks, cutting away sections of their scabrous flesh with a thin knife to collect samples for later study. The trail of his blade seeped with greasy black sap that smelled worse than it looked. Here and there in the forest, Korm thought he could hear footsteps in the undergrowth keeping pace with their march, but he never managed to catch sight of his observer.
    On one such occasion, looking off the rough