Chapter One: On a Stillswept Sea

Korm Calladan grimaced as his teeth pulled a strip of flesh from a hastily cooked human arm. After three weeks and twelve of his mates put to the spit, he couldn’t quite bring himself to devour his meals on deck, before the eyes of his fellow crewmen. He knew he would have died long ago if not for the grim meals—and he refused to die—but his survival brought him no satisfaction. Worse, the passing of days had brought no wind to the still Obari seas, and soon, quite soon, there would be no one left to devour.

According to the navigator, the Queen’s Lament had been less than a week from Quantium when the winds died, and the long voyage from distant Vudra had left them but a few days of provisions when the sails went slack and the ship fell still. Korm had argued against putting in at that city of wizards, favoring instead the markets of Katapesh or even the slaver enclave of Okeno, but the ship’s captain had no fear of sorcerers and mystics, and carried forth toward Nex’s capital port, mocking Korm’s superstition. Then the ocean died, and the captain along with it. After the navigator, he had been the first to provide his meat for the survival of the mutinous crew.

Even now, Korm could hear the crew cackling and howling on deck, filled with a moment’s energy from their latest harvest. Sitting with his back against the cabin door and his eyes on the sunlit stairs, Korm swallowed a hunk of what this morning had been the third mate. He tried not to think of the look in the young sailor’s eyes when the lad drew a tarnished silver coin from the capped tankard they used to determine whose turn had come. In the space of a moment, the crew fell upon him with knives and sharpened hooks. Two weeks ago, Korm would have left the work to the others. Earlier today, he pushed them aside in an effort to claim the choicest cuts for himself and his companion, Aebos, on the other side of the door.

“Korm would rather talk than fight, but he’d rather fight than die.”

With the navigator and the captain, they’d sliced the meat into cutlets so they could pretend they feasted upon some animal. It was brutal work that forever changed the butcher. By the third draw of tarnished silver, men threw their slain mates right into the fire, hacking crisped limbs away, leaving fingers and toes intact, making no pretense of their foul work. To date, Korm and Aebos had remained on the right side of the dinner knives, but he knew their luck would only last so long. Korm dropped the mate’s arm into his lap and brought his bloody fingers to his mouth, plucking a hair from between his front teeth.

A shadow darkened the stairs to the deck. Then another. And another.

The thin wooden stairs creaked under the weight of six emaciated sailors, led by Hurmat, a lanky, thin-bearded Vudran in a blood-spattered blue vest. He held a red-greased knife in his left hand, and the capped tankard in his right.

“We miss you on deck, Calladan,” he said with a wicked smile. “There’s still some of Armad left, if you hurry. We wouldn’t want you to go hungry. Why do you always disappear during meals?”

Korm flicked away the thin black strand of hair and let his left hand fall to the thin saber at his side.

“It’s not that I dislike the company,” he said. “I had to bring a portion down to Aebos.”

The men behind Hurmat shifted nervously, their eyes darting to the cabin door. Korm noticed that all of them held short blades, belaying hooks, or curved daggers. That and the presence of the tankard suggested that they hadn’t just come to talk. Even with the little strength provided by their latest meal, Korm doubted he would be able to take all of them in a fight. Unshaken, Hurmat stepped forward and leaned down to look Korm straight in the eyes.

“Yes. Aebos. We’d like to talk to you about him.” The sailor’s hot breath carried the stench of urine in its second or third cycle. The potable water had lasted just longer than the food. “He’s a big boy, that friend of yours. It takes more than a man’s share to keep him fed, and his meat alone is worth twice that of any of us. There’s no wind in sight, Calladan. Perhaps it has died across the entire ocean. If we take Aebos, it will give us a week without need for more draws from the cup. But it must be done now, while we still have the strength. Even the mighty Aebos grows thin, and if we wait too long, even his flesh won’t sustain us for long.”

“To Hell with you, Hurmat, and to all of you bastards. We all agreed to the system. The next draw is three days from now. Then we will let the coins decide.”

“Wrong,” said Hurmat, stepping back to stand with his fellows. “The next draw is today. Now.” He flung the tankard to the floor between Korm’s outstretched legs. As it clattered upon the wooden planks two pieces of tarnished silver clinked from the cup and onto the floor. No one spoke as the coin nearest Korm spun to a slow stop.

“Let me guess,” Korm said, staring at the death-dealing coin. “Everyone else has already taken their draw?”

“Indeed, Calladan. It appears that your luck has run out. I know you keep the key to your friend’s compartment in your pocket, and I’d hoped you would turn it over willingly. You’re a brave man. But I tell you one thing: I will not die with an empty stomach.”

“No, you won’t,” Korm said, leaping to his feet with a burst of energy that surprised even himself. Somewhat less steadily, he raised his slender blade and crouched into a defensive stance.

“Take him!” shouted Hurmat. “And don’t let him open that door!”

The crew surged forward in a wave of flashing swords. A black-skinned Garundi with white hair and a wicked scar across his face pushed past Hurmat to thrust a short blade at Korm’s abdomen. Korm sidestepped and raised his saber, deflecting the attack. In a single movement that drained more energy than it should have, Korm shouldered the Garundi to the wall and brought the sharpened pommel of his sword down on his enemy’s neck. A gout of warm blood spurted from the wound, coating Korm’s sword hand and spraying a trail of death as the Garundi slumped to the floor. Five more. He’d have to dispatch all of them as quickly if he hoped to survive.

Next came a blond youth with a missing eye and a dagger in each hand. Korm grimaced as he recognized his attacker as Delmios, an orphan befriended by the dead captain years ago in some godsforsaken Andoren smuggler’s port. Delmios had been as close to a friend as Korm and Aebos had on the ship, filled with questions about their travels and eager to learn the rudiments of Korm’s swordcraft. Early in the voyage, Korm had even given the lad some basic fighting instruction.

As Delmios advanced, Korm noticed with pride that he kept to the balls of his feet as he had taught. The youth slashed with his left dagger while keeping the right ready to parry a counterattack. But one-eyed is no way to go into a fight, and Korm easily took advantage of the youth’s damaged perception, sidestepping his blow and raising his saber in a jab aimed right at Delmios’s working eye. The blade scraped past the parrying blow and slid easily into the socket, catching for a moment inside the boy’s skull. Delmios screamed, dropped his daggers, and fell to the floor, blindly clutching the bleeding mess of his remaining eye. The act gave Korm no pleasure, but it was kill or be killed.

The sharp point of Hurmat’s knife cut a thin slice through the meat of Korm’s left arm. He dropped his sword reflexively, spinning to face his attacker. Somehow, during the fight with Delmios, Hurmat had slid behind him. Korm cursed his clumsiness and fell into a quick kneel to reach for his fallen blade. Instead, his hand came down upon the bare planks of the floor, where a heavy boot soon fell upon it, crushing the fingers of his sword hand. Korm swore. He looked up the long leg attached to the boot to see the bushy black beard of a burly attacker. The sailor brought his other boot up in a fierce kick to Korm’s face, sending him spinning, weaponless, to Hurmat’s feet.

“You should have joined us when you had the chance, Calladan,” muttered the Vudran, looking at Korm and the two bodies next to him on the floor. The Garundi’s neck still seeped dark red blood, albeit less enthusiastically than before. He didn’t move. Delmios squirmed upon the floor, moaning softly. Hurmat stood against the door, licking his lips as he decided how to strike the killing blow. Behind Korm, the black-bearded sailor, a squat half-orc deckhand, and the ship’s hook-nosed quartermaster blocked escape up the stairs. Korm’s saber rested on the floor behind them near the first step to freedom. But even if he could somehow make it through their legs without being killed, he’d still have the rest of the crew on deck to deal with. From the howls and screams thundering down the stairs from up above, they seemed energized as ever.

Hurmat spoke from before the door. “It’s all over for you. I’ll raise a toast to Korm and Aebos as we divide the meal. With the addition of these two,” he said, gesturing to the Garundi and Delmios, “we’ll not be hungry for a week or more.”

On his knees before Hurmat and with little energy to spare, Korm managed a crooked smile. “You forget, Hurmat, that yours is not the greatest hunger on board. I kept my friend behind closed doors not for his protection, but for yours.”

Hurmat raised a dark eyebrow at Korm’s bravado and opened his mouth to retort, only to flinch terribly as the door behind him shuddered from a tremendous blow from within. His face curtained with sudden worry, Hurmat turned toward the sound just as a hairy, meaty arm as thick as a man’s thigh smashed through the door. A massive hand grasped Hurmat’s face like a boy grips a ball, and the Vudran released a short squeal of terror as the powerful fingers squeezed his head. From the floor Korm heard the cracking of bone.

Then, in a moment, the arm flexed and pulled Hurmat through the door and into the dark room beyond, shattering the broken portal. Hurmat’s screams echoed through the ship’s underdecks, and must have been audible all the way to the crow’s nest.

The armed sailors at the foot of the stairs exchanged terrified glances. Korm chuckled, balancing himself against the wall as he rose to his feet. A looming presence emerged from the darkened cabin, stepping into candlelight to reveal the form of a giant garbed in a rough leather garment stitched together from the skins of unknown beasts. Hurmat’s blood coated the creature’s powerful hands and forearms to the elbow, streaking across a barrel chest and up to a wide, angry mouth filled with irregularly spaced teeth. A single eye the size of a man’s fist leered from the center of the beast’s bald head, glaring hate at the fear-frozen sailors near the foot of the stair.

“Gentlemen,” announced Korm as he stooped to retrieve his saber, “you remember Aebos?”

Like the rest of them, Aebos had lost a lot of muscle over the last several weeks, but his emergence evened the odds. The half-orc and the quartermaster looked to the black-bearded sailor and back up the stairs, toward the indistinct shouting of the abovedeck crew. For a moment they appeared ready to flee toward sunlight, but the noise from above grew louder, and soon a crowd of sailors thundered down the stairs, pressing the worried warriors toward Korm and Aebos.

Korm grabbed a handful of black beard in his right hand, pulling his enemy’s face into a rising knee with a loud crunch. As the sailor collapsed to the floor, Korm saw a flash of the hook-nosed quartermaster’s surprised face rush past him, pushed forward by the newcomers.

“What have you gotten us into, Korm?” shouted Aebos in a low voice as he grappled with the quartermaster. A vicious scream tumbled down the stairs before ending abruptly in a blood-choked gurgle. Korm realized that what he had at first taken as the sounds of celebration must instead have been slaughter.

“This isn’t my doing, friend! I think the ship’s under some kind of attack!” Korm ducked the wild swing of a scimitar just in time. The blade bit into the wooden wall, eliciting a grunt from a new attacker. As the deckhand struggled to free his trapped sword, he cast a worried glance at the stairs. Korm’s saber pierced his throat before he had the chance to look back. In the doorway, Aebos held a man by the neck in each hand, using their struggling bodies to deflect the blows of their allies. As he watched, the jerking victims sprouted crossbow bolts with red fletching, and Korm cursed. Someone on the stairs was firing randomly into the melee, and it was only a matter of time before their shots struck true.

The sailors fought on in desperation, trying to push past Korm and Aebos rather than defeat them. Fear, chaos, and clumsy blows filled the candlelit hall. Korm stepped left to avoid the hasty chop of a boarding axe, only to slip on a smear of viscera and fall hard to the ground. A bolt-pierced sailor collapsed upon his legs, trapping him on the floor. Korm struggled to pull himself free, but the weakness of starvation and the rigors of battle had drained him of energy. His fingers clutched for his dropped saber. Found nothing.

Clammy hands scrambled across Korm’s face, threading through his long black hair and snarling his thick mustache. A slight form pulled its way atop Korm’s body, grimy fingernails hooking into his mouth. Korm clamped his eyes shut reflexively.

“Calladan!” His name came in a thin whisper from a dying voice he immediately recognized. Delmios. Korm opened his eyes to stare into the dripping socket of his former pupil. The boy straddled his chest, one blind hand on Korm’s face and the other holding aloft a dagger for the killing strike. Korm released a resigned sigh, wondering what had happened to Aebos. So this is how it all ends. Shit. He braced himself for death.

Instead, a red-fletched bolt pierced Delmios’s eyepatch, and the boy collapsed upon him. With all of his effort, Korm shoved the lifeless form aside and sat up, casting a wary glance at the stairs.

There, arrayed in long coats of ringed mail and wielding powerful crossbows loaded with red-fletched bolts, stood a half-dozen helmed warriors clad in the red-and-yellow livery of the wizard kingdom of Nex. They stood in taut formation, unharmed, their weapons pointed at his heart. Korm looked behind him to see Aebos standing dumbfounded in the doorway, surrounded by the bolt-pierced forms of the crew. The cyclops shrugged, offering a feeble smile that revealed blood-crusted teeth. Aside from the soft moans of the dying crew, all was silent.

At once, the crossbowmen relaxed their weapons and parted with a fluid motion, snapping to attention with their backs against the stairway walls. Soft footfalls descended the steps, and a feminine figure emerged from the sunlight and into the darkened, body-choked hall. The woman’s jeweled slippers came first, followed by legs cloaked in a filmy red silken dress gathered around a circlet of filigreed bone that ringed her navel. The garment pulled tight against her smooth hips and generous breasts, and while the complete effect suggested seduction and a woman well acquainted with her physical charms, the precision of the cut and the elaborate decoration upon the cloth suggested wealth and influence. She carried a stout black wooden staff carved with runic symbols in one hand, and a small glowing crystal sphere in the other. As the woman reached the final stair, the crystal’s brilliance flared, revealing a cold, beautiful face framed by an elaborate headdress of beaded glass and tropical feathers.

The orb’s coruscations played upon the glass beads and the woman’s dark eyes as she surveyed the scene. She regarded the slain crewmen without an ounce of sympathy, pausing only a moment to gaze at Korm as he slowly stood. With a flash she turned her attention directly to the cyclops. Her red lips curled into a wide smile.

“Korm and Aebos,” she said with satisfaction. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Chapter Two: Breaking Fast

Korm and Aebos emerged into the morning sun to find the bodies of their crewmates hacked apart and bleeding upon the midship deck. Red-fletched crossbow bolts stuck out from the corpses at odd angles. Korm’s empty stomach lurched, and with a grimace the slender swordsman realized that the carnage had caused his mouth to water with anticipation. An hour ago, here on the windless barrens of a stillswept sea, the ship’s gory deck would have been the platter for a life-saving feast. As he warily eyed the dozen armored men who circled them and held loaded heavy crossbows at the ready, Korm wondered how long that life would last.

At the head of the armed brigade stood the dark-hued woman whose arrival had saved them from the knives of the cannibal crew. Despite the readied weapons of her warriors, despite the bodies and severed limbs littering the deck at her feet, the woman’s posture betrayed no hint of alarm or worry. Even the most hardened warriors often lost some of their composure in the presence of Aebos, for the day of the cyclopes had passed millennia ago, and the race stood on the precipice of legend. But the woman and her troops all came from the wizard kingdom of Nex, where swordsmen were little cause for concern, and strange, inhuman creatures walked the city streets as a matter of course.

“I’m glad we were able to find you when we did,” the woman said with a thin smile. “My alchemist has been toiling away at breakfast for hours now, and it would be a shame not to honor the sole survivors of the Queen’s Lament. So sad that the ship sank with nearly all hands aboard, but these are difficult times for pirates.”

“I’m not hungry,” Korm said, almost too quickly.

“The ribs showing beneath your shirt suggest otherwise, Mister Calladan,” she replied. “Of course you are free to deny the invitation, but in that case I suggest you start looking for the choicest cuts of meat here on the deck, before the ship sinks and you have to wrestle them out of the mouths of sharks.”

“You seem to know a lot about us,” Aebos said warily, rubbing his meaty hands clean on a bit of shirt stolen from one of the dead crewmen at the top of the stairs. “But we don’t know anything about you.”

“On the contrary,” the woman said. “You know that we are friends. My men do not want for ammunition, and two more shots would have made very little difference. But we spared you. It should be obvious that we mean you no harm.”

Korm and Aebos shared a stern glance.

“I am Iranez,” she said. “Of the Orb. Chiefmost among the Council of Three and Nine that rules in the name of the Archwizard Nex from the port of Quantium, three days to the west. I’ve got a ship that can sail without wind, a table topped with food prepared by the most talented chef in all of Garund, and chairs for two at the head of it. And I grow weary of waiting. Won’t you please be my guests?”

“We seem to have little choice,” Korm scowled.

“Oh, lighten up, Mister Calladan!” She pivoted on a slippered foot and laughed over her shoulder. “I’m fairly certain my men and I just saved your lives.”

The soldiers shifted starboard, urging Korm and Aebos along in their wake. The cyclops bent down to whisper in his partner’s ear.

“She’s probably right, you know,” he said. “Besides, what harm can come of it?”

Korm frowned. “Ask me again after I’ve had a bit of her alchemist’s breakfast.”

As the group approached the starboard rails, Iranez’s ship came into view, and Korm’s breath caught in his throat. Thin cords, gangplanks, and rope bridges connected the Queen’s Lament to the attacking vessel, but the two boats could hardly have been more different. Iranez’s ship stood tall in the water on two sleek hulls, like a catamaran, and came to a sharp point at the front, as if designed to slip through waves like a knife slides through a ribcage. Its smooth surface looked as if it had been shaped from ceramic or carved from lightweight stone. Two tall, impossibly thin masts rose from the slender deck, but neither had been rigged with a sail. However the Nexian ship had made it alongside the Queen’s Lament, it had arrived under its own power.

“Gentlemen,” said Iranez, “I present the Relentless, very nearly the last of its kind. Shaped by the otherworldly shipwrights of the archmage Nex himself, she once stood at the vanguard of our nation’s armada. I rescued her from a sargasso on the edge of the Eye of Abendego a century ago, and she’s been my personal vessel ever since.”

As Iranez turned to admire the ship, she gently placed her left hand upon the top of the orb at her side, which seemed to hover of its own accord. The crystalline sphere pulsed with a soft green illumination, and the woman’s slippered feet lifted off the deck. Without any hint of effort, the Nexian rose over the siderail and glided across a dozen feet of open ocean toward her vessel. The armored guards sheathed their weapons and scampered across the ropes and planks connecting the ships. Aebos looked to his companion, shrugged, and scrambled after them.

“Just because Iranez saves your life doesn’t mean she can be trusted.”

Korm stepped forward and looked over the deckrail to the glistening azure waters between both ships. The high morning sun shone brightly upon the placid surface, giving the water a radiant, almost mystical quality. In the last weeks he had come to think of the sea as a prison, and very likely a tomb. Now he saw the brilliant blue as a crystal portal between two dimensions, a wizard’s membrane separating the world of the living from the world of the dead. Without so much as a glance behind him, Korm hauled himself up onto the rail near a thin gangplank and took a decisive step toward life.

∗ ∗ ∗

The alchemist’s lips quivered in self-satisfaction as the translucent slug pulled a trail of brilliant amber across the serving tray. “We begin with a delicacy unique to the untamed jungles west of our homeland, brought to the table of Lady Iranez by the reach of almighty Nex’s unparalleled merchant network and prepared by yours truly, Epostian Creeg.”

From his vantage at the head of the table, the well-manicured dandy raised an eyebrow and surveyed his audience for reaction to his name. Iranez offered a thin smile while Korm and Aebos looked on without expression. He continued.

“The creature’s slime deadens the tongue’s acidity, triggering a mild euphoria in the taster. When combined with the ink of the Blanchess urchin smuggled from the depths of Lake Ocota, this effect unlocks what the Mwangi mystics call the ‘seventh flavor,’ a sensation ordinarily reserved for their haughty, ancient spirit-gods.”

He surveyed the panoply of dining implements before him—mirrored at each place setting—and gingerly selected a long length of polished whale bone stained with dark purple resin. The three diners followed suit. Iranez drew her bone across the viscid trail, gathering a dollop of slime no larger than a silver coin upon the flattened end. Epostian Creeg returned a smile and nod, and the woman brought the slime to her tongue with a steady, practiced hand. She carefully placed the implement back on the table, closed her eyes, and focused on the sensation. Her nostrils flared and her head fell back slightly, betraying just a hint of ecstasy. Korm looked awkwardly toward his companion across the table, unsure of his next move. For his part, the cyclops eagerly dipped his stick into the slime and brought it to his wide mouth. His huge eye shut almost immediately, and Korm noticed swift movements behind the lid, as if his friend were dreaming. Korm felt Creeg’s eyes upon him. Expectant.

He hadn’t eaten proper food in weeks, he thought, musing on the change in perspective that had classified euphoric slug slime as “proper food.” It beat human, anyway. With a resigned sigh and an eye on some of the more appetizing provender crowding the table, Korm dipped his utensil into the trail and reluctantly raised the amber slime to his tongue.

It had an earthy, sharp taste Korm usually associated with poison, but just as soon as it registered the sensation faded into a dull, comfortable stupefaction that began at the tip of his tongue and ran slowly down his throat and into his chest. Almost against his will, Korm’s heavy head tilted back against the padded chair and his shoulders began to sink into a pleasant lethargy. For the first time in weeks, Korm Calladan allowed himself to relax.

“A fitting start for what it to come,” the alchemist said, eyes flashing, “for the slime is but the first of eleven courses we will enjoy this morning.” Creeg motioned to a long porcelain tray to his left, drawing his slender fingers across a meticulous display of dozens of small gray hard-boiled eggs shot through with flaky gold spices that sparkled in the nimbus of Iranez’s orb.

“In the wilds of Nex’s southern plains, too near the treacherous, blasted landscape of the Mana Wastes for human settlement, dwells a peculiar avian known to the roving tribes as the aubekan. Aubekans mate for life, and a pair of these rare birds produces a single offspring only once every six years. These creatures never survive in captivity, but their eggs convey a rich flavor unlike that of any other creature on Golarion. When seasoned with a special spice of my own creation, these eggs serve as the perfect opening to our feast.”

Without need for further explanation, Aebos reached across the table and grasped a half-dozen eggs in his powerful hand. Smiling at Korm under a heavy-lidded eye, the giant threw the whole handful into his mouth, smacking his lips with all the decorum of a Queen’s Lament crewman feasting on his fellow sailor. Iranez selected a single egg, spearing it on a long-tined fork and cutting it into several pieces on her fine porcelain plate before taking tiny, delicate bites. Korm followed suit, bringing a small portion of aubekan egg to his mouth.

It didn’t taste anything like he expected. Creeg’s golden spice gave the egg a powdery consistency that didn’t match its succulent appearance. At first he detected a hint of sourness redolent of a ripe apple, but the sensation soon slipped to sharpness suggestive of aged cheese. Korm wondered if the shifting tastes were inherent to the aubekan egg, to the euphoric slime, or simply to his weariness and recent unfamiliarity with decent food. Before he could decide, the flavor changed again, and the swordsman almost spit out the egg into his embroidered napkin. It tasted just like every meal he had eaten in the last month. Like human.

Aebos didn’t seem to notice, and kept shoveling the gray-and-gold delicacies into his huge mouth. Iranez and Epostian Creeg both marveled at the cyclops’s appetite, completely ignoring Korm, oblivious to his growing disgust. As Aebos neared the end of the tray, Creeg turned to a wide plate to his right, cleared his throat quietly, and continued.

“Next we have a rare delicacy claimed from the deep waters east of Katapesh: the finest ocean caviar wrapped in the dried skin of a giant river gar, pierced by mussel skewers flavored with a variety of spices imported from distant Tian Xia and supplemented with a unique herbal blend of my own design.”

Each portion of the extravagant dish measured no wider than the palm of Korm’s hand, so it was a good thing that Creeg had prepared far more than a single serving for each diner. Again, Aebos devoured the stuff moments after its introduction, tossing the packets of fish eggs into his maw three at a time. One was enough for Korm. Again, the dish produced a profusion of flavors ending in the familiar tang of long pig.

Each course that followed was the same. Meticulously prepared and delicately spiced with Creeg’s golden flakes, the plates looked more like fine art than food, yet despite his hunger, Korm had to force himself to continue. After the caviar, everything started to run together in his mind, and they all led to the same revolting conclusion. To Korm, everything tasted like human.

Boletus and dungeness crab handkerchiefs. Human. Aurochs tongue on a bed of pesh flowers. Human. Truffled mammoth curd. Human. His fellow diners didn’t seem to notice, treating each new course as a wonderful delicacy to be savored and enjoyed. After a while Korm decided his affliction was psychological, and once he had swallowed enough of Creeg’s food to stave off starvation, he took only the smallest of bites, tuned out the alchemist’s pretentious presentation, and allowed his mind to wander.

With walls of dark wood appointed with elaborate trim along the floor and ceiling, the room in which they dined conveyed a sense of power and wealth. At most six diners could sit around the fine marble-topped table, suggesting that the ship’s crew was meant to dine elsewhere, in a presumably far more humble setting. Finely wrought wooden doors marked the port and starboard walls. They’d come in from the port, and Korm suspected the opposite door led to the quarters of the ship’s senior staff. His mind subconsciously began to wonder what the bedchambers of a national ruler might look like, and Korm smiled as he sensed the return of his old self now that food and freedom were at hand.

At the head of the table, Epostian Creeg gestured with his left hand, his first two fingers raised to the ceiling as he extolled the virtues of the next course. Korm didn’t pay attention to his words, but rather focused on the man’s meticulous appearance. Dressed in a supple white leather suit cut to the latest fashion and accented by a brilliant red flower in the buttonhole of his left breast pocket, Creeg appeared every bit the royal attendant he was. His short blond hair was freshly trimmed, his smooth skin without a hint of dirt or blemish. Like his beautiful dishes, every aspect of his demeanor and dress seemed perfectly arranged to impress.

A massive symbol imprinted on the wall behind Creeg framed the alchemist in a perfect circle, between two diagonal lines that suggested a road disappearing over the horizon. The image reminded Korm of the mystical symbols adorning the few alchemical reference works he’d perused in his travels, and the swordsman let out a soft snort as he decided that the pompous dandy had probably planned that, too. No doubt the alchemist fancied the dramatics of appearing to stand at the head of a long road leading to the infinite horizons of enlightenment. And then it hit him.

He’d seen that symbol before.

Creeg paused his presentation for a moment, and Korm decided it was his turn to speak. He turned to Iranez of the Orb.

“If you sit on the Council of Quantium,” he asked matter-of-factly, “why does your dining chamber bear the seal of the Pathfinder Society?”

Iranez raised an eyebrow in pleasant surprise. “You’ve encountered it?”

“I was raised in Daggermark and spent my first two decades traveling up and down the River Road,” Korm said, trying not to sneer. “You’d be surprised by what I’ve encountered.”

Iranez pursed her lips in a bemused expression, clearly unused to being chided by a social inferior.

“Your travels serve you well,” she said. “The glyph is the mark of the vessel’s previous owner, a questing hero named Durvin Gest, one of the founders of that guild of explorers. He somehow infused the surface of the wall with the symbol, and no means arcane or otherwise can remove or obscure it. Believe me, I’ve tried. It is a mar on the eldritch craft of the archmage Nex himself, created fifty centuries ago in the Age of Destiny. Imagine discovering a perfect Azlanti statue carved by the finest artisan of that bygone kingdom of legend, preserved for thousands of years just as its creator intended. Then imagine chiseling the crude face of your sallow-cheeked daughter over the original, simply to satisfy your own sense of vanity and pride. It is an affront.”

“I kind of like it,” said Aebos, mouth full.

“Indeed,” Korm added. “An indelible symbol imprinted by a long-dead famous hero. It adds a sort of mystery to the ship.”

“The ship has plenty of mystery of its own,” scoffed Creeg.

Iranez nodded. “One such mystery is the cause of your rescue, and the price of your freedom.” She smiled as Korm and Aebos turned to her with a start. There had been no prior discussion of a fee.

“The Orb seems to believe that the two of you represent the best chance we have to remedy a wrong that has brought much grief to the seas of Nex.”

“Wait,” Korm asked. “You speak to the Orb?”

“The Orb speaks to me. ‘Whispers’ is perhaps a more accurate term, for its words are meant only for my ears, and cannot be heard by others.”

“That’s convenient,” said Aebos.

“I have found it to be so,” she admitted. “On more than one occasion the Orb has saved my life, or led me to a decision that enhanced the fortunes of the Council, the nation, or its people. Over long years I have learned to trust its declarations.”

Aebos cut to the point. “You speak of a grief upon the seas. You mean the stillness of the water? The lack of wind?”

“The same,” she said. “Tell me, Korm, in your travels along the River Road, did you ever hear about the demon ships?”

Korm’s eyes narrowed at the mention of demons. “Can’t say that I did,” he said, monotone.

“They date from the last days of the Age of Destiny, when the archmage Nex turned to conquest upon the seas to broaden the scope of his kingdom. Unwilling to bow to the might of storms or the whims of the wind, Nex sought a method to propel his fleet to military victories regardless of weather.”

Creeg spoke up, interrupting his mistress. “He found his method by binding the souls of powerful demons into enormous, perfectly cut glass lenses, which he bonded to his ships in a supreme act of arcane mastery. While imprisoned within the false reality of the lens, the demon’s essence suffused every element of the ship, from its navigation to the fine details of its appearance. In a very real sense, the ship became the creature’s skin, though its mind remained forever hidden away.”

“In all of our rich history,” Iranez continued, “no demon has broken free from its lens or betrayed its captain. Until now.”

“Let me guess,” Korm said. “The Relentless is one of these demon ships?”

“Indeed it is,” said Iranez. “And until recently it had been an unusually docile specimen of its kind.”

“But then something happened,” said Aebos, “and the demon’s control extended to the waters around the ship. This whole business is your fault.”

“This business is the demon’s fault,” Creeg corrected. “It simply decided to rebel for reasons of its own that we have not yet been able to discern. That is why we turn to you. You must resolve the situation with the demon at the heart of the ship. The disruption to trade must not be traced back to the lady.”

Korm furrowed his brow. “And how, exactly, do we get the demon to change its ways?”

Iranez lowered her left arm toward the floor, from whence she hauled a fine linen bag and placed it upon the table. As it landed with a loud clink, the lip of the bag dipped below the considerable bulk of its contents, revealing the glimmering edge of a crown and the sparkle of a scepter topped with what appeared to be a large emerald. Aebos’s eyebrow lifted.

Iranez spoke softly, her golden eyes perfectly locked with the gray of Korm’s, her face a picture of calm and practiced diplomacy. “The creature calls itself Juval. I believe that it can be reasoned with. Like any demon, it is subject to powerful desires that can be twisted to manipulate the creature to your own ends. In this case, the wealth collected here will serve to stoke its avarice.”

Korm stared at the bag of treasure for a long while before returning his attention to Iranez. “You rule an entire nation and own a ship with a demon in it. Aebos and I are not your lackeys. Why don’t you do this yourself?”

Iranez sighed softly. “No kingdom in all of Golarion has as many wizards and mystics as does my homeland of Nex. As a supreme agent of the Council of Three and Nine, my every action is scried, scrutinized, and divined by numerous factions. By special design, this chamber has the power to block such divinations. This power alone allows me to speak of Juval and its influence over the waves, for if I did so elsewhere word of my involvement would reach all quarters of Quantium within the hour.”

Korm scoffed. “The politics of Nex are none of our concern.”

The alchemist’s eyes widened comically and his jaw went slack. “The utter insolence! The Lady Iranez rescued you from certain death and brought you into her confidence! And she has provided you with this resplendent meal.”

“This is her demon,” Korm responded. “Her problem. The way I see it, the Lady Iranez and her demon have provided me with all of my recent meals.”

“Mister Calladan,” said Iranez, “you survived the River Road and the dangers of distant Vudra. I have faith in your ability to talk yourself out of a problem, as does the Orb. You must pass through the lens into the demon’s territory. There, you must convince Juval to withdraw its influence to the ship itself, and return the winds and waves to the waters surrounding Nex. What trinkets Juval does not claim are yours to keep, with my blessing. Upon your return from the world of the lens, I promise you safe passage to Quantium.”

A wide grin broke across Aebos’s face. “My lady,” he said, “we could have saved significant anguish if you had led with the bit about us getting to keep the treasure. We will agree to your terms.”

“As if the two of you reprobates deserve any riches beyond your lives,” snapped Epostian Creeg. “My service to the Lady Iranez has convinced me to trust the guidance of the Orb, but what it sees in you, I cannot tell. I do not believe that the two of you can be trusted.”

“Nor, I confess, do I,” said Iranez, her voice tinged with a hint of regret soon erased by a wan smile. “To ensure that our needs are met, Korm and Aebos will be accompanied by my most trusted agent, Epostian Creeg.”

The alchemist’s face turned as white as his fine leather suit.

Chapter Three: Beyond the Demon Lens

For a long moment Korm Calladan felt only a pleasant warmth. Gone were the fears of starvation, the thrill of combat in the cramped underdeck of the Queen’s Lament, the suspicion of the Lady Iranez and her imposing crew. He knew his cyclops companion Aebos and the preening alchemist Epostian Creeg were somewhere ahead, for they had preceded him through the curved glass lens at the heart of the Relentless, but in the soothing calm he saw only a featureless white haze.

After the rigors of the past weeks, Korm wanted more than anything to linger in this peaceful no-man’s land, but his legs seemed determined to carry him forward despite the wishes of his overworked mind. He counted the steps. Upon the sixth, the haze vanished abruptly, and Korm found himself near the edge of a jagged bluff of rigid red stone, his long black hair and considerable mustache whipped by a stark, ill-smelling wind. A thin white outline in the air behind him marked the way back to safety on the other side of the lens. A cackle of ominous thunder ripped through the inky black clouds cloaking the turbid skies above, shaking the ridge.

“I knew it would be just like this,” he said with a grimace, drawing his slender sword. His companions stood just beyond the reach of his voice in the whipping wind, surveying the land beyond the cliff’s edge. He buttoned his open shirt with his right hand as he approached them.

“What a delightful little world we’ve found,” he said as he reached the rocky ledge, almost yelling over the howling wind. Aebos looked back over his shoulder and smiled at his friend’s arrival.

“Don’t let the club fool you—Aebos is a lot smarter than he looks.”

“Perhaps not so little,” the cyclops shouted in response. He gestured toward a vast expanse of land that spread from the mountain below into a wide plain spotted with violet pools and copses of feeble, dun-colored trees. Jagged mountains hung like curtains in a ring around the arid flatland. The roiling black clouds above cast everything in a pallid gloom, as if the whole of the demon’s realm stood poised at the moment just before the breaking of a terrible storm.

Creeg pointed to a distant glow, perhaps a dozen miles away beyond a wide swath of sickly woods. “Look there, in the distance,” he said. “I think something is burning down there!”

The alchemist removed a large rucksack from his shoulders, placed it upon the ground, and rummaged through its contents, finally producing an elegant spyglass. He held the device to his right eye and glanced at the vista for a moment before furrowing his brow in frustration. “It’s definitely a fire,” he said, “but I can’t make out much detail from here. I think it’s some kind of building.”

“Let me have a look,” said Aebos, snatching the glass from Creeg without waiting for the dandy’s permission. The alchemist sneered. Aebos smiled right back at him, pointing to the center of his forehead. “I’ve got an eye for this sort of work.”

Without aid of magnification, Korm could just make out the bright spot beyond the woods that had captured Creeg’s attention. Aebos glared through the alchemist’s scope and narrated what he saw.

“It’s definitely a structure,” he said. “Looks like some sort of mansion, like you might find in Andoran or Taldor. Human construction. Well made, too, but it’ll be totally consumed within the hour.” The cyclops frowned. “Too bad.”

“There are ruins not too far from the house,” he continued. “Broken stone walls, columns… There are people down there! Hmmmm. No. None of them are moving. Statues. Lots of statues. It seems ancient. Must be the remains of some kind of garden. Looks like the whole place is abandoned.”

“Scan the rest of the land down there,” Creeg ordered. “See if you can make out any other settlements.”

Aebos brought the spyglass across the landscape in a wide, slow arc before shaking his head and handing the implement back to the alchemist. “I see nothing else but pools and trees.”

“Then we will set off toward the garden and the burning building,” said Creeg. “Juval must be found there, and there is no time to waste.” He shouldered his pack and began walking away, seeking a path down from their lofty perch.

“Just wait a second, chef,” countered Korm. He pointed in the direction of the distant glow with his saber, letting his spirit rise slightly with the flinch of the pompous alchemist. “How do we know Juval is down there? That’s miles away, and we haven’t the proper equipment to climb down a sheer mountain. Why would the demon put the entrance to its lair so far away? And how do you fit twenty miles of hellscape inside a glass lens the size of a giant’s shield, anyway?”

“I work in chemicals, Calladan,” said Creeg. “Not planar physics. Even I don’t fully understand how all of this works. But I do understand that Juval has placed the entire kingdom of Nex in danger, and that said danger will not be resolved here on this ledge. We’ve a long walk ahead of us, and we best start off soon. It looks like more than a day’s march to the garden, and I don’t relish sleeping in this place any more than I have to.”

As he turned with a flourish, Creeg slipped on a bit of scree and fell to one knee with a curse. Why the Lady Iranez had chosen this overconfident glorified cook as their companion in this treacherous land made little sense to Korm, but if she wished to risk her trusted agent in this task, it was her own coin to spend. He doubted the alchemist would survive the journey to the foot of the mountain, let alone make it back to the other side of the lens after making a deal with a demon.

Aebos bent down to collect the bag of Iranez’s treasure that lay at his feet, threw an awkward grin at Korm, and set off along the alchemist’s trail. Korm sheathed his sword and set out after them, eyeing the linen sack as it bounced upon the cyclops’s back with each of the creature’s long strides. There was a fortune in there. Surely the demon wouldn’t need all of it. Even a handful from the sack would set him and Aebos up for months in Quantium, if not pay their way to any port on the Inner Sea. But in order to spend their reward they’d have to bargain with Juval. And they would have to survive.

∗ ∗ ∗

Six hours later the trio had reached only halfway down the mountain. Although no sun had been visible in the sky since their arrival, the whole of the demon’s world had become progressively darker as they made their way down the rugged terrain, and in the last hour all three of them had slipped and slid within inches of unseen dropoffs and unexpected ravines. Epostian Creeg’s fine white leather suit bore jagged tears and stains from shoulders to shins from the coarse red dust that covered the mountain. Korm’s left knee still bled from a fall that had shredded the leg of his breeches, and the alchemist’s salve had done little to stop the dull pain. The persistent fire of the burning mansion, still visible just above the treeline of the nearing forest, glowed more brightly in the growing gloom, but did little to light their increasingly dangerous path. All of them suspected that a fatal tragedy lay just ahead.

“All right,” Korm said, throwing up his hands. “I think we’ve got to call it a night and rest here. Any more climbing in this darkness is likely to kill us.”

Aebos frowned—his vision far surpassed that of a human in the dark—but Epostain Creeg’s dust-covered face shone a wave of relief.

“Agreed!” the alchemist said cheerfully, plopping himself down on a low boulder set against a jagged wall of rock twice the height of Aebos. “This vantage should prove easily defensible for the evening. I shall prepare us a meal, for all of this climbing has aroused a demonic hunger in my guts.”

At the mention of food, Aebos turned away from their makeshift trail and let out a contented sigh. “That is the wisest thing you have uttered since we arrived,” he said. “What provender shall you provide from your satchel?”

Creeg smiled reflexively, his eyebrows high with surprise. “It is nice to be appreciated,” he said, struggling to free his arms from the straps of his oversized rucksack. He set the bag on the ground beside him and withdrew a generous metal pot with an engraved lid. This he uncapped, setting the lid beside him on his rocky seat. He placed the pot between his legs. “Our options are somewhat limited under the present conditions,” he said, his face a mask of genuine regret. “Before we ventured through the lens I returned to the galley and scavenged some mashed tubers that I’d set aside for dinner. There are cubes of hippogriff within, but I’m afraid the lady Iranez enjoyed the tenderloin the day before yesterday, and all that remains are the lesser shoulder cuts.”

Aebos sat himelf upon the ground opposite the pot. “I am sure we will manage,” he said, peering into the stew. “Shall we light a fire?”

“We don’t need to,” Creeg replied. He reached into his bag and retrieved a slender glass tube filled with bright blue liquid. “A little something I cooked up before setting out from Quantium.” With an eager grin he unstoppered the tube and flicked his wrist three times. Three dashes of sapphire splashed into the pot, which immediately issued a small cloud of steam. Korm felt steady heat from within the pot as he sat down next to Aebos. Satisfied, Epostian Creeg re-capped his glass tube and placed it into the bag, from which he withdrew a long metal spoon. This he jabbed into the pot, stirring the slurry with enthusiasm.

After a few moments of slience, Korm spoke up. “So what do we know about this demon?”

Creeg looked up from the stew. “We know that it’s formless in nature. When Nex trapped the demons within his ships he stripped them utterly of their physical forms. They exist now only as a disembodied presence. After a while the demons learned to possess mortals who came into their realms. Over the centuries, Juval has taken hundreds of forms by possession. It shoves aside the consciousness of a body it wants and wears it as long as it wishes. Because Juval is immortal, its fascination with a given body tends to outlast the lives of its physical forms, but this is no problem because it can always claim another.”

As he spoke he drew a small glass cylinder from the bag. Korm recognized the familiar gold flakes—Creeg’s signature flavor—from breakfast. The alchemist unscrewed the top of the canister and dumped a generous clump of the stuff into the pot and stirred. After a few moments, Creeg sniffed the stew with an expert nose, but even Korm could tell it was ready to eat. His mouth began to water. His stomach tightened. He swore to himself he would enjoy the meal, no matter what.

Creeg fished three wooden bowls and three short metal spoons from his bag, filled the bowls one at a time, and handed them to Korm and Aebos before tending to himself. The cyclops ignored his spoon and tipped the entire bowl up to his thin lips, practically gurgling the stuff.

“If the demon doesn’t want Iranez’s treasure, how do we get it to return wind to the seas?” Korm asked, eyeing the beige mess slopped into his bowl. The hippogriff chunks looked like squalid islands in a sea of sludge. Only Creeg’s golden flakes brought a touch of class to the dish, and Korm was quite sure he’d had enough of those. “Can we kill it?”

Creeg chewed a bit of stubborn meat before replying. “I doubt very seriously that either of you is capable of such a feat,” he said, leaving unsaid whether he thought himself capable of the deed. “And besides, slaying its host body won’t do the trick, because Juval can simply reassume its formless nature, in which it is even more difficult to defeat.”

“Anything can be defeated,” said Aebos, scraping remnants of sauce and mush into his tiny spoon. “You’ve just got to punch it hard enough.”

“You cannot punch what is not there,” said Creeg, wiping his bowl clean with a fine linen cloth. “I’m afraid the best way to defeat Juval is to try to best it with words. The Lady Iranez—or rather, her miraculous Orb—seems to think the two of you capable of the job. It’s a testament to your glibness that you have survived this long, so I suppose all hope is not yet lost.”

Korm scooped a spoon of stew to his mouth and was surprised to find it delicious. Perhaps he could put the Queen’s Lament behind him and learn to enjoy food again after all. As he slowly maneuvered his spoon from meat island to meat island, Korm looked out over the horizon to the valley below. Darkness hid the dismal trees and rank puddles, but the flickering light of the burning building at the center of Juval’s world drew his attention like a magnet.

“Up there, on the ledge, Aebos said that the house on fire down in the valley would burn itself out within the hour. I can see it myself now that we’re closer, and it’s definitely still burning. How is that possible?”

Creeg, having finished with dinner, now stood up from the boulder, his rolled sleeping pad tucked under his left arm. He circled Korm and Aebos in a survey of their camp, looking for a bit of flat earth on the jagged mountain ground. “Juval controls everything around us, from the rocks on this mountain to the chill of the air to the sickly grass below our feet. If the building keeps burning, it is because Juval wishes it to be so. We’re sitting on a mountain now because Juval wanted a mountain here. We have to risk a plummeting death as we descend because that’s the way Juval wanted it. No doubt the demon considers the grueling march a fitting expression of its power over visitors.”

Aebos stirred his spoon in the tiny bowl cupped in his hand. “So if Juval controls what this place looks like, what else does it control? Could the demon fold forest and flatland to draw us closer to its lair? What if Juval discovers that we are here?”

Epostian Creeg snorted. “I assume that Juval knew we were here the very moment that we entered its realm.”

The alchemist flicked his wrists and unfurled his sleeping pad with a resolute snap.

Chapter Four: Across the Plain of Pools

Korm woke from fitful dreams at the touch of Aebos’s massive hand upon his shoulder, shaking him gently. “It’s been four hours,” the cyclops said softly. “It’s your turn to stand watch. A good thing, too. I just caught myself dozing off.”

Korm rubbed sleep from his eyes and surveyed his surroundings. Across the small expanse of flat ledge on which they’d camped the alchemist Epostian Creeg lay upon his fine bedroll, snoring softly. Beyond Creeg the mountain fell away into an inky darkness that filled the goblet of the valley, pierced only by the distant glow of the burning building at the center of Juval’s realm. Everything here looked exactly as it had when Korm had finally fallen asleep, and if not for his friend’s testimony he would have sworn less than an hour had passed. He certainly didn’t feel well rested.

As Korm roused himself, Aebos sat beside him and unfurled his sleeping pad. He looked to the roiling skies. “I’ve seen a swarm of shadowy avian creatures pass overhead three times since you and Creeg went to sleep. I couldn’t tell if they were the same creatures or different flocks. As you scan the mountain for danger, don’t forget to look up.”

Korm nodded, casting a casual glance to the sky. Far above, the clouds roiled without sound, but he saw no sign of the creatures. In a way, he almost looked forward to encountering them. If Aebos’s bird-things had been circling for a meal, he’d find out soon enough. And that, in a way, brought comfort. He knew how to fight. That was the same no matter the circumstances. A sword in the hand brought a sense of certainty and control, if nothing else. If he could maintain control, they would stay alive. Deal with the demon. Get back to the ship and the safety of land.

If he did it right, they’d also be rich.

“I’ll watch out for your birds, but my biggest concern is facing off against the demon with Creeg at our side,” Korm said quietly, his eyes on the sleeping form of the alchemist on the other side of their camp. “If Iranez thought he could have handled Juval alone, she would have sent him alone. She could even put dozens of guards at his back, and yet she didn’t trust him to get the job done. You saw how puffed up and angry he got at breakfast. He’s going to say something that’ll get us killed, I can feel it.”

“He is an exceptional cook,” Aebos offered.

“Perhaps the lady tires of his food, and has sent him here to get rid of him?”

Aebos chuckled. “Too elaborate. Surely she could just have him thrown overboard. It’s Iranez I’m worried about. When this is all over, and we return with the treasure, who’s to say that she’ll simply let us accompany her back to Quantium? She could just as easily have us killed.”

Korm pursed his lips and exhaled a slow blast of air, as if deflating. “That’s tomorrow,” he said. “In order to solve tomorrow’s problem, we’ve got to make it through today.”

Aebos smiled. He pulled his woolen covers over his shoulders, closed his heavy eyelid, and lay still. He began to snore before Korm had finished belting on his sword.

Korm circled the camp with soft steps, casting his eyes into the darkness in search of lurking danger. Finding nothing, he heaved himself upon the boulder near Epostian Creeg and did his best to let his mind wander while at the same time keeping a vigilant eye on the mountain—and the sky. His thoughts turned to the chilling tales he’d heard of demons from pilgrims riding the rivers of his youth, fleeing the crusade lands of the north where a rift in reality allowed the fiends access to the world. They spoke of vile appetites and perverse cruelties. Demons were beings of ineffable evil. They thrived on the sight of their enemies’ blood. And the greatest of demons were legendary beings in their own right. The sages spoke of them in the same breaths that conjured ancient dragons.

And now they were about to go face to face with one of them. He trusted Aebos, of course. He knew his sagacious companion would let him do the talking, and wouldn’t say anything to unduly arouse the demon’s ire. And if things did go to shit, he knew Aebos could back him up in the ensuing battle. Creeg, on the other hand, was a risk on both counts. Given his ego, he seemed almost pathologically destined to say something upsetting, and the man had thus far proven dangerous to absolutely nothing beyond lobsters and unborn aubekan chicks. A look at the slight form of the alchemist sleeping below him confirmed that Creeg offered no physical advantages to their chance of success. Korm chuckled at the enormous rucksack next to Creeg. He’d have to pull something awfully impressive out of that bag of his to prove his worth, Korm thought.

But why wait to find out what it would be? Korm eased himself off the rock and stepped softly to the bag. With the precision of a master tomb robber disabling a trap, the swordsman gently lifted the bulky satchel, flinching at every tiny clink from the glass bottles and containers within. Creeg didn’t seem to notice, and slept on.

Korm returned to the boulder and began rummaging through the rucksack. He withdrew a slim leather case hinged at one end and fastened at the other with a simple clasp. This he opened, revealing a medical kit with three crude metal syringes and a length of leather cord. Small loops of material built into the case’s interior held several ampoules filled with colored liquid. The kit and its contents looked shabby and well used.

Korm next removed a small, cylindrical glass jar from the bag, raising his eyebrows as he recognized Creeg’s ubiquitous golden spice within. Although he could not deny that the flakes added to the flavor of the meals they seasoned, they also brought a monotony to each dish that was starting to tire him. That said, Aebos loved the stuff, and would surely suffer from a scheme that deprived him of it forever. The perfect solution seemed obvious.

Korm placed the jar of golden flakes into his beltpouch. This way he could use it to get back into Aebos’s good graces a month from now after Korm inevitably got them into trouble again.

It was an investment.

Aside from cooking supplies, some dried meats, and numerous tubes of alchemical liquids Korm couldn’t hope to identify, Creeg’s bag contained several samples of narcotic drugs that shed troubling light upon the needle kit Korm had found earlier. These items included a folded rectangle of butcher paper smeared with pesh paste and a pouch of qat leaves, as well as more than a dozen hallucinogenic yellowcap mushrooms.

His search complete, Korm decided nothing in Creeg’s bag suggested a coming betrayal or 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 trail into the woods, Korm found himself staring into the eyes of a massive bull.

The vacant stare, twisted mouth, and extended yellow tongue told Korm the creature was dead even before his mind registered what he was seeing. It almost came as an afterthought that the bovine head sat detached from its body, balanced in a clump of viscera upon a gore-soaked tree stump at eye level, facing the path through the woods. A tree just beyond the grisly stump was the scene of an even greater atrocity. There the body of a muscular human man hung upside down from a long nail driven through both ankles. The splattered red stain smearing the tree from the man’s jagged, headless neck gave the appearance of a can of paint tipped over end, with the thickest sludge still slowly oozing to the ground.

The head and the body had once been a matched pair.

“So I guess this guy is another of Juval’s figments?” Korm asked.

“It is possible,” Creeg said without enthusiasm.

∗ ∗ ∗

Finally the three reached the low stone walls ringing the garden at the center of the valley. Here the dusty ground and clumps of scrub grass gave way to wide, broken paving stones partially claimed by creeping vines. Raised platforms, dry and weed-choked fountains, and the remnants of mosaic paths hinted at the garden this once had been, an impression strengthened by the many statues arrayed around the area.

From a low rise at the center of the garden, the burning manor cast a flickering glow on the sculpted figures. Most of them looked in the house’s direction as if transfixed by the awe of the sight. Korm could hardly blame them.

The entire frame of the stately three-story structure remained visible through the furious flames, but only the first was more than a vague outline. The front door stood as yet unmarred by fire, as if beckoning potential rescuers to burst through in search of survivors. Had they been in a city, even this far away, Korm might have attempted it. But here, in the demon’s realm, he doubted very seriously that whatever lurked within would welcome him as its hero.

Their answers, and Juval itself, probably awaited them inside. But there was no sense in rushing into things. If Juval had known the moment they had arrived, as Creeg had suggested last night, the element of surprise had long since been lost.

And besides. They had not come to fight, but to negotiate.

The trio cautiously advanced into the garden, passing several of its statues on their way to Juval’s lair. Some of the figures wore primitive, tribal garb. Others were attired as pirates, and others dressed in outdated military uniforms. Most had been sculpted in a moment of terror, their hands splayed out before them as if fending off danger, each face a rictus of fear. Closer to the garden’s center, a trio of humanoid statues seemed to slink up a low stair toward the house. Time had worn away their crude features, but what remained gave Korm the impression of sharks. While inspecting the extremely realistic trident clutched by one of the creatures, Korm’s peripheral vision caught a ceremonial altar at the top of the low stairs.

A small organic form lay motionless upon the altar. Korm, Aebos, and Epostian Creeg approached closer to discover the body of a goat-horned satyr prostrate upon the pedestal. A jagged line marred its bearded neck, and the flaked pool of blood that had gathered under it suggested that the body had been here a week or more.

The three of them stood with their backs to the garden, considering the slain satyr, when the clip-clop of hooves tapped from the flagstones at the foot of the low stair behind them. They turned just in time to see the form of a powerful centaur step from behind a massive stone plinth. Unlike the ashen statues that surrounded it, the creature’s healthy tone and muscular physique exuded life and spirit, as did its bushy red beard and shock of wild hair.

The centaur’s eyes burned with a bright crimson fire, and Korm knew that he looked upon Juval itself.

“Epostian Creeg,” it said in a hollow voice accompanied by a disembodied chorus. “I expected you months ago. The decade has long since passed, and a fitting tribute is long overdue. Tell me, what treasure have you brought in the name of Iranez of the Orb?”

The alchemist stepped forward and gave a courteous bow. “A cyclops, regal Juval!” he shouted. “I bring you the form of the cyclops Aebos, to do with as you wish!”.

Chapter Five: Home Fires Burn

Aebos’s fist crashed into Creeg’s jaw with the force of a battering ram. The alchemist made a meek little sound, spun once, and collapsed upon the garden floor. Korm had seen lesser blows from the cyclops’s fists snap the necks of men much hardier than Epostian Creeg. Perhaps the punch had killed him. A fitting end for a traitor.

At the foot of the low stair, cloaked in the form of a centaur, Juval cackled loudly. “That was unexpected! How very exciting. I had not known there would be entertainment prior to my collection of the fee.”

Korm stepped toward the demon, his hands held palms forward in a submissive gesture. “I am Korm Calladan, and this is my friend, Aebos. We have no quarrel with you, and have come only to negotiate the return of winds to the seas surrounding the Relentless and the kingdom of Nex.”

The creature turned its piercing eyes to Korm. Crimson flames smoldered under thick red eyebrows. “The almighty Nex created his demon ships for battle, did he not? This is a war vessel, designed for conquest. What harm does the lack of wind do to the Relentless? I can power the ship through storm and calm alike. If lesser ships are rendered useless, it is to our tactical advantage.”

Korm frowned. He had not expected reason from a creature born of multiversal chaos. Convincing Juval to abandon its gambit without giving up the bag of treasure was bound to be more difficult than simply asking nicely, but Korm wasn’t ready to give up yet. If they were to dissuade the demon, he would have to find an angle. And to do that, he had to keep it talking. He decided to start with the obvious.

“So those statues, they’re former hosts? Old shells you keep around to remind you of past victories?”

“Oh, no,” Juval said, its face masked with scorn. “By the time these wretches invaded my domain I’d long had my fill of human frailties. They were mere invaders. Victims. Three hundred years ago the Relentless ran aground near Lirgen, and over the centuries natives of those rain-cursed lands found their way onto the deck and explored the ship’s lower quarters, seeking treasures. Instead they found the lens and their way into my domain. Among the earliest was a snake-haired medusa, whom I inhabited to great effect. Her eyes saw the world more vividly than any I had used before. Better, her form granted me the ability to cast any who beheld it into stone. Here, let me show you.”

Juval’s centaur form twisted upon itself, the rear legs pushing up into its torso even as the fiery red beard withdrew into a sharpening, increasingly feminine jaw. Korm’s mouth fell slack as Juval’s mop of ropey hair writhed and undulated, transforming before his eyes into a profusion of squirming green snakes. Juval’s arms extended into lanky, gnarled emerald branches tipped with jagged claws.

“No!” cried Epostian Creeg, throwing his hands in front of his face. Korm met Juval’s eyes just as the demon’s pupils took on an ophidian cast. A dull power seemed to emanate from those hateful eyes, anchoring Korm to the ground and forbidding him from looking away.

The tips of his toes began to ache, and Korm imagined them hardening to gray stone within his boots, the transformation creeping rapidly, inexorably up his legs, over his groin, and into his trunk. He wondered when it would finally kill him. When his frantic heart stopped within a shell of rock? When the march of stone reached his eyes and he could no longer see? Or would the transformation preserve his consciousness so that he might live forever as a statue, feeling minute pain in every chip and scratch over the uncountable years he would spend trapped in this demon’s personal Abyss? And when erosion set in, and all that was once Korm Calladan had crumbled to dust, would he still maintain his sense of self?

But Korm’s toes did not turn to stone. His heart continued to race in his chest. Juval, now wholly a medusa, cackled with delight.

“You’ve nothing to fear from my gaze, child,” it said in a voice that dripped with newfound femininity yet remained unmistakably that of the demon. “That body died out long ago. I can assume its image now only because it remains in my memory. For I now inhabit a shapechanger, and can become any creature that once was mine. No more can I create statues, but with a thought I can make my own body a gallery of the forms I have worn before.

“No, swordsman. The statues are not reminders of my previous forms. They are something far more useful. They remind me that though I control all aspects of this realm, the keys to its front gate are not in my possession. I must remain ever vigilant against unwanted intruders.”

“But we are not unwanted,” replied Korm. “Epostian Creeg brought us here. You and he had some kind of deal, didn’t you?”

“I do not deal directly with wretches like that dandy on the ground,” Juval spat. “My accordance is with his mistress, the Lady Iranez. That she uses intermediaries to deliver my price is a sign of weakness and lack of trust. Most disappointing.”

“I also find Creeg most disappointing,” Korm said. “But I assure you his offer is not genuine. As far as I can tell, he is acting as his own agent in this. In fact, the Lady Iranez instructed us to deliver a portion of treasure culled from the finest of her personal collection. Aebos, show our host what we have been authorized to deliver.”

The cyclops reluctantly reached into the linen sack and withdrew a sturdy platinum tiara bejeweled with a rainbow of scintillating colors. A fine silver necklace chased with glittering rubies looped around the apex of the delicate crown and curled over Aebos’s massive thumb to dangle invitingly.

Juval cackled, the snap of its derisive laughter sharper for the chorus of hissing snakes that accompanied it. When finally the demon’s pleasure subsided into a fit of rough chuckles, it spoke, shaking its head. “You are a fool. What good does a pretty bracelet or a handful of coins do me here? I am trapped forever in this Hell of my creation, never to visit a market or fancy ball. Wealth as you understand it means absolutely nothing to me.”

“I’m certain that we can come to some accommodation,” replied Korm.

“As am I,” Juval replied. “Creeg spoke true. My accordance with his mistress calls for the delivery of a new, interesting form once every decade. I inhabit that form until I tire of it, at which point I demand a new one.” Juval turned briefly toward the murdered satyr atop the garden’s central dais. “The last three deliveries Iranez has made have not been sufficiently interesting, and so I have stilled the waters of her beloved homeland until the quality of her offering equals the value of my service.”

Aebos began carefully returning his treasures to the linen bag. The corner of Korm’s mouth twitched. Things were about to go to hell, he thought, but at least if they managed to get out of here that bag of treasure would accompany them to Quantium.

Korm’s mind raced to concoct a way to defeat the demon. If he stalled the creature, perhaps Creeg could rouse himself and come to their aid. Even the thought of pinning their hopes on Epostian Creeg—who had already proven himself their enemy—made Korm’s stomach turn. He brought his left hand to rest on the grip of his saber, unsure what to do next. Juval seemed to read his thoughts.

“There is nothing you can do to win the day. The cyclops is already mine. I control every aspect of the world within the lens. I control every aspect of the Relentless itself, down to the finest detail. And now, thanks to eons of effort, I extend my control even to the waters surrounding the ship. And through those waters I control the fate of a nation. You should have known better than attempt to bargain with a demon, Korm Calladan. We are not limited by human frailties, weaknesses, or desires.”

There it was again. The demon controlled every aspect not just of this gloomy underworld, but of the ship that surrounded it. Korm smiled. His sword might not be up to the challenge of killing a demon, but perhaps another avenue presented itself.

“Who was Durvin Gest?” asked Korm.

“No one of consequence,” snapped Juval, in a manner that suggested otherwise. After a moment’s consideration, it continued. “You remind me of him. Lean like a predator. Sword on the right hip, though Gest’s was a true blade and not a needle like yours. He was a stronger man than you, from a better era, but the prototype is the same.

“You even have his eyes. Sharp as a forest drake. Gray as a wolf.”

“You sound very familiar with those eyes,” said Korm. Juval’s own eyes flared, but the demon kept its face placid, as if it had barely noticed the comment. The calm extended only as far as its brow, where its serpentine hair writhed in disdain, each tiny ophidian face registering its personal disgust at his impudence. Behind Juval, on the small rise at the center of the valley, the burning manor house flared mightily. Korm felt its warmth on his cheeks.

“I knew him well. In the fifty centuries since a wizard’s treachery left me formless and bound eternally within the lens, hundreds of visitors have ventured here—many of them human like you. Pathetic creatures. Frail. Singularly obsessed with protecting their lives yet incapable of doing anything meaningful with them. A human will always, always sell out its principles to preserve its life, but so few manage to think beyond petty concerns like family and community.

“But Durvin Gest was unfettered from sentimentality. He sought to use his ephemeral human life exploring the world, taking in its marvels, and leaving his mark in the form of deeds and tales that would long outlive him.

“A quest of limitless scope requires a vessel of limitless capability, and so Durvin Gest claimed the Relentless by virtue of sword and guile. And in time…” Juval turned to glance at the burning home behind it, “In time, he even conquered me.”

Korm raised an eyebrow.

“I led the conquering hero all over the world. Around the Horn of Garund, through the straits of lost Azlant, and to the far shores of Arcadia. After every stop, Gest returned here to our home together. He told me of the people he had defeated and the mysteries he had solved. He brought me funerary masks and axeblades and bones and books, eagerly sharing the panorama of a larger world beyond the Relentless. A world I would never truly see. His triumphs became my triumphs. As his image of the world exploded with mystery and wonder, so did mine extend beyond the confines of my eternal prison. Our lives became linked.”

Aebos snapped his fingers, finally understanding what Korm was driving at. “The symbol on the dining room wall! That’s your doing! You and Durvin Gest had a partnership!”

“We had a bond. I knew that the captain of the Relentless was a truly exceptional human, and so I took on more than just a human form. I attempted to think like a human thinks. To aspire as the greatest of humans might aspire. To be the companion that this exceptional human desired. To be exceptional together.”

“Plenty of exceptional humans are trapped on Nex’s seas,” said Korm. “Because of you I even ate a couple of them. Many more exceptional humans will starve when ships can’t reach port. You’ve got to put an end to this.” Slowly, deliberately, Korm withdrew his slender blade from its scabbard. “And if you don’t, we’re going to have to kill you.”

Juval threw back its medusa head in a wicked laugh. “You do remind me of him, Korm Calladan. Curious and confident to the point of recklessness. You came here, to a world I command to face off with a creature older than your race’s eldest empire. And you come in the company of a lout and an addict, wielding nothing but an unmagicked blade.”

“I object!” said Korm. “Aebos is far from a lout.”

“Even in the face of certain death you remain jovial. Just like him. But Durvin Gest never returned from his final adventure. By now he must be centuries dead.”

Behind Juval, the burning manor exploded in a bright conflagration. As the fire cloud lifted, it left behind no sign that the home had ever been there at all. Korm suspected a similar transformation was now taking place in the ship’s dining room on the other side of the lens.

“I no longer believe in exceptional humans,” said Juval. “The age of the human is over. The form has expired its appeal. I thought a shapechanger would cure the ennui of my imprisonment, and in truth I will miss it. But I find myself limited to only forms I have inhabited before. A shapechanger will come again. In ten years’ time I can even demand one from Iranez, or again Nex’s waters will fall still.

“But I may never get another chance at a cyclops.”

The medusa fell slack and slumped to the ground, its cheek slamming into the edge of a step with a dull thud. While the body itself remained motionless, the details of its appearance undulated and rippled. The brown linen garment lost definition and melded with the body beneath, which grew increasingly gaunt and malnourished. Its serpentine scales smoothed even as the tendrils of its hair withdrew into the skull. The feminine face sagged until it resembled the early outlines of a hollow-eyed bust. Its vacuous mouth hung crooked and low. It was no longer a medusa.

“I think I understand now why Durvin Gest might have chosen Juval as a companion.”

It was no longer Juval. Korm turned to Aebos to shout a warning, only to realize that he was too late. His friend was down on one knee, bent over and struggling to steel himself against some unseen assault. As the swordsman rushed to his side, Aebos slackened his shoulders and sighed. Korm placed his hand upon his companion’s arm. Aebos turned to him.

“They say that the cyclopes can see the future,” the demon said in Aebos’s voice. An unseen chorus echoed the words. “I wonder if your cyclops ever saw himself with his hands around the throat of his most trusted ally?”

Juval grabbed for Korm, a wicked smile upon its face, murder in its single eye. Korm rolled along the outside of Juval’s attack in a move that always confounded Aebos in their many sparring sessions. But the cyclops was no longer Aebos, and Juval seemed prepared for his dodge. It spun to meet Korm’s movement, swinging its forearm in a clothesline strike that swept Korm off his feet and put him on his back upon the ground.

Juval looked down at the swordsman and opened its mouth for some further insult, only to double over at the waist, clutching its arms to its stomach. Korm saw anger and confusion on his friend’s face. “The form of the cyclops,” Juval muttered with difficulty, “it burns! The pain is intolerable!”

Juval fell to both knees and moaned. Korm scrambled away from the demon and got to his feet. It crushed him to see Aebos in so much pain, but he reminded himself that the demon was not Aebos at all. Creeg had said that Juval pushed aside the spirits of the forms it inhabited, so the best he could hope for at the moment was that whatever plagued Juval so terribly had no effect upon his friend. Juval clawed at its stomach, trying to tear a hole in Aebos’s leather armor to get at the source of the pain within. From between the demon’s outstretched fingers Korm saw a flash of golden radiance that seemed to come from within the cyclops’s body.

Juval turned its baleful eye upon Korm, and the swordsman recognized determination on the face of his friend. He immediately felt a blasphemous presence slice its way into his psyche, slashing the bindings between his body and mind and thrusting his consciousness aside. He no longer controlled the movements of his form, but as he sensed his hand reach for the grip of his saber he felt the familiar softness of the supple leather handle and realized that if he could feel texture through his alien hands, Aebos must surely have experienced the horrific pain that had forced Juval to flee. Sword fully drawn now, Juval turned Korm’s head to regard the stricken Aebos, pitched over on one side upon the ground. He took a step toward the cyclops and raised the sword for a mighty blow.

Korm felt a sharp scratch in the pit of his stomach. Juval brought his hand to the point of pain, and at the touch a hundred daggers exploded within him. Juval threw back Korm’s shoulders and screamed in anguish, his puppetry of Korm’s form finally matching exactly the intentions of its owner. Korm felt as if a swarm of insects was tearing him apart from within.

Although Juval seemed reluctant to look directly at it, from his peripheral vision Korm beheld a corona of crackling golden light shining from his abdomen, and he instantly realized what had happened. Creeg had poisoned them both—and himself—from the moment he first had met them, no doubt hoping for exactly this result. Each point where golden fire seemed to scorch his innards away must have been some remnant from one of Epostian Creeg’s flakes of golden seasoning. But understanding the source of the pain gave Korm no control over it, and hope vanished within seconds of the excruciating onslaught. Korm realized that the pain that wracked both puppet and master would soon kill them both. Epostian Creeg had won.

Korm was willing to die, if that meant Aebos would live. He had no control over his own body anymore, but perhaps he could extend his mind to touch that of Juval’s, find some kernel of goodness that would confound it into remaining in his body long enough for Creeg’s golden flakes to do their fatal work on them both. He did his best to push the pain to the back of his mind and opened himself to the imposter dwelling within him. He managed to contact only a tiny sliver of the demon’s mind, a thundering abyss of resentment, hatred, arrogance, and anger. Such a mind offered little for him to work with.

Before Korm could formulate a plan, however, the demon slipped away, leaving him in control of his faculties once more. The pain left immediately upon Juval’s withdrawal, though Korm felt a warm glow in his stomach that convinced him that Creeg’s poison still provided a defense against another possession attempt. His heart jumped as he looked to Aebos, fearing that Juval would make another play for his promised tribute. But Aebos lay gathering his senses on the ground, free of demonic inhabitation.

A flurry of movement on the steps drew Korm’s attention to the squirming shapechanger, who writhed in pain on the ground, stomach glowing with a golden radiance. Somehow Creeg’s golden flakes had transferred back with it so that even the shapechanger’s body had been infected. Not all of the flakes, of course, but enough to constrict Juval in paroxysms of pain. As if summoned by his triumph, Epostian Creeg stepped past Korm to approach Juval.

“You are all fools,” he said, dabbing his bloody mouth on the back of his hand. Already an angry bruise marred the side of the face where Aebos had struck him. “Iranez of the Orb has more pressing matters to attend to than placating her demon. You have outlived your usefulness, Juval. We knew that a cyclops would be too tempting a morsel for you, so the Orb found us one. Then it was only a matter of fattening it up with a substance anathema to you, and we knew you would undo yourself. And you did.

“But poison has no command over demons!” cried Juval.

“Indeed it does not,” replied Creeg. “But what you have ingested—what’s now become a part of you—is not poison at all, but a violation of multiversal law. You act as if you are poisoned because it is a biological process that is killing you. Or killing your mortal form, but that is good enough for our purposes, as your formless soul will die just as surely.”

“I—I do not understand,” Juval said through gritted teeth.

“When you started causing us trouble, the Lady Iranez ordered me to learn what I could about demons, in particular how to combat their ability to possess victims and steal their bodies. This led me to discover an order of celestial azatas known as the Golden Host, who made war against demons countless aeons ago. They had no natural protections against possession, so they bathed their skin in eldritch extracts anathema to demonkind. When a demon possessed the azata, its soul and the azata’s became the same being, trapped within the imprisoning golden skin.”

Both Korm and Aebos had regained their senses and approached Epostian Creeg and Juval. The alchemist continued his narration, as much to brag to his companions as to inform the demon of its impending fate. “This process violated the fundamental rules that govern the multiverse. A creature of utter good or utter evil is either one thing or the other. A demon cannot also be a celestial. So the multiverse compensates by erasing the contradiction. And thus did the azatas of the Golden Host discover a method to poison the unpoisonable. A fascinating study in alchemy I might never have discovered if not for you. Go to your oblivion knowing that you have my most sincere appreciation.”

“These creatures are not of the Golden Host,” declared Juval through the shapechanger’s gritted teeth.

“Of course not,” Creeg scoffed. “Such a creature would never accede to subterfuge, and would never agree to our plan. So I didn’t even bother asking it. I simply summoned the creature, murdered it, and dried its skin for later ingestion by our bait.” At that word, the alchemist smiled a blood-soaked grin at Aebos.

“Just think, Juval. If you had truly been one of those humans you hate so much, you would have been perfectly safe from our plan. I hope it makes your blood boil to know that in the end, it was one of us that finished you.”

The shapechanger’s image rippled and twisted, refining itself into the form of a beautiful human woman with luxurious long red hair to match the familiar crimson eyes. The indistinct body smoothed and took on the curves of a shapely human woman garbed in the clothes and gear of a traveling adventurer.

“I was human once,” Juval said in a soft, feminine tone wholly free from the muffled chorus that had previously accompanied everything the demon said. “I could learn to be again.” It turned to look Korm straight in his gray eyes. “This is how Durvin Gest saw me. How I truly am.”

Aebos hesitated. Korm reached into the pouch at his side and clutched the cylinder of glass containing the rest of Creeg’s golden flakes.

“Do not trust it,” Korm said. “I have touched its mind. There is nothing good left in it.”

Epostian Creeg gasped as he recognized the thin golden flakes contained within the jar in Korm’s fist. The swordsman stepped back to get the most of his swing and punched Juval in the face so hard that his hand shattered its teeth and penetrated its mouth. He withdrew his hand rapidly, wincing as the demon’s jagged mess of a mouth cut furious channels in his bare flesh. But he left the smashed jar within. Aebos closed both hands around Juval’s head and, for good measure, shook the demon violently to ensure even distribution of the flakes.

The creature’s form shifted urgently as it jerked around in the cyclops’s clutches. The fingers of the demon’s hands melded and sharpened into cruel talons, which tore handfuls of flesh from Aebos’s shoulders and arms. The cyclops released his grip and backed away from the fight. All detail fled Juval’s form, which once again assumed the shapechanger’s emaciated natural frame. With a surprising burst of energy, it lashed out at Creeg, throwing the alchemist fifteen feet away to land with a sickening crunch. Juval spat a dollop of blood upon the stairs and spoke through broken teeth in a raspy, desperate voice.

“You have hurt me, worms. Worse than any mortals have managed before, but I am afraid I have digested all of your foul meal, and yet I live. Perhaps an ounce more and I would have been undone. But I am not so greedy as to inhabit any of you again. I will have to content myself with tearing you limb from limb. A pity that you have no more of Creeg’s poison.”

Korm rushed Juval, saber raised for a deadly slash. On the downswing, Juval caught the blade in the palm of its hand, instantly heating the metal to soft, useless slag. The demon slapped Korm across the face with a backhand, sending him sprawling on the verge of unconsciousness.

With a touch of triumph to his movement, Juval spun to face Aebos on the ground, only to find himself looking directly into the eye of the cyclops. A wide grin split Aebos’s massive head.

“I’ve been eating Creeg’s poison since breakfast yesterday, and I have plenty left here in my belly. But I’m more than willing to share.”

With that, Aebos opened his mouth and brought the index finger of his left hand to the back of his throat. Almost immediately, the cyclops let loose a powerful torrent of vomit directly in Juval’s face, filling the demon’s slack-jawed mouth. Even from where he lay upon the ground, Korm could see the sparkle of tiny golden flakes within the spray.

The golden glow at the pit of Juval’s stomach spread across the whole of its body, and when the flash of light slowly faded, nothing of the demon or the shapechanger remained but the dying echoes of an all-too-human scream.

∗ ∗ ∗

From the deck of the Relentless, Korm and Aebos looked on as Iranez’s crew put the Queen’s Lament to the torch. A strong wind spread the fire quickly to the mainsail, which erupted into a curtain of flame. Iranez of the Orb and Epostian Creeg stood upon the bridge atop the sleek demon ship, while the boat’s crew rigged enormous sails upon its impossibly thin masts for what must have been the first time in ages.

Korm clasped the bag of treasure tightly. Iranez had looked disappointed upon their return, but proved true to her word, allowing them to keep what they had earned. Even now Korm felt the Relentless pulling away from the Queen’s Lament, catching the fresh westerly wind that would bring them to Quantium.

“Aebos, my friend,” he said. “I think we are finally getting free of our troubles. It’s all uphill from here. I’m not thrilled about going to Quantium, but at least we’re moving.”

Aebos shrugged. “I am eager to reach the city,” he confessed. “I don’t know about you, Korm, but I could use something to eat. I’m starving.”