There are mushrooms here and there in the garden, as it turns out. They're smaller, subtler growths, clustered around fallen wood and beneath thick leafy flowers, but as they circulate along the path, some of them glow faintly, as if they were waiting for the right eyes to spot them.

"More than surprising. I remember having to keep my eyes covered for days," Barcus says. "I'd made some goggles, because I knew what I was in for, but even the moonlight felt like too much at first. I was traveling alone, mostly by night. I don't think I bothered to get a good look at anything until after the first tenday on the road. I remember I came up on a river. Not the Chionthar, but one of the tributaries. It was just about dawn, and the light was yellow and pale pink on the water."

"I'd never seen anything like it. It was...so open, just water and light and sky. It was beautiful, but it felt like the end of the world. No cavern ceiling above. No jutting rocks or boulders."