Chapter 34: A Chance Encounter

Bodies lay everywhere in the temple complex. Bodyguards. Servants. And a few young men whose understanding of the dangers of the forbidden region came from books alone. They stared up into the sky, their faces filled with the terror they had experienced before dying.

There were also dead jellyfish.

Unlike humans, when jellyfish died, they became shapeless gray sludges that flopped to the ground and emanated a noxious stench. They didn’t seem anything like the beautiful,...