The caravan set out at dawn after a departing meal together at the caravanserai's eatery. They were headed due north of Mosdenechrak, carrying their cargo of cider into the mystic theome of Inaildoro.

The rest of the caravan took the news of their route without comment, but Denziu had already never been this far from home before. Inaildoro was a place that zie'd read about as a hazard. It was one of the theomes that put the mist in mystic, supposedly; banks of clouds blew across the plains north of Mosdenechrak without source or destination, and mistwraith monsters lurked in them. With these things in mind, Denziu asked, "Should we really travel through Inaildoro?"

"But of course! It's one of the few things that really goes better for a Tekagoli caravan, and I do it every time!" said Choave. "And we’ll visit Danundseer after. Danundseer isn't even on the west route that evades Inaildoro, so we'll fill our loose space with a few crates of mushrooms and be one of the few caravans going north with that."

"Don't worry,” Oghai said, all smiles like he was sharing a good jest. “Inaildoro is trivial. Open roads and no obstructions. Even odds we'll cross a hamlet, want to lay a bet?"

"How can that be uncertain?" asked Denziu, mystified at the idea that the caravan could be unsure of whether it would cross a hamlet on a route they always took.

Oghai laughed and said, "Because it's a mystic theome. You only see what the land god Inadagedyn decides you ought to see. Infinitely big-" Oghai held his arms apart, "infinitely small-" Oghai put his hands together, "totally unmappable. Takes exactly as long to cross as Inadagedyn decides, but we trust him on that. We’ll be there for one night and part of the next day."

They departed Mosdenechrak again without Choave's blessing, and Denziu had the sense that all the days without it since Tanoriz were good for the health of the caravanners. They didn’t need the vigour charm. There was no point straining to cross a mystic theome faster than a comfortable walk.

As the group departed Mosdenechrak, they left by the north gate, and crossed into yet more emerald farmland. This place looked vibrant, like it'd never had a drought, nor a depletion of the soil. Denziu wondered who was working zir own job in these lands, teaching the vrash how to perfect the soil in the farms. Perhaps the local equivalent was a vrash with that magic touch, eschewing the direct farming to sell perfect soil conditions to vashael who could work the land better. Or perhaps the land god Akilno, who adored the prosperous city, was prone to blessing the farmland directly... but Denziu doubted that. The lesser divinities were on their own in most theomes if they ruined the soil that they tried to farm.

Here along the road north from Mosdenechrak, there were plenty of travellers upon the road, most of them bullied aside by the formation of the caravan, though at one point when a southbound caravan met them both caravans pulled into long strings to pass each other.

When they approached Inaildoro, the edge of the theome was disconcertingly visible. A mistbank was bunched up on the edge of the theome, looming like a strangely linear wall of grey over the plains. This was something that was spoken of more often than seen: a weather event with a defined border. The mists of Inaildoro were never seen in Mosdenechrak.

"ALL STOP! Gather to me," shouted Choave. The whole caravan rolled to a stop, and Choave unhitched from his own wagon to turn and face the group. He stood tall as he said loudly, "Instructions for Inaildoro! When the air is clear, be at ease! When the fog is about us, keep an eye on the next wagon ahead of your own and the wagon next to yours! If we're together, we'll be safe, so stay near each other. Pray to Baggil and we'll be safe!"

With that, Choave rehitched himself, and the group walked into the thick fogbank.

It was an unnaturally thick fog that they walked into. It was too dry for its density, which readily blocked the front of the caravan from the back, so that it felt more like walking through haze, but unlike a true haze it was easy on the lungs. The air tasted very clean, in fact. The fog was wholly immaterial, not formed of mist like a fog nor of dust like a haze, but formed solely of the substance of the will of the land god.

The fog or haze was too durable for the distance that they crossed and the time that they spent crossing it, so that hours passed while Denziu was simply putting one foot in front of another. Every so often as they walked, Denziu saw a streak of motion in the fog, a sort of roiling distortion at the edge of visibility off to the side. They were still passing some kind of soundless, dim grassland all the while...

Oghai broke up the tension and the tedium by walking up and down the caravan checking in with everyone periodically. One of these visits was particularly fun, as Choave called a brief stop while Oghai broke open a cache of meaty handpies to distribute for the group to have lunch on the road. After that, it was back to walking.

Oghai stayed near Denziu and asked, "How are you holding up?"

"Are we really going to see two days of this? This endless haze?" Denziu asked.

Oghai shook his head and said, "Probably not. We're lucky we haven't been attacked yet, actually. This much haze usually means that Inadagedyn has taken a direct interest in a travelling crew."

Denziu shrunk, and for a step fell behind the caravan's pace, then with a grim-set jaw picked up the pace again. "What kind of attack?"

"Weird things, like deformed dragons and ghosts," said Oghai. "Some of it’s talkative, but Inadagedyn will try to break up the caravan before individualising things. Our Tekagoli charms protect us here, and from anything except getting separated, so usually we make the journey safe just by refusing to lose sight of each other. Just... don't listen to anything that wants you to leave the line."

There was no such thing that day.

It wasn't long after that when the fog did finally clear, and they saw that they were walking through a wide grassland in the evening. There was some hillocking to the landscape and occasional trees, but most notably there were more of the distant banks of roving fog, vaporous and loose-edged here where they were far from the edge of the theome. Ahead of them, another one looked to have rolled over the road again.

"We'll be camping in fog at this rate," bellowed Choave, with some frustration powering his voice across the caravan's length.

"We can't get lucky every time we visit!" called back another of the merchantgons in the caravan. That was Sharisen the Sociable, who rarely spoke and startled several of the merchantgons by responding to Choave from the back row of the caravan where she was pulling Oghai's carriage that day.

Lorvaza cried, "Since when do Tekagoli merchantgons get lucky at all?" Which yielded laughs, and broke the tension.

Denziu watched after Oghai until the running izerah noticed and came back. "What were they talking about?" Denziu asked.

"We've had a run of good luck the last few years while passing this theome,” answered Oghai, walking alongside Denziu to speak. “Clear weather in Inaildoro and getting to stay at the inns in the villages overnight. No sleeping in the open. No monsters to deal with.”

After the caravan entered the fogbank, they soon found that they were walking through what looked to be a lightly wooded area... in as much as they could see anything, with the sun setting and the trees about them. Soon after, Choave called a stop, and the caravanners gathered right on the road. "There's no point pulling off the road," Choave said. "There's no traffic in Inaildoro unless Inadagedyn wants us to meet someone."

It was a dreary night. The "campsite" they were at was far too crowded with the trees hedging them in and all the wagons pulled around one spot on the road where the fire burned, and all of them afraid to step foot into the fog that surrounded them.

There wasn't enough room about them to have privacy, so that when it happened that Choave started talking to someone or something in the fog, there was nearly a full alarm from all the dragons rousing to say, "What was that?" and "What did you say?"

A feminine draconic voice cleared her throat. "Ahem! I'm peaceful, but please don't make me step into the firelight. You wouldn't want me to."

"We've a visitor from the fog," said Choave. "Wants to speak to Denziu."

The unknown dragon said, "I swear to Baggil I'll let zir return safely to you by the morrow, but Inadagedyn wishes to have Denziu's measure on a question of importance."

Denziu walked over towards the pair. The known and the unknown, Choave at the edge of the firelight, and the unknown dragon in the fog.

"You shouldn't do this," said Choave, "But that oath is valid if you do."

Denziu was wearing a Tekagoli charm. Zie trusted that Baggil would never let an unsurvivable consequence be inflicted. So it was that heeding Choave not, Denziu addressed the dragon in the fog. "Do you have a name?"

"Taioma."

Following after Taioma was a strange experience. There arose a kind of sourceless insufficient light as the two stepped away from the caravan. Taioma let Denziu see a glimpse of her tail, of her two tails Denziu noticed with surprise, and otherwise stayed shrouded by the fog. As though concealing the broader facts of her appearance, Denziu thought, harking back to Oghai's warning of deformed dragons in the mists of Inaildoro.

Soon Taioma's tails curled around the edge of a table. It was set up in the 'forest', a little of which Denziu could see by that odd dusking light that had continued growing stronger as they moved. There were six plates upon the table, and four cookies on each plate. There was a seventh plate in the centre of the table, larger than the rest yet with nothing on it at all. All of this stood in a forest with nothing else nearby. "Why is this here?" Denziu asked, questioning the oddity of a table set up in the forest.

"By the blessing of Inadagedyn, these are for you," said Taioma. "However much or little you please to eat, and if you will try at least something, I will have a question for you."

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The grey unshadowed light, the wisping fog, the shrouded dragon who stood by the table... Denziu could tell now that she was staring at him, could see the hints of a draconic form through the ever-present fog.

Where the haze of the day had been dry, this fog was not. It was unpleasant, cold, and damp. Still the air tasted very clean. There was no fungal taste as a wet night in a forest might be expected to provoke. With such a clean air, and as much walking as the caravan had done, being on foot all day... It was not unthinkable to eat something, under the blessing of the land god.

It was hard to see much about the cookies on the table. The light was of a weak grey quality that rendered all colours weak and grey, as attains in the pre-dawn, which it now seemed they were surrounded by. "Are these all the same?" Denziu asked.

"They are of various flavours, but they are not otherwise distinct."

Denziu hesitated over the table.

Taioma said, "Please, just eat one. Even half of one."

One of the cookies departed the table and was torn in half. This was an interesting exercise, for the cookie tore quite easily. It was a soft, dense cookie, with a moistness to it, not at all baked hard as other cookies that Denziu had before. Zie pulled a piece from the half a cookie, and popped it into zir mouth. Lemon. It was a heavy lemon cookie.

Zie ate the rest of the half, and looked to Taioma, looming shrouded in the fog.

"Why do we toil?" she asked.

The question was a surprise. A pure and simple non sequitur, Denziu had no idea how to reply to it, but stood waiting for Taioma to go on.

When she did, her words were, "Why do we work for our food?"

"To eat it," Denziu said. "We would starve without working to secure it."

Taioma reached over the table, and Denziu's stomach turned to see a limb depart that shrouding mist, a living dragon's hand yet bare meat exposed. Taioma picked up a cookie with one hand, stabbing it with her claws as she pulled it in two. She came away with just the half.

She ate half a cookie, as Denziu had.

"What do you know of starvation?" Taioma asked. "The ground yields up its produce so easily in our world. Do you know the word for mass starvation?" She did not wait for an answer. "It is 'famine', Denziu. There have been no famines in this region."

A moment of silence.

Taioma added, "You should have another cookie. I'm still hungry."

Denziu took a step around the table, and Taioma likewise circled it, keeping the table between them. The shroud of mist followed the other dragon, but Denziu still felt her eyes boring into zir.

Another cookie, torn in half. Strawberry, this time. These were such dense, moist cookies... and this one was strawberry flavoured.

"Who baked these cookies?" asked Taioma.

"You did," Denziu said, taking a guess.

Taioma shook her head slowly. "No, I did not. I do not know the recipe for these. Nor could I carry them through the night's sodding damp without ruining them. Want to guess again?"

There was nobody else here. Thinking about how readily Praoziu had summoned power unknown to enlarge zir wagon, Denziu could think of one other dragon who could have 'baked' the cookies. "Inadagedyn," zie said. "They were provided by the land god's blessing."

Taioma reached across the table, again leaning out of the shrouding swirl of mist, this time reaching with both hands to grab one of the cookies and rip it in half. The skin had rotted off her limbs; her claws were too bare an ivory, as though a glimpse of bone showed through on the hand Denziu had only just seen. She took another half a cookie.

"Everything is provided by the land god's blessing, Denziu. Even our toils. So why do we toil?"

A difficult moment of silence. Denziu understood the question this time, and tried to answer it in zir head first. If the land gods could give me anything... Is life better somehow for my toils?

I have not been given too many things, zie thought. Only the flying wagon, which made it possible to carry bags of soil from one place to another, and so had Denziu flying regularly between different parts of the forests and swamps in zir homeland.

The vrash farmergons with whom zie worked, they were gifted the ability to change the soil... it made the work of farming more reliable, but it even added a step. They did no less work, but slightly more. The land gods had given them a gift that made them toil harder, as Praoziu had given Denziu a gift that made zir toil harder. The 'reward' of having no famines was juxtaposed strangely with the cookies on the table.

"I don't know," said Denziu.

"Do you want any more?" Taioma asked. "Surely you must be hungry after all that walking."

You're undead, thought Denziu, staring at Taioma's mist-wrapped form. Zie was hungry, but the setting was still putting zir off the cookies. If zie might have preferred meat, the sight of Taioma's hands made that desire more remote still. "Why are you bringing the land god's blessing only to me? Why not feed the whole caravan?"

Taioma reared back slightly, then laughed. "Oh indeed, whyever not! I will say a little prayer to Inadagedyn and he will give us a little basket for you to carry off cookies in."

Sarcasm. She was sarcastic.

"I can't quite carry all these cookies without one," Denziu admitted, "But why not bring them here?"

"They are all much older than you, Denziu," said Taioma. "They have already been tested. Each of them has been offered gifts and toils and ten dozen lives other than the one they are living. Most of them, you know, would take far more than you have taken, oh little mudmonster of Lauvera..." She laughed again, more softly. "Would you be willing to eat another, for me?"

Mudmonster of Lauvera? Denziu hadn’t done any mudwallowing at all on this journey. And how did Taioma know that Denziu had ever done any at all?

Denziu circled the table a few more steps, until zie was at the plate where Taioma had taken her first cookie, and Taioma was at the plate where Denziu had taken zir first cookie. Denziu sniffed at the half-a-cookie remaining, and was repulsed by the faintest hint of dragon's blood. Zie grabbed one of the untouched cookies, and tore it in half. Bittersweet. Some strange, unfamiliar flavour, delivered in chips of some kind on a base of sweet squash. Such a different flavour, but still a heavy, moist cookie, like all of the cookies on the table.

These soft cookies would fall apart if Denziu tried to pick them up in groups. Zie couldn't bring this back to the caravan.

Taioma delicately picked up the half a lemon cookie that Denziu had ripped up, and tore it up into little pieces that she ate one by one. "Thank you," said Taioma, when she had finished it. "You know, I thought this would be a proper feast..."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," said Denziu.

"Did you know, there's only one kind of necromancer that can never learn any geomancy?" said Taioma.

"Which kind is that?"

"Ghosts," said Taioma. "Literal ghosts. There's nothing left to bind the land god's blessings to. But I am not a ghost."

"You're an undead geomancer," supplied Denziu.

Taioma stood stock-still, and yet a sense of motion crawled along her body as the misting shroud started to retreat from her. It revealed a zombie, for lack of a better word; most of her body was intact, grey in the grey sourceless light, little rotted but unmistakably dead. She was once a vrash.

"Do you like your toils?" she asked, as Denziu stood transfixed by the reveal.

"I-I, er, I do," stammered Denziu.

"Then Inaildoro isn't offering you what you want out of life. Come back someday when you are dying to change your Fate," said the undead vrash, laughing again. "Inadagedyn offers paradise. And a rather easy advancement, for geomancers."

She stepped to the very edge of the table, and reared up to put both of her hands upon it, then with a wave of one hand over the large plate in the centre of the table there arose a condensing distortion of the mist. She muttered something as mist gathered over the large plate, then started billowing and fuming until all the table was half-covered... and when it was gone, there stood a simple basket.

"I was going to summon a cake." Taioma stepped back from the table with an air of petty disappointment. "But go on. I have said a little prayer to Inadagedyn, and he has given you a little basket to carry off cookies in. Just as I promised." And at this she laughed again.

Denziu gathered up the cookies, minus the six halves that they had eaten and the two halves that Taioma had touched, until the basket had twenty whole cookies in it. They were flecked with various substances, light flecks of lemon on the three remaining lemon cookies, dark flecks of bittersweet foreignness on the two-and-a-half squash cookies. Four of the cookies, untouched by both, were so dark that they were dark even in the greying half-light. Denziu hadn't tried them to know what they tasted like.

When zie had filled the basket in this way, zie stood waiting for some sign from Taioma, who had gathered the mist to her body once again. "Which way do I go to get back to the caravan?" asked Denziu.

"Any way at all. You will never return if Lord Inadagedyn doesn't wish you to... but I think you will return five strides from the table, just in time for the caravan to be waking up."

"What? So I've missed a night of sleep for this!" said Denziu, alarmed. Zie hadn't felt like such a span of time had passed!

Taioma shook her head again, a great mistwraith of a two-tailed dragon once more. "No. You will have gotten a fine night of sleep. One last blessing for playing along... You'll see."

Disquieted, Denziu walked away from the table, and the grey dusking light didn't fade at all as zie went. Five strides from the table, zie saw zir wagon floating in the air over the sleeping form of Choave, who was sheltering under it, and a dusk-lit foggy forest was all around. No, not dusk. Dawn. It was grey dawn light, brightening slowly.

"Choave," said Denziu, nosing at the sleeping caravan leader, "I've returned safely, with a gift from Inadagedyn."

"Hm wha?" said Choave, rousing. He looked at Denziu, then at the basket Denziu was carrying, and that morning the caravan had strange cookies to share with breakfast. Moist, heavy, but a mix of familiar and alien flavours. The four darkest ones were a different variation of bittersweet flavour that none of them had tried before.

The dragons of the caravan found something strange as the cookies were shared around. Even though there were at most four of each flavour, nobody was denied the chance to try one of the flavours, for the basket failed to deplete! So they had a large, sweet meal on the morning of yet another long hike with wagons at their back, then set at once to making use of it.

The fog cleared after they finished eating, and there was no more forest around them when the fog cleared. Indeed, there was no more fog all the way ahead of them to the border of Danundseer, but Denziu saw all around them the emerald farms and livestock grasslands of yet another boring farm theome. They saw their first glimpse of Inrakaveach looming far overhead in distant mountains on the horizon, but this place dominated Denziu's thoughts too much to raise zir gaze to the horizon and think about the mountains. For as zie looked around a place that looked like only the same manner of (admittedly prosperous) farmland as surrounded Mosdenechrak, zie wondered where, in which layer of this place, and with what details... What was the 'paradise' that Taioma had tried to offer to Denziu?

Alongside Ekis zie walked again that day, and so thinking of Taioma’s claim that the other caravanners had all been tested, zie asked, “Hey, Ekis. Have you ever been ‘tested’ by a spirit in Inaildoro?”

Ekis smiled at Denziu, but it was a strange smile. Her eyes were tired, and it was an expression that Denziu had never seen on her, for an izerah cannot feel normal exhaustion at all. “We’ve all stepped away from the caravan in this theome at some point. Few of us have done it twice.”

Taken aback by Ekis’ attitude in saying it, Denziu said, “But… Taioma said that Inadagedyn offers paradise.”

“Paradise arises first in the mind,” Ekis said, and she looked away from Denziu to stare at the wagon in front of her. It was an endless stare at nothing in particular, and Denziu withdrew without asking anymore.

It was a long and quiet walk after that. Denziu wondered to zirself if the basket zie now carried would be an infinite cookie basket, as though it were a hint forever of that paradise, but this idea proved foolish the first time Oghai relayed a request for one of the cookies. The undepletable basket had been a blessing of the morning mist. When they were eaten in the light, the basket depleted as normal. With thirteen dragons in the caravan, it did not last the march to Danundseer, and Denziu was left with a final relic: a mundane though well-made basket created by the magic of Inadagedyn, with a rather surprising little legend burned into it: "Made in Inaildoro".