Across the street three elephantine orange-green slugs lay melting in the sun. Their glutinous bodies renewed themselves as they liquefied and they emitted an odor so foul that it rose above all the other myriad stinks that afflicted the noisome concourse. In place of saddles they wore simple handgrips that were buried deep within the slimy flesh itself. Once more, their riders were thankfully conspicuous by their absence.
That did not mean that the streets were devoid of denizens. While Skawpane would never pass for a bustling metropolis, neither was it a ghost town—though ghosts shared the streets and fronting establishments with the rest of their fellow citizens. In addition to reddish demons who might have been related to the prospector they had encountered out in the layered hills, there were demonic folk of every stripe and color. Some were dressed in styles that would have been considered shocking in cities as far apart as Lybondai or Askaskos, but which in their current surroundings seemed perfectly appropriate. Others were content with plainer attire.
The population was a mélange of all that was disturbing and horrific, a veritable melting pot of the diabolical. Besides demons and ghosts there were less familiar phantasms, from towering, spindly brown creatures with bulging pop eyes to winged horrors boasting circular mouths that covered their entire black faces. The crows that haunted the tops of buildings and pecked at offal in the streets had membranous wings like bats, and sickly toothed beaks that looked fragile enough to crumble at a touch. A flower-crowned, tentacled horror lazing in a rocking chair made of human bones tracked their progress down this boulevard of horrors with organs that were not eyes. Next to where its feet would have been if it had had feet, a dog-sized lump of multilegged one-eyed phlegm lifted its rostrum and sniveled threateningly.