Skulduggery had abandoned his magical disguise the moment he stepped off the turtle's back and onto the continent. Not because he thought it might make anything easier, but because breathing was a habit he'd long since forgotten, and trying to maintain it without constant vigilance was more exhausting than it sounded.

It meant the group targeted for this task happened to include a skeleton in a suit, but since it also happened to include a man who looked as though he'd been carved from red stone, Skulduggery felt absolutely no inclination to pull the disguise back up.

When the group split up past the circle of pines, he found himself following Wan. It had less to do with the map, he suspected, and more to do with keeping their groups as small and unobtrusive as possible. It probably also had something to do with the way the mist was passing Wan by, but Skulduggery had never been one to count curiosity as a reason for doing things. Curiosity, for him, was a static mode of existence. He was more surprised when he wasn't curious about something.

"Is the map confusing you yet?" he asked after a few moments of walking silently through the woods.