Splap unhooked the calister from his pack and dropped to the ground in an exhausted heap. He had been walking for most of the day. Well, some of the day. The rest of it was spent figuring out how to keep from falling down. He had been doing that a lot lately. Walking, that is, and not because he liked it. He liked the physical activity, sure enough, and he was grateful he had the capacity to do it, but self-imposed forced marches rarely held the kind of satisfaction he was looking for.

No, these days he was on his own. He was walking to deliver the warbort to Count Gremblort, a quest of approximately 300 days due west into the Jumblat Highlands, an unmapped, untamed, unliked territory approximately the size of half the world.

The moon was hovering over the canyons over there to the east. It gave off a dusty, dusky glow that was less glow and more dull metal. That was a typical moon on Morgog’s Eve, the day of the Annual Horrifics, when it was reputed that Morgog rose from the Burblort Gribblocker itself to haunt the hapless residents. Sometimes they celebrated, other times they cowered. It depended on the mood of the constables, who were either unwilling or extremely unwilling to bend the rules. It all depended on who you got.

Anyway, Splap fished an apple out of his courier pack and ate it in one bite. He needed a break. He’d been walking all day. He sank into the ground beneath a spindly spidery tree that seemed to reach outward in some final plea for rain. No rain in the Jumblat Highlands. Not these days. Not since Count Gremblort had taken command of things.

And that was the whole paint of the situation really. The warbort could reverse the Certain Problem that had crept up in the Western Reaches and threatened to go further, into the Reaches and even the Eastern Reaches where the Reaches reached. So the Council claimed. They had devised this warbort device to counteract the effects of the Certain Problem.

Splap had not asked many questions. He was Count Gremblort’s son anyway. He was the only one who had even a chance of getting into Good Graces, the count’s inner circle. Splap had been exiled some years before but he didn’t mind. He rather preferred the task and was happy to head back west. Maybe Feebo was still around and he could ask her to dance with him the way she never would when they were younger. He hated himself.