This is just one of the tales in the book of the Great Balsamo. It was a long age ago, and in a place very far from here; the great city of Everwork. Now, you must learn that Everwork was a very different city from the ones known to you and I. Its streets were long and straight, and all fanned out from a great central hub. Its factories, foundries, homes and arcades each laid along one spoke each. Yes, from above, Everwork had the look of a big brass wheel, all wrapped In fog

Yes, it was some years ago, where the glittering salt desert of Whitleg met the Gulf of Silber. It was once a lively place of fresh roads and crowds, where the works of the masons never seemed to stop. Salt-by-sea was its name and it had long since withered away. Enter Edvar Sewel. He threw open the wooden hatches of his loft and beheld what was left of the town. His view and the view of those in the street below were very, very different. Edvar saw his home of several years;

Night had fresh fallen over the turrets and walls of Ivriskap by the hour our story begins. As if a cluster of thin fungal flutes had risen from a corpse, the fortress’ turrets rose from an undergrowth of crenellations, turrets, courtyards and gatehouses, and too few torches shone from within its smatter of dark arches and shattered windows. For the first time in many moons, no snow fell, and the fighting pits around the foot of the fortress had thawed the days before. There

I set out for my interview in Cologne with a suitcase full to bursting. Water bottles, filter, sealed food, a personal heater, my heaps of UBS documents, visa, even an up-to-date CSF sample. Over prepared? Maybe not, but I had no intention of letting ever-changing travel restrictions slow me down. I had even scheduled enough free-time to submit to a few medical exams in quarantine facilities. Yes, I even brought a sleeping bag. Anyone whose career has forced them to endure an