We tracked the heretic Fieri to the edge of the wastes before the search was abandoned.

First Praetor Bourdain was the first to approach the wizard’s abandoned camp - not because he was bravest of us, but because no overseer would follow a man who would not walk, back straight, into the mouth of hell. Bourdain was that man.

“It is safe,” he said, and his voice was not unaffected by grief, for as with Fieri’s other camps, the ground itself had been ruined. As we stepped gingerly into the ring of small stones that surrounded the camp, a putrid stench rose to meet us. "Mozzarella,“ said Bourdain, and Jamie, our standard-bearer, retched.

The fire at the center of the ring had burned not 48 hours before. We had been so close! But Fieri was the only man alive who would brave the wastes. The razor-crumbs would lacerate your feet within minutes. Bourdain knelt down and, after a time, reached into the ruins of the fire. His hand, covered in the sweet, sticky Buffalo Blueberry Kickin’ Dipsauce that the heretic used to build his fires, gripped a small object barely larger than his palm. “The wizard has left us a gift.”

It was a Jalapeno Poptastic. Bourdain explained to us how the wizard ingested these artifacts of the Seventh Age, how they granted him incredible foresight and madness in equal amounts. He placed it into a box of young oak and sealed it tight. I will remember until my dying day how his hands shook.