Fury of Sol, Flameborn, Scourge of Lruh, Killer, Thief, Heathen, there are more; there is one I prefer though: Joyce, Joyce Alglas. Son of Riccard Alglas and Cria Alglas, Father of Tomas Alglas, Husband of Erica Alglas. The once proclaimed ‘chosen one’ of Sol, that was me, is me I suppose. Prophesied to be the manifestation of Sol on Earth, he who would fight the daemons of the night and lead man to the new world without monstrous daemons; I had a bad habit of being less than you’d think. I was given those titles forty years ago, at the bright age of fifteen.

They wouldn’t matter until I was fifty-three. By then, they already left their mark. I was arrogant, am arrogant, because of it. Always told I would be the one foretold. It screws with you, makes you think you’re more than you are.

I mean, hell, I was a good fighter. Still would be if I were ten or twenty years younger, you don’t lose technique; technique stays with you if you learned and practiced it for as long as I had. My mind was always one of war. Entering new rooms always meant looking for exits, entrances. Walking around meant always keeping your hand near your sword, in case any of the citizens get any bright ideas from what you decide to wear. Difficult transition, fighting to writing. Sol knows I’ve never been much of an intellectual; back on the farm, it was tough, even finding opportunities to learn to do things like read… Ma could, she was an exception I suppose. I write this to give the next Fury hope, and to make him or her understand that they are not a manifestation of Sol (Technically I’m writing this because of some very persistent Solites, but it’s not an awful idea).

I’m fifty-four now. Last year showed the whole of Cresnia, if not the world, that daemons exist. They are real and they are controlled by pure darkness, manifestations of Lun herself, controlled by the second child of Sol: Thera. She and I are bound by father, for to be Fury is not to be Sol, but to be crafted of Sol.

Indeed all of mankind is crafted by Sol, he and Lun are the ancients of this land. Both once part of the sam- I’m getting ahead of myself.

I write this because in the last year the entirety of existence on our Earth was almost snuffed out by darkness unbound. I write this because my luck has run out; because the next time Thera comes she will face a new Fury: I write this for you, Fury. I must warn you however; that I don’t know how to do this, or what it is you will look for. So I will write everything I know. All of it.

I will show you my childhood, the peaceful farm and my family.

I will show you the monastery, the learning and affections of divination I was fed and bloated on. Making me unfit to be of Sol.

I will show you the cold-blooded killings I made in no name. Monstrosities bound in the hearts of man, left restrained by the narrow grips of our society’s feeble rules and chains. Truth of the most dangerous creatures, not those commanded by the pitch blackness of the void: but your fellow man.

I will show you what a useless war appears as. The wars we fight amongst ourselves, the ones that are useless, the ones that only weaken us from the true threat of darkness.

I will show you love, and family. Holy, sanctimonious bonds forged by blood, tears, and flame; sparks that hardly last but a moment in the life of any living creature. Chains once broken, that the slave is determined to repair.

I will show you age. Feeble body no longer capable of matching the mind or the soul, youth surpassing your arrogance in all things no matter they be of the mind, brain or soul, age brings us all to dust.

You will see a broken man. On these pages you will learn of the vilest daemon that has ever walked these hallowed grounds granted us by the great Sun. You will watch a child become corrupted by arrogance. You will watch the church make him ruthless, you will watch his strength gather in the halls of faith and break the convictions of better men than he. You will watch the terror of Lruh, you will see a man engulfed by flame taking lives by force, without prejudice; lives burned forever by a monster; children born of feared force and traumatized mothers. You will watch the fable, watch him strike down his own flesh and blood and leave them no chance to become themselves in anyway known by the whole of man. You will see him fall. You will see his body betray him and make him weak, unable to redeem himself even in the face of destruction.

You will see fury.

Fury, I know not where your blood will call from. Man or Woman, I could not say. Daemons may come when you are scarce an adult, or hardly a child, or in the grips of age. All I know is what is written on these pages, this is my gift to you Fury. Knowledge of the past and what it holds for you, understand me and understand the choices I made when it mattered most.

Do not take this volume as gospel, take it as it is. Take it as the tale of ages gone by. Learn from history and do not repeat the sins of the father, Fury. Realize that being of Sol does not make us more than ordinary, all it does is make the decisions we make seem more than they are. Man is not defined by what man is, man is defined by the choices we make and live with. I lived my life as Fury: I did not live my life as a man would. There is no proper way to live, all there is, is to understand that no matter the choices you make each and every one of them has consequence.

You live with my consequences, Fury. See my actions.

childhood.”

See the hills of Cresnia. They roll, lush and verdant across the landscape stopped by no skylines or other implements of man: save one. Upon few of the hills lie roads. On fewer still, fields. Fields that grow wheat, potato, corn, onion, and whatever else allows its owners to survive another day. Distance enough to truly appreciate the horizon of the rolling countryside reveals another feature: a home shadowed by the grand sol itself; surrounded by field, and few lonesome trees. The boy who would come to be known as Fury called that place his home. Those rolls where his world, the fields his land, and the house his royal throne.

If one were to walk along the winding roads of the country they would find one path that led to the house. They would see not a house, but a worn home. A home built of sturdy wood and stone, surrounded by flattened ground. Pockmarked trees would provide shade from the sol’s great strength. Upon their branches lay the fruit that farmers grow for blessing of Sol himself. Pebbled gold surrounded the sweet delicacy. Oranges: fruit of God.

Sunset would mark the sounding of a bell in the front of the wooden abode. A woman stands, hand waggling the bell’s ringer for the longed supper of the day; she stands proud and plump. She is not short, she is not tall; she is not thin, nor is she fat. She is average in all but two regards: her face has the features of a hardened soldier, not of the fair maid she was; her hair lays down her back, reaching her hips, outside of the gray hints at her scalp: it is a sanguine red. Red so rich that (no matter the woman upon which it would rest) would drive king’s to war, queen’s to poison. She was a radiant beauty. She was Cria Alglas; my dear mother. The dress she wore was simple- nothing extravagant on the farm- and green. A color that would mean only one kind of meal was being prepared in that household; a meal of celebration and festival: her husband’s day of birth.

Ringing bells pierce the countryside, sound that tells of a family feast. A man stands, fields-walk halted by the sound of struck steel; he stands earnest and tall. He is not broad, he is not weak; he is not skeletal, nor is he lanky. He has the look of a once boisterous man, his gait focused; his curled lips, smiling eyes betray the rest of his appearance. Callouses the size of chestnuts adorn his hands. Tanned leather seems to be the man’s skin tone. Dark twigs seem to compose his hair, surrounding a worn face; face wearing an aquiline nose, one bent in places too many; his face seems the one of a man past his prime: the piercing emerald gaze however, seems to be that of a young man; a gaze that kept its youth. He was Riccard Alglas; my dear father. He wears familiar apparel. Worn, covered in dirt and dust, but clean. Momentary quiet broken by another ring of the bell, a crystal clear note, unwavering; music wasn’t unheard of in our family.

Notes find themselves all along the farm, sounds that somehow always find great bounty with water. A girl stands, face gazing into the farm’s well, cutting into the stone-walled pond; she stands quaint and thin. She is not loud; she is not quiet; she is not girlish, nor is she seductive. She has a spark that no one else has on the farm; she shares a velvet hair with her mother. Her spark, her spark is voice twined as silk. Choral talents that did not live unnoticed, nor did it live alone. Where her mother looked brutish and her father gaunt, she had neither of their follies but all of their charms. She was Lucia Alglas; my dear sister. Member of the choir of the nearby Monastery, she was always treated well by them. Almost always she dressed in their colors, as if expecting them to suddenly arrive and whisk her to some concerto. A third ringing of the bell stopped her stare into the well, reminding her of the obligation to dinner with family; even those in it she could hardly stand to be with.

I’m in the mud.

I’m scare a handful of years old, and I’m standing knee-deep in the mud we keep some pigs in.

Mud is everywhere. My pants and shirt are soiled. My shoes somehow lost to the vestiges of the pigs’ domain. My uncut poorly maintained curls don’t change much; their color a slightly darker brown than they were before I made a plunge. Already at this age I have my mother’s face, and my father’s build. Even though my childhood could’ve resulted in my father’s divorce, there was one thing I didn’t share with my parents.

Hazel. Hazel colored eyes specifically. To be fair they weren’t even hazel really, more a gilded rust.

On that third strike of the bell I looked up from my filth. Hadn’t quite hit me just how much trouble I would soon be in; for you see, Fury, a child’s brain does not hold onto the long term very well. So I ran. When that third strike finally came into the world and made the presence of food known: I ran.

That house, which lay upon rolling hills, found itself filled with those who knew it well. The woman by the heated stove, hovering over a roast of pork; the man entering the back of the home, smiling and covered in thin layered dirt; the girl entering through the front, happy for the meal to come. All those in the house dressed as their normal attire. Cloth kept not in filth. Colors brought in that made the man happier for the presence of those who he has blood with, direct or otherwise. Their shared smiles shattered upon the opening of that main door. Sol’s rays crashing the dust settled onto the cabin’s wooden floors, blocked only by the shadow of the boy standing by the door. Boy covered in filth. Boy tracking the floor with wet filth, intruding his own home.

Things were quite still a moment. My family’s breathing being some of the only movement breaking that discomforting harmony. Father finally broke the silence with an uproarious upheaval.

His laughter, deep, broke the unwavering silence with its own kind reverbs led from that thin-lipped smile made all of us break in that moment.

“Seems the little spot of light decided to come in his best eh, Cria?”Her response was not as jovial as his. “Joyce, you have a minute to get out of this house before I decide you have more use as an offering to the Solites.”

I made a smart choice. I got out of that house and peddled my little legs as fast as they would take me to the well by the house. When I had gotten there I stripped and bathed in a record setting time. Less than five minutes later I was fully dressed and rushing back to the warm meal waiting inside the safety of the house.

I opened the door again, but this time to a different sight. I saw my family seated, having just started the meal food hardly touched; a plate sitting there in my usual spot… still warm.

That was my earliest, complete, memory.