Since my forging, I had seen little else but strife. In the monastery, I was proclaimed an abomination by the very priests who trained me. I was told over and over that I had no soul. That I would never join in glorious union with the Silver Flame. I was a tool – a weapon – to be used in the Last War, and then what? When the war was over? I never got the chance to find out.

Ever since my arrival in this strange world called Althanas, I have seen that war and strife are not all that can be. In fact, battle is a sport here, where I have found employment at the Dajas Pagoda. The Ai'Brone monks – the sort of men I can admire in this place – have afforded me my own sanctuary and arena in which to fight. A church of the Silver Flame is all that I asked, and it was like they pulled together all of my memories of such places and constructed it perfectly, right on down to the stained glass depiction of the Lady Tira Miron and the couatl striking down the great demon to become one in the Silver Flame.

I have seen Valeena Lake, and I have walked Brokenthorn. These places were ones of beauty and majesty. But it is in battle that I feel truly alive. Alive as the priests claimed I had no right to be.

So here I stood in the aisle, waiting for the young man who had challenged me to do battle. I gazed upon the oaken doors, my green eyes casting a faint glow with the magic that sustained me. Pews on either side of me – old but sturdy wood encased within filigreed iron – I felt a congregation of one. Preacher and parishioner.