I left my name behind at the waypoint at Eos. The Legions gave me a number, but you can call me, Sof. I never attended schools, nor had the chance to invest much in anyone of my own age. I was tutored so I would have the requisite skills to communicate what I was doing and how. They did not care about me. They wanted power. They didn’t know that I could not help but use it, that the swell of it would bloom in the presence of any of the Flame who needed aid. It was not mine to possess, rather it possesses me.

I wish I had begun my diaries all those years ago, that I had connected my thoughts to an othermind and offloaded all those memories for permanent inclusion, and yet I feel as though much would have been lost. Here, on this virtual page I am given the chance to refine my memory in the crucible of writing. If they find it, it will be destroyed, but these truths must be spoken. This war seems like it will have no end until the Legions make an end entirely of the zealots – not a single member living. The insurgents are like mad raving dogs, shouting nonsense and murdering themselves and others with random hatreds veiled as religious piety.

The Sons of the Flame, who are called variously sorcerers and aberrants and disintegrators by friend and foe alike, have been discovered in greater and greater number and are being used in greater in greater number by the Legions in this war. The Flame is in opposition to the Zealots, but so too is the Flame against the Luminaries. There is no right way here, it seems. Many sons and daughters flock to the legions thinking it is a right war. They are deceived. For some, like myself, we were not volunteers. I was taken, ripped from my home, my parents, my brother, and thrown out into the battlefields for my power to be used to keep the war going- promises of victory and meaning and purpose ringing in my ears.

Once, I even bought them. A young Sof loved that she could slay death with a touch. Now, I fear I keep my brothers and sisters alive for further torments from the Luminaries, that I keep them from the home to come, prolong their battles and their sufferings and their sins beyond what ought have been.

In a sense, I have kept them in war where there might have been peace. And yet, I must trust, bide my time, and grow.

These paths are winding, the way unclear, and the power – it has a mind of its own.