Chapter 41: Those who came before
Calen was sitting on his bed with a copy of ’A brief history of the Flamebearers’ in his hand, waiting to be read.
The book was significantly shorter than one would expect from a tome describing multiple world-saving heroes, but apparently there was a reason for it.
"Every single mark bearer disappeared soon after finishing their job, so we only have fragmented second hand accounts." That was what Elira told him.
He wasn’t particularly thrilled to learn that all of his predecessors fell off the face of the earth, but he figured that maybe reading this book would give him some sort of a clue on how to avoid a similar fate.
The thin tome looked... unique, to say the least.
The cover wasn’t made of wood, leather or paper like in most cases - instead the old pages were cased in a heavy metal binder, covered in elaborate illustrations depicting various foes defeated by the past Flamebearers.
It was dark gray in color, except in one place - the center was occupied by a golden circle with a black sun engraved on it, the same one that was present on Calen’s wrist.
The beginning of the book was an introduction to the concept of Flamebearers: who they were, what they did, how they came to be, and so on.
He scanned the opening to see if there was something he didn’t know, but it contained only the most basic information.
The first entry was by far the largest one, and concerned the original Flamebearer - The Sun King Anatos.
It was almost pointless to read that part, every person in the Sun Kingdom knew his story, but he started reading nonetheless.
Anatos was not born with that name, in fact he was born without one. It was during a time were the lands were split between countless warlords, each of them too busy with conquest to consider their subjects.