Scandinavian Aggression

Ymir’s Corpse Interviews is a Scandinavian Aggression initiative in which Rowdy Geirsson picks the metaphorical cloud-matter of authors, artists, and other creators whose works are based on or inspired by the old lore of the Northlands. This time around we have Gregory Amato. Gregory is a novelist based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of the Spear of the Gods trilogy, the final volume of which, Fallen to Fury, was just recently released. For anyone out there not familiar with the books, they are set just before the Viking Age in a version of Scandinavia in which the myths, magic, and monsters of Norse sagas are all very real. The series tells the coming of age story of Ansgar the Skald, who joins a ship of monster-hunting warriors and discovers firsthand how much harder living a life of high adventure is than telling about one. The books are epic fantasy dominated by Norse lore and humor, a bit as if Shadow of the Gods (high adventure in the far north), Kings of the Wyld (a bit of humor and strong sense of found family), and Name of the Wind (an introspective and intellectual protagonist) had a baby. Before becoming a full-time writer, Gregory worked as an intelligence analyst for the FBI and wrote many sorts of true and important things, almost all of which were boring.

RG: So, Greg, welcome! It’s great to have you here and to have a chance to chat with you about your work. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the first two volumes of the Spear of the Gods series and am looking forward to diving into the concluding volume, which I know just came out. That series and its inspirations is going to be the main focus of what we talk about here. The inspirations and references relating to the legendary sagas is what I’d like to ask about first, because this is something one does not see nearly as often as inspirations and references to the myths. To me at least, the emphasis on the legendary sagas in an original storyline makes for a very unique premise. What motivated you to create a series that draws so heavily on the legendary sagas as opposed to keeping it purely historical or purely mythological?

GA: The short answer is “because the legendary sagas are so awesome.”

Dwarves chopping off peoples feet and putting them back on. Magic swords cutting through solid rock. Archery battles with arrows meeting tip-to-tip in mid-air. Shapeshifters of three different kinds. Dragons with terrifying helmets, sorcerers shooting arrows from their fingers, sex with giants. One story that’s just about a dude haunted by a demon while he’s trying to take a shit. And I haven’t even gotten to the trolls, or how that word used to mean something very different from what it does today. Or magic, and how we really don’t know much about how people of the Migration Era and Viking Age practiced it.

The historical fiction set in the Viking Age I’d read didn’t include nearly enough about those old stories, beliefs, and practices for me. Other than Harry Harrison’s The Hammer and the Cross trilogy, which I highly recommend. I knew from the outset that I wanted to write a series that was definitely fantasy rather than historical fiction, and the legendary sagas are such great sources of fantasy literature.

The myths and sagas aren’t just content to be mined, though. I’ve always been interested in understanding how other people think, especially when they think in a very different way from me. I’ve heard way too many people explain myths away with something like, “In the past, these primitives didn’t have science, so they made stuff up to explain things.” Which is about the most chauvinistic attitude I can think of, and completely misses bigger issues at play. People from the past had these stories to explain nature maybe, but also to describe social dynamics, to illustrate philosophical principles, to inspire one another in difficult times, and to pass on wisdom. Fantasy literature does that better than any other genre. Especially when compared against supposed “literary” fiction.

Also, I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss all those stories as purely made up. I’m not worried about landing on an island full of heather only to find that it’s the back of a big sea monster about to eat me. But I’m very familiar with demons trying to harass me to death while I’m trying to take a shit, because today we call those demons “smartphones.”

RG: Isn’t that the truth. I’m sure the poets of old Scandinavia could have come up with some great kennings for smartphones.

GA: Coal-biter’s friend. Relaxation’s cure. Giver of the gossip din. Ófnir’s daily ration, for an esoteric reference. The Brunnmigi of the mind, for an esoteric reference involving pee.

RG: Personally, I think all our lives could stand to be enriched with more esoteric references to urine. You’ve clearly done your research on this culture, and it comes through in a big way in the books, too. I’d say the background information shines its brightest light on the characters, places, and events of the legendary sagas and myths as well as certain known cultural aspects involving sorcery, runes, and poetic meter. Those disparate facets blend together very effectively the series. What was the research process like to bring all these elements together and how did you determine when you had the right balance of historical, legendary/mythological, and cultural information to create the desired effect?

GA: I didn’t really have a research process at first, because I started the “research” 30 years ago with no goal other than satisfying my curiosity. And because I was me, I was like, “Don’t give me any of this diluted stuff. Where’s the source material?” So imagine my confusion when I start reading the source material in The Prose Edda like, “The Norse gods weren’t gods, they were just uppity wizards from far east.”

It turned out that the source material wasn’t written by the actual sources. You can date a lot of those old poems back a long way with linguistic analysis, but the supposedly canonical versions were all written down hundreds of years after the Viking Age. I thought reading source material would explain everything. All it did was create newer, more specific questions. And again, because I was me, I wanted ALL THE ANSWERS. So I read more. Some history, some archeology, some analysis of the myths and comparable stories, and eventually I had to start studying a bit of Old Norse to understand certain things.

Researching a topic like this means research is never really done. It wasn’t a report I just wanted to get done so I could write the books, it was always something that fascinated me from long before I conceived of the books. The most important aspect of that process, I guess, is accepting a high degree of ambiguity, and deciding what to do with that ambiguity.

RG: What exactly do you mean by that?

GA: The idea of the berserk, or in Old Norse, berserkr (plural = berserkir), is a good example.

There’s no clear answer on whether the term berserkr refers to a person wearing a bear’s skin as a shirt, or no shirt. Or how they even became berserkir in the first place. Lots of them appear in sagas, but not with a clear or consistent presentation. Sometimes they’re immune to fire and iron, like sorcerers often are, but sometimes not.

What I had thought of as berserks before I got deeper into the research was based on pop culture references, and it was all wrong. When I had a better idea about them, I decided to focus on some of the more consistent depictions in sagas, including that these guys were not well liked at all. They raided weaker people most of the time. They often appeared in packs of twelve. And these packs of twelve almost always got themselves beat to death by a single hero.

So ultimately, I included the popular notion of berserkir, who get killed pretty easily when you put them into the reality of the Viking Age. But I also included what I might consider real berserkir, who were hard to kill, but totally outclassed by the real heroes of the time. And I added my own idea of a berserkr, I just made him old and frail-looking despite him being the most dangerous out of all those.

That’s me leaning into the ambiguity of our limited knowledge. I handle the ambiguity differently at different times. Two different versions of a story survive? Sometimes Ansgar will just opine about liking one version better than another, or about how many different versions there are of a poem like Havamal. In Fallen to Fury, he talks about the ship Naglfar ferrying the dead to the world-ending battle between gods and giants, but the character he’s talking to says, “Hmm, I heard that ship ferried giants to the battle, not the dead.” And yes, exactly, because we have written sources saying both those things.

RG: You definitely undertook, and from the sounds of it are still undertaking, a deep-dive into the material. Are there any sources you found to be especially helpful?

GA: I did get more organized in 2017. I’d heard about this guy, Jackson Crawford, and drove to Boulder to hear him lecture. He was a good dude, was extremely patient with all my (still amateur) questions, and he gave me a reading list. Reading those books took me to the next level I needed to get to.

During that time, I found Neil Price’s lectures online and followed those with his book, The Viking Way, which makes a really extensive examination of Viking Age magic and beliefs. I also appreciated that he was trying to discover good explanations for how these people thought rather than dropping his assumptions on them and then looking for evidence to justify his conclusions.

It’s so tragic that the vast majority of information being put out there about “That Northern Thing” is toxic bullshit, because there are more resources, more accessible than ever, for people to educate themselves with. Crawford is a great first stop for people, kind of a bulwark against a lot of the bad information. My friend, Joseph Hopkins, also runs the site Mimisbrunnr.info and Hyldyr Publishing, which feature deeper dives with well-sourced information on topics a lot of people want to know more about. You can stop by the r/Norse subreddit and read their starter resources or ask a question and get it answered by real experts who study this stuff and value passing on that knowledge. Hell, you can even read Edward Pettit’s translation of The Poetic Edda for free online.

There’s no one-stop shop to learn everything. And even reading a lot of sagas, articles, books, etc., it resulted in even more unanswerable questions. But that was okay, because asking good questions helped me think about potential answers, which led to making my characters more human. And, I think, more authentic to the time period.

RG: That makes total sense. In the end, you are telling a story about humans—and also gods and goblins and trolls among other beings—to other humans. Which actually brings me to another question I’ve been wondering: why a skald as the main character?

GA: It was weird because I didn’t intend it at all when I started writing the story. In 2007, I was writing about a wandering wizard for National Novel Writing Month. By the end of the month, what had come out was this guy who was not super powerful, more like a bard. He told his story by telling a series of other stories. And most of those stories were the ones I felt closest to, the Norse myths.

Once I got myself a little more organized, I realized a skald was the perfect character. He could tell the myths as side stories. He could also encounter people who had heard different versions of the myths, illustrating how those stories varied over time and place just as they really did. And best of all, he could comment on those stories, tell the reader why they were important or funny or sucked.

I also realized this was a far more interesting character than any of the books I’d read before. They were mostly “young would-be warrior needs to come of age and become true warrior.” That’s a fine story, but I read it like six times and got tired of it. Ansgar the Skald knows a lot of lore and can appreciate the good aspects of his culture. He also understands that culture well enough that he can poke fun at the absurdly hyper-masculine elements of it. His coming of age is more complex, less predictable, and way more interesting than I imagined the story at the outset. Sometimes it takes me a bit to realize why my brain created a thing. That’s the power, and the frustration, of unconscious processing.

RG: There’s also some anachronism in Spear of the Gods. I’m thinking of references to less legendary aspects such as the existence of the Rus and the monastery on Gotland, for example. I think these merge seamlessly into the narrative and world of the series, but anachronism itself is always a little bit of a hot potato because, on the one hand, there are people who get enraged if Harald’s Gormsson’s blue tooth isn’t described using the most historically accurate hue terminology possible, and then there are people who watched History’s Vikings and now think that Lagertha was a real person who ruled over a vast northern realm. How did you go about deciding which anachronisms to include and why?

GA: I’m willing to push on boundaries when it makes sense from at least one perspective, or when it’s plausible that, if we had more evidence, a thing might not be anachronistic at all. The monastery on Gotland, for example: even if there’s no evidence of a monastery at that place during that time, that doesn’t mean one didn’t exist.

I’ll also make exceptions when there’s a precedent set by saga literature. The Rus, for example: Gardariki is mentioned in lots of the sagas. Hervor and Heidrek’s Saga is what really informed my decision; a Gardariki reference goes way far back in history in that saga. A king of Gardariki is supposedly the one who stole the sword, Tyrfing, and then the sword has many generations of history after that until the legendary Battle of Goths and Huns. Anyone trying to date that “King of Gardariki” based on that saga is either going to give up or conclude that this guy stole the sword in the third century. Well, that is somewhat anachronistic, since we probably don’t have a Gardariki until hundreds of years after that. I address that anachronism directly in Fallen to Fury. Can’t say much more without spoilers.

Modern terminology and ways of thinking were anachronisms I was never going to accept. The idea was to represent the time period in an authentic way. Or maybe it’s better to describe that as an ethical way. You can’t write a new legendary saga and have characters talking about “freedom of speech” or “disinformation campaigns.” You can have them talk about truth and wisdom and how critical it is to pass those things on, though, because that was the whole point of their poetry. That’s what myths and sagas do so well, and why stories people told 1200 years ago in Scandinavia were relevant to a 16 year old kid from the suburbs around Washington, DC.

I was using a first-person perspective to tell the reader, “Listen, this is how it really went down,” where “this” is everything from the source of Tyr’s last stand at Ragnarok to the source of Beowulf’s name and legend. Ansgar’s explanation is that all those “canonical versions” of myths and sagas that were written down are just retellings of retellings of multiple stories, all half-remembered and stitched together over hundreds of years.

So of course there is anachronism in the books, because their main sources include anachronism. Does Ansgar’s version have evidence to back it up directly? No. Is his version a plausible beginning for some of those stories? Very much so.

RG: That’s a good explanation, and I suppose also reinforces and is reinforced by what you were saying earlier about ambiguity. There’s some wiggle room since so much is unknown and the motives behind the stories that have survived were hardly impartial.

A slight change in direction here now: another thing that leapt out at me immediately with the series is its general tone. It’s full of action and adventure, and while there’s definitely a presence of darkness and evil, there’s also a lot of humor. We don’t see that very often with fantasy novels released in recent years. It seems like most titles are striving to set a new benchmark in absolute grimness, unless they go into full blown cozy or romantasy territory. Was it a conscientious, predetermined effort to add this strand of humor, or was it something that came about as you were writing the books and then decided to stick with it?

GA: I can’t say I have the full pulse of the genre, but my impression is that fantasy trying to be “blacker than the blackest black times infinity” is a trend trailing its way out, if it hasn’t passed already.

And good riddance.

I do need some grit in my fantasy worlds to keep them from feeling like renn faires without the turkey legs, but some of those worlds are just misery porn. I finished a super popular trilogy that ends up basically describing how every character in the story was—surprise—some variant of evil. A friend of mine described it well: “All that buildup and the payoff was the fantasy equivalent of punching me in the nuts and running away laughing.”

I can’t imagine writing something that basically says the world sucks and everyone is evil unless I was writing satire. It certainly wasn’t the way those legendary sagas were written.

As far as this perceived separation between seriousness and humor, it doesn’t make any sense. Norse myths include some seriously dirty humor: Lokasenna has Loki accusing Freya of farting after incestuous sex and Njord of letting people piss into his mouth. The legendary sagas are filled with dark, dry humor.

Dr. Tom Shippey does this amazing job of describing the qualities of Norse humor in his book, Laughing Shall I Die. And when I read those qualities laid out like that, I realized this was my sense of humor, and always had been. Using esoteric references to send vulgar insults to new, creative heights? Yes, please.

I can’t imagine a fantasy world devoid of humor. It’s not grim and realistic, it’s absurd. Like some asshole posturing about being tough but overcompensating so hard that all his efforts make him look more pathetic than scary. Or in shorter form: Like Andrew “I had to stop fighting because I telegraph my punches” Tate.

RG: That’s well said. But the books are funny. At the same time, I wouldn’t say they are straight-up humorous fantasy novels along the lines of say, Terry Pratchett, but rather fantasy with humor if that makes any sense. I personally think there’s a distinction between those two things. So I’m curious if there are there any particular books or authors that served as clear or direct inspirations in creating the balance of epic fantasy imbued with humor that you’ve blended into Spear of the Gods?

GA: Pratchett’s work is humorous, but absolutely serious at the same time. That’s never lost on me when I read one of his novels. At the same time, I don’t go for the consistently humorous tone he does. That was his unique voice, and nobody is going to emulate it.

There are a few fantasy authors who have an eye toward humor in their prose and dialog and do it particularly well. I don’t think I was directly inspired by their work since I had already developed my voice, but they did influence my continued development as a writer.

Michael J. Sullivan is definitely one. I’ve learned a lot from him since we became friends in 2008 when he was an early indie author. He wrote a style of fantasy without old-timey, overly formal dialog, having his characters speak like modern people. His prose moved fast. His characters made jokes and rolled their eyes at each other. And in doing all that, he was setting precedents, pushing boundaries with his success. I think my style is not much like Mike’s, but I’ve improved my prose a lot by considering why he did what he did, and adapting accordingly.

Christopher Buehlman is an amazing writer whatever genre he writes in, though I do prefer his fantasy. The Blacktongue Thief and The Daughter’s War, both have humor appropriate to the voice of their protagonists, but you wouldn’t shelve these in a “fantasy humor” subgenre. J. Zachary Pike describes his Dark Profit Saga as satirical fantasy, and I think he’s okay with “humor” as a label rather than just a descriptor. It’s not just humor though—it’s the emotional depth of the characters, and how the prose uses humor without needing to rely on it all the time. Nicholas Eames’ The Band series, starting with Kings of the Wyld, strikes me in a similar way even though he and Pike use very different approaches. Most recently, I found Tim Carter’s excellent novella, Majordomo, and am reading his novel, Jester. Humorous situations and turns of phrase, sure, but also emotionally and socially poignant. Sci-fi rather than fantasy, but Martha Wells deserves a mention for Murderbot Diaries. And maybe her other books, too, but I haven’t gotten to those yet.

Michael Chabon’s novel, Gentlemen of the Road, isn’t fantasy, but is a historical novel in a medieval setting. His prose style is more formal and, I suppose, what you’d call “literary” compared to the genre authors I mentioned. His sentences are often long and complicated. And yet, that book is such an easy and enjoyable read! Chabon’s low-level of dry humor keeps you glued to the story without requiring a prose style calibrated for short attention spans.

RG: You mentioned the combination of seriousness and humor, and while that can mean different things and play out in different ways with different writers, I’m also well aware that there is some indirect—shall we say commentary of a more serious nature—on our own world in Spear of the Gods. The Author’s Note to Fallen to Fury relates the lessons of Havamal to current events in a very effective way. And, without giving it away, a certain character named Varg meets a certain, memorable, mythology-inspired fate in Rune to Ruin, which works on multiple levels. Varg means wolf, at least in modern Swedish, so it’s a fitting name. And it is also the name of a comical but evil character in the Norsemen television series. But more significantly, it is also the name of a noxious Norwegian murderer-musician. Are there any other connections to insidious, real-world individuals or events in the books—hidden or otherwise—that you’d like to comment on or hint at for readers to try and spot?

GA: You’ve hit it on the head, and also hit on how Norse stories and poetry love multiple meanings, as I do as well. “Varg” is just one Old Norse word for wolf, but it conveys a meaning beyond animal identification because it has a negative connotation that “ulf” doesn’t. The writers of Norsemen were brilliant, and knew exactly what they were doing, turning Varg into a killer, but one who was weak, awkward, and cowardly. Just like a certain shit-heel black metaler. You don’t have to know that guy’s (fake) name, but if you do, you’ll get that there are multiple motivations for the character’s name in the book.

There are very few real-world equivalents in the books. Ragnvald’s Wager is one—that being a Norsified version of Pascal’s Wager. Mostly, I relied on partial inspirations for characters and the applicability of certain ideas.

Magnus was partially inspired by Herger from The 13th Warrior, and his duel with those berserkir is partially inspired by Herger’s duel. Svein is . . . well, I think most people know plenty of people like Svein. And Ulf. The characters are based on no one in particular, and yet lots of people I’ve known over the years.

From the real world, the effects of the Brisingamen and their implications for Midgard might sound modern, but they’re also timeless. What world is more horrible to live in than one where you don’t know what’s true and not true? Whether you believe in the gods or not, Ragnarok is the end of things, the end of passing on any wisdom. It’s the polar opposite of when Havamal talks about becoming wiser by talking to other people, a breakdown of connectedness between people in the present and the past.

There’s a contrast between characters in Fallen to Fury that I suppose could be taken as if it’s from the real world. It’s real Christianity vs. the angry, militant, cross-wearing douche-baggery that I’ve run into so often. I didn’t conceive of the characters thinking about what they represented, though—I just wrote them as people and let them act accordingly.

RG: I think that just makes it more relatable for the reader; characters maintaining a certain consistency in behavior combined with reflections on our own time. I’ll be bearing this in mind when I read Fallen to Fury! Also, you’ve mentioned Old Norse a couple of times now. Additionally, runes also feature heavily in Spear of the Gods. Can you tell us about your interest or involvement in those worlds? Do you work with runes yourself in any capacity?

GA: Runes are such a funny thing. Mention vikings and runes, and most people assume those folks used the Elder Futhark. I mean, it’s elder, right? They used the Younger Futhark, though.

Another assumption being that Norse myths were written in runes because that’s what you wrote Old Norse in, right? But no, they’re written in Roman letters, and well after the Viking Age.

I made the same assumptions when I started out. And that was the first step—learning about some of the historical facts of runes and their uses. There are lots of runic carvings that survive in rocks, but that medium is not exactly the most efficient one if you want to preserve the text of a myth or saga.

Runes look cool, but I don’t work with them in a spiritual way. I know a little about Old Norse, but not enough to read it yet. Just learning a little bit about the history of the language and the different runic alphabets opened up a lot of new questions, especially about how the meanings of words change over time.

RG: So far, we’ve stuck with pretty serious subject matter. Inspirations, research, writing process, etc. But I suppose we shouldn’t forget that Spear of the Gods is fantasy, and fantasy excites the imagination. Your books have gods, magic, and fantastical…let’s say beings, so as not to go down any paths that might inadvertently create spoilers. Many fantastical beings in fact: sea serpents, trolls, dragons, talking ravens, shape-changers, goblins. Which ones did you have the most fun creating/writing?

GA: I had a really great time thinking about Heather Back and writing the encounter with him. He’s got very little description in Arrow-Odd’s Saga other than his back looks like an island full of heather, and he uses that to lure sailors onto it and drown them or swallow them. I think it only says he drowns them, actually, but I don’t buy it. A sea monster needs to eat.

I was also combining a scene from the Kalevala, though, and that part of the story had strong “take this job and shove it” vibes. I was writing that draft not long after telling the FBI to take that job and shove it, so I had a lot of empathy for that sea monster at the time. It turned out that scene would be important later in Spear of the Gods, too.¹

The ogres and goblins were fun, but not nearly as fun as writing the animated severed head or the giant eagle. Actually, it wasn’t even the eagle itself as much as the antagonization of the eagle by the two most resourceful characters in the series. The ‘Steins are my ultimate proof against disbelievers that violence can be funny.

As much as my series is about people, I really liked getting into the heads of some of the gods. They’re kind of human—they certainly have human attributes and foibles. But they’ve got completely different perspectives given their long lives and different motivations. Being able to get in there and dive deep into Odin’s or Heimdall’s psyches was something I really enjoyed that has a lot of notes in my notebooks despite relatively little prose in the books.

RG: The gods certainly have their own personality attributes. It’s important to maintain a sense of consistency and continuity with what we know about them from the old sources, limited as they may be, because otherwise things will start to feel false. I think you pulled it off nicely with this series, which has now reached its conclusion with the release of Fallen to Fury. So what’s next? Do you foresee any further adventures of Ansgar the Skald and the crew of the Sea Squirrel? Long format or short format if so? You’ve written some short stories set in Spear of the Gods‘ world, as well as some that are completely unrelated. And I know you’ve mentioned in the past that you have other ideas for new series as well.

GA: There won’t be any more stories of that particular ship’s crew after Fallen to Fury. I have a few stories that are in the Spear of the Gods world, but not directly related to Ansgar’s saga. Backstories of side characters, peripheral stories, stories alluded to, and one that happens much, much later in time. Maybe there will be an anthology of shorts in the future.

For now, I’m thinking about a couple of other projects. The one I’m currently writing is still all about “That Northern Thing,” but it’s in Northern England rather than Scandinavia, and the setting is Hadrian’s Wall in the very late 4th century, featuring mostly Germanic auxiliaries, Picts, and a lot of big dogs.

This series is tougher in the sense that it’s difficult to imagine what Germanic myths looked like that far back, and how much they should or shouldn’t be like the more familiar Norse myths. It’s also a bit outside my regular wheelhouse, calling on very old school Celtic beliefs, as well as the melding of Roman and British cultures. At the same time, it’s pretty freeing as far as creativity.

As a great power is crumbling, there are a lot of opportunities for bad things to happen, but also for regular people to be heroic in refusing to let that stuff happen without a fight. If you want to see how an empire is crumbling, the edges of that empire are where it will be most visible because they’re hardest to control. Hadrian’s Wall was one edge of the Western Roman Empire as it was definitely on its way down.

Not that anyone would say, “The empire is crumbling” out loud. Oh, no, they can’t say that! And it couldn’t be the rampant corruption, financial policies favoring the most privileged, or civil wars every decade dragging the empire down. It was those dirty barbarians!

RG: Someone’s always got to take the blame, right? And that scenario is a splendid example of: “the more things change, the more they stay the same”! It sounds like a very cool premise for this new series, though. But we’re about to wrap things up, so one last question just for fun: if you could meet and enjoy a pint of ale with any of the characters from any of the legendary sagas, who would you choose and why?

GA: Bodvar Bjarki, because I could ask him how he does the bear thing. And whether he agrees that going into a seidr trance is a womanly thing, or if that notion is some bullshit invented by people later.

RG: That would be a wonderful secret to learn. I bet he’d have a ton of great, never-before-heard stories about Hrolf, too. Anyway, Greg, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me!

GA: It was my pleasure, Rowdy, thanks for having me!

Dear Web Prowler, since you’re here, please check out Gregory Amato’s work and give him a follow on social media via the links below:

Gregory Amato’s Website (receive a free Spear of the Gods novella if you join his newsletter)

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Unless otherwise noted, the images associated with this interview are all courtesy and copyright of Gregory Amato

1. These future implications are found in Chapter 2 of Fallen to Fury. ↩︎