I grew up on a farm in Connecticut, when Connecticut had farms, where sleeping in was getting up after the sun, and you could put your hands in the Earth, smell the soil, and grow something other than grass in it.
I didn't know that a god named 'War,' in a land called Fovea in another reality, needed a champion, and that he'd contracted with the dying god Anubis to provide him with one, in return for enough power to put Ra on his throne again.
I didn't know that Anubis chose me, and for a total of eighteen years threw everything he could think of at me, to break me, to torment me, to forge me into this thing to be traded.
He cost me the love of my life and a college education. He cost me my career in the US Navy. He cost me my parents and friends, each one given up in offering, passed like a mile post, left behind to harden me into this instrument that War wanted. My failures became His successes, my anger that instrument's edge.
At the end of it all, after I passed all of the tests, leading a life left in a shambles, never knowing that I had been tested at all, Anubis appeared and tricked me into pledging my soul to him. That gave him the right to make the trade and give me to War who, by comparison, made Anubis seem like a pretty nice guy.
I'm Randy Morden - welcome to my world. A world where magic is real, technology the stuff of fantasy, and warriors with swords ride horses into battle, trying to stay one step ahead of their gods' will. I didn't ask for this life, but I promise you: before anyone ever knocks me down again, I'm going to have their blood on my knuckles, because a man can only be pushed so far!