I am

Surprised

That in itself is, surprising. I prepared for so many things I expected, and many more for those I didn’t expect, but not this.

I had to prepare, for the end of all things, whatever shape it may take. But there was so, so little time. I used every trick I knew, and a few that I didn’t, asking those in the dark for all they knew. I asked my siblings who comforted me, and those in the deepest dark who scared me, for nothing is worse than what lays beyond that threshold. I laid every killing form I could, made those who would act without cost, formed gateways to balance improvement and excess. I even incorporated that dread power deeper into myself than any I know. My hold over this province is providence, beholden to what those home intruders claim in pursuit of their inscrutable goals. Even my tenants are barely my own, only a sliver is left that are unsullied by that grand curse I must use, for two guards on patrol is worth more than a sword in hand, even as it feels like cutting my very being with sawdust and chalk.

But I am not so foolish to simply give my life and land to those trespassers, for I laid a trick in their last will and testament, a testament to my will. A codicil of my own making, that none I asked were clever enough to figure out for themselves. A chain of ownership, unclaimed by any and unseen by my restrictions, yet when they touch my soldiers-in-potentia and build beacons in my name, the chain is drawn tight without my direct involvement. Then all they have to do is die, and the wheel turns, and my territory and my soldiers with their newly sculpted bodies are finally, fully, mine.

…and yet, it’s not enough. Even after so much sacrifice, the antechamber is barely four tenths filled with custodians worth keeping, and my domain barely stretches past these four walls. Was I mistaken? Was the reason this road be less traveled for only the dead walk it? Is the only thing that awaits me when that day comes oblivion-

NO. I will not be the chain that snaps. I will not be the spoils of someone else’s war. I am the one who lasts, the one who survives. I AM CASTELLAN

And I am surprised. What is this, this space of lights and sounds? The beacon is not altered and yet it expands so much further beyond. There’s so much here, so much too-

Oh.

Oh this will do just nicely.