Day one

You know, there’s not a lot of people who can tell me what to do. I’m exquisitely proud of this. Of the fact that anyone who’s ever so much as tried met a crisp end. So when someone tells me to start a hells-damned journal it has to be someone with significant sway. Of course, if you’re reading this, then either you’re her, I’m dead, or you’re about to be.

Yesterday, the Serpent of the North ordered her generals and advisors to the war room and she completely changed tack from her initial plans. It was a delight to see old Otto, pompous toad, be taken down a peg with such alacrity and casual venom, but I do have to wonder what it is that Queen Eliza is planning. She seemed to be an almost different person, though she had just fought -- and defeated -- the fabled Hero of Eferton, and even killed one of his companions.

Then today I found out that she’d not only resurrected but turned the companion, a mage named Sabine, over to her side, further showed me just how right I was to join her side. Ruling didn’t work for me, and I’ll be damned before I bend the knee again, but working with someone this powerful to enact my true revenge on all of them? That I can do.

Which is why I was so baffled when she called me to her today, on top of the battlements, to talk. I assumed this was to do with the “lessons in magic” she’d mentioned, but once there things took a turn I am still deeply uncomfortable with. She asked me to demonstrate my power, aiming up. A wise choice on her behalf, as even at this distance I might have set her fields ablaze, but a weird request. She’d seen my power before, when she first defeated me. But even she’d seen the value in one as powerful as I, and perhaps she wanted to gauge my usefulness again. I conjured up my full might and unleashed an inferno into the heavens that would have been seen for miles around.

You know what she said? She said “Hmm”! I performed a feat of power that few in this world could match, and her response was no different than as I’d pulled a daffodil out of my sleeve. She asked me, next, if I could make the fire burn as hot, but much smaller.

I told her no, of course. “The fire can not be controlled. It is the element of wild abandon.” She gave me an odd look that made me uncomfortable. She looked like she was actually listening to what I was saying.

“Fire can’t control itself,” she said. I agreed, mentioning that that was, more or less, what I’d just told her. “Sort of.” She looked out over her kingdom, strangely pensive. “You can, though.” I didn’t understand, and said as much. “Fire can’t control itself. You can. Are you just a… a bottle for the fire to be held in? Do I ask you to help me or do I just pop the cork off and aim you somewhere?”

I didn’t know what she was getting at, but my frustration was visible simply due to my hair taking on its more fiery state. She had the audacity to look at me with pity.

“If you don’t control the fire, then you’re not the one in charge, are you?”

I was getting fed up with her questions, but she’d given me food for thought. I told her. She asked me to write down the most important events of the day. I asked her if it was for the purposes of evaluation. “Sure,” she said. I told her I wouldn’t have any compunctions about speaking my mind, and that threat of punishment wouldn’t work on me. “Great,” she smiled, and walked off. She is as powerful as she is infuriating.

Day four

I’ve been practicing the smaller, hotter flame, like she asked me to, and the fact that it is, indeed, difficult is proving a more pleasant challenge than I’d anticipated. I’d assumed that the upper limit to my power was simply a matter of output, that there was only so much to burn, but a focus on finesse does have its uses. It’s allowed me to focus a lot better, as well, and it’s staved off a lot of the boredom I’ve had from waiting here.

I met the queen again, and she seemed to be in fairly good spirits. She wanted to have another talk. I asked her if she was here to call me a bottle again and she laughed. It was odd, almost playfully. No, she told me, she wasn’t here to insult me. She did have more questions though, and I already dreaded the encounter. As oddly comforting her presence has been of late, her questions are deeply uncomfortable.

As we walked the battlements she asked me about myself. Who I was, where I came from. I’d given her the short version a long time ago, but I wasn’t surprised she wanted the full version, now. So I went into detail about the specifics. My childhood -- or lack thereof -- and the quick emergence of my powers. I’d grown into quite the little warlord myself before the Hero disgraced me and drove me away. I told her I had no intention to rule again, only to use my power where I saw fit. “Why?” she asked me.

“Because I can,” I said. It’s the truth, after all. “I am powerful and deserve to use that power to get what I want or need. Such is the nature of power.”

She seemed to chew on that for a moment, and I found it hard to believe that she wouldn’t agree, a woman who could beat any one person on this entire continent in a fight. But she seemed to anyway, in the most roundabout way. “Do you believe you’re better and more deserving than the people you are more powerful than?” I nodded. “So you think I am better and more deserving than you are?” An uncompromising question, but I had to concede that, yes, I did.

She looked out over her fields and pointed. “There’s a farmer, out there, somewhere, tilling the field. Are you better than he is?” I felt my fury bubble up again, it was hard not to when she’d told me she wouldn’t insult me, but perhaps she was getting at something more subtle so I tried to focus, tried to control the fire.

“Of course I am,” I said. “I am much more powerful than he is, and I can achieve more in life than he ever will.”

“Could you grow, oh, I don’t know, a single potato?” she asked. What sort of question is that? I shook my head. Of course I couldn’t. I’d never worked a field in my life. “So,” she said with an infuriating little smile, “he’s more powerful than you are when it comes to growing potatoes?” I nearly erupted then and there. Technically what she said was true, but the ability to grow a single potato does not constitute power. I told her this. “But like, you agree that he’s better than you at growing potatoes?” I sighed and said yes.

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“He can do something you can’t,” she said. “Does that make him better than you?” I told her no. “Then why does your ability to do things he cannot make you better than him?” I’d worked hard to be as powerful as I am, I told her. “But he works hard every day, in the field. Not to throw fire, obviously, but still very hard, to feed his family.”

She paused and leaned on the parapet. “The guy working down there is no better or worse than anyone else around here. Power is just a… thing, you have. It’s a skill, like any other. Something you’re good at, or aren’t.” I had no idea where she was going with this, and she looked at me and saw my confusion. “Play with the idea, okay? For me. You’re not a better person because you’re stronger, because that would mean that if, for any reason, you’re ever not as strong as you are now, you’re not good enough. That’s not… that’s not a healthy way to think.”

Her philosophy confounds me still. She questioned my sense of worth blatantly and repeatedly and then told me, as we walked back downstairs, that it was inherent. She implied over and over again that we both were just as worthy of self-respect as any other. That respect was inherent, not earned. It was hard to believe her, but I find it hard to disagree with her.

She also advised that I speak with Erza, the Orc liaison. I have no issues with their kind, and she implied that I might have something to learn from the artificer woman.

Day Seven

Queen Eliza is off to Whitehallow with her retinue, leaving me steward of her castle for now. I didn’t relish the opportunity as much as I thought I would. The call of power doesn’t have the ring to it the way it used to, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s that blasted queen’s words. I see now why she’s as mighty as she is, her words have a tendency to stay in my head and crawl around, changing the way I think. It’s a dangerous power to have, and she seems to wield it well and without compunction. Why she chose to use it on me, to make me doubt my right to discharge my strength, I don’t know. She’s completely opaque to me. And just as infuriating as Erza, though I’ve enjoyed both of their company. Erza recommended to me some books on power and control and I found that most of these seemed to contain breathing exercises and lessons on mastering oneself. I decided to read them anyway, as I’ll be spending a lot of time alone. She also gave me a few smaller books that she told me would be good to use as a kind of buffer in between exercises. She didn’t tell me what they were about. We had several interesting conversations about might, and she seems to hold similar views to the queen. I find it difficult to contextualize their vision with the positions of power they hold. Surely, they’re powerful because they deserve to be?

Regardless, I have a lot of reading to do, at the queen’s request, and I can only hope she smears Otto across the walls of Whitehallow when he says the wrong thing. Imagining his ridiculous little moustache tremble brings me great joy.

Day fifty

It’s been a dull couple of months, all things considered. Queen Eliza sent me a letter, telling me the talks with Queen Anastasia went very well, that there’s peace. I’m confused by her actions, but at least Otto is no longer in power, the insufferable oaf.

The Hero of Eferton is dead. That was… unexpected. I was so mad at him for so long, but now that he’s dead I feel hollow. Is it that I’ve been denied my vengeance? Or do I just not care?

I’ve spent a lot of time practicing my arts, on top of the castle, conjuring firestorms at my will, but their unbridled fury doesn’t bring me pleasure. They’re as uncontrollable as wildfires, and I can not help but wonder if that makes me merely a conduit for another power. That I am not powerful, but that I am merely a vessel. A bottle, as Queen Eliza posited. It was an infuriating thought, so I focused my attention on the books lent to me by Erza, and my attempts to create a small but hot flame, trying to shape it. It’s harder than I initially thought, like trying to bend a steel blade with only two fingers. In frustration, I found myself losing control and set my room ablaze.

I think the death of the great “Hero” is getting to me more than I thought it would.

I sent the queen a letter asking for guidance. I apologized for burning down her tower, but only tentatively. Destruction is in my nature.

Isn’t it?

Day fifty-nine

The letter from the queen was as frustrating as it was kind. She forgave me for my explosive frustration, and then she had the gall to tell me to forgive myself, as well. That I was trying, she said in the letter, was proof of my “growth as a person.” What this meant passed me by, and I wished she was there so I could ask for clarification. Then she sent me an exercise that might help me control an outburst like that, telling me to count “blue objects around me”. I felt like I was being treated like a child.

Day ninety?

I haven’t been keeping up with the diary because nothing has happened. It’s tremendously dull here, and I found I had nothing worth doing. Queen Eliza governs the kingdom just as well from Whitehallow as she does from here, and this castle governs itself, needing almost no input from me. I had only my exercises to go on, and Erza’s books, which I’ve read twice now. There was one that had caught my attention on the nature of language and patterns of observation. There were interesting passages that I found myself drawn to. I initially considered tearing them out, but found that it was, perhaps, more prudent to copy them down instead. While I don’t see what someone like Erza might need with a book like that, taking those words for myself seems unnecessary, and copying them isn’t that much additional effort. Destroying the book for just a few passages seemed needless.

Day something something

It’s been at least a few months now. I’m losing track of time, but I’m trying to spend it well. I’ve kept in correspondence with the queen, and she’s been unrelenting in her encouragement. Despite her earlier insistence that I shouldn’t rely on ‘external validation’, she seems unable to stop validating me regardless. I internalize what I can, and the experience seems to be bearing some fruit.

I was reading in Erza’s study, idly practicing a small flame that I was trying to curve into a circle, when I managed it suddenly. I was overjoyed, of course. Through constant practice, I am achieving new levels of my ability. It was strange to think of this as a personal victory over myself, rather than one over my environment. This small circle didn’t make me more powerful, I realized, except over myself. I am beginning to realize that this might be what Eliza had been referring to when she mentioned worth being inherent and internal.

I lost control after a few seconds and the little circle exploded in my face. I am immune to my own flames, of course, but it set the book I was reading, a silly romance novel Erza had recommended to me, on fire as well. I blew it out as quickly as I could, but the pages were damaged. I was furious, and I felt my rage boil up again. The air around me vibrated and I suddenly realized that a violent outburst here would likely burn down all of Erza’s library. I took a deep breath and counted the blue covers on the shelves. After the count of fifteen, I felt my senses come back to me.

I sent Queen Eliza a letter telling her I was proud of myself.

She sent me one back and told me she was proud of me too. It made me happier than it had any right to and I keep it with me. It feels good to read it when the isolation gets to me.

Day ???

I’ve been spending more time reading. I could get used to this, if I’m honest. The new laws the queen has enacted have brought life back to this country, and it’s a delight to walk outside and find a place to sit and read. I’m also doing a lot of thinking. Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I’ve been well and truly… branded… by some of my experiences. In my exercises and training to control myself, I’ve found my reaction to certain memories… lessening. From Eliza’s letters I feel she’s gone through a similar transformation in years past. Something troubles her but it doesn’t control her, and she steers it where it can benefit her and those around her, much like I do with my fire, now. This campaign hasn’t gone the way I expected it to, but I do not regret it. I’m quite content here now, if I’m honest. The peace that seemed laughable months ago feels more and more like a blessing.

Day who cares

The war is back on, it seems. The Queen and her retinue are coming back. I don’t know how to feel about this. I’m sure I’ll be asked to burn armies before me, drive them back, crush them with my ‘power’. I don’t know if I even want to. I’ve spent so long trying to find the peace not to lose myself in such a way, it feels like a shame to succumb to it, even if I’m ordered to. I have to trust the queen. She got me this far. If I have to use my abilities, I trust her to point me in the right direction.

And it’ll be good to see people again, at least.