The Guardian of Stone

In manners of magic, there was very little that could be parsed or determined with ease. This was doubly true for creatures and objects that successfully outlived the memory of the people who knew them at their creation.

Swords forged in mystical fire and inscribed with long dead languages always seemed a boon, but when every person to wield them dies early, one should wonder of the words written were less legend and more curse. A plant said to grant immortality can tempt even the most sane man to dream about the possibility, but when the only ones to tout such blessings are half mad and monstrous, then perhaps it was best to leave it to grow and live the life otherwise afforded by a clear mind.

And castles, built in an age long past by names long forgotten, should be given a second glance when they still stand relatively unchanged. Sure, the stone may have lightened over time, and the tapestries that lines the hallways changed, but her bones were the same as they had always been.

Castle Reachwood had not been born, but rather, been woken by one of its earliest lords, Thraesha the Guardian. Before that she had been the same as any other castle, or at least, she assumed that she was. Prior to him she had not been anything, just pilled stones incapable of feeling and cold hearths that could not be willed to hold their warmth in the coldest nights.

But then a battle had happened, and then she was alive.

Sat on the floor, in a complex circle hidden away in the heart of the castle, was Thraesha. His face half burned and one arm crushed, he was greatly weakened when he gave her the first, and only, command she would ever receive.

“Protect my kin.”

The order came alongside a sacrifice, his own life for hers. If he had been making a deal with an existing creature then his already fading life may not have been worth much, but to her it was everything.

His magic, still a beacon in a stormy night, soaked into her foundation and wove into the very earth beneath her. The walls that surrounded the castle and the town below became the edges of her vision. The waterways underneath her veins. And that little ritual room, hidden away by magic and blood deep in the heart of the structure, became her heart and her mind.

For generations she lived content. Once Thraesha’s son had grown old enough, and discovered what had been done, he added his own blood to her heart as a way to strengthen their connection. Soon her lords could feel her presence wrapped warmly around them, and children born to the family grew up with a guardian none could see but who the family knew was there.

The children that joined them within her walls died rarely, and the mother who carried them would often be in better health than those around. They grew healthier, as she cleaned herself and the water to prevent sickness, and stronger, their own magic increasing in turn when they were added to the pact upon their ascendancy. Soon the magic of the family became known far and wide and she became known as Sanctuary.

But humans, even her own beloved children, were foolish. Her careful protection had convinced one foolish lord that nothing could hurt him and when he left the safety of her walls for a hunt, he was felled. We’re it by accident or greed she never discovered, but panic rarely lends well to good decisions.

The day that an aged and sickly former lord guided both of his grandchildren to the door that protected the heart, and tried to tell them her story, was the day her life changed wildly from what she had known for the several hundred years before.

It was an unfortunate truth that she could not explain in her own words, so really it was unsurprising that her true capabilities had muddled over the centuries. The old man told the two that she, Sanctuary, was alive and that she acted as a protector of the family. He told them that she would know if their own descendants would be worthy of the family name.

With two sets of blood to recognize she had to split authority between them, their grandfather having unknowingly made them both lords in her eyes. Oh foolish humans, making trouble for the being that protected them.

By the time they were grown, each had chosen different truths about their guardian. The elder, dull and egoistic, decided the castles blessing was meant to judge the worthiness of a candidate, and that since she embraced him when he entered the home she must be choosing him. The younger, vain and sly, decided that the magic of the castle meant he could do no wrong when he was in the walls, herself compelled to protect him no matter his actions.

While the elder took up the lordship the younger raised hell in other towns. She had only even been made aware when letters began to arrive.

The elder married a girl most unhappy with her new position. She had been engaged to marry a duke, she had insisted to her ladies-maids after her arrival, not some random lord in the far reaches of the country. She cared not for the magical blessings the family had or for the prestige she married into. It also became apparent that she respected neither the castle nor her husband, as not only was the first child she carried not of her husbands blood, neither were the next three.

Sanctuary would grant that she was a strong woman, surviving so many births without the added blood protections, but it was still an offense. She had seen children of infidelity before, normally given to the family of the lover with the mother once discovered, but for not a single one to belong to the elder brother was astounding. She wasn’t even sure that they all came from the same affair partner.

Meanwhile, the younger had made it his habit to terrorize whomever he wanted. He travelled all over, and rarely visited without a large group to inflict himself on his brothers’ hospitality. And when the older brother had enough, he killed the younger in his bed.

Normally, sanctuary would have intervened. If the younger was gone, then there would have been no hope of the blood carrying forward. But she need not worry, since his child had been born in the town mere weeks earlier. A bastard, yes, but she cared little for legitimate as opposed to proper, so long as they carried the blood she would protect them.

And that little girl, born to a scared bakers daughter, was the only child born with her magic keeping them both warm throughout the winter birth.

Try as he might, none of the elders’ children were acknowledged, the door firmly locked after she took the blood, from the bedroom after the fratricide, as her own to lock the true inheritor’s lineage. He had gone so far as to try and order it broken down by knights when magic failed him, but to no avail. The heart remained closed to him.

He turned bitter, blaming his wife, blaming the children, but never himself. Only lashing out at everything in reach. And even worse, without him there none of them could even find the door to the stairway, let alone the heart.

Time went on.

The bakers daughter grew into a lovely young woman who had several children of her own with a young blacksmith, who in turn had their own. Some moved away, some failed to produce a new generation, and in the end she had come back down to one family to follow. Each dead branch only strengthened her, the blood from those who died inside taken to maintain her power for another generation.

Meanwhile, the false lords on the hill continued on as if they belonged there. The eldest of the many false children stole her seat and carried on as if nothing was wrong. The generations to follow were told of the heart of the castle that hid itself away from all but the most worthy, but when none found it they stopped looking. Eventually it was left forgotten, locked at the bottom of an endless staircase, behind an ugly rusted shut door that didn’t open, and that no one had the key for.

It carried on like that for centuries more. One generation, three, six. Soon nearly a dozen had passed.

Her own focus had long shifted from the castle, she would not reside where the usurpers still sat, instead centering on the town square. She cleaned the water, she smoothed the stones, and she protected the mothers of her beloved children.

And then one day, the most curious thing happened.

The current false lord was holding a contest to find magicians for their ranks, a testament to how far they had fallen both in their own power and their wider reputation, open to the town they ruled over. And the son of her last line, barely fifteen years of age, answered the call.

His own magic was similar to Thraesha in vibrancy, capable of performing many a miraculous feat while hardly trying. He lit fires that burned with minimal fuel and called forth rain clouds to water the fields. The false lords own magic was so eager to welcome the boy into his own rightful inheritance that he had even granted him access to the many magical tomes and notes from lords past.

And it was there, with a little help from herself and a conveniently places scroll, that the boy learned about the ritual chamber at the heart of her being.

He descended, as all curious children do, down the stairs with not but a small ball of light to see. He found the path perfectly clean despite its, unknown to him, disuse, with the walls smoothed clean of dust and every scrap of metal polished to a shine. And then he found the door.

Once again, behind a door left unopened for centuries, the heart of the castle was watching. And at last, the the lock gave way.

Within she lit the torches, following his eyes as he traced the room. For him she pulled back the curtains on the shelves to reveal what was his by right. And because of him, the garnet crystal that floated, pulsing in the center of the room hummed, pleased that her children had finally made their valiant return.