Prologue: The Final Diary Entry As A Future Duchess

Has my life been preparing me for a day like this? My grace as a lady be tested to its utmost for a reveal like today’s?

The unfettered utterances of a cursed spirit summoned by I’ll prepared mage cannot describe the searing anger of the millions of suns boiling within me begging to set this territory aflame. All my life, all my torturous life, have I not been raised to be the matriarch of the Selphim family?

The wordless dinners, the adolescent nights spent rubbing my throbbing palms and calves for failing to stride in perfection, and the endless hours keeping a placid smile painted facing the shrill screaming of a mother unable to cope with her envies of my youth?

Is this the price the Goddess has asked for a drop of my tongue’s venom towards the ditzy, classless, graceless saintess that appeared?

What are a few curt words? What are a few snide remarks? What are a few choice comments towards a lowborn who is undeserving? The bumbling mannerless soft-spoken girl was no one to tell me how to treat my followers.

She is no one to demand apologies when reduced to tears for simply being told that her concern is unwelcome, unneeded, unasked, and most importantly useless.

Were all those glamorous balls and dusty books drilling this idea into me wrong? Of course not, I’m being condemned for doing everything I’ve been taught.

It is absurd! Deceitful! Hypocritical! Yet I can only blame myself for expecting anything more than nothing from fools.

Speaking of that saintess I am now reminded of the gall of the crown prince who dared to shout at me, the eldest of Selphim, because I attempted to turn away the meek girl from entering the Selphim estate for the victory celebration. The humiliation I had to endure only able to apologize for being unknowing of the fact the saintess was his invited.

I was too blinded by my disdain to realize it must have been his ploy when she arrived without escort knowing the address, the time, and the correct entrance. The Uyurist church has no legal bearing and no official position. I was not wrong to turn away a commoner and stranger, to me, from entering my home. Who was I know the prince had taken a liking to the girl worth nothing?

What has she done to deserve the world? Was it not the hero under his royal highness who defeated the rift demon Malzak? What could a meek woman like her have accomplished when she appeared after Malzak’s demise.

Awarded for helping the clean up of Malzak’s leaderless remaining forces? Such an ill joke, I myself could have done such a task in scorching speed. Her appearance was nothing but Uyurist’s propaganda, I am certain she didn’t appear at the start of the war because they didn’t want to endanger their Goddess’ chosen and their claw to regain the official political power they once had.

Was it not me who delegated the Selphim army and led the twin Selphim class airships to create the path for the hero and his party? Was it not me who managed the supply lines for the effortless clean up? Was it not me who procured the funds to stop my father’s short-sighted greedy dawdling that would have damaged us more than saved when the first signs of the rift appeared?

Yes! It was all I and I alone as a future duchess and rightful heir to my territory.

Or once rightful, my work no longer matters anymore.

After hearing the report my protest resulted in a heavy strike across my cheek, which I’m sure carried the indignant anger reminding him his daughter accomplished more than he could ever. It was not the strike, that useless weak man could hit me a thousand times and I would feel nothing, but his words, or his reading of someone else’s words, which caused me to stumble to my room.

That crass prince must have been laughing, grinning ear to ear, as his father signed the royal decree.

I had been sold.

Sold to the hero at his request as part of a larger bill. Fully ratified and approved unanimously before I could even react by all houses including those houses who hadn’t raised a finger to proactively save the kingdom from harm, the houses who raised only words but no material results, and a house that includes my father who has yet to realize, if he ever will, is a father.

Agreeing after adding a line containing a reward of supplemental war reparations for having the final arc of the rift demon’s war on our land.

What a stupid useless man. Matches his vain vapid wife. At some point every year of my existence they continue to leave me awed wondering how they produced an heir as capable as me.

…

It seems writing hasn’t helped to quell my heart. My pen digs deeply into this notebook as if I were holding a scalpel sliding across my father’s face and mother’s engorged stomach. I can feel the mana in my astral soul roiling white competing with the depths of the hottest nova. My head is spins in the purging flames of the heavens with the full six-hour chant of “Endless Conflagration” singing beautifully in my mind lullabying me to reduce everything in my sight into white ash to vent the rage filled inside me.

Unfortunate my peerless mind reminds me they had no say in this matter, “they” being people that I promised brightness in turn for their loyalty and subservience to the Selphim family, I cannot take away what I gave when those who received have done nothing wrong.

It seems my unborn brother in my hag mother’s womb will be inheriting my work without a drop of sweat. What a bastard that child will be, I am certain he will be equally as stupid as that man with vanity rivaling that woman.

Today I loath the world, but what I loath the most is the me that cannot find it within me to destroy it all. Destroy the work, the systems, the projects that attributed to this territory’s prosperous growth.

All I have ever worked for and all that I was born with is now gone leaving me with but a flimsy notice to arrive in the hero’s territory in a month’s time or be tried for treason as a commoner.

Is it my dignity or my pride that stops me from ending my own life? Or is it spite unable to come to terms with me not outliving the two worthless birth givers.

I pray the birth is still and the mother is lost in labor, I pray the territory without heir spearheads into the ground by a man who has lost sight, if he ever had it, of the ideals he had someone else teach me, and I pray those who had been loyal to me abandon the hopeless territory sooner rather than later.