Silly Little Castle

Five centuries of cold war. Five centuries of mistrust and espionage, attempts at assassinations and undermining of one another's domestic and foreign ventures. The war had been brewing for five hundred years but it took whispers and dark rumours to finally set in motion.  Ancient, evil machinations that had been found by a lost spy looking for a path in the dark. 

With the war machines going and diplomacy a complete farce between the two powers, one last mission of peace was all that stood between them and falling into the plot of powers beyond their imagining. 

One mission involving a border fort high in the mountain passes that divided Aupana in the east and Sellexu in the west.  A mission that saw one of the Queen's newly formed diplomats, who all went by the name and title, Foxes, defending a castle with a handful of back country rangers. 

It was a silly little castle. One forgotten stone bastion in the mountains on the edge of the sea, standing alone against the onslaught of armies and time.It hadn't had to do much more than stand there, alone, amongst the mountains and crashing waves below, for several hundred years. 

The enemies it protected against had remained on their side of the vast bay that separated the two lands through most of its history. They had not traversed the unforgiving monolithic peaks that would bring them here in recent memory, though the threat had hung unspoken through failed diplomacy and wars by proxy waged by either side.

Neither of the two nations had, whether defender or aggressor, until just recently. The castle was a remnant from another long ago battle, held on to by one side as a main turning point and victory before being ultimately forgotten. 

Ranger sections from Aupana would move through the passes and inhabit the castle along their ever varying routes, sheltering out bad winter storms and providing an early warning to any chance of invasion from their sleeping neighbours. But there was no village nearby, no liege holding court within its damp stone walls, for it was a forgotten, silly little castle.

"And suddenly, all the world is willing to die for this damned thing." Foxes murmured softly to herself, looking up at the ramparts as she surveyed its defences.

"Now you're just being melodramatic. No one wants to die for this." The reply came from her second in command, the grizzled, one eyed warrior called Nathax, a man who had been a Ranger of Aupana all his life. He had lived in these passes, sheltered in this castle for longer than he could remember, longer than most his section had been alive.

She chuckled and pulled her white hood back over her painted features. "Yeah. But this is the only open pass, during the first season Sellexu has wanted to wage war in five hundred years."

Nathax smirked as he inclined his head. "Aye. So why is it that the Queen-heir has decided to reinforce this tiny forgotten Ranger platoon, with one of her white diplomats?"

Foxes sighed softly, looking over to the man, though he couldn't see her eyes, cloaked in the shadows of her hood as they were. "I could regale you with the same nonsense of how this is important and that everything will make sense and that we are here to give them time to assemble on the battlefields below this pass..."

"But I don't give two dog farts about diplomatic poetry." Nathax cut her off, as she knew he would. "Not when the lives of my Rangers are on the line. They're good men and women who don't ask for much from their country." 

"Then just take faith that I am here because all the reds and the blacks and the blues were busy."

"There are that many colours to choose from?"

Foxes barked out a laugh and clapped the man on the back, leading him back indoors. "Did you know she even had white diplomats before I arrived?"

***