Chapter Text
"Once upon a time, its rumored she was a beautiful princess. Supposedly Beautiful before what happened to her anyway."
"-But one day she was cursed and an enchantment was put upon her... a curse, which could only be broken by 'love's first kiss'."
"The true elements of the curse were hidden from the public and to protect her highness and her future happily ever after so her parents had to send her away in seclusion."
"-For her own good her parents the king and queen of far-far away locked her away in a castle. A great and somewhat condemned castle guarded by a terrible according to rumor atleast fire-breathing dragon.
The dragon who made her home and therefore their castle home in the pier of an active bubbling volcano!"
"To tell the princesses story and blatantly advertise for knights brave or stupid enough otherwise to save her, books just like this one were spread throughout the entire kingdom and beyond."
"The tale was told orally in in taverns and sung by pretty women- whores drapped in silk along the cobblestone paved streets of brothels."
"Through the years she was locked away many brave knights of the kingdoms had attempted to free her from the prison that is her lonely tower, but none prevailed. So there She waits still in the dragon's keep, in the highest room of the tallest tower as traditon dictates."
"She waits for her true love, and true love's first kiss to break the spell."
...
"-It's not very fair but... that's just how fairy tales work sometimes." The Voice grumbles.
What a load of magnificent bullshit; what fool would wander into the fire breathing maw of blatant risk?
Our protagonist of course...
---
Much like the story above Williams life practically became a fairytale magic'ed into real reality.
In this life fairy tales really are real, real enough to punch him spitefully in the face.
Real enough that story themes to teach life lessons and all their tragic characters could really come out of the damn books to fight you too.
It's a dangerous world... It always has been... whenever isn't it.
He doesn't remember much of anything about that life before.
Just the impossibility that his name was still the same and everything else is almost horrifically different... Maybe he'd eventually remember what.
In his heart of hearts he's always wondering why...?
Why him?
William wasn't lucky enough to be born into nobility in this life or really any other as far as he remembers.
Last time it was poverty, the cheapest noodles he could find steaming on the table, and a struggle to educate himself along with holding onto a job.
He wasn't rich and in no way, shape, or form would he have a silver spoon in his mouth.
As a squalling baby he was hungry more often then not; luck somehow was on his side because through that vulnerable time his providers didn't starve.
Well they didn't starve to the point of making the harder choices.
In winter they were cold much like all the others but no one was forced to volunteered to die.
To wander with death in the white blanket of unknown.
Instead he chewed braided straw to relieve his aching gums and in boredom slept, shat, and ate his days away at that point.
The main point of all this was, if he wanted to get anywhere in this life it would have to be built from something.
Mostly from his own drive and power... not that a baby had much of the latter.
Afterall his new mother was a serf.
A slave to their lord in all but title although it was much the same.
His whole damn family were piss poor serfs- don't even ask about his father.
Afterall like all those memes his dad really did leave, just not to get milk.
Daddy dearest was a knight of their lord and William... William was just his forgotten bastard.
So Mother was all he had.
She was all he needed too not that he had much of a choice with that one.
Mother was special; special not because of what she had or could teach him but instead because of her love.
She loved him, she sang to him about stolen dreams, she even rocked him to sleep in the hay, and when he was old enough to stand and toddle behind her he was allowed to clutch at her skirts and babble to his content.
She didn't know much about reading anything book wise other then the few words important to her craft but she did know a lot about other things.
About how to survive in this fantasy world, about how to work smarter then all the other serfs that broke their backs with their jobs.
Instead of her back taking the toll as a farm girl swinging around a hoe she worked nimbly with a needle in her hands.
Instead of hard labor in the farmed plots of her lords land- with her beauty and her street wise wits and a pinch of luck she got an apprenticeship with a crone many years ago sewing in the castle.
Eventually after a couple long loyal years she even took the elder woman's place.
She then became a seamstress who lived in the barracks of their lords castle, the servants courters- that's how she met father eventually.
Not that father was anything wildly special beyond his good looks.
Mother said he fumbled with his sword almost everyday in the training yard, besides his noble blood he was a good for nothing muscle head.
Afterall what smart person falls that hard that many times and keeps going.
One thing was blatantly true, He loved the sword and he loved being a knight.
Of their few clandistine times together he talked all about it before, during, and after raising her skirts.
If he wasn't so good with his hands he wouldn'tve had her more then the second time.
Mother wasn't by any means the best seamstress with a needle in the lady's cabinet but she definitely had the greatest taste.
The lady especially loved the gowns she altered and sewn from scratch that highlighted her bosom while still being just as effortlessly elegant.
Any work she spent her time on was beautiful even if she had to rehem it a couple times for perfection.
When he was old enough at four years old even though he was a boy mother taught him how to wield a needle like the best of the children.
Not that it was an open secret or anything but he was on the level of other girls starting at his age.
And that's pretty damn good.
According to her any help would be more then appreciated, and as his mother he kind of owes it to her... For everything even if she'd never ask it of him.
So as they days drifted further they bonded over needle pricks, a rainbow of gossamer, thin threads, and tiny wicker thimbles they wove together.
Their time together much like their crafts always felt beautiful.
Since he was born inside castle walls he had it better then most of their lords serfs children.
Besides chores they were allowed to play often, food wasn't as much of a worry as it was before.
Finally at 8 yrs old William was finally allowed to watch the knights in the courtyard train.
He could watch them pummel each other under the condition he empties the foulest of chamber pots first according to his mother under the supervision of the squires attending servant.
He got to wander the kitchens for scraps the cooks disguarded, and even play with the prized hunting hounds their lord took on his hunts every full moon.
Childhood was fun for little William and it had only just begun.
Pretending he was a knight was one of his favorite pastimes.
He'd be a gallant knight much better then his washed up father. A knight that would've been loyal to mother, strong, and true.
Chivalrous and loving in all the ways his father should've been to his mother, and if he knew by chance William existed he could've been fatherly figure in all the ways he wouldn't be.
Afterall what was wrong with dreaming?
A year later by chance he even got to help the old hermit in the library organize his things.
Everything was always everywhere; disorganized like a flood of clutter.
If the hermit was a mage William would swear a trash tornado had been blowing through the place in shifts!
Getting yelled at and whipped with a switch whenever he seemed a bit too clumsy for the man's liking hurt but it was what it was.
One thing led to another with the old man and that's how he learned to read again not that the script was much different.
The old man had a pride to him that in his own words he wouldn't stand to be in the prolonged presence of an illiterate welp.
Yes he ignored the blatant insult, being allowed pretty much free reign of the library and learning under the old man was a privilege he wouldn't allow himself to fuck up.
After that it was Copying book after book with the old man for a long long while.
Books in the castle were old and falling apart, some needed to be rebinded and others had pages ripped or even missing.
The worst cases was with the ones with faded ink; it was his job to organize the shelves so how would he know where to put them?
Asking the old man one to many times was just asking for another beating.
Other then that things were fine.
Of all the work he did honestly the most of it was just learning how to gently handle quills instead of pens and keeping ink magical and otherwise fresh to write.
That year was special.
The old man eventually grew on him.
Sometimes he even laughed and made comments about how he was almost too smart for a peasant child.
Those comments about his sheer intelligence led to the old man jokingly calling him his honorary page.
It was a joke... But a joke that stirred close heartedly to his dream.
He took it as encouragement as he always did.
In years long past the old man used to be a noble born knight.
He roamed the land going on amazing and sometimes rather shitty quests.
Like they say... anything for coin.
He explored many distant kingdoms and their many mysteries.
He fought Evil and sometimes he was just that... the evil.
They are right when they say you either die a hero or you love long enough to be a villain.
He was both many many times.
Eventually though he got hurt.
Hurt in a way it wasn't simple to recover from; you could call it an injury beyond his means.
It was a crippling injury really.
So there he went again, stumbling to the first castle he could desperate.
He was forced to sell his horse, his plate metal Armour, his Mail, and the one thing he wishes he kept... even his sword. He sold it to the local lord of the nearest castle and when that money finally ran out offering his services to the closest castle permanently this time was the best choice he had out of many bad potential ones.
That's how he spent his days wandering the walls, watching young men draw their swords in ways he could not now and age.
Old and grey now, its only natural that death stalks the corners of every hall for him, haunts his darkest shadows.
That's how he became what he was now.
An old hermit hobbling around the keep at routine reminiscing of old and lost glories.
Nameless.
It was a joke when he even bequeathed William a broken stick and called it the child's glory.
albtite not a funny one to the child in question.
Waving the stick around grandoiusly with a skip in his step that was scarcely there before.
"So Yee Seek glory huh...?" And he laughed with a mutinous twinkle in his eyes, "Well Bask in this Brat!"
Then he beat the child with that same ill named stick.
Let it never be said that the road to knighthood was easy, especially Williams.
The old man understood he had to be cruel first to be kind; being gentle in foundation would see the child knocked down from his endless mountain climb of a journey and devastated.
Shattered like a pretty bauble of glass or even a rock fallen from two high of a place.
the child should know his place early, be wary, and have appropriate caution.
Nothing of worth in this world comes easy, William would have to adapt to harsh times and the old man took it upon himself to be the first to temper him.
Afterall after that instance the geezer justified beating him as just... toughening him up.
He looked at the boy and saw himself almost, younger with so much wonder in his eyes that it would be a shame to snuff the flame out.
Either way the child took it as a sign that maybe his impossible dream was possible...
Maybe Williams dream really would come true.
Eventually all of Williams side jobs in the castle became secondary to his work in the library.
Until working with the old man became the only thing he did day in day out except the sewing with mother.
The sewing by this point was more of a hobby for William, with enough appropriate thread and a good borrowed needle from mom he could fix any of his clothes, darn a good pair of socks, and secretively he even fixed some of the old man's robes.
The old man became something of a father figure for William over time, a roaring intelligent, somewhat abusive but always cankerous magical warrior man nonetheless.
With the oftened bloody 'Glory' in hand William would watch the knights and their pages in the courtyard and try to copy what they did.
He wasn't as sneaky as he would've liked because the old man noticed... and he wasn't the only one.
Eventually Sir John, one of the yards trainers for the household guards and squires was one of them.
It took a couple months of the pages and household guards japes about the little piss pot 'knight' and a smidge of curiosity to draw him close enough first.
He was the first to snatch the child up with eventually their lords permission and because of the old man's assurances.
Little William would and could be page material if his pedigree was overlooked.
Their Lord, Lord Faustian had William called over along with his mother and his bastardry was shed into light.
It was quite embarrassing laying out all the long buried gossip.
Facts were told and stories spun like spindles.
Illegitimate as he is with the half assed claimed noble blood of his absent father that was just enough for their lord to reason permitting his training.
Mother was both shamed and fiercely proud.
Her son, with his father's handsome face and her ambition rolled into one would no longer be bound into serfdom and eventually if he made it as a knight of their lord he could petition to free her.
One day she could be free.
A dream come true, a fragile and rather cruel hope for a woman.
All she could and would do dispute everything was believe in her son; as always regardless of his choices and what he possibly could and could not do for her she would always love him.
That was her love, unconditional.
But that was eventually, right at this very moment she was being shamed as a whore in front of the castle as a whole for allowing his father to have her even though they were unmarried.
Everyone had assumed she had to have married someone to have him, turns out it wasn't so, so- she was in hot water.
At Least her skill with the needle and her Lady's fond opinion of her kept her position as a castle seamstress still.
That night mother whooped him with a wet switch stick marking him with welts simply for the fact that noble attention on a serf was anything but good news.
Then when she finally stopped crying herself mother lathered it all with a poultice she made before the whipping and congratulated him in his new position as a page.
Her boy would wield a sword one day with honor like all the stories of gallant knights, it's a wonderful thought.
...
Many years later he becomes just that... He names his sword glory, their lord grants him a noble steed in honor, and his armor stands gleaming just like the fairy tales.
It's perfect; everything in his wildest dreams swears it so.
He is Sir William of White Prairie but they call him The Phlox Knight.
"I want what any princess wants, to live happily ever after..."