Path of the King - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Hey guys! Welcome to the second chapter of my latest story. Should I have started a new story when I can't keep up with my current ones? Maybe not. Did I do so anyway? Absolutely. 

This story is a commission from one of you guys, LordCampione, and I just liked the idea too much not to go for it. I've been mulling over writing something in the Fate or Campione! worlds for like, multiple years at this point, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

As you can probably guess from the previous paragraph, this is a Fate (Nasuverse)/Campione! crossover. I know not everyone is familiar with both (or either) settings so I'm going to try to make the story as accessible as possible. If you have questions you can't answer with a google search, ask me here or on discord! It might very well be a completely original element.

I don't accept too many commissions (I write slowly, inconsistently, and have too little time to do it as it is :sob:), but this one caught my eye. Hopefully y'all will enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed working on it.

This is where I'd normally tell you the planned update schedule, but I've decided I'm going to try not doing that for a bit and just keeping it private. Stuff keeps coming up every time I do do that, and at this rate I'm going to get hit by a car or something the next time I say 'chapter coming tomorrow' or whatever else.

THIS IS CHAPTER 2. If you haven't read chapter 1 yet, go read that first! Chapters 3 and 4 coming in the next few minutes.

Eventually, I made my way inside and headed towards my rooms. Despite the late hour, the interior of my family’s ancestral home was brightly lit. Torches burning with cool blue flames that radiated cold instead of heat lined the walls of hallways, while larger rooms were lit by floating shapes of captured sunlight that drifted around the ceiling like luminescent jellyfish. 

I stopped briefly in the entrance hall, leaning against a wall to stay out of the way of the two servants on their hands and knees dutifully scrubbing the floor, and watched the lights drift by. The ones here were tinted a pale pink like the sky at sunset and gave the otherwise austerely decorated room an inviting sense of warmth.  

There was something bittersweet about them. They were beautiful to look at, stunning in a way that mundane art could never truly be. I loved the house I lived in back in Oslo, with all its many modern conveniences, but there was something so cold and impersonal about electric lights. They were one of the few things I really missed about living here. 

They were also a product of my family’s magecraft. Something that should have been my birthright, but was barred to me by little more than bad luck; a fluke of genetics that had haunted me since I was a child. These ones in particular were my sister's work. I still remembered the exact sunset where she’d crafted them, her very first successful attempt at utilizing our family’s fully-implanted magic crest. 

Our parents had been so very proud. They’d immediately decided to replace the old lights that had lit the entrance hall for decades, wanting every visitor to see first-hand their heiress’s achievements. 

I sighed heavily and moved on, leaving the servants to their work. The white marble floor was utterly pristine already, but my egg donor demanded that it be cleaned and polished every single day, even if no one but the servants was present. 

I found my rooms much as I’d left them, though it was clear that several servants had been through to clean up and poke around. My backpack and the blue bag I’d mentioned to Gamal were both waiting for me on the small table in my room’s living area while my duffle was nowhere to be seen. Not much of a surprise really. I didn’t even know why I still bothered to pack clothing when I decided to come home. 

Isidora, my ‘personal attendant’, was kneeling by the door when I arrived, her eyes downcast and her hands folded behind her back. She wore almost the exact same uniform as my sister’s attendant had––a short blue skirt that was open at the front with only a tiny white waist apron trimmed with blue and gold to preserve her modesty, a white crop-top stretched tightly over her chest with blue and gold accents, an elaborate gold usekh, blue and gold arm ruffles, and a pair of wide, almost cuff-like blue and gold bracelets on her wrists. The only difference was the name carved in both ancient Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphs into her usekh. Keon, king, not Dalia, flower.

In theory, Isidora should have been one of my most trusted companions and confidants. I’d picked her out from a group of young trainees more than a decade ago and she should have been with me ever since, constantly at my side guarding, advising, and ready to serve. It was a tradition dating back to the very earliest days of my family, mirroring the relationship between our great ancestor Hephaestion and his liege Alexander. Some changes had been made over the centuries, allowing for multiple attendants and transforming the role into one of service more than friendship, but the original idea remained. 

Instead, well. Isidora had been trained to be loyal to the Hephaestius family, and she was. She was everything I could have ever wanted in a lifelong companion––smart, kind, beautiful, a talented magus, and so very loyal. It was me who was the problem. Me, who had been born with malformed magic circuits that made me incapable of magecraft. Me, who could not be the heir the Hephaestius family had hoped for.

I liked Isidora, I really did. I’d trust her with my life. Had trusted her with my life multiple times. I’d spent years with her by my side, told her things I’d never told anyone else, brought her to my bed, and cared for her deeply. 

But ultimately, her first loyalty was to my family and thus to my parents––the lord and lady––and my sister––the heiress. Not to the crippled, broken firstborn son. Not to the disappointment who had to be kept out of sight when visitors came. Not to the wretch who could call himself a Hephaestius but could never bring anything but shame to his family name. Not to me.

And so, when I’d decided to strike out on my own and attend a mundane university outside of Egypt, I’d broken with centuries of tradition and left her behind. I had too many plans, too many secrets, that I could not risk them getting back to my parents. She would have been so useful to have by my side, but she would have never let me do what I needed to do. She wouldn’t have understood. 

It had…not gone over well. Not with her, not with my family, and not with Anet. 

The decision had irreparably damaged our relationship and I had no one to blame for it but myself. But I had to. I had to. To take that first step on the path whose end I was so very near. Soon. Soon. As long as nothing went wrong. As long as everything worked out just right. Soon, I could fix things. I could have her by my side once again just like I used to. Everything would be fine. 

But it still hurt when she didn’t look up at me when I entered the room. When she waited silently for me to have the first word. When she acted more like just another maid than as my lifelong friend and confident. 

“Hey Isi,” I greeted her softly, “You know you didn’t have to wait up for me.”

She bowed her head, her long, dark hair framing her face like a pair of curtains. “This one welcomes the young master home,” she intoned, her voice flat and monotone.

I flinched a little. “Isi,” I tried again, “you don’t have to talk like that.”

She raised her head, allowing me to see the utterly expressionless look on her face. It was completely at odds to the bright, happy smile that had first drawn me to her all those years ago. The smile I’d grown used to seeing every single day for much of my childhood and teenage years. 

“Does the young master require anything of this one tonight? Should this one––”

“Don’t,” I ordered sharply, “Just…” I hated having to do this. She shouldn’t…shouldn’t think this is what I wanted. I shouldn’t have to order her to act like she used to. 

I turned away, unable to deal with this right now. I hated seeing her like this. I hated having to order her to act normally every single time I came home. 

I sighed heavily, “Just… go back to bed, Isi. Anet is probably going to come by in the morning. Could you wake me up when she arrives?”

She bowed her head again. “This one hears and obeys, youn––”

I turned back towards her, suddenly so very done with all of this. I wouldn’t have to deal with this if I actually mattered. I wouldn’t have ever had to deal with this. It was fine when the other servants called me that, expected and appropriate even. I was their young master, even if they used it derisively. But Isidora wasn’t just another servant. “I have a name,” I all but spat. “Use it. Like you always used to.”

“Master Keon commands and this one––”

“You also have a name.”

For the first time in over a year our eyes met and I could see the pain, completely undiminished even after several years, shining in them. Her face was an expressionless mask, but I knew her too well for her to hide everything away. We’d gone through the very same training after all. A Hephaestius, and their attendants, had to be composed at all times. 

She looked away quickly but the damage was already done. “Just go. Go,” I ordered, my tone brooking no arguments.

She stood up and fled, vanishing into her own little private room attached to my own living quarters. The door slammed shut behind her and I heard the lock click, not that it would stop me if I actually wanted to go inside. It was still my room, not truly hers. But even with our relationship having deteriorated as much as it had, I wouldn’t do that. She’d never done anything to me. She deserved at least some sense of privacy. 

I sighed heavily and collapsed onto one of the room’s low couches. Gods above, this was one of the reasons I stopped coming home nearly as often as I had at first. 

I looked around, trying to center myself with the familiar sight of the rooms I’d lived in for most of my life, but too many of the memories included Isi. The old Isi, who wasn’t afraid to tell me I was being stupid but never treated me like I was made of glass or would chop off her head for saying the wrong thing. The old Isi, who was more family than most of my actual family. 

Eventually, I just stood up and tried to get ready for bed. There were a few things I’d been planning to do tonight, but they could wait. All I wanted to do was take a shower, change into something comfortable, and turn in for the night. Unfortunately, it seemed as though my sister did actually want to talk to me tonight. Go figure.

I had just gotten out of the shower and was finishing up brushing my teeth when the door to my room was thrown open and Dalia strode in, two servants following a step behind her. One of them was the servant girl from before, who was struggling to conceal a nasty smirk. The other was a young woman I was very familiar with, Meryt, my sister’s counterpart to my own Isidora. My sister had a lot of servants that answered directly to her, but most of them came and went. Only a handful––Meryt, Gamal, and a few others––stuck around long enough for me to bother remembering their names. I had no doubts that Layla, if that actually was her name, wasn’t going to be one of them. 

I rinsed my mouth, sighed, pulled the sinfully soft white bathrobe I was wearing closed, and stepped out of the bathroom. I mentally took note of the new arrivals, then folded my hands over my chest and bowed deeply. “Honored Heiress, it is a privilege to see you again,” I said smoothly without raising my head. 

I stood like that for ten full seconds, making sure to keep my eyes down and my back perfectly straight. I personally found it silly, and I knew she did as well, but it was still important to go through the motions. Especially since there was a less than trustworthy pair of eyes watching us. 

“Rise,” Dalia said eventually and I straightened, though I still kept my eyes pointed firmly at Dalia’s sandal-clad feet. She turned to the side. “Leave us,” she ordered the two servants.

I doubted the new girl was happy about it, but while she was clearly willing to at least partially stand up to me, she didn’t dare disobey a direct order from my sister. I waited patiently until the door closed behind them, then finally looked up at my sister.

Dalia was three years younger than me and originally had been intended as a bargaining chip, someone they could marry off to another member of the Council of Sands to cement a new alliance, or perhaps to someone further afield to expand their reach outside of the middle east. As such, my parents had taken pains to make sure that their second child would be a daughter, and that she would inherit all of my egg donor’s best physical traits. Physical beauty was not everything when it came to favorable matches amongst magi, but it helped.

Then my parents had discovered that I was utterly unsuitable to be heir, and suddenly all those duties and expectations were placed squarely on her shoulders. Fortunately for them, my sister was everything I wasn’t. She was born with thirty-six high quality magic circuits, effortlessly adapted to the Hephaestius magic crest, and learned new magecraft with frightening ease. At just nineteen, she was widely considered one of the most powerful magi in all of Egypt, bringing yet more honor and prestige to our family.

“Hey Dal,” I greeted her casually. “It's been a while.”

“It has,” she agreed. “And whose fault is that, exactly?”

I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly and said nothing. Dalia rolled her eyes and plopped down on the same couch I’d used after my run in with Isi, carefully making sure her dress lay smoothly. It was one of her favorites, a shiny, tight-fitting dark blue shoulderless gown that hugged her curves with a split just below each hip that left her long, slender legs bare. Over it she wore a matching pelerine that emphasized her slender neck and covered her shoulders while leaving a wide diamond of her dark chest exposed. Both were embroidered with lines of golden runes and I knew she also had matching sleeves that she sometimes wore. 

“Fine, be like that. You know, Anet’s been asking about you every time I see her. She was really upset when you didn’t come home for your spring break.”

“I was doing something important.”

“More important than coming home?”

I nodded.

Dalia huffed. “I doubt it.” She glanced over at the closed door to Isi’s room. When we were younger, that door had never been closed. The four of us––Dalia, Isi, Meryt, and I––had spent most of our free time together, wandering freely throughout the castle, gardens, and each other’s rooms. Now, I could barely recall the last time I’d seen it open. 

Dalia frowned. “I guess things didn’t go well with Isi today?” she asked rhetorically.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“She misses you more than anyone. Even more than Anet does. She’s just less obvious about it.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well you damn well should!” Dalia exclaimed suddenly. “She’s your Hephaestion, idiot! She loves you! She should never be more than a few steps away from you and instead you left her in a whole different country! Take her with you, for god's sake, and everything will go back to normal.”

“It's more complicated than that. People in the mundane world wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, and when have mundanes ever mattered for anything?” she fired back. A moment later, she slapped her hand over her mouth and looked away. “I mean, uh, other mundanes. You’re not really one of them. You’re just, uh…” she trailed off.

I just raised an eyebrow. The topic of my ‘disability’ had long since stopped bothering me too much, but Dalia still always treated it like a sore spot that should never be directly addressed. 

“Fine, fine. I’ll drop it.” She huffed loudly and folded her arms under her chest. “But you’re being an idiot. You need to fix things, or I’m just going to take her for myself.”

I had just looked away but now I turned my head back towards her fast enough that it made my neck hurt. “No you gods damn won’t.” 

Dalia just rolled her eyes. “See? Bah, whatever.” 

I ground my teeth together, but said nothing. 

Dalia shifted slightly, slouching her shoulders and leaning forward a little. “So, you have one more year, right? And then you’re coming home?”

“One more year, yeah.”

Dalia definitely noticed that I had only addressed her first question, but didn’t comment on it. Instead, her former frown vanished, replaced by a cheerful smile. “Great! I’ve been talking to daddy and some of his friends. There's some stuff in the mundane world the Council has been working on and they need someone to oversee it. You’ll be the perfect fit. 

“That way you can live at home and still stay busy, and we can go visit all those clubs and raves and parties that American girls go to! You can bring Isi with you, and I’m sure Anet will want to come too, and you can even bring all your new college friends! I can’t wait to meet them all. It will be amazing!”

I listened silently as she continued to babble. Dalia had only ever left Egypt twice, and had spent a bare handful of evenings in the mundane world, but she’d clearly done a lot of…research. Introducing her to the idea of social media had been an accident and a mistake, but at least it wasn’t as bad yet as I knew it would be in the coming decades. 

After almost ten minutes, I finally interrupted her in the midst of describing her ideal yacht trip (I was pretty sure she wasn’t fully aware of what exactly a jock strap was, or at least I hoped she wasn’t). “Dalia, I’ve missed you, you’ve missed me, it's great to see you and everything, but it's like two in the morning. This can’t be the only reason you came to see me.”

Dalia blinked rapidly. “Oh, right. Sorry, I got excited. It's been way too long, you know? I can’t remember the last time me, you, and Anet hung out together, just the three of us. I still see her pretty often, but it's not the same without you.”

“Dalia,” I prompted.

“Oh fine. Spoilsport.” Her expression turned deadly serious, the way I’d seen it the handful of times I’d been allowed in her workshop while she practiced her magecraft. “I don’t know why you wanted that pendant and I don’t think you’re going to tell me, but you didn’t cover your tracks all that well. Don’t worry, I took care of it for you, and I’ll make sure mom and dad don’t find out, and I won’t tell Anet either. But be more careful in the future, okay? I don’t want anything to happen to you. It would kill Isi, and break Anet’s heart.”

That…was not what I’d been expecting. My mind raced, trying to come up with a good explanation for what I’d done. My first thought was to deny, deny, deny, but Dalia wasn’t stupid. I needed something false, but believable. Something she wouldn’t immediately see through. “Its not––”

Dalia cut me off with a raised hand. “I don’t want to hear whatever made up story you’re going to tell me. I know you, Keon, and petty theft is beneath you. It's something important to you, right?”

I nodded slowly.

“I thought so. And you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

Well, if things worked out…she’d probably be one of the first people to know. I nodded again.

Dalia’s serious expression vanished and she smiled brightly. “Good. Now, don’t get caught next time, okay? You’re better than that. I know you can’t use proper magecraft, but you’re scrapy, pretty good with runes, and you’ve got enough mystic codes tucked away that you should be alright even against a real magus. Mom and Dad are blind for not seeing how much of an asset you could be for our family.”

Dalia stood up and headed towards the door, then stopped and turned back. “I know you know that having Isi with you would have made things a whole lot easier. You do know that, right? She’s not me, but she could give a Sealing Designation Enforcer a run for their money.” 

“I know.” Over the years I’d seen Isi train with the other magi loyal to our family plenty of times, and she was very good at what she did. 

“Good. Then fix things with her, okay? You broke her, Keon. Take responsibility.” There was nothing I could really say to that. “Anyway, it's good to have you back. Good night, brother dear.”

I shook myself. “Good night, Dal,” I whispered back.

And then she left, leaving me alone with my thoughts once again. As I finally prepared to turn in for the night, I couldn’t help but think that that hadn’t gone the way I’d expected it to.