Chapter Text
Phillip stays quiet and compliant as the strange herd of centaurs travels away from the rift. He tells himself that he’s biding his time; learning what the centaurs’ plan is so that he can eventually escape and report back.
(Assuming he heals enough to escape.)
(…If there’s one singular benefit to being mistaken for a child, infuriating as it is, it’s that the centaur that has done so is taking the symptoms of his damaged nerves in stride.)
But the truth is that it’s just… easier to let things happen, for now. It’s easier not to talk, not to risk upsetting the status quo. Everything hurts, and he’s still so, so tired. He spends a lot of time sleeping and even more time in a light doze, slumped limply against the centaur that holds him.
True motivation or not, he does still learn things during his reluctant periods of wakefulness.
The maybe-horse is, in fact, a horse. She is, further, called Horse.
She wants to raise an army to fight the Nowhere King.
(The Nowhere King is back, and it’s… thanks to the Horse?)
The centaurs are… well, centaurs.
Phillip is only forty three; he wasn’t made all that long before the rift between the worlds closed and the Nowhere King disappeared. He doesn’t remember his components' lives very clearly, either. Some minotaurs clung to the jumbled memories of their past selves—as long as something was around to prompt said memories in the first place—but Phillip had never really seen the point of lingering on parts of himself that were lost and dead.
(He remembers—loneliness, and confusion, and fear.)
(War, Phillip thinks, is a much more palatable affair when you have very little left to lose and an entire world there to gain.)
Further, with the Nowhere King staging his double-sided war from within the rift itself, travel between the worlds had all but ceased long before the rift had actually closed. And Phillip himself has been stationed on the human world for most of his life.
So he isn’t exactly well-traveled.
But he has seen centaurs before, and while these centaurs have more life to them (hah) than the rapidly dwindling number of refugees Phillip observed and killed on the human side of the rift, the penchant for song and the absolutely baffling “logic” and abilities are recognizable enough.
There’s a lot of singing. Singing at night, singing in the morning, singing to pass the time.
(There’s ridiculous magic, and enough food for everyone—summoned from thin air and offered freely. There are petty squabbles that for the most part stay petty; that always seem to be forgiven or at least set aside.)
The centaur that has mistaken him for a child is named Durpleton.
It doesn’t take long for Durpleton to decide that “Oh, you look so cold,” and to make a swaddling carrier for Phillip. Considering the number of times Durpleton has gotten excited or distracted and either waved Phillip around or dropped him outright, Phillip isn’t even sure he wants to complain.
Durpleton takes the knife out to wrap him, and Phillip almost gets his hopes up. Then Durpleton exclaims “Whoopsie! Almost forgot to put this back!” and stabs him again. Phillip shrieks and Durpleton soothes him, but it’s with apologies for waking him.
As far as Phillip can tell, the Centaur doesn’t give the actual stabbing a second thought. So. Phillip doesn’t think they’re trying to hurt him, at least. He isn’t thrilled to be at the mercy of centaur whims, but… well, it’s better than being left to a human’s mercy probably would have been, at least. Better than minotaur mercy, too.
Either way, Phillip doesn’t think he’s ever had this much luxury to rest before, even when injured. It’s a relief not to have to think much right now. It reminds him dimly of his distant memories of following the Nowhere King’s mental commands, surrendering to someone else’s will, only far more restful.
(Despite the chatter of the centaurs around him, his mind is quiet; entirely his own.)
He sleeps.
“Okay, Durpleton, bud, you have got to stop carrying that minotaur around.”
Durpleton lets out an outraged gasp and covers the sides of Phillip’s head. Phillip’s ears are internal and Durpleton’s aim is off; he can still hear clearly, and reluctantly blinks his eyes open to see what the commotion is about. “You take that back! I would never abandon my boy-child!”
Oh. This again.
“Okay, okay, okay. Fine,” Horse says, clearly exasperated. “But can we… hide him somehow? We need to recruit an army and if the cataurs see a minotaur looking like… that… it’s going to be really hard to get them to take us seriously.”
Phillip bristles and gives a quiet hiss. It’s not his fault that he’s been half-paralyzed and swaddled like a baby. He wiggles a bit, despite his better judgment, but Durpleton’s swaddle has thoroughly bound his arms and his efforts just shift the knife in his back. He winces and goes still again, biting back a moan and breathing shallowly through the pain.
“Hmm…” Durpleton’s neck coils around until he’s staring directly into Phillip’s eyes, his expression pursed up with intense thought and an edge of concern. His voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper as he nuzzles Phillip’s cheek and turns to look back at Horse. “Maybe my little boy shouldn’t hear all of that. I don’t think he likes the A-R-M-Y word.”
“Yes! Sure. Exactly,” says the Horse with audible relief. “So, uh… if you could just…I dunno… llll-leave… him—?”
“Glendale! My boy-child needs a quiet place,” Durpleton exclaims, straightening up and prancing towards the spindly little centaur in question. Phillip eyes her apprehensively. Glendale looks equally uncertain.
“Mmmmrm—I dunno, it seems a little… different to just—I mean you’ll want him back, and—”
“He won’t cause annnny trouble. Look! He’s scared!” Philip winces and squeezes his eyes shut as he’s abruptly swung around and presented to Glendale. He slowly cracks one eye open to find himself snout to not-nose with wide eyes. Glendale quavers with indecision. Durpleton’s face suddenly appears next to them, uncomfortably close. “Can you say no to that face?”
“Hmmmnmnm… I guess if you—”
“Ohhh, thank-you thank-you thank-you!” Durpleton pushes forward and scoops Glendale up into his arms right beside Phillip in a hug. Phillip wheezes as Durpleton squeezes tight, swaying them both back and forth with glee.
Glendale eventually pushes herself free and rears back, the portal in her stomach activating. “Okay, so if you just—oh—oh I guess you’re both going in I didn’t think that was—hrmnnn. I’m pulling you out when we get there okay??”
Durpleton straightens up in the portal realm, cradling Phillip in his arms. “Welcome to your new home! I think you’ll be very happy here.”
Phillip blinks and looks around. It’s his first good look at the place, considering he was half unconscious the first time, and… okay, he’s not going to lie, it’s honestly a bit disturbing. Mountains of objects tower above them, outlined against dull red clouds in a glowing orange-yellow sky. The color of the sky almost feels like home, but the sheer scale of the mountains in their otherwise empty plane, and the way objects break away from the mountains and float upwards, makes it all more than a bit surreal.
“Your friend contains a nightmare dimension,” Phillip mutters, and then freezes. Oh, oh he should not have said that—
“Oh, I just knew you’d like it!” Durpleton coos, beaming down at him.
…well. Alright then.
Maybe he spoke too quietly for Durpleton to hear?
Or maybe Durpleton is just really good at denial.
Either way, talk about a lucky break. Phillip is in absolutely no shape to deal with the fallout if Durpleton realizes he’s a full-fledged adult minotaur. It’s fairly obvious that most of the rest of the herd is just humoring Durpleton—with the possible exception of the fluffy pink one, who seems as invested in this fantasy of parenthood as Durpleton is—so Phillip really doesn’t have a safety net here. He needs to be more careful.
(Not for the first time, it occurs to Phillip that if he’d been back with the other Minotaurs the best he could have hoped for was a quick culling. But here he is, injured but still alive, doing his best to play along and make sure he stays that way. This centaur and his delusions have saved his life.)
(Phillip doesn’t know how to feel about that.)
Durpleton is humming cheerfully and rocking Phillip in his arms as he strides between the mountains of junk, his neck stretching and contorting to give him a closer look at the things that catch his eye.
He’s mumbling to himself in between the humming, but with his head so far away, Phillip can’t make out most of the words. Mostly all he gets is the vibration of Durpleton’s voice resonating down through his chest.
(It’s soothing. Durpleton’s arms are warm.)
Phillip fights it for a while—he just woke up, he shouldn’t be this tired again already—but it doesn’t take long for the stabbing-induced exhaustion to catch back up with him.
He sleeps.
Phillip is woken when Durpleton decides that it’s time for him to drink something, which is the same weird mix of infantilizing and reassuring as it always is. Something in him keeps expecting food and water to be limited, rationed, rewarded, but so far the centaurs have just… provided. Proactively.
He takes another look around as he drinks, still half asleep but curious what Durpleton has been up to.
Durpleton has dragged together a fairly large collection of items. Phillip doesn’t recognize half of them. Most of them look smooth, clean, and bright; very Centaurworld, if a bit rumpled from however long they’ve spent buried in their piles.
He can recognize tables, chairs, and what look like books. The beds and piles of blankets are familiar as well, if far more plush than he’s used to seeing. The minotaurs normally just slept on palettes or cots, if even that; resources were pretty sparse by the time Phillip fled into the rift. There were times he’d considered himself lucky if he could find a corner somewhere out of the wind to snatch a quick nap in between guard shifts.
When he yawns, winces as the knife shifts, and focuses back on the centaur, he finds Durpleton watching him fondly. “Neat, huh? I thought you could choose what you like!”
Phillip blinks, a cold jolt down his spine bringing him ruthlessly to full awareness.
This… this could be a minefield. Does Durpleton expect him to talk? How much will be too much? Phillip doesn’t know how children work, let alone how Durpleton expects them to work in this fantasy version of Phillip that he’s built—
Durpleton squeezes him, for once managing to avoid the knife. “I’m proud of you just the way you are,” he says, his smile briefly fading down from eager to something… sad, and slightly uncertain. “Whatever you like is going to be awesome." He rallies, his tone growing cheerful again. "Because it’s you who likes it, and you’re awesome!”
That is absolutely not the issue here, but… it’s still surprisingly reassuring. Phillip gives an uncertain hiss, swallows, and looks back to the pile of things that Durpleton has collected. “Uh…”
“I know! Let’s just pick one thing at a time, okay?” Durpleton sets aside Phillip’s cup, wraps his arm under Phillip’s legs, and clambers to his feet. He wanders over to one of the piles. “This is a bed. Can you say ‘bed’?”
Phillip can’t help a weary sigh, for all that this does at least solve his dilemma. He doesn’t have to like the form of the solution. “Bed,” he grumbles dutifully.
“Good job! A bed is for sleeping in. I found… hmm. Two. Couldn’t carry too much while you were sleeping, haha. Which one do you like?”
They go on like that for a while, Durpleton stepping through various categories of objects and continuing the impromptu language lesson in the process.
It’s tedious and embarrassing, but it does teach Phillip about some of the objects he hadn’t recognized, so there’s that. For a certain definition of “teach.” Phillip still isn’t sure what a “snowglobe” is. Durpleton’s definition of “A prison of hopes and glitter!” is certainly what the thing looks like, but it hardly explains why anyone would want one.
(It’s part of Durpleton’s so-called “happy things” category. Phillip chooses it. It is pretty.)
By the time Durpleton has dragged together the selection of blankets, bed, nightstand, lamp, and a few other odds and ends, Phillip's head is swimming and he is having to fight to keep his eyes open. He’s short of breath just from the meager effort of keeping his head lifted and talking; his chest feels thick and clogged. It’s a relief when Durpleton finally sets him down on the bed.
Yet again, he sleeps.