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Technoblade never meant to take up the mantle of the Blood God. He thought it would've been funny, to act being larger than himself, stronger than himself. Who would've thought a Blood God took the form of a mortal? So he strode around, emblazoned the Blood God's name on himself, and silently laughed.
(acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt: mortal actions never fool the gods.)
The gods do not take mockery of themselves lightly, do not take words lightly.
The Blood God visits him in the form of a casual game of Bedwars, when his vision gets drenched in red and all he can feel is the hot impulse to flay and to slice - his self rends in two, and the Blood God puts it back together with violence as glue, turns him feral with tusks and pointed ears.
Technoblade does not tempt the gods again. He has found that controlling the quiet sing for blood difficult enough. He can't imagine the idea of more than one god shoving him around, pushing his impulses like they were children playing with a toy.
After the fall of SMPEarth, of his Antarctic Empire, Technoblade has found that his God is quieter. Perhaps it is because he spends his time away from the sword, away from the loudness of people and war, and throws it into farming potatoes.
A silly ambition, he knows this, but an ambition nonetheless.
So, day in, day out, he tills ground and replants seeds and monitors them quietly growing. It's nice, pulling life out of the hands claimed by the Blood God.
In some ways, his God still creeps into the things he does: the impulse to ruin Squid Kid, the impulse to go to war, it all feels like the rush he gets when his patron decides it's a little too mundane. But it is more petty, more childish, a gritty impulse softened. He smiles quietly to himself and thinks, yes, I could live like this.
(Can he live like this? With every swipe of his hoe, he feels an urge to tear it all up and feel the sink of flesh against steel again.)
There is no peace that lasts long, he learns.
Technoblade meets another one claimed by a God, but one that feels unfamiliar - he hesitates to name it. Wisdom? The energy that crackles at the edges of him is too wild to be the patient and exploratory gaze of Wisdom. Whatever he is, he makes his patron's whispers grow vicious and deafening.
Techno is only a mortal man, and the pull of blood so enticing is enchanting to the impulses to which he gave himself over.
So when the other man, who grins too wide and laughs too loud, brashly challenges him to a duel, Techno can't resist. He has been waiting for - anticipating - this for a while.
They fight for 10 days, one match a day, giving the other enough time to respawn. They are evenly matched, but there is still an undeniable difference between them.
Wisdom, however deep and powerful it is, fades with age and time. It needs a new host every century as minds dull and learning changes. Blood, however - the deep ache for war, and the feel of your enemies torn open upon your sword; this is no mere parlour trick. This is a gift, an instinct, carefully honed and fed till it blooms into gory glory. However strong the other man may be, Techno bears the mark of the Blood God upon everything he does and everything he is.
The other man may bound across the stage in reckless performance, but that has nothing on the animalistic carnality that the Blood God sewed into him.
The man who dresses in green and hides his face takes good naturedly to the loss, immediately diving into the different ways that he could've done better or the results could've been different. They both know, though... the Blood God would accept nothing less.
He thought he would be given more time to breathe, more time to rest. No rest for the wicked, he supposes.
The next calling comes in the form of a man he'd never thought could hold such a deep stench of revenge on him. He knows that the blonde boy - the idealist, the bright-eyed hero, the bright-eyed fool - is the one who called him. But he has no interest in Tommy's goodness when Wilbur's bitterness went so deep and flowed so dark.
The brown haired man hides it, of course. One does not act as the face of rebellion while wearing the haughty smirk of the emperor.
Still - mortal actions never fool the gods, Techno wants to say. Wilbur may mask his anger behind the smile he wears when he first saw L'Manberg after the first war, but it is still there and it is the cacophonous siren's song Techno can never avoid.
He involves himself in another war. He throws his support behind the side that he thinks will cause the most bloodshed, cause the most anarchy.
He is wrong. Everybody supports Pogtopia and their cause. The Blood God howls in rage, and then worse: the mocking visage of Dream comes to support them while wearing a knowing grin. Hands them the required ingredients to throw the server into chaos, but Techno knows that if they act now, there will be no chaos. There will be a quiet pop as Jschlatt is eradicated from the history.
There is a little interlude to feed his God when the boy who usually stands at Dream's side stands against him. Over a fish, Techno scoffs. Still, he does not spit in the face of a chance to feel the high of blood slick against his hands.
But it is not the reprieve his God is looking for: the only one to satisfy their urges has been Dream, and the rebellion is no more a rebellion than karmic justice, there is no satisfaction there. This could not be entertaining if there is no enemies, nobody but the tottering goat that play-acts at ruling.
Try as he might, Techno has been inhabited by his God for too long: he feels himself growling lowly at how easy it all is. There would be no backlash, no consequences. And Techno catches himself in his impulses, reminds himself that a smooth transition of power is better than the senseless pain and suffering caused by war.
(He does not know if he has convinced himself.)
This is why he stands with the God hidden in ram flesh on the podium: for as powerful as the Blood God is, there is no strength behind it without the chaos that follows.
(It is too late when he finally, finally, realizes why the ram pulled him as much as Wilbur did. For all of Techno's observations, Schlatt's streak of chaos that lit up the tyranny that surrounded it managed to evade him.)
Technoblade does not want to do this. Even as he's been claimed, he retains some humanity left of him and -
As he faces the quivering young boy - so young, so naïve, stuttering how he doesn't understand - he does not know if he can find it in himself to murder him. So he tries stalling, even though he knows what Schlatt is asking of him, and knows he will do it.
"Take him out," the cruel God demands. He knows what he is doing, he knows he is tempting Techno.
"What," Techno tries chuckling. "Like, out for a dinner?" His conviction loosens with every word, and the enthralling promise of chaos nearly bowls him over.
"No," Schlatt snarls. "I want you to kill him. And make it painful."
As he stands at the podium, he feels the eyes on him.
They watch, they observe; they take who he is, and then they tear through who he is. Comrades, enemies, the people beyond those lines: this is a performance, a show of power. And he feels their greedy, expectant eyes sinking into his back. They want blood, they want kindness, they want pain, they want empathy.
He has no more time, and the rise of chaos and blood make it all that much harder to make it deny it; those eyes. Two gods, maybe more, his comrades, his enemies, they all watch as he falls deeper into his God's thrall.
Technoblade never meant for it to turn out this way.
"I'm sorry, Tubbo. I'll make it as colourful and painless as possible." Techno hears himself say. A pittance in the face of what he'll do, a meaningless gesture as the boy's eyes widen and wordless pleas fall from his lips.
He shoots a rocket - red, white, blue, he wants to laugh - twice. It kills the Chaos God and his right hand man as well, but he doesn't care anymore, the swell of anger and resentment and blood sings through him. He feels maniacal and it rises through him again, he reloads his crossbow once more, then another, then another -
The sky is coloured the same as the 4th of July.
Technoblade rides on the euphoria of the slaughter at the festival only to be met with a furious Tommy.
He's broken from his little heroic role, reverted back to the angry, righteous little boy from the previous war, and oh how Techno wishes he'd settled down before he came into Pogtopia because now, it's even easier for the Blood God to sink their influence into him.
"Why did you kill him?" Oh, Tommy, it's not as though he had a choice. Even then, he tries to reason with himself, it got Tubbo out of Manberg, and they escaped with minor scratches and a death for everybody present.
He stands there, guilty in the face of spitting rage, unable to come up with a satisfactory response.
In the end, Wilbur comes in instead, revenge already having settled into him and painting him in a beautifully maniacal light. "Why don't you settle it in the pit?" He jerks his head towards the stone dip he mined out for this instance.
This is will be no battle, Technoblade knows, but he needs some way to satiate the burning hunger within him.
As he beats the boy red, he feels a vague sense of guilt, he should stop, he should stop, he should stop -
"You killed Tubbo, Techno." He should stop.
"Tommy - " He feels the bloodthirsty smile his patron bares at him spread across his own lips. "The thing is, you're using words. But the thing about this world, Tommy, is that the only universal language is violence. And we've had that conversation. We've spoken that language in the pit. It's over." He grabs his trident and ignores the stricken face Tommy gives him.
"Onto another day," he borderline sings. "Another plot to destroy Manberg."