Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first thing Philza knows is death.

Not his own, of course. Its almost impossible for a god to die permanently, let alone the God of Death. No, his first memory is of someone else's death, a little creature lying in the dirt and taking quick agonised breaths, trembling in fear and pain until it just... stopped.

Millennia later, he still has no idea what kind of animal that was. It must have been old, though, to be the first mortal to die.

He feels its soul detatch, a twitching, writhing mass of light and life, and drift towards him expectantly, completely trusting him in his Godhood.

Even back then, when Philza didn't know where he was, or if he remembered anything at all, he knew death. He knew the exact steps he had to take to reap this tiny, unfortunate soul. He reaches out to the soul, feels it happily accept his cold, lifeless grasp, and he hesitates.

The first emotion Philza ever experienced was pity.

He looks down at this tiny animal crumpled before him, at its soul, innocently twisting around his hand, even as its fear lingers, and swallows a lump in his throat.

It's so young.

No, he thinks, this isn't fair.

The creatures soul dissipates at this thought, and he starts, ready to panic. Before he can make a move however, the animal gets up and shakes itself off. For a second they look at each other, neither sure what to make of the other. Then it bounds off without a second thought, and Philza is left alone.

The ability to respawn is one of the most precious gifts given to use by the Gods. The God of Death, less commonly known as the God of Mercy, was the one to grant us the ability to resurrect after death twice, to let us live the long and exciting lives we deserve. While his motives for doing this have never been explained, as he is an altruistic God, this is our best explanation.
- Double Death of the Soul: an Alchemists Guide to the Respawning Process by Bridget Lokdack

Soon more Gods began appearing, as the mortals evolved and learned and understood. The God of Life, the only being older and more powerful than him, a colossal living mountain radiating pure energy and wisdom, the God of Chaos, a cheeky God that was more concept than flesh, delighting in bringing misfortune and trickery to any mortal who crossed his path, the God of Tragedy, who's tears carved out the oceans and rivers that dotted the planet (or so they said). Philza avoided them all, preferring to live amongst the mortals where he could grow and become a different person over time instead of stagnating forever.

He never stays in the same place too long, for fear of being found out, preferring to move from place to place, meeting new people, seeing new sights, making friends with the people he knows are dying. He hopes that when he does pass, his familiar presence will bring them even the tiniest bit of comfort. No one should have to die alone and in fear, and for years they don't. The world is large but it is peaceful. The Gods are still mostly benevolent at this point, blessing their people with enough food, little sickness, and of course, the ability to come back after death.

One change that Philza wasn't expecting to happen as he travelled, was his growing resentment for his fellow gods. He interacts with the mortals everyday, talks to them about their dreams and fears and loves, gets to know them in a way that no other God does. He knows the way mortals revere and fear them, the way they wonder why none of the Gods have ever interacted with mortals for more than five minutes at a time, how they view Life as a distant, yet loving creator and Death as a merciful angel, how they fear Chaos and his tricks... and he doesn't understand. Why do the other Gods hide away from the mortals? While he doesn't doubt there is some level of affection for mortals in their hearts, he is the only God who understands them, who takes the time to know them on a personal basis. He sees the ways it breaks the mortals hearts.

He sees the way the Gods grow less caring to their people.

He doesnt know which side starts the war. He doesn't know which God egged the conflict on, which side they were on, or even how many years the fighting lasts. All he knows is the endless suffering and death that war  brings. Peoples final moments are filled with screaming and begging, blood pouring from open wounds, sobbing into their hands as soldiers fight and die around them. His respawn gift, originally intended to be something good, something kind, ends up becoming an instrument of torture in it's own way. People die and respawn, dying again from the same unhealed wound that killed them, people redrawing and committing suicide immediately after, unable to cope with the prospect of more death and suffering, enemy soldiers being tortured for information, unafraid of killing their victim, content in the knowledge that they'll return, a little more afraid, a little more likely to talk.

It makes Philza sick to his stomach. How could this have happened? This kind, peaceful world has been torn apart forever, even the mortals with their short lives and memories will remember this violence. There is no going back from this. The earth scars and bleeds, Life wails in agony as her people die en mass, and Philza weeps in Tragedies arms for every soul he fails.

Eventually, it ends. Both sides loose in the end, their kingdoms in tatters, their citizens starving and furious at the rulers who dragged them into this unfair and unjust war, the Gods are quietly shaken up, whispering to each other about how terrifying the war had been to watch, the cruelty they didn't know the mortals possessed. Philza continues travelling, leaving the wounded kingdoms behind and searching for somewhere safe, innocent, untouched by the horrors of war and pain.

He doesn't find it.

The world is vast, and it is empty, but even the tiniest villages tucked away in the freezing tundra of the north have heard of the war that brought suffering to this world, killing the peace and innocence here forever. Eventually he gives up. He builds a cabin by a lake in a remote forest, untouched by civilisation. He can spread his wings here, unleash his divine nature in a way he never could when he lived amongst the mortals. It is a retirement home for a God.

(Not too far away is a village. He has heard the rumours of Chaos' disappearance after the war. He doesn't want to forget how to be kind.)

Philza lives here alone for years. He hears rumours that Gods have began interfering in mortal lives, bribing their rulers and taking over their kingdoms in the name of fear. Fear of mortals. Fear of what they can do.

He doesn't say he blames them. In his quiet routine in his cabin, he visits the village every so often to buy food and socialise with the villagers. For the most part, it is peaceful. Someone asks him how his day has been; he always answers positively, no matter how he really feels. He tracks how long it has been since he last entered the village by keeping an eye on the technological advancements of the village, the way it grows from being a tiny farming community to a larger town with cars and schools and TVs. He buys himself a TV one day, and finds it a strange but useful tool. He watches a documentary about himself. He cries.

This routine goes unbroken for hundreds of years, and while Philza wouldn't describe himself as happy, he was content.

"The Communicator is one of the most high-tech gadgets we have ever created. It fulfils a lot of the same requirements as online message boards, yes. But it is completely offline so all you need is a signal. Unlike texting, using it is completely free, and you can customise your Communicator in anyway you want.
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However, what really makes this device stand out from the crowd isn't how many words you can fit in a message, or how fast you can send them. The really special thing about this device is that we imbued it with the power of the God of Death himself. While it won't give you any amazing powers or help you subvert death, it will track your deaths and send out  alert to everyone on your friends list when you die. We don't think we need to explain why this is such a useful tool everyone should have, especially after the tragic events of last month."
- Press release for the release of the Communicator v1.0 - Nicholas Tanda (originally published in Gadget Craze Magazine edition #110 (19XX)

The first disturbance to Philza's peaceful life is when a businessman shows up at his front door, flanked by bodyguards. Philza is out watering his crops when they arrive, wings in full display. By the time he realises they are there and hides them away again, it is too late. He never finds out how they found him.

They sit around his kitchen and drink tea. The bodyguards stand, casting suspicious glances at Philza's old china collection. The businessman takes a very long drink of his tea in a way that he thinks is supposed to be impressive, or maybe even intimidating? The whole thing feels patently ridiculous, but he is too polite to voice that thought, and elects to look at his table in awkward silence, before his guest decides to speak.

"Esme McKinnen." he says, and looks at Philza expectantly. Philza leans back and averts his gaze, tracing the wood patterns on the table for a moment.

Of course he knew who she was. A child who'd died a few years ago, having sustained such terrible injuries in an accident that she'd burned through all of her respawns at once and died forever. Or so everyone had thought. It hadn't been until years later, when a confused and surprised family had found her banging on their door in the middle of the night that the truth had come out.

Yes, had died. Yes, she had respawned, still injured. But rather than die again, she had been kidnapped and held captive for years. It was a tragedy in every sense of the word. It was another thing for Philza to feel terrible over.

"What about her?" he asked eventually, quickly looking up. The man, Nicholas according to his nametag, met his gaze steadily.

After other brief pause, he pulled his briefcase out and pulled out a small device and a stack of papers, which he handed over to Philza. Philza looked through them in confusion before looking back questioningly.

"My company wants to make sure nothing like that will ever happen again," Nicholas says, his voice softer than Philza had expected. "We are working to develop a communication device that will allow instant communication between people, no matter the distance between them." Philza nodded. It was a noble intention, and he could see where they were coming from, but he couldn't figure out what this had to do with him. "If you take a look through our manual, you'll see what we mean," he goes on.

Philza looks down at the paperwork and flips through it. Most of it is pretty boring, descriptions and lists of the device and how they'll work, what features they'll have, and he finds nothing to comment on, until he gets to the last page.

With a written note marking it experimental, is a description of how the device can be used to track a persons deaths and respawns, sending out notifications to friends and family so no one will ever die and go unnoticed. There is a list of materials that could be compatible with his magic, a list of tests that need to be carried out, and then more complex ideas to combine the communication half of the device with the magic half. Philza reads it over twice, before looking back at the man, am impressed look on his face.

While it stings knowing that something like this is necessary, that what was supposed to be his gift to the mortals turned into such a disaster, he can't help but be amazed at the idea, how much these people had thought about it, how determined they are to make it a reality, and without realising his lips curve in a smile. Nicholas finishes his drink in one motion and smirks back at Philza knowingly.

"I am going to assume," he says wryly, "that you are on board?"

Philza laughs, suddenly filled with a sudden joy at making amends for the pain he accidentally brought to mortals, and the two shake hands across the table before beginning to make arrangements to begin testing with his magic.

And so Philza's life slowly, but surely, began to change forever.

Chapter Text

He takes the bus into the city a week later, a scrap of paper with an address scrawled on it clutched in his hand. The bus is crowded and loud, the scent of stale cigarettes and weed stinging his nose as the constant chatter grates in his ears.

It occurs to Philza, then, that he needs to get out more.

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat as his wings, invisible of course, cramp. The woman beside him shoot him a glare, lipstick and eyeliner, and then goes back to talking on her phone even louder, giving him a second look out of the corner of her eyes, just to make sure that he knows she’s doing it out of spite.

After an hour of staring out the window and watching the idyllic trees and fields turn to formidable mazes of concrete and steel, the bus finally, blessedly, pulls to a stop in the bus station. Philza leaps to his feet, smacking his foot off the womans leg in his hurry to get off the bus, which no doubt earns him another glare. He is first off the bus, practically running in his haste to get away from its overbearing stuffiness, relishing in the chance to stretch his wings out. His power ripples throughout them as they stretch, covering the sun in a faint dimness that makes the mortals around him shudder slightly, until he reigns his emotions in and folds them away again, taking a proper look at his surroundings.

The city isn’t what he was expecting. From what he has seen on TV, they are massive labyrinths of glass and metal skyscrapers with modern designs. These buildings are clearly a lot older, probably a couple hundred years old if he had to guess. They are dirty stone, brown and greys mixed with blacks, and a few stories high at best. Despite these cosmetic differences, the large number of people s exactly what he had expected, and he internally braces himself before he begins walking.

In the end, he needs to get another bus to the outskirts of the city. It takes a few bemused but helpful mortals to guide him in the direction, first to the bus stop, and then the factory from there, but he eventually makes it half an hour early. The factory is a small concrete building tucked among larger concrete buildings, and the receptionist is quietly awed as they tell him where to go.

He makes it to the testing facility, a small white room with a table loaded with gadgets, and waits in silence for ten minutes, before someone finally shows up, looking more than a little stressed. They appear to be a blaze hybrid, with burning yellow marks across their skin and bright red hair. When they stand beside him he feels the air warm, and when they take documents out to show him they wear gloves. Their words crackle with fire magic, undetectable to mortal ears, as they introduce themselves as the head engineer of this project.

“What we need you to do,” the head engineer explains, visibly wilting under his (perfectly neutral) stare, “is to just send a little bit of energy through each of the devices. We want to test and see how your magic reacts with them, to give us a better idea of what materials we can use.”

Philza casts a glance over at the technology sitting on the table: an old phone, a TV, a watch, and curiously enough, a Samsung Smart Fridge and tries to figure out what they all have in common, aside from being modern technology. Taking is curious silence as an unspoken question, they go on.

“This is only the first test we want to do. There’s still a lot more after this, so don’t worry about it being vague.”

Internally, Philza sighs. Externally, he gives them a reassuring smile that they return.

“Right,” he says, and the two fall into an awkward silence. After a moment, he goes on. “Good to know.”

The engineer nods again, and there is another longer moment of silence, in which the two of them look at the floor and wait for the rest of the team to arrive.

“So…” Philza begins, trailing off when his companion looks up at him. “Are they – are they late?”

They nod and he laughs before he can stop himself, spluttering out apologies as they laugh as well. The awkward silence between them is broken then, and they begin to talk a little more. The engineer is halfway through a more detailed explanation of the type of research being conducted today, when the doors slam open and the rest of the team sheepishly file in. They all take their place behind magically reinforced glass, and Philza is left alone in the room.

The loudspeaker crackles to life, and another scientist begins to speak through it. “We need you to just send a simple pulse of energy through each of the devices. Please start with the cellular device on the left and work your way across, taking it nice and slowly. We will tell you when to start and stop.”

Philza nods along, and takes his place beside the table, picking the first item up. The plastic is cool in his hands, the phone itself very light. Over the loudspeaker, he hears a flurry of movement and the rustling of papers before the same person tells him to begin.

It takes him a moment to figure out how he is supposed to do this. While he has used his magic before, it is usually to administer a painless death to someone, or on very rare occasions, to kill someone’s sickness before it could kill them. The world he surrounds himself with is very much alive and capable of dying, and he has never felt the need to kill an innocent tree before. He eventually manages to hold it at both ends, sending a tiny wave of energy from one side to the other, with relative difficulty. It spirals down the cords and cables inside the phone, misting across the top of the cable, revibrating with the dim energy of everyone who has ever touched it, as it disperses into his other hand and is reabsorbed. He feels a brief stab of pity for the person who died of a creeper attack last month.

The loudspeaker bursts to life again and he is instructed to fill out a form, answering a few questions on what just happened. How easy was it to move the energy? Did you feel anything? Did it cause you pain? It only takes a very short amount of time, and he can’t help but feel slightly doubtful at the lack of detail they want. Surely there is more he could say? Are they saving it all for the follow up tests and meetings?

Despite his reservations, he goes on. The watch is the easiest to use, not that he felt a lot of surprise at that. What is a watch but a countdown, after all?

Everything goes very smoothly after this, until he reaches the final device, the Samsung Smart Fridge standing beside the table. It is brand new, shiny and spotless, and he spends a long moment trying to figure out how he is supposed to do this. Eventually he settles for placing his hands on their side and tries to not feel incredibly ridiculous at this.

“Ready when you are,” a different scientist tells him, and Philza gathers a tiny bit of energy in his hand.

This is where things start to go wrong.

When he looks back at this moment and tries to find a reason for what happens, he is unable to come to a definitive conclusion. Maybe this was going to happen regardless and it just happened to fall on the day he was testing his powers for science. Maybe the person who built this fridge was a devout follower of Life and left a little bit of that energy in it. Maybe the inner workings of it reacted very badly to his magic. Maybe the power of metaphor was too strong in this case and caused a strange, negative reaction.   

Whatever reason, or lack thereof, as soon as the energy begins its circuit throughout the fridge, something very strange begins to happen. There is a sharp pain in his hand, that grows into agony as it travels up his arm. Philza screams when it reaches his heart and spreads further, the burning pain to witherings ice cold. He faintly feels himself fall back and smash his skull into the floor, although that is a gentle touch compared to the blistering pain coursing through his divine veins. Rot and entropy arc away from his hand, still releasing the deadly stream of magic, directing it into the air instead of his hands. His skin sloughs off and regrows while he flails, sending small pieces of rotten flesh across the floor, his wings flap desperately as the bones shatter and putrid pus leaks from the wounds. He wails until blood pours from his mouth and his skull smashes on the floor and regrows, once twice, thrice.

He of course, is aware of none of this. The pain he feels is wholly dissimilar from how it feels to rot alive on a cold metal floor, watched by a team of horrified scientists. It is the sensation of being skinned alive by burning hot knives, of burning alive on a stake, of being boiled from the inside out, choking on spit and blood, begging someone, anyone please help me stop this I can’t take it kill me kill me KILL ME

In these situations, of course, Philza is usually the one being begged for. There is no one that can help him here, and so he is forced to writhe and scream until finally – finally! – he feels the pain leave back through his arm, as if it is being peeled away, and then the damned energy that caused all this finally tearing itself out of his hand, and then finally, blissfully

Silence

When he awakens, it is to the sound of a baby's cry.

His eyes squint against a bright light. His body aches. His mouth is dry. He is so tired, he could go right back to sleep.

And he does, lulled by the sounds of quiet whispers all around him.

When he wakes up again, the room is dim and he is significantly less tired. His brain is slow in a way he has never felt before, and it takes him a moment to figure out where he is and what is happening. He is lying in a bed in an unfamiliar bedroom. The door is closed and the room is dim, but light is seeping in from the next room over. He can hear cars and people speaking softly. The window is open, and with great difficulty, he pulls himself up and look out.

He is still in the city. It is the middle of the night, and the streets are quiet. From what little he can see of the surrounding buildings he appears to be in a very tourist centric area. A hotel, perhaps?

He hides his wings away, gritting his teeth through the wave of pain that flashes through his head as a result, and slowly gets to his feet. The voices next door dim down, and he hears someone get to their feet and walk closer, swinging the door open before he has a chance to say or do anything.

It is the same scientist he spoke to before, the blaze hybrid. They have an expression of gentle concern on their face made visible only by the gentle light emitting from their markings as they step into the room.

“Are you alright?” they ask, voice low. “You’ve been out for a very long time.”

“What happened to me?” he asks, voice equally low. He feels weak, disarmed in a way completely alien to a god. “Where even are we?”

They look embarrassed at that, ember eyes drifting to look at the floor. “We panicked,” they say in a guilty voice, “you passed out after destroying the room, and we didn’t want to take you to a hospital because they wouldn’t know how to treat you and we didn’t want people to find out we almost killed a god and we had to deal with the baby-“

Their mouth snaps shut and their eyes widen as they tense, staring at Philza in panic. He simply looks back, slowly parsing through what they just said. The panicked and smuggled him into a hotel room, very unprofessional of them, but he couldn’t hold it against them. He passed out and destroyed the room, that made the most sense. They didn’t think a regular mortal hospital would be able to help him, he agreed there. He didn’t even have regular DNA, there was nothing that could have been done. They didn’t want the bad PR, that also made a lot of sense. They had to deal with the baby? He wasn’t sure what that meant, but –

Wait.

“What baby?” he asks, stepping closer to the engineer. They cringe and back away, hands in the air as though to soothe him. “What fucking baby?”

“Sir – “ they begin, and shoot a quick worried glance to the door. He follows their gaze, and his heart stops.

Of course there’s a baby.

Of course when he felt his magic peel away from him, it meant that he was, for the first time in his life, experiencing his own magic rebel against him to form its own creation.

His son.

The engineer is babbling explanations and apologies beside him, but he doesn’t listen. His eyes meet the innocent gaze of his son formed through magic, and it is the most beautiful thing he has ever experienced in his life.

His son.

Philza had never considered having children before. He lived a solitary life and he was content with that. He thought all he needed was a quiet cabin by a lake, some mortals he could talk too without growing too attached.

He was wrong. He was so wrong.

He takes a step forward, brushing past the hybrid without even realising. His gaze was is still locked onto the baby, who is watching him just as intently. He is beautiful, with deep brown eyes and chubby cheeks framed with short brown curls. He and Philza look nothing alike, which was to be expected of course. Philza didn’t really have blond hair and blue eyes, of course. He didn’t really have anything at all aside from his wings. Philza continues walking closer to his son and takes in more details, desperate to catalogue every unique detail about him. The tiny points in his ears, the tiny black wings on his back, pint sized versions of Philza’s own, the way he leans towards him, gladly recognising his own father.

The person holding the baby gladly relinquishes him, and Philza sits down beside them, cradling his son. The child snuggles into his arms and yawns quietly, causing Philza’s heart to melt in a way it never had before.

He sits for a while, simply watching the way his child slept in a quiet reverence, spellbound by the simple way his chest rose and fell. In his life, Philza has seen a lot of miracles, from the way nature bent to the whims of a God, to the evolution of humanity itself. None of it – none of it – compared to watching his newborn son sleep in his arms.

Eventually, he looks up at the scientist sitting beside him, the same one as before. They look less anxious now, perhaps relieved that he wasn’t about to sue them for what had happened or kill them all on the spot. When they speak their voice is soft.

“He’s beautiful,” they say, smiling softly.

Philza nods, not trusting himself to speak.

“I don’t want to apologise for what happened,” they go on, looking regretful. “You seem… very pleased with how it turned out. But I am truly sorry it caused you so much pain.”

He nods again, taking a short moment to formulate a response.

“Yeah, it was pretty bad. But I’m fine now. Did you get the results you needed?”

They brighten up at this, quite literally, the markings glowing for a moment until they pull theirself together. The baby in Philza’s arms mumbles at this but stays asleep.

“Yes! We got what we needed after you finished working with the watch, to be honest. If you’re still willing to work with us, we can get started working on that and send you a letter when we need you to come back in. Is that okay?”

Philza nods again and they go silent, staring at the sleeping baby.

“Do you have a name?” they say suddenly after a few minutes. “For the baby,” they clarify at his confusion.

Philza can honestly say that he has never thought of baby names in his life. The idea of him ever having a child had been ridiculous to him until five minutes ago, when it became the most important thing in his life.

He goes to answer and then pauses, having just realised something incredibly important. “I’m sorry, what if your name? I just realised I haven’t bothered to ask you.”

They laugh again at that, a little louder. “My name is Luz,” they say brightly. “And don’t worry about it. I hadn’t expected us to spend so much time talking today after all.”

He can’t help but agree with that.

Luz tells him that they can walk him to the bus stop, and Philza agrees, already deciding that he’ll just fly home instead of spending anymore time on a bus especially with a child. The night air is chilly on his skin and he holds his baby a little closer, although he stays fast asleep.

“I’m going to take that as a no,” Luz says suddenly and he turns to look at them in surprise. “You don’t have a name, do you?”

Philza sighs and slumps a little as he walks. “I don’t,” he agrees regretfully. “I don’t think I’m very good at naming children.”

Luz hums at this and gives the baby a quick look. “If you’re stuck on ideas, you can name him after my father if you want? He is a very big fan of you, it would make his day!”

He shrugs loosely and they take it as a sign to go on.

“His name is Wilbur, he’s human.”

“Wilbur, huh?”

Philza stops walking and unsheathes his wings, making Luz jump back in shock. He gives his son one last look, a gentle smile on his face as he tries the name out in his mind.

“I like it,” he smiles and takes flight.

Chapter Text

The first thing does when he gets home is build a crib for his son. After this, he takes his son to town and buys some baby supplies for him. The shopkeepers coo at Wilbur and Wilbur babbles back, making Philza’s heart swell. He gets the room set up later that day and spends the entire night awake, watching the baby sleep.

By the time Wilbur says his first word (daddy), Philza is already planning on adding an extension to his home. He can’t expect his son to sleep in the room with him forever, after all. By the time Wilbur takes his first steps, the room is built and sits empty, waiting for its new occupant. For Wilbur’s first birthday, Philza helps him move into the new room (he loves it).

After this, they settle into a new pattern. Wilbur wakes up early and drags Philza out of bed. They eat breakfast together, Philza still half-asleep and Wilbur already bursting with energy, spewing crumbs all over the table as he talks and sings. After that, Philza says inside to clean up while Wilbur plays outside with the dogs for a few hours, laughing so loud his father can hear him from outside. Then, they eat lunch together and work on the farm for a few hours, before going inside as the sun begins to set and watching TV for a few hours. Wilbur falls asleep on Philza’s arm and is carried off to bed before nine. Sometimes they go into town together, or a visitor stops by, but aside from that they live in peace for a while.

The sun rises and sets over the distant mountains everyday. The seasons come and go, from the blistering heat of summer to the freezing winds of winter. Wilbur grows from a baby, into a toddler, and then a child. Philza doesn’t change at all.

Life goes on like this without interruptions until Wilbur is six years old. It is a scorching day and he plays outside while Philza relaxes indoors, content to let his son have his fun. The TV is playing an old movie about a village driven to ruin through their own paranoia and fear, the volume turned down so low he can barely hear what’s being said. His eyes slip shut, only for him to force them back awake when Wilbur shrieks from outside. He waits for a moment to make sure he isn’t being hurt, only relaxing when he laughs again.

Philza sleeps like the dead. He can’t even keep track of the amount of times he has woken up in the morning to find Wilbur curled up in the bed beside him, furious with his father for sleeping through whatever nightmare had tormented the brunette out of his own bed, or found out there had been a massive storm overnight. If Wilbur had told him where he was going, or made any noise at all, Philza had slept through it.

When he wakes up, the air is cool. The sun is slowly setting in the distance, colouring everything pink and blue. It is quiet. Much too quiet.

Philza blinks slowly at the ceiling, taking a moment to get his bearings. Although he hasn’t figured it out yet, the realisation that something if off tickles at the edge of his mind. He gets up and stretches, feeling his brain finally start to kick back into gear as he does so. He freezes, suddenly aware of how quiet it is.

“Wil?” he calls, going over to the window and looking outside. There’s no one there. Philza feels his heart beat faster in his chest, and takes a deep breath. “Wil, where are you?”

There is no response, and he clenches his fist, taking a deep breath as he does so. Panicking won’t fix anything or bring his son back. He has to stay calm. He quickly runs through what he knows: Wilbur isn’t dead, he would have felt that, so he must be somewhere around the cabin. He can’t have gone far, he isn’t tall enough for that. It isn’t dark enough for hostile mobs to spawn, so he won’t have been attacked.

He rushes out of the cabin, barely remembering to shut the door behind him, and heads straight for the stable. The horses whicker and shift uneasily as he goes in and takes them, no doubt reacting to his worry. He saddles up quickly and efficiently, still struggling to stay calm and relaxed. He’s never felt like this before, never had to deal with caring about another being so much before and has no idea how to react to it. He just wants Wilbur to be okay.

He settles his hands on the side of the horse for a second and watches as they tremble slightly, still fighting to keep his breathing under control. “I’m going to kill him,” he mumbles, laughing in his panic. He deliberately keeps his thoughts blank, too afraid to consider the possibility that he could be badly hurt.

He doesn’t manage to get on the horse before he spots something that steals the breath from his lungs. The small shed he keeps his Nether Portal in, the door left slightly open, enough for the purple light to shine out of it.

He always closed the door.

He half-falls from the horse and runs to the portal, heart pounding in his chest. No, no no no no no no no no… he barely realised he is whispering along with the desperate chanting in his head until he stumbles through the portal, the words choking as he gags on the sulphuric air of the Nether. Desperately he looks around, praying to catch a glimpse of his sons’ yellow clothes or brown hair, any kind of clue at all.

“WIL!!!” he screams, taking flight and swooping through the air, eyes raking the ground for any signs of the child. There is nothing. No footprints, no dropped loot, nothing to indicate that his son had even been here at all. He tries to remind himself that that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, this means he hasn’t been hurt either.

He flies for half an hour, doubling back and taking different paths, still frantically looking for anything. Eventually, sweat pouring from his skin and his breath rattling in his lungs, he is forced to turn back. Maybe Wilbur isn’t here at all, he decides, landing beside the portal. Maybe the Nether scared him off.

He steps back through the portal and collapses to the ground, basking in the coolness of night even as his mind races. The woods beside the cabin are dark and treacherous at night, crawling with mobs powerful enough to kill a child with ease. Wilbur, not dead yet his mind whispers, has been told numerous times to stay away from them even during the day. The possibility that someone lured his son away sinks into Philza’s brain and he stands up, suddenly overcome with fury. He’ll kill them, smite them with his divine fury. His son. His son.

The night air seems to tremble as he spreads his wings out to their fullest extent, blocking out the moonlight as he does so, marching towards the woods with holy death magic crackling in his veins. Wilburs face, innocent and beautiful, flashes through his mind and he fights the urge to scream his wrath into the sky. He doesn’t want them to know he’s coming.

Grass and plants wither and die as he walks over them, the trees greying as he passes by, a silent but deadly predator in the woods, dead set on enacting vengeance upon anyone unfortunate enough to get in his way. Mist forms in the air, turning it cold and strangely dry, any natural moisture being lost as he passes through it. The animals and mobs give him a wide berth as he passes, the air silent aside from the sounds of their terrified reactions to him. He pays them no mind, ears straining to hear anything useful.

He goes like this for another hour, carving a trail of death through the forest as he does, until he hears something. Wilbur laughs in the distance, sounding wholly unafraid and happy, and Philza comes to a halt, deathly aura already beginning to vanish. He takes a deep breath in, the first one he has taken in a few hours now and tries to calm down before he goes and gets his son. He’s safe, he’s safe, and from the sound of it, he hasn’t even been injured or scared. If Philza was a more naïve man, he would call it a miracle.

He listens carefully as the person with his son responds and tries to figure out who this person is. Their voice is familiar, yes, but it crackles with energy in a way a mortals voice never can. Carefully he reaches out until his magic brushes against the others own magic, and feels it retaliate in turn. The person falls silent and Wilbur does too, his breathing hitching in fear. Philza’s heart aches, and he steps out from behind the tree, investigation forgotten in his hurry to calm his son.

“Hello, Phil,” Chaos says, voice as easy going as it can be. He hasn’t changed at all, still long and thin in a way no mortal ever could, still dressed in very casual clothes only now coming into fashion, face still covered by his hood, revealing nothing but his glowing white pinprick eyes and wide, unchanging smile. Wilbur hangs on to his hand, staring up at Philza with a shocked expression which quickly melts into joy.

“Daddy!” he shrieks, running over to Philza and leaping into his arms. Philza sinks to the ground and catches him gratefully, burying his face in his hair. His breathing hitches and he squeezes Wilbur tighter, making him laugh and protest even as he hugs him back just as tightly.

“Where were you?” he asks, pulling back to check his son for injuries, sighing in relief when he sees Wilbur is completely unharmed. He looks up at Chaos quickly and nods, knowing the chaos god had kept his son safe. He had no idea why Dream would do this, but a favour is a favour.

Wilbur smiles again as if aware of how much trouble he is about to get into, and launches into a story about how he accidentally opened the door to the Nether Portal and went inside (“I’m really sorry Dad I was just so curious”) and met Dream (Chaos apparently) who had saved his from a Ghast, and if Philza hadn’t clutched Wilbur closer at that bit of the story, and they had went on a walk together until Wilbur had calmed down and hadn’t realised how dark it had gotten. Wilbur continues to splutter out apologises as Philza looks back up at Dream, still watching him in eerie silence. Why had he taken Wilbur? He can’t sense any bit of Dreams magic on him or any kind of evidence the Chaos God had been messing with his son in any way, so he simply gathers his son in his arms and stands up, still staring at Dream, daring him to do anything.

When he turns around, he half-expects a knife in his back. He walks quickly, even as Wilbur waves and shouts goodbyes to the man he only saw as a fun new friend. Philza walks until he is out of sight of Dream and takes flight getting back to the cabin as quickly as he could. He holds on to Wilbur’s hand while he puts the horses away and locks the door as soon as they get inside, drawing all the curtains in the house, Wilbur still at his side. They eat with all of the lights on, Wilbur a lot quieter now, no doubt reacting to how rattled his father is. After they finish eating, Philza insists that Wilbur sleeps in the room with him, something Wilbur doesn’t protest. That night as Philza lies in his bed and attempts to sleep he swears he can still feel Dreams eyes on him.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Wil, what do you want for dinner tonight?”

Philza hears Wilbur freeze behind him, the front door still open and letting in a cold breeze and waits patiently for a response. When his son doesn’t speak, he turns around and sees his very guilty looking son look back at him. Wilbur has recently had to get glasses and he looks decidedly owlish as he blinks at his father, trying to project an aura of innocence.

The winged man fully turns to face his son, hands on his hips as he does his best to project a stern, fatherly aura. Wilbur shrivels under his gaze, his pupils darting to look down at the floor as he shifts nervously.

“What have you been up to?” he asks, narrowing his eyes slightly. When Wilbur only mumbles something, still struggling to meet his father’s icy gaze, he narrows his eyes further in suspicion. “Wilbur.” he repeats, voice now coated in a layer of annoyance. “Where have you been?”

Eventually the brunette cracks and sighs like the weight of the world rests upon his tiny shoulders, and slouches as he walks over to the sofa and flops down on it. Philza follows him and sits beside him, crossing his arms as he does so to best maintain his strict parent look.

“Jus’ about…” he hears Wilbur mumble into the cushion and raises an eyebrow. Clearly something is up. His son is usually desperate to tell him everything that happened in his day, from the mundane things like seeing a cool fish swim through the lake to the moderately exciting time he saw a Pillager skulking in the woods. (This story had almost given Philza a heart attack, and he’d barely been able to stay patient long enough to settle Wilbur at home before he went out into the woods to kill the marauders.) But this guilty demeanour and reluctance to speak was new – and very suspicious at that.

While his son kicked his legs against the sofa – only occasionally hitting Philza’s shins as he did so – the God attempted to think of anything his son had been doing that would cause this. His first thought was Dream, but he quickly dismissed it. Neither he or his son had seen any trace of Dream since that incident in the woods two years ago, and Philza had been keeping an eye out for the telltale signs of chaos magic ever since. He was still unsure of what Dream had been doing in the woods that night, his thoughts flipping from ‘Dream is planning something’ to ‘Dream isn’t planning something and was just fucking with me’ to ‘in three years time Dream is going to gaslight me into thinking he was planning something’ on occasion. But plan or no plan, he was confident in the assumption that the Chaos God was not involved at all.

So what could it be?

His next thought it the Nether, and he is slower to dismiss this. Wilbur had been told numerous times to stay out of the Nether, warned about the peril the crumbling cliffs and boiling lava seas posed to even the most seasoned adventurers, along with the gold-starved inhabitants of the realm. Surely he wouldn’t be stupid enough to…

He is distracted from his thoughts just long enough to notice something interesting on his son’s shoe. A black mark stains the side of his right shoe, and even more interesting is that the mark appears to be a singe mark.

He sighs.

“So you were in the Nether,” he says flatly, fixing his son with a disappointed look that makes him flinch, even with his face still hidden. “I told you not to go in there, Wil.”

It takes a few moments for Wilbur to respond, sighing again and turning to peek at his father, wincing when he meets his very unimpressed look.

“Was just curious,” he said sulkily, squinting back with all the indignant anger an eight year old boy can muster. “Wasn’t that scary anyway.”

Philza highly doubts this, but he remains quiet in favour of quickly checking Wilbur over to make sure he doesn’t have injuries at all. By some miracle, he is completely unharmed. Aside from the mark on his shoe, there’s nothing to indicate that he so much as tripped and fell. It would be impressive, if it wasn’t so suspicious.

So many strong warriors had braved the Nether and fell victim to its dangers – from the boiling lava to the deceptively innocent looking piglins – even just walking in the wrong direction was enough to spell your doom. From brave knight seeking treasure to powerful mages seeking knowledge, the only way to survive in the Nether was to know it inside-out. Even the Gods, powerful as they may be, gave the Nether a wide berth, fearful of the threat it posed. Yet Phil’s son, barely eight years old and terrified to fight for fear he would hurt someone, had managed to come out completely unarmed? No, there was something else going on here. Something – or someone – had been there, helping his son every step of the way, but who?

Phil’s first thought was Dream, of course. How could it not be? Dream, leading Wilbur into the Nether, placating him with words of comfort and wisdom, every defeated monster only serving to endear Wilbur to him, his poor innocent son none the wiser to the schemes Dream no doubt had up his sleeve. He clenches his fists, caught so up in this horrid fantasy that he doesn’t notice the room going cold, his entire demeanour changing, becoming angrier and more terrifying, until he hears his son’s gasp.

Fuck.

Abruptly, the room returns to normal and Philza forces himself to calm down, taking deep breaths as he does so. He’s overexaggerating. He has no idea what happened in the Nether, no idea who helped his son, there’s no need to terrify him over this –

“It was a piglin.” Wilbur says quietly.

Phil stares at him for a second in confusion. “What is?”

“The person that helped me in the Nether.”

For a moment, Philza is going to as Wilbur how he knew that, but then dismisses that question in favour of several different ones. A piglin had helped him? Piglins were a brutal race, favouring gold and violence over helping a child. How could one have helped Wilbur? Why would one help Wilbur?

“He’s a kid like me,” his son pipes up while Philza struggles to comprehend this.

“I’m not even going to ask how you know that.”

“He told me.”

“He…. Okay.” Philza stands up and rubs his eyes, trying to fight off a migraine. “You know what, Wil? Why don’t we go into the Nether together and you can introduce me to this person.”

Wilbur gets up cautiously, checking to make sure his father was being serious. The two walk hand in hand to the portal, and Philza can’t help but notice the weather changing. It’s going to storm later, he thinks and can’t help but feel wary.

The Nether is as stiflingly hot as ever, and Wilbur talks about his new friend as the two walk along the netherrack path. His friends name is Technoblade, he’s a little older than Wilbur, he doesn’t have any parents and he lives by himself. Philza stays silent for all of this, conflicted over what he’s learning. While Technolade’s existence confuses him and he has no idea what to make of the child, he is at the end of the day a child. The death god can’t help but hate the idea of leaving anyone to carve out a living in the Nether, especially a child the same age as…

He looks down to Wilbur, still talking about the first time he met Technoblade, and feels so very sad for this child.

“We’re here!” Wilbur chirps suddenly, letting his fathers hand go and darting ahead to a wooden door built into a netherrack cliff.

Philza follows slowly, suddenly aware of how nerve-wracking Technoblade would find being confronted by a strange man to be and comes to a complete stop as the door opens, revealing a tiny piglin. He stares at him in shock, completely blown away by him despite Wilbur’s description. His eyes are dark and yet intelligent and thoughtful in a way he has never seen before. His clothes are shoddy, clearly made by someone who hasn’t had a lot of practice sewing before. His stance is timid, yet Philza can see that he has a lot of experience fighting from the scars on his body. He is so busy staring at him in shock that it takes him to realise that Technoblade is staring back at him in terror.

He takes another step forwards, hands outstretched to appear reassuring. “Don’t be afraid,” he begins, barely able to get those words out before the kid runs.

He’s fast. So fast that he’s on the stone path they traversed to get here before Wilbur can even speak, leaving them in the dust as Wilbur tries to follow him, yelling after him the whole while. Philza pursues him, grabbing Wilbur as he passes him and pulling him onto his back. He’s aware of how stupid it is for him to chase a terrified child through the Nether, of course, but he also doesn’t want to simply leave him to run off and get hurt, so when he sees Technoblade’s form appear ahead, still running for his life, he takes off and glides above him.

Philza and Wilbur, much more silent than he usually is, glide over the fleeing piglin, casting a shadow that causes him to look up. The scream that comes from him is terrifying. It is both the cry of a scared child and the scream of a wild animal being chased down. Technoblade continues running along the path and Philza slows down, coming up with a new path. The Nether Portal is right ahead. If he follows Technoblade then he will be able to catch him when he stops at the portal. Surely he won’t go through the portal.

They reach the portal and Philza watches as the piglin runs through it without hesitating.

Wilbur gasps and scrambles to jump onto the path, yelling something at Philza as he goes through the portal too. It takes him a second to fold his wings away and step into the purple haze, but he eventually arrives back home to a much different scene from when he left.

The storm has arrived. The sky is almost black as rain pours from the heavens, splashing Philza even as he stands inside the shed. Trees creak around him and lighting flashes overhead, illuminating his son as he crouches outside in the mud with Technoblade, who is almost lying down with his hands over his ears.

He’s afraid. More than afraid, he’s terrified. Philza can’t blame him. It’s been a long time since he’s seen a storm that bad, and that storm had killed six people. Aside from being from the Nether and most likely completely unused to rain and storms, he’s very right to fear a storm this bad. Philza leaves the shed and cautiously walks towards the two, noticing with worry that Technoblade’s shoulders shake, how he doesn’t seen to know he’s even there. Wilbur looks up at his with pleading eyes that soon change to alarm. Before Philza can ask, he feels lightning strike just behind him and whips around, watching in horror as a tree just beside the shed holding the Nether portal is struck by lightning and catches fire. The fire is quickly put out by the rain, but before it is one large branch falls off and crashes through the roof of the shed and out of view. Philza hears the Nether portla shatter from where he’s standing and winces. He can’t get back there until he fixes it. Technoblade is stranded until the storm ends.

He makes a decision.

“Wil, bring him inside,” he says firmly, jogging towards the house and opening the door, allowing the two soaked kids to walk in. The door shuts firmly behind them and he locks it quickly while they settle down on the sofa. Wilbur wraps his arms around his friend and rocks him while the piglin shakes with fear. It is a sweet sight and one that Philza feels awkward watching, so he wanders into the kitchen to make hot chocolate.

When it is done, Technoblade has calmed down but doesn’t make eye contact with him. Instead, he holds Wilbur’s hand and stares at the ground while Philza gives him his drink. He mumbles something that might be a thanks and drinks it slowly. Philza pretends he doesn’t see the way his eyes light up when he drinks it, and instead busies himself by leaving to close all the windows in the house and bar them shut.

When he comes back down he pauses on the stairs to listen in to their conversation.

“You can’t leave,” Wilbur says quietly.” The portal is broken. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

“I…” Technoblade’s voice is so quiet Philza can barely hear him. “Would he let me stay?”

“I’ll ask him,” Wilbur says firmly. Philza smiles proudly and enters the room like he heard nothing.

He claps his hands, noting the way the children turn to look at him. “So, Technoblade.” he says lightly.

“Dad,” Wilbur interrupts him “Dad, he has to stay with us. We can’t let him go out in the storm.”

Philza glances at Technoblade to gauge his reaction. He looks timid, still staring at the floor, but there is the faintest glimmer of hope in his eyes.

Wilbur eyes his father up, still clinging to Technoblade’s hand like he never wants to let go. Philza, of course, isn’t going to let such a young child wander out into a storm, but he plays along and looks out the window like he is thinking it over.

“Alright, Wil.” he says eventually, smiling as Wilbur cheers. “He can stay.”

Wilbur waves his hands in the air triumphantly, causing Technoblade to look startled as his own hand starts waving too. He’s smiling too, much more restrained than Wilbur, looking up at Philza with quiet gratitude.

“Thank you,” he says, barely audible for Wilbur’s exclamations. “Thank you so much, Phil.”

Philza raises an eyebrow at the nickname, but decides that he doesn’t need to comment on it. He’s never had a nickname before, and he can’t help but feel warm inside at it.

In the end, the storm rages on for a full week. By the end of it, Philza had fallen in love with his guest, and was ready to sign the adoption papers as soon as he can. The piglin was much more hesitant towards him in return, but slowly began trusting him more as the time progressed. The first day he tensed whenever Wilbur left the two alone in the room together and clutched his hand whenever he could. By the next week, he was able to make eye contact while having a full conversation with the man. With every passing day, Philza couldn’t help but grow fonder of the young piglin.

Eventually, the week came to an end and the sun came back. When Philza awoke and went downstairs, expecting to be alone as he usually was, he was surprised to see Technoblade curled up on the sofa, gazing out of the window at the clear skies.

“What are you doing up so early?” he said softly, quietly making his way over to sit beside the boy.

Techno sighs sadly and shrinks away from the blond man, curling up even smaller. Philza gently places a hand on his shoulder, watching in growing concern as he tenses under his caretakes touch, the God removing his hand as to not cause him any further stress.

Unable to think of anything more to say, the two sit in silence for a while and watch the rain together. It isn’t a peaceful silence, or a comfortable silence, but rather a tense and awkward one between two people with a lot to say and no desire to say anything at all.

Technoblade breaks first, turning to look Philza in the eyes. The death god can’t help but be shocked at the sadness in his eyes, so much sadness for such a young child. He opens his mouth to speak and hesitates, lips trembling as he fights back tears that are already threatening to spill. Philza hesitantly opens his arms in case Technoblade wants a hug, but the piglin curls up and scrubs his arm over his eyes violently, taking deep shuddering breaths as he does so.

“Aww, Techno,” Philza says awkwardly, cursing the way he laughs in awkward situations. “What’s wrong, mate?”

Techno looks up at him for a brief moment and loudly sucks snot back up his nose before he responds in a tiny voice, “the storm is over.”

It takes him a second to realise what this means, and it hits him like an anvil to the chest when he does catch on. The storm is over. Techno is leaving today.

“Oh.” he says simply, meeting Techno’s tearful dark eyes with icy blue eyes full of a simple sadness. Technoblade nods back.

“Oh,” he echoes.

There is so much Philza wants to say here, so much that he doesn’t even think he can say. How do you explain to an orphan who has lived his entire life alone, devoid of love, how much he has grown to care for the child over the course of a week? How do you explain how empty the house will be without him, how sad Wilbur will be to say goodbye, how much Philza wants to beg him to stay? He can see that Technoblade feels the same way, how obvious it is from the way he is acting, how quickly he has grown to love staying with them, but is the boy even able to put those feelings into words and understand them?

Let me teach you how to love, Philza thinks. You, me, Wilbur, we can be a family together. He loves you. I love you.

Instead, he says; “well, there’s no need for you to leave if you don’t want to.”

For a moment, Techno stares at him in baffled silence, hardly able to believe what he has heard. Then, his mouth slowly curves into a smile, his eyes light up with so much joy it almost hurts to witness, and he laughs for the first time as he throws himself into Philza’s waiting arms and clutches him tightly. Philza laughs back and holds him just as tightly, rocking the boy as he sobs with joy into his chest.

“Dad?” a tiny voice says from behind him.

Philza turns to see his other son there, dear sweet Wilbur looking at them in confusion and concern, and he beams, so happy he can’t contain it, grabbing Wilbur and pulling him into the hug. Wilbur yelps in surprise, but he’s smiling as he wraps his arms around them both, as Techno latches onto him and sobs “I can stay! I can stay!”, tearing up even as he asks Philza what Techno is trying to tell him.

Later on, when Philza makes breakfast, the two boys cling to each other, talking too quietly for Philza to hear. He looks at them and smiles so hard it hurts, imagines a future where the two grow up side by side, close as they can be, and he laughs again as he calls them for breakfast. He follows them outside and as he gets started on rebuilding the Nether portal, watches as Wilbur shows Techno his wings and flies around him. Techno voices his awe at this display and Wilbur beams with pride.

That night they sleep side by side, curled up together so tight Philza couldn’t separate them if he tried. He smiles fondly at them and retreats to his own bed, getting only a few hours of sleep before the problems start.

Two tiny hands shake him awake. He looks around in confusion before seeing Wilbur shaking his arm, a frown on his face as he does so.

“Wh…” he mumbles, still looking around for Techno. “Will…?”

Wilbur frowns harder and folds his arms indignantly. “Dad.” he snaps. “Dad, Techno keeps kicking me in his sleep.”

Philza stares at him for a second and then falls back asleep. He faintly hears Wilbur sigh, feels him climb into bed beside him, feels him deliberately kick Philza as he does so before he drifts back into a dreamless sleep, thankfully uninterrupted this time.

When he wakes up in the morning, Wilbur is still here. He can’t help but sigh at this, resigned to the fact that not everyday is going to be happiness and sunshine like yesterday. Siblings argue. Siblings who share a bed apparently do this.

Techno wakes up an hour later when Philza is putting the finishing touches on his new bed. This is perfect, as Philza needs to move Wilbur’s bed out of the way to fit the new bed into the room. The noise of the bed rouses Wilbur from his own sleep and he joins Techno in the hallway as they both watch in silence. Philza can’t tell what type of silence it is, but he can’t help but hate the vibes Wilbur gives him as he watches.

He finishes rearranging the beds, turns on his heels, and comes face to face with a very furious Wilbur. Shit.

“Dad!” Wilbur explodes before he can say anything. “Why did you put Techno’s bed in my room?!”

“Because it’s his room too…?” Philza responds in confusion. “I thought you knew he would be sharing with you.”

“I didn’t! I don’t want to share with him, Philza!”

Philza sighs and fights the urge to roll his eyes. Kids… He briefly glances over to Techno, who is looking at Wilbur in alarm, and feels a brief moment of appreciation for how calm he is. If only Wilbur could be more mature, the way Techno was –

“Dad!!!” Wilbur shrieks, tugging on his sleeve.

Philza jumps and glances down at him and – oh, he is pissed. His face is scrunched up in anger, almost going red, and his entire demeanour is tense, furious, like a feral kitten about to bite the hand that feeds him.

“Look, Wil…” Philza sighs, and rubs his temples briefly. He loves the kid, god, he loves his son more than anything, but sometimes Wilbur really irks him. “Techno is fine with it, I don’t see what the problem is.”

The godling rounds on Techno, pointing at him as he snaps “are you okay with this?”

Techno shrugs helplessly, looking at the ground. Wilbur sighs and turns back to Philza, his angry expression now turning to a pleading one. “Dad…” he whines.

“I told you,” Philza responds, undeterred. “Techno is fine with it. You’re the only person who has a problem with it, Wil.”

His expression breaks, shock mixed with sadness and betrayal washing across his face before he squeezes his eyes shut, fists clenched so tight they almost seem to hurt. Before Philza can say anything else, try to reason with him, he turns on his heels and storms off, the front door slamming shut a moment later.

There is a moment of silence. Philza tries to decide if he should go after Wilbur or not. While he’s sure Wilbur won’t run off and get hurt, he still wants to go find him, make sure he’s safe and well. But at the same time, he doesn’t want to leave Techno alone while he does so, and another part of him whispers that if he goes running after Wilbur, all he’ll be doing is rewarding this kind of behaviour.

“Are you going to go after him?”

When he meets Techno’s eyes – dark, intelligent, full of worry and fear – he comes to a decision. Kneeling down to his height, he gently grabs his shoulder and does his best to sound reassuring as he talks.

“I think Wil is a bit mad at me right now. Why don’t you talk to him instead?”

The piglin frowns. “Won’t he be upset at me?”

Philza is already steering him towards the door, squeezing his shoulder gently as he does so. “Nah, mate. He’s old enough to know it’s not your fault. Besides, you’ll have to talk to him and sort this out anyway.”

He hesitates only for a moment, turning to look at Philza before he darts off after his brother. Philza follows at a slower pace, stopping at the window where he can see the two talking at the lakeside. It goes well, a lot better than he’d hoped, as Wilbur skips straight past anger and instead talks to Techno, head hung low. Techno sits beside him and responds just as quietly. The two talk for a while until eventually Wilbur gets up. Philza lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and opens the door to let them both in.

“I’m still mad at you.” Wilbur says, fixing him with a dark, angry look. “But I guess I forgive you.”

With that, he runs off after Techno and the two of them dash upstairs, where he hears them playing together. From what Philza can hear, Techno is a brave hero come to slay an evil prince, played by Wilbur. While it is an odd story for two young children to write, he can’t help but smile as he hears them play together.

Time continues to pass. Wilbur picks fights with Techno and makes up with him just as quickly. Techno reads quietly by the beach while Wilbur sings at the sky and occasionally eats sand, which appears to be a new habit he’s picked on from god only knows where. The two spar together sometimes, Techno clearly holding back while Wilbur gives it everything he has, visibly frustrated to see Techno going so easy on him.

“You aren’t even trying!” Wilbur complains one night, ineffectually beating his wooden sword against Techno’s own sword. Techno effortlessly knocks him back and he hits the ground hard.

Techno is already pulling him to his feet as he answers Wilbur, pointing out how much stronger he is. Philza from where he sits on the porch and enjoys the sun, can’t help but agree. There are times when he looks into Techno’s eyes and can’t help but feel like there is something else, lurking in those dark depths. Something dangerous. Of course, Wilbur has no idea of this and neither Techno nor Philza are willing to tell him.

“Listen. Techno – Techno listen!” Wilbur yells over the top of his explanation, grabbing his ands with excitement. “Techno, Phil is right there!”

Philza looks up, meeting his gaze with a sharp look. Wilbur’s enthusiasm dies for a second, before coming back in full force as he dances with anticipation.

“I don’t get what you mean,” his brother says dully.

“Techno! Phil is watching us! He can make sure nothing bad happens!” Wilbur says gleefully.

Philza, or Phil as his son has decided to call him now, watches as comprehension spreads across Techno’s face, following by concern as he turns to Philza. Philza thinks it over for a moment. Wilbur clearly wants to spar with his brother, and he is right in saying that Philza is right there. While Techno is incredibly strong, much stronger than his own fragile son, Philza is a God who has walked a thousand men to their deaths. He can handle a simple child. Besides, it might do Techno some good to let some of his aggression out.

“Fine.” Philza says and Wilbur cheers. “I want you both to be really careful, though.”

“Okay!” Wilbur beams, and Techno echoes it.

Wilbur takes initiative and starts the fight by smacking his sword into Techno’s arm as hard as he can. From where Philza sits, intently watching the fight, he sees the skin redden from the impact. Techno doesn’t react, instead lunging forwards and forcing Wilbur to move backwards, still giggling as he does so. Wilbur stumbles, almost falling, and hits out with his sword again, attempting to catch Techno a second time.

Techno bounces back just out of Wilbur’s reach and dashes forwards towards the laughing child. Before Philza can even begin to realise what is going on, he punches Wilbur hard – enough to knock him out of the sky and to the ground. Leaping to his feet, Philza began to run towards the two. This had gone too far. Wilbur struggles back to his feet, clearly still winded from his assault but attempting to laugh, not realising Techno’s mood had changed completely.

“Tech? What are you doing…?” Wilbur asked.

Close enough to see how Techno’s eyes were now a sickening blood red, and yet far away enough that he was powerless to help, Philza can only watch in horror and fear as Techno skids to a halt behind Wilbur and runs towards him, sword held to his side and ready to attack. Before his son can even turn around, just as Philza opens his mouth to yell something – anything - the piglin Slunges, swinging his sword directly into his back with no hesitation or mercy.

Techno roars in victory, a wild and harsh sound devoid of any humanity or mercy. It is the war cry of the Blood God that echos through the air as Wilbur falls forward, blood already pooling around him. Philza falls to his knees and crawls the rest of the way forwards, single minded focused on reaching the two children before the situation got even worse.

Just as his fingertips reach Wilbur and come back bloody, Techno stabs him too, causing Philza to shriek his pain and fury back. Techno’s eyes meet his and for a moment, the wills of two Gods clash, causing thunder to roll overhead. The Blood God is strong, driving the most powerful of mortals to bloodlust and madness with his songs. These songs course through Techno’s veins always, and no times more powerfully than this. A mortal would not survive even a glimpse into Techno’s mind. Any normal God would most likely be defeated, even weakened by this.

But the Blood God sings of war and carnage. And these are always followed by Death.

Techno looks away, the humanity and innocence returning to him. When he stares back up at Philza, he is a normal child, suddenly terrified at what he has done and the power contained within him, tears already beading in the corners of his eyes. Philza gratefully holds Techno as he buries his face in his chest and heaves deep sobs that shake them both, the two beings utterly terrified by the exchange that had just occurred. There was no doubt that each one would have killed the other if they could, and this knowledge chilled them too their bones.

Yet while Techno was consumed by horror and fear, a tiny part of Philza couldn’t help but feel excited. He had spent most of his existence secluded from war and violence, trying his best to live a peaceful and quiet life. For millennia, he had told himself that he was happy to have his cottages and farms, eking out a living next to the mortals and doing his best to bring them comfort. He had never really had anything like this happen before, felt true adrenaline and bloodlust course so violently through his veins any slightest movement could have brought him to murder.

While Philza had never heard anyone say it before, it was a well-known fact that the Gods were more violent and chaotic than the mortals, and Philza wasn’t foolish enough to believe he was an exception. He had always done his best to remain in control of this, to stay calm and collected and peaceful, but as he looked at the boy he had almost killed, he couldn’t help but consider the possibility that maybe he didn’t want to keep doing that.

You’ve been alive for a very long time, Philza Minecraft, the Blood God croons in his ear. God to God, I think that maybe it’s time you have a little fun.

He can’t find it in him to disagree.

Chapter Text

Eventually, Philza remembers his other son, bleeding out on the ground beside the two. Guilt hits him, so hard he falls back, knocking Techno to the ground as he does, already looking around frantically for Wilbur. There is a trail of blood beside him and he turns slowly to see Wilbur desperately trying to crawl up the steps into their home, whining in pain as he does so.

Fuck.

Fuck.

“Techno, stay there,” he orders, getting to his feet and running towards Wilbur, who has flopped to the ground, apparently given up on making it inside. Before he picks his son up, he checks to see how bad the injury is and swallows back nausea at the sight of his sons wings. One of them is hanging on by a sliver of bone and skin, flopping limply against Wilbur’s back as he breaths lightly. His black feathers are torn and bloodied, the growing pool of blood around him covered in a fine layer of black featherdown. The other wing is much worse. Techno’s sword hadn’t gone all the way through, so it is still attached, but Philza knows all this means is that he will have to remove it himself. The skin has been torn where the blade hit, exposing the bone, and from where he is hovering over his sons body he can see smaller shards of bone tearing through the skin. There is no saving this.

Wilbur doesn’t respond when Philza picks him up, gentle as he can be, holding him against his chest so he doesn’t touch his wings. He fights back fear at the lack of response and does his best to remain calm and in control. The last thing any of his sons need is for him to start panicking. With one last glance at Techno, still sitting on the ground and staring at the blood in frozen horror, he walks inside as quickly as he can.

“Okay Wil,” he murmurs to the unconscious boy as he lays him down on the sofa (stomach down of course). “You’re going to hate me for this, but I promise it’s for your own good.”

He has to cut his sons sweater off, the pale yellow wool already a deep brown from the blood, and drops it on the ground, leaning in to look at the wounds closer. He has a plan, but he will need to be extremely careful about it, and he can’t help but feel a pit form in his stomach. If he fucks this up… Wilbur will die. Technoblade will never forgive himself. Philza has no idea what he would do if he failed to save Wilbur here, if he would even be able to pull himself out of the ocean of grief that would no doubt submerge him.

These thoughts still itching in his brain, he extends his shaking hands and gently grabs Wilbur’s wings, right over the injury. He winces at the terrible sensation of blood coating his hands – his own sons blood – at the way the torn skin brushes against his palms, the tiny pieces of fragmented bones dig into his skin and hurt – before he pushes it from his mind. He has to focus.

“I love you so much,” he says to his son. “If I fuck this up, I’m so sorry.”

And with that, he begins.

Wilbur’s life force clings tightly to his skin, a vibrant purple coat that brightens and dims as he breaths, constantly moving where he moves and growing weaker as he bleeds out. Philza closes his eyes and Sees it, the way it delicately wraps around the individual strands of his hair, the tiniest bone shards in his wings, the grooves in his fingernails. It takes his breath away as he closes his eyes and Sees it, reaching out not with his hands, but with his divine soul, until the energy itself warms him from the inside.

It is frail in his hands, tissue paper glued to paper, and yet also steel welded to Wilbur’s bones, as he gently tugs it away from Wilbur’s damaged wings. It does not go easy, but he slowly reaches incorporeal hands underneath the energy and peels it away from the mess of broken feathers and skin and bone, settling it down on his back like there had never been wings there at all. Wilbur whines the entire time, horribly aware of the sensation of having the fabric of your life toyed with, and Philza forces himself to concentrate on his work.

When he is finished, he opens his eyes to see the effect his actions have caused. Wilbur’s wings are rotting away, skin and feathers falling to the floor in aged clumps, muscle and sinew retreating along the bones and withering away in turn. The bones curl in on themself, yellowing with age as flakes fall to the ground, before they eventually collapse into clouds of dust that fall to the floor, mixing with the rotted remains of blood and skin and meat that litters the ground. With a flap of his wings, he dispels it, turning the shredded remains of his sons wings to dust that coats the rest of the room.

Making a mental note to clean the entire room later, he looks down at Wilbur who is still unconscious on the floor. Now that Philza has finished playing with the very essence of his being, he is peaceful. He would appear to be sleeping if it weren’t for the blood staining his skin. He leans over and examines the remaining evidence of Wilbur’s wings – of his injury – and tries to ignore the guilt weighing his heart down. He had to do it. Wilbur would have had to get his wings amputated, the damage was too much for him to survive, and there was no way to get him to a hospital in time. His son would understand. If given the chance between dying with wings and living without them, Wilbur would choose the latter.

There are two tiny stumps on his back, already grown over. They look completely natural, like two tiny extensions to his collar bones. They look like he had never had wings before. Philza sits back on his heels and scoops Wilbur into his arms, a sudden tightness in his throat as he carries his son into the bathroom, so he can clean him up. Wilbur has never looked like him at all – his hair is dark and fluffy while Philza’s is blond and neat, Wilbur is tall, even for a child while Philza is a regular height (or short for a God as some might say) – the wings were the only thing they had in common, the proof that they were related no one could deny.

And now they’re gone.

He glances out of the window at Technoblade, still hunched in the dirt with his head in his arms, and sighs, suddenly at a loss for what to do. How will Wilbur feel about Technoblade when he wakes up? Will he even be able to live beside him, love him the way he did before? How will Technoblade even be able to look Wilbur in the eyes knowing what he did? What he took from Wilbur? How is he even supposed to raise them together now?

The god opens the bathroom door, sits his unconscious son on the floor and feels all his eons at once as he slowly scrubs the dried blood from Wilbur’s back.

And what about him? He chose Technoblade over Wilbur, he embraced Technoblade while Wilbur lay dying beside them, barely even remembering he had a second son. He thinks of Wilbur dragging himself to the door, forgotten by his only family, barely able to drag himself through the door, and sobs.

“Shit,” he laughs while a tear rolls down his cheek. “This is so fucking scuffed, huh Wil?”

Wilbur doesn’t answer.

Eventually, Wilbur is clean. Philza dresses him in clean clothes and lays him on his side, kissing him on the head and promising to do better. He puts different clothes on, and throws the bloodstained outfits into the fire, watching them burn for a moment before he heads outside to Technoblade. He’s left the piglin waiting for long enough, he has to do better for his children now.

“Hey, Tech,” he begins, looking around for him.

Technoblade is not there. The ground is disturbed from where the boys are fighting. The cow’s wicker in their pen. The grass is stained with blood.

Technoblade is gone.

“Fuck,” Philza says, already sprinting to the Nether portal, ready to throw himself in and find Techno. “Techno!” he yells, reaching out to open the door, freezing when he realises that it’s still locked. Technoblade hasn’t been here.

He turns wildly to the woods, taking off as he flies over the trees, eyes raking the ground as he looks desperately for a glimpse of pink, please, please he can’t loose Technoblade, his son, his baby, please, only to see the familiar shapes of the monsters that roam the woods instead. Monsters that could have easily killed a young child, terrified by what he had just done –

His breath hitches at the thought. Technoblade, too horrified at his actions to fight back as any number of creatures attack him, hurt so badly he can’t escape, waiting for Philza to save him, for anyone to help.

He swoops lower, circling around the woods as he begins to call his sons name.

“Technoblade!” he screams, voice cracking with the force of his worry. “Please!”

There is no answer, but the distant hiss of a spider and he bites back a sob. First Wilbur being injured and having to lose his wings, now Technoblade running off in guilt and fear – he’s really fucked his sons up. How could this have gone so wrong?

He circles around again, still looking as best as he can, ignoring the knot of fear and sadness in his chest, the whispering in his brain reminding him that he fucked up, that he failed his sons, his boys, his babies…

When the sun starts to rise over the horizon, he has to go home. He’s found nothing, and he can’t abandon Wilbur to keep looking. As he flies back home, he can’t help but sob quietly. No one hears it.

“Dad?” Wilbur shrieks when Philza walks through the door, tackling his father into a hug and sobbing into his chest.

He puts a hand on his sons shoulders, eyes drawn to the empty space where his wings used to be, a constant damning reminder of his failure, and sighs. Wilbur says something to him, a slurred mess of tears and snot that Philza can’t understand, shaking when his father kneels down to look him in the eyes.

“Hey, bud.” Philza says sadly, shooting him a small smile.

Wilbur snorts and wipes his eyes. “I w-woke up and you were gone!” he wails, grabbing Philza’s hand and hanging onto it. “And – and my wings! And Technoblade attacked me and – and you didn’t even care!”

Shit.

Philza pulls Wilbur in for another hug, stroking his hair as he hums soothingly to him, letting his child cry until he calms down. Eventually, Wilbur’s sobs slow to occasional sniffles and whimpers as Philza slowly lets him go, holding his hand while Wilbur dries his eyes.

“Wil, I’m sorry,” he says softly, leading the boy to the sofa. Wilbur sits down in the gentle way you have to with wings on instinct and Philza’s throat tightens as he sits beside him. “Your wings were so badly injured, there was no way to save them. I had to amputate them while you were unconscious, it was the only way to save you.”

His son thinks this over, looking at his hands thoughtfully. “You could have healed me,” he says, voice hollow. “Don’t we have healing potions?”

“We ran out,” Philza whispers, voice wracked with guilt. “I’m so sorry, Wil. I should have realised.”

His son, his sweet boy, nods, accepting the apology. An apology for forgetting to have potions in case anything went wrong, for not being prepared enough before he let the boys fight. Or at least that’s what Wilbur assumed Philza was apologising for. He had no way of knowing that what Philza was really apologising for, which was for forgetting about the healing potions stashed away in a cabinet out of the way, for lying to his son so Wilbur wouldn’t be upset. As Wilbur mulls this over, hesitation and confusion in his eyes, Philza feels a horrible guilt eat away at his soul, dark and murky and impossible to shake off.

Wilbur’s injury. Techno’s disappearance. Lying to his son.

He is a terrible father.

“So, you say your son is a piglin,” the police officer asks doubtfully, gazing at Philza’s wings with a skeptical eye.

Philza grits his eyes and ruffles his feathers in irritation. He doesn’t believe him. Technoblade is out there, lost, possibly injured and alone, and this poor excuse of an officer won’t even entertain the idea of a piglin child? He has seen the way this man eyes his wings, the distaste that drains away whenever he turns to Wilbur, now able to pass as a regular human without his wings.

“Yes,” he repeats himself, fists clenched tight enough to hurt. “He is my son, and he is missing. I am asking you, an officer of the law, to find him.”

There is a moment of silence while the two make eye contact. The officer is disbelieving, sarcastic, jaded in his emotions. Philza is almost shaking, both in his rage and the effort it takes to hold himself back. It would be very easy for him to explode, terrify the mortal into doing his job with a display of divine power, or to simply let the room grow cold, his eyes too bright, teeth too sharp, just enough to signal something’s wrong! but he resists.

Eventually, the man blinks and looks away. “Sure,” he says calmly. “I’ll alert the boys and we’ll have a look around and see if we can find anything. Don’t get your hopes up, all I’m saying.” He finishes with a shrug, as if he isn’t talking about Philza’s son.

Philza escorts him to the door, tense with rage. Fuck this man. Fuck his ignorance. Fuck his bigotry. When the man steps outside and turns to say one last thing to Philza, he slams the door in his face, the furious fire in his chest ebbing slightly as he yelps loudly.

He stalks up the stairs to Wilbur’s room, sighing as he sees his son curled up on his bed.

“Hey, dude,” he whispers, coming in to sit beside him. “You alright?”

Wilbur hums, eyes on the duvet as he traces tiny circles in it with one finger. “Dad?” he says softly.

“Yeah?”

“Is it my fault Techno ran away? If I hadn’t fought him, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt…”

Philza opens his mouth. He wants to tell Wilbur that it isn’t his fault, that it was just a horrible series of events, or his own fault for being a irresponsible parent. He wants to find the right words to make Wilbur smile and laugh, to fly like the used to before. He wants his sons in his arms where he can keep them safe, loved and happy.

But there is another part of him that is furious at everything and everyone, from the rude officer to both of his sons, who wants to see everyone around him hurt until he has cut his own pain down and doled it out to whoever he can. And so he stays silent, and when Wilbur sobs quietly to himself, Philza pretends he didn’t hear it.

Chapter Text

“Wil, are you ready to go?”

It takes Wilbur a long second to respond to his father’s question. He is staring blankly at their old home, with a distant look in his eyes, a thousand questions Philza can’t even begin to read flickering through them, before he blinks slowly and turns to his dad.

“Wil,” Philza repeats, nudging him lightly on the shoulder with his free hand. “I asked if you were ready to go.”

“I-“ Wilbur stops, glancing back uncertainly before droping his gaze to the ground. One foot lightly kicking at the grass, hands fidgeting at his side, he shoots a quick glance at his father before looking away. “I guess I’m a bit sad. To – to leave.” He looks at Philza again. Philza has no idea what his expression means. “Is that dumb?”

“No,” he responds quickly and turns to follow Wilbur’s gaze up to their old home. Empty of life, windows boarded up and doors locked forever, it reminds him of a corpse abandoned in the forest to rot away and be reclaimed by nature before anyone notices it exists. At this thought, his heart aches with a quiet and sad sentiment that he quickly shakes it off, reaching out to take his son’s hand in his own. “Wil, you’ve lived here your whole life. I’d honestly be more surprised if you weren’t sad to leave.”

He glances down at Wilbur once more and sees him open his mouth to speak, closing it again with a furrowed brow. Ignoring the irritation he feels at the tiny movement, Philza instead opts to give his son a patient look and wait for him to speak. Wilbur spends a moment simply thinking to himself, eyebrows furrowing more as he chews on his lips with teeth too sharp to be purely human. Philza has noticed that ever since Wilbur lost his wings, he has started growing hybrid features that he had never had before (he thinks, at least). A light dusting of russet fur on the points of his ears, the beforementioned sharp canines, Philza even swore he saw a tiny fox tail sticking out of Wilbur’s spine one, just before Wilbur had slammed the door in his face.

He has no idea what to make of it. Philza has the appearance of a bird hybrid, with his wings and feathered ears, yes, but it would be ridiculous (in his opinion) to call him a bird hybrid when he isn’t even human at all. When Wilbur had been born with his tiny wings and nothing else, he had assumed that his son was the same.  But now he can’t help but wonder that maybe Wilbur is just a fox hybrid who used to have wings, as if said wings had been supressing his real self. Maybe Wilbur wasn’t even related to him at all. Perhaps those wings were the only shared genes they had, in some strange and divine way, and without them Wilbur is a child with no biological parents of his own, his DNA struggling to reconstitute his nothing genes into something useful.

Or maybe he’s thinking too much into it. That is also a possibility.

“Dad,” his child complains, tugging his hand impatiently and shooting him a cheeky smile when Philza glares playfully at him. “Dad, are you sad to leave too?”

Philza doesn’t answer, instead dropping to his knees and allowing Wilbur to clamber onto his back, tuck himself snuggly between his two wings as he considers the question. Is he sad to leave? He’s lived in this house for years, raised a child here, lost a child here. He is familiar with the surrounding land and sea in a way he’s never felt before, had truly felt like this was a place he could call home. So yes, his first instinct is to say he is sad to leave, and will miss this house dearly, and yet… Another part of him is glad to go. In a way, he is overjoyed to say goodbye to the home he experienced so much sorrow and pain it, even if there was joy to balance it out.

He thinks of poor Technoblade, the son he lost due to his own foolish mistakes and feels grief tighten around his lungs and slide into his stomach. It’s been four years. Technoblade, if he’s even still alive, is twelve years old now. He’s probably moved on now, to a better and happier life full of the things Philza could never give him. He’s probably never thought about the family he’d left behind.

His breath shudders in his chest for a moment and he feels Wilbur knock his head against Philza’s own in a quiet recognition of the grief the two share. Rather than speak and ruin the moment Philza instead spreads his wings and takes flight away from the place he lived in for so many years. There’s a metaphor here, he thinks, but for the life of him he can’t puzzle out what it means.

His heart aches one last time as the tiny house disappears and Philza lets out a deep sight, grounding himself in the warmth of his child against his back. When he breaths out he imagines ridding himself of all the depressing emotions, leaving nothing but happy memories, tinted yellow with age and sweetness.

There’s no use in thinking of that now. Technoblade is gone. Even if he ever returns to their old home, he won’t find anything other than a husk of worn-down furniture and whatever scraps the two left didn’t take.

“Dad,” Wilbur whispers, a tremble in his soft voice. “Do you think Technoblade will go back and try to find us?”

Oh, Wil…

He swallows, carefully thinking before he replies. He doesn’t want to make Wilbur think that Technoblade hates them or make him worry that Technoblade will return home and miss them either.

“I don’t know?” he begins. “I think… I think Techno will have moved on, Wil. After all, he left because of something really serious, yeah? I think that it’s possible he won’t try to find us.” When he hears Wilbur inhale sharply, he quickly goes on, panic making him talk faster. “Not because he hates us, of course. He probably feels really guilty, or he’s scared he might hurt us if we meet.”

There is a lull in the conversation as Wilbur shifts slightly.

“I… I think I want him to feel guilty, Dad,” he whispers. “Is that bad?”

Taken aback, Philza slows down, simply drifting on a wind current instead of flying. Regretfull, the two had never discussed how they felt about Technoblade leaving, nor the incident that had claimed Wilbur’s wings. Truthfully, he had always imagined Wilbur had forgiven Technoblade years ago. He had no idea his son felt like this at all and can’t help but feel slightly distressed at this. Fuck, he was a terrible father.

“I think it’s a bit bad, yeah,” he admits, head hanging low as they pick up speed. “Like I – I get why you feel that way, I really do, but I think it’s a little bit fucked up.”

Wilbur hums and Philza has no idea what he’s feeling. Panicking he goes on, hands gesturing wildly in his panic.

“I’m not saying you’re a bad person or anything, I’m really not! I’m sure that there’s a church somewhere that says it’s cool to be mad at him, after all he did take your wings…”

“What church?” Wilbur asks despondently. He laughs slightly, the sound paradoxically miserable. “The Church of Prime?”

“The Ch- who the fuck even is Prime?” Philza laughs, distracted momentarily. “Wil, do you have any idea who the Church of Prime even worship? Is this some new god that showed up and no one told me?”

His son shrugs in response, making a little noise a few seconds later when he remembers his father can’t see him before falling into silence. Philza chuckles quietly, lost in his memories of how baffled he was the first time he’d heard of the Church of Prime. It just made no sense! There is no god named Prime, or at least there’s no god with that name that any of the other Gods know of, and if this God has his own church, then surely someone would have seen them before, right? The church website (yes, he’d checked) was frustratingly vague on the specific details of the church, talking about rebirth and revival instead of anything useful.

He sighs until his laughter dies out, focusing on the long flight ahead of him. Hopefully by the time the sun sets he’ll be somewhere suitable for them to spend the night. He doesn’t fancy the idea of flying through the night, it would be so very easy for them to get lost or even injured by some wayward hostile mob.

Luckily, they come across a tiny village tucked away in the shadow of a mountain just as watery yellow streaks start to spread across the sky. Philza lands just outside the village and leaves Wilbur there while he goes to finds a place for them to spend the night, promising to return soon when Wilbur protests. The village is sparsely populated, with only a few residents and even fewer homes and it takes him a lot of convincing before one of the villagers fixes him with a glare in their beady eyes and gestures for him to follow them into an empty home just beside a large gorge.

Wilbur, when Philza comes back for him and guides him into their temporary accommodations, is less than thrilled about it, complaining emphatically while the two settle down for the night. First the house is too dark, then it’s too small, with his last grievance he airs as Philza pulls the duvet over him (resisting the urge to wring it around his neck) is that it “smells funny”, whatever that even means. He falls asleep quickly though, and Philza watches the village outside the window from a tiny, uncomfortable, and dusty armachair as the villagers turn in for the night, the town quickly overtaken by mobs soon after. When it is too dark outside for him to see anything and his eyes are growing heavy, Philza changes into his sleepwear, climbing into bed beside Wilbur even as his son mumbles in his sleep and weakly shoves him away. His eyes slide shut thankfully as wrapping a wing around Wilbur, falling into a sleep before he can even register the blackness lurking behind his eyelids.

When he finally wakes up, the sun has already risen high enough to shine through the windows. Philza sits up and rubs his eyes, giving his wings a long stretch to wake them up. Wilbur is already awake and ready to go, sitting on the floor and humming to himself while he draws shapes on an especially dirty patch of wood.

“Don’t do that, Wil,” Philza says as he gets out of bed, stumbling over to the window so he can check on the village. “You’ll get your hands all dirty.”

Wilbur doesn’t respond, instead following his father to the window and gazing outside with him. It is a sunny day today; the village is now bustling with life in an admittedly still very lifeless way. One villager tends to the tiny farm, digging potatoes out the ground and chatting away to another who is simply sitting and basking in the sun. A few kids are playing together just outside the small circle of houses, yelling and laughing together. It is peaceful, Philza thinks to himself. Quiet. His gaze slides to Wilbur, now staring at the playing children with hunched shoulders and unabashed longing in his face.

“You know, when we get settled down in our new home, you’ll be able to play like that too,” he remarks, resting his arm on the window sill and closing his eyes against the light of the sun.

“Dad, I’m twelve,” his son responds with a scoff. “I’m too old to be playing like a kid!”

He bites back a grin, shooting Wilbur a sly look that makes Wilbur glare back, a smile playing on the corners of his mouth.

Philza wraps a wing around his boy and pulls him a bit closer, dragging a hand through Wilbur’s hair affectionately. Wilbur leans into his touch and Philza feels his smile soften out into fondness. What a good kid he has. What a wonderful son Wilbur is, he thinks and squeezes him a little tighter, leaning down to kiss him on the head.

“Love you,” Philza hums into soft brown curls, feeling a warmth in his chest when Wilbur echoes the sentiment back to him, a shy note to his voice.

“Now get out so I can get changed in peace.”

After Philza gets dressed and they have a quick meal of soup under the warm sun, they take off. Wilbur is once again perched on his father’s back as they fly away from the village, past the edge of the forest. Beyond the forest lies a desert, the sun baking the sand underneath it. Unfortunately for the two of them, the desert is huge (Philza suspects it’ll take them a few days to travel it), and the soon find themselves sweating profusely under the heat. Wilbur pours water over Philza to “cool him down” and Philza kicks him off his back and makes him walk for a bit. The exercise will do him good, anyway, is his excuse when Wilbur whines.

They carry on like this for a few, Wilbur complaining about the heat while Philza walks beside him to give his poor wings a break from flying. The desert is monotonous in appearance and indescribably boring to walk through. Even when they pass what appears to be an abandoned village rotting away in a pile of old wood and rubble, with strange red marks covering what remained of the buildings they are too exhausted and bored to want to get any closer and so they continue.

Hours pass. Philza takes to staring at the sky as the sun begins its slow march under the horizon, judging when they should build a shelter and camp for the night. Wilbur runs on ahead, somehow invigorated by the slight drop in temperature, singing to himself as he goes. The song is nonsense, barely anything more than him humming random notes and pairing it with words, but it brings a smile to Philza’s face all the same. He is strangely sentimental today, he notes.

Deciding that it was dark enough to stop for the night yet light enough to buy them time to set up a tent, Philza opens his mouth to call for Wilbur when they both see it. Sitting just ahead of them in the sand is a battered cardboard box, decently sized and taped over. Philza takes a step closer, calling for Wilbur to start setting the tent up while he looks. He can sense something alive in the box, a tiny heartbeat just barely setting off some sixth sense he has, and he’d be damned if he’s going to leave some poor animal to suffocate in a box all night.

“Dad?” Wilbur calls, a note of confusion in his voice. He is sitting down, squinting at the instructions despite the torch he’s using to see it. “Dad, what do you think is in the box?”

“I don’t know,” he responds, inching closer as the box twitches slightly. It’s listening to him then and appears frightened by his yelling. He lowers his voice to a normal speaking tone. “I think it’s an animal?”

“That’s so sad!” his son exclaims, lowering his own voice in turn. “Can we keep it, then?”

Now close enough to touch the box, Philza is sure to keep his voice level as he stretches one hand out. “Depends,” he breaths. “If it can’t survive in the desert we can.”

That said, he uses one nail to rip the box open, gingerly lifting the lid and bracing himself for what he’s about to come face to face with. A wolf? A cat? A hostile mob about to attack him? These possibilities flash through his mind as he lifts the lid before he registers what is inside, mind going blank in his shock.

“Dad? Dad, what is it?”

He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t hear Wilbur or comprehend anything at all. Even moving his eyes to look at his son would be too much for him right now. His entire world has fallen away from him in his shock, leaving nothing but him and the large, terrified eyes of the creature huddled inside the box.

A child.