Chapter Text
Some people said that Phil overprepared. In fact, that's what most people said in the small village he had moved to. He overprepared, he was paranoid, he would never need as many supplies as he seemed to think. Phil disagreed; after so long avoiding death, and so long on his own, he had learned the value of being ready for any eventuality. And that mindset is what drove him to the Nether for potion supplies.
This was far from his first trip to the fiery landscape while he'd lived here. Phil already had a small Nether wart farm and a decent amount of blaze powder, but he needed ghast tears and magma cream. Just in case.
He made sure he was wearing his gold boots and that he had all of his gear: sword, bow, shield, potions, armor, food. He should be set. Nodding to himself, Phil stepped into the swirling purple mist of the Nether portal.
It was always uncomfortable going to the Nether; Phil held his breath, knowing that inhaling would feel like breathing in fire, feeling warmth crackle against his skin in a way that was almost painful but not quite. Then he was through, and the purple of the portal gave way to the bright red of a crimson forest.
Phil's hunt started off well. He managed to find a magma cube in fairly short order, which gave him a fair amount of magma cream, and he picked off two ghasts, which dropped a tear each.
He was fairly familiar with the Nether at this point. He knew what dangers it held and how to deal with them, or better, how to avoid them. Of course, he knew better than to let his guard down, but he felt fairly confident in his ability to handle anything he may encounter.
As it turned out, the Nether could still surprise him.
He was skirting a bastion when he first saw it: a flash of pink, darting between two rocks. Red was a typical color in this realm, but pink was unusual. Phil paused and watched for a moment, but when nothing else appeared, he cautiously moved on. Getting distracted by something unusual for too long in the Nether was a death sentence, and though respawning was possible on this server, Phil had lived too long in a hardcore world to shake the habits that came with it.
He saw it again, though, a few minutes later. A small flash of pink, there and gone again. If he hadn't been looking for it, he wouldn't have seen it. What was it?
"Hello?" Phil called cautiously, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword.
The area near him grew almost unbearably still. There was no movement, no sound. Just Phil and the gentle popping of lava from somewhere nearby.
Then, silent and swift, the little pink blur darted over a nearby rock, and Phil barely had enough time to draw his sword before it was on him and blades clashed.
It was a child, Phil realized in gut-wrenching horror, a pink-haired child wielding a chipped and broken golden sword with practiced ease, a child with hatred in their eyes and a piglin's ears. They snarled, and Phil got a good look at their tusks, still tiny, still small enough to be hidden in their mouth. A hybrid. Phil's heart plummeted into his boots; he was well-acquainted with how cruel humans could be toward those deemed to be other.
Almost instinctively, Phil's wings, which had until this point been folded neatly against his back, opened to their full width and beat once.
The child stumbled back in shock, and Phil used the opportunity to take several steps back and sheathe his sword, holding his hands up to show he was unarmed.
"It's okay, mate," he said softly, trying not to upset them. "I'm sorry I startled you."
Ears flicking uneasily, the child tightened their grip on the sword. They did not back down, but they also didn't attack, which was a relief. They had the stance of a seasoned fighter, and Phil's heart ached to see it. They were so small, they were so young, no child should have a stance like that. No child should wield a sword so easily and so well.
Moving slowly, telegraphing his movements as clearly as he could, Phil took a golden carrot out of his inventory and set it on the ground, then backed away.
He could see how the child's attention was instantly captured as soon as they realized what the item was, and something unpleasant churned in his gut. How long had it been since they had eaten? One of the only food sources he could think of in the Nether was hoglins, and they were notoriously difficult to kill. Certainly there were no carrots in the Nether.
The child took a half-step toward him and paused, watching him intently. When he didn't move, they inched forward one cautious step at a time, their eyes never leaving him, then snatched the carrot and darted back to their original position. They turned it over in their tiny hands for a moment, then quickly began gnawing on it.
Phil watched them as they ate with frenzied desperation, like someone or something could interrupt them at any time, and they had to finish as much as they could before they were chased off. The habits of a scavenger. He had been right; this child wasn't strong enough or skilled enough to hunt for their own food. When they finished, he carefully tossed another carrot to land a few feet from them, trying to ignore how they flinched away and raised their sword.
"I'm not gonna hurt you," Phil assured them, though he had no idea if they understood him. There was no telling how long they had been here. Instead, he put his hands back up and knelt down, folding his wings back in to look as harmless as possible. "It's okay."
The child hesitated, waiting for him to move again. After a few long seconds of staying still, they picked up the other carrot and ate it too, maintaining eye contact.
"More?" Phil asked, holding up a third carrot.
No verbal response, yet again, but he saw the way the child looked at it. He tossed it to them.
Instead of eating it, the child stuffed the carrot into a small, worn-out leather pouch on their belt and darted away.
Phil watched them go, knowing exactly how they felt. He had been in their shoes once, many years ago, shunned for daring to exist. He knew what is was like to view trust as a weakness, a danger. And he knew that even if the world forgot about the child, he never would. Even if he never saw them again, he would always wonder if they were alright, if they were still surviving. At least he had helped them a little.
With a sigh, Phil stood and kept walking.
Ghasts proved scarce in this section of the Nether, though he did encounter another magma cube. There were no more flashes of pink.
Finally, after what must have been half an hour of wandering, he spotted a ghast. It shrieked, a horrible, ear-splitting cry, and shot a fireball - but not at Phil. Its target was a small outcropping of netherrack several yards back, and Phil couldn't for the life of him figure out why until he saw a tiny pink blur dart out from behind it just before impact.
The child - had they been following him this whole time? - was thrown back with the force of the explosion, making a tiny squeak of pain as they hit the netherrack. After a brief moment, they forced themself to stand, wobbly and obviously in pain, one arm wrapped around their stomach. They had dropped their sword in the explosion, but they bared their tiny tusks at the ghast anyway.
The ghast screamed again.
Phil didn't even think.
One moment he was standing out in the open, several yards from the flaming crater, sword in hand. The next, he was in front of the child, wings flared, shield braced for impact.
The fireball connected and exploded, but the wood hummed with enchantments, and Phil and the child were unaffected by the blast. The instant the coast was clear, Phil dropped the shield and pulled out his bow, taking aim and firing with the ease of long practice.
The ghast went down in one shot.
Phil glanced down to see that the ghast had been above lava, sighed in disappointment, then turned to the child.
They growled at him, back pressed against the netherrack. He was shocked they hadn't bolted yet.
Phil put his bow away and pulled in his wings, carefully kneeling down. "You alright, mate?"
Obviously, the answer was no. They were terrified and in pain and he was a clear threat. But asking made him feel better, and even if the child couldn't understand the words, his soft tone seemed to assure them he wasn't about to attack, because the growling slowly stopped. Their ears gradually began to relax from where they had laid flat against the child's head.
"I won't hurt you, I promise," Phil continued. "It's alright."
Another ghast cried out in the distance, and the child's ears flattened again as they pressed themself further against the netherrack, snarling not in anger, but in fear.
Phil glanced over his shoulder. He could only barely see the ghast, but it did seem to be coming closer. "Okay, it's alright, we're safe for the moment, but we need to move, alright?"
The child stopped snarling, but didn't move.
Okay. Time to improvise a little. Phil picked up his shield and held it in the ghast's direction, then turned back to the child and beckoned to them, keeping the shield up.
Luckily, that seemed to do the trick. The child cautiously edged to their left, away from Phil, and Phil moved to shield them accordingly. Their confidence seemingly bolstered, they began taking larger and larger steps out of the open cavern, back the way they had come. Phil followed. He kept his shield between the ghast and the child until they were safely behind another netherrack outcropping, scooping up the child's sword as he went; only then did he put the shield back in his inventory.
The child's knees buckled, and they collapsed against the netherrack, sliding slowly to the ground with a huff of pain.
"It got you good, didn't it?" Phil muttered, kneeling down to assess the damage. Superficial burns, probably lots of bruises. Nothing irreversible.
They made a soft little snuffling sound. Phil noted happily that their ears were slowly relaxing.
Again, Phil barely needed to think. He took out a healing potion and set it down on the ground in front of the child. "Drink this, it'll help."
The child eyed it warily, drawing their legs closer to their chest and further from the suspicious glass bottle. Their gaze flicked up to Phil.
Phil mimed drinking from a glass. "Drink."
Slowly, very slowly, the child reached out and picked up the bottle. They pulled out the cork and sniffed, sneezing adorably as the strong scent of Nether wart and glistering melons hit their nose.
"Sorry about that, mate," Phil chuckled. "Healing potions aren't exactly made to taste good, they're made to be effective. Though maybe that's just me."
The child glanced between Phil and the bottle several times. Then, determination sparking in their eyes, they took a swig of the potion. They shuddered as the tingly, almost burning feeling of magic surged through them, no doubt also feeling the discomfort of damaged skin rewriting itself.
Potions weren't comfortable things. They were useful, which is why Phil made sure he always had some handy, but it didn't feel good to use them.
The child blinked in shock at their arms, which were free of burns and bruises. They took a deep breath and wriggled a little, eyes widening in surprise when neither action hurt.
"Feeling better?" Phil asked with a smile.
With only a moment of hesitation, the child took another sip of the potion. Then, they held the bottle out to Phil. "'Rin'."
Phil froze. "... What?"
"'Rin'!" the child repeated. They held out the bottle with one hand and copied Phil's 'drink' gesture with the other.
Slowly, Phil took the half-full potion bottle. "Drink?"
The child nodded.
Well, how could he say no to that? Phil drank the rest of the potion, feeling the paper cut he got that morning and a muscle he had pulled earlier right themselves.
With a firm, satisfied nod, the child stood and hurried away from their little area of sanctuary. They paused and glanced back at Phil for just a moment, then vanished behind a netherrack wall.
Phil was left sitting on the ground with an empty bottle and a mind spinning with questions. The child was smart, and learned very, very fast. They were also much kinder than Phil had anticipated, given their dangerous environment.
... How long had this child been alone?
Phil shook off the thought and stood, putting the empty bottle back in his inventory. He'd gathered enough potion ingredients for today.
The journey back to the portal was relatively uneventful; he saw a few endermen and piglins, but antagonized none of them, so they left him alone. The only real enemy he encountered was a hoglin, which he shot and killed without much difficulty.
When he reached the small stone building that shielded the portal, he ducked inside (leaving the door open) and paused for a moment, sitting down with his back against the frame of the portal.
The hum of the portal muffled any sound the child might have made, but after a few minutes, a tiny face peeked around the edge of the doorway.
Phil smiled. "Hey."
They blinked at him and didn't move.
Phil took the broken sword out of his inventory and set it on the ground in front of him, leaning forward as far as he could to set it far away before sitting back.
The child's eyes lit up and they gasped, darting forward to grab the sword. They gave it a few practice swings, and Phil realized that they were actually smiling. And they didn't back away from him.
"I haven't seen anyone else here with you," he told the child quietly, "so I think it's safe to assume you're alone."
The child didn't reply, of course. They just tilted their head slightly to one side.
Phil glanced at the portal. "You know, my house is big enough for two. I live just outside of town, so there would be no one to bother us, and I can grow you a lot of carrots if you want them. I have a lot of farmland that I've been meaning to cultivate."
The child blinked at him, making another small snuffling sound.
With a smile, Phil stood and held out his hand. "You can come with me if you want."
It suddenly seemed to register what Phil was asking, because the child's eyes darted back and forth between Phil and the portal. They gripped the hilt of their sword tighter, and their ears flattened.
Phil kept his smile gentle and his hand extended.
For a long moment, the child didn't move. Then, slowly, they inched forward and rested their hand very lightly on Phil's own, as if ready to tear it away in a heartbeat.
Phil's smile widened, and he gently led the child through the portal.
Time to go home.