Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The kingdom that Philza lived in was not technically at war. None of the surrounding lands held any love for the reigning king, but they were willing to turn a blind eye to the many injustices he permitted so as to not lose their trade agreements. After all, the kingdom had some of the most profitable mines in the land, and greed is a powerful motivator. So his crimes - the prosecution of hybrids, the use of child labor, the rampant corruption of the upper class - continued unchecked, and the citizens of the kingdom had no one to turn to for aid.

Despite there not technically being any war, the kingdom's borders were constantly under attack. There had been a growing monster problem in the southeast for years now, not to mention the near constant raids by pillagers coming from the west. There were even the rare militant factions of rebel hybrids that never missed a chance to strike back at the ruler that had all but made their existences illegal. It was utter chaos.

After an aggressive military recruiting campaign that mostly failed, the king enacted a new decree. Starting from the age of 17, those individuals showing promise would be drafted into the nation's army for a minimum of five years. Though there was immense pushback against the new law at first, it soon died down. After all, no one could deny that it was working. The country was safer than ever, and if that safety came at the expense of unwilling sacrifice, well. Sacrifices always had to be made.

It was under these circumstances that Phil was drafted into the military. He had displayed remarkable aptitude with a bow, and was too much of a proud, stupid teenager to hide his skill when recruitment season came around. He was promptly snapped up and shipped off down south, where a recent famine had only added to the hordes of reanimated corpses terrorizing the land.

For the next three years, Phil gained notoriety amongst the ranks for managing to fight through and escape combat virtually unscathed. While his comrades fell around him, he would emerge untouched and with an impressive trail of slain enemies behind him. It was a combination of luck and skill that earned him the moniker of The Survivor. 

Phil hated that name.

His luck was not to last. During a mission out to a seaside village to deal with an infestation of Drowned, his battalion was attacked by a pillager ambush. The three crossbow bolts that embedded themselves in his chest and arm were not enough to kill him, but they sent him into a coma that would leave him on the verge of death for months.

When he finally woke, wounds long since healed, he was promptly informed that he had been discharged with honors. The king himself had recognized his bravery, they said. 

He was to vacate military grounds as soon as possible, they said. 

What they didn’t say was that he had already used up enough of their resources during his long sleep, but Phil wasn’t an idiot. He could see it in their fake smiles and impatiently tapping feet.

So at the age of 20, Philza found himself a veteran of a war he had wanted no part of. He moved to a quiet, secluded village where no one bothered him too much. The solitude was nice. It gave him a chance to come to terms with the new rules of his existence; the night terrors and the wheeze in his chest from where his lung was punctured and the aching pain in his left arm whenever the weather changed. It was nice, he told himself, trying to ignore the creeping loneliness.

Not even three months later, his world changed again, this time for the better.

Phil wasn’t expecting much out of that day’s fishing trip. He certainly wasn’t expecting to find a tiny piglin hybrid, no older than 7, staring at him with distrusting eyes and clutching a chipped stone sword in bloodstained hands.

It took weeks for the boy to trust him, weeks of leaving out food and warm clothing. The child was skittish, almost feral, and only stared at Phil uncomprehendingly when he tried to talk to him. It made Phil terrified to think of what might have happened before he found him. It wasn’t until much, much later that Phil discovered that the small piglin did understand him, but he hadn’t had someone try to talk to him in so long that he’d forgotten what to do. When the child first mumbled out “Techno,” in response to Phil gently asking his name, it took all his strength to not immediately wrap the kid up in a hug.

Once Techno stopped lashing out at touch, there was plenty of time for hugging. Phil learned that the kid was 9, not 7, but his growth had been stunted by malnourishment and rough conditions. Once he started getting regular meals in him, he grew like a weed. He was a quick learner, too, soaking in all the knowledge Phil had to give eagerly and with a terrifyingly fast learning curve.

As long as they kept Techno’s piglin features covered, Phil could bring him into town when he made supply runs. The locals didn’t ask too many questions about the child Phil had mysteriously acquired, just congratulated him on his new son and moved on. Phil frantically tried to explain that Techno wasn’t his son and that he was nowhere near old enough to have a child that old, but no one seemed to listen to him. After a while, he just accepted it. It was easier that way.

It was two years later when the small family expanded again. Techno had been inside the house, reading an old book of myths for the 5th or 6th time. Phil had been out in the garden, tending to the potatoes and carrots in a peaceful silence. The silence was broken when a small figure broke through the treeline, breathing heavily and glancing backwards in fear. 

It was a boy, maybe 13 or 14, wearing ripped up clothing, a too large coat, and a dark beanie pulled low over unkempt curly hair. As he swung around to face him, Phil could see arms held tightly around his neck and a small face peeking over his shoulder. 

Phil moved towards the new arrivals, intent on making sure they were alright. Before he could do anything, however, the older boy brushed his hair away from his face, revealing a bright orange eye. The boy opened his mouth to speak and Phil’s mind went blank.

When he came back to reality, he was in his house, sitting at the table and staring into space. Techno was shaking his shoulder, pleading with him to wake up. Apparently he had been sat there unresponsive for hours, having dropped his farming tools in the dirt and walked inside in a trance after talking to the stranger.

When he asked what had happened to the two boys, Techno looked slightly guilty and just pointed to the trapdoor down to the cellar. It was currently covered by a large chest. There was muffled screeching coming from below.

He hadn’t wanted to get aggressive with the strangers, Techno promised. But when he went over to confront them about what they had done to Phil, the little one tried to bite him and the big one tried to hypnotize him and well, one thing led to another. He didn’t even hurt them, just threatened them with an axe a bit!

Phil could only sigh. He’d heard of the powers that guardian hybrids had over the mind but he never thought he would witness them firsthand. He definitely didn’t want to experience the blankness of being trapped inside himself again. Nevertheless, he waited a few hours until the annoyed shouting trailed off and made his way down into the cellar.

Now that the two boys were asleep, curled up against the bundled wheat in the corner, he could more easily identify their hybrid features. The elder’s hat had slipped off his head, revealing blue and orange fins behind his ears and patches of scales trailing down his neck. Phil suspected that he would find gills with a closer look.

The small child was even smaller upon second inspection, maybe six years old. Phil had difficulty figuring out what the kid’s second species was at first, having only slightly glowing freckles to go off of. Then he coughed slightly in his sleep, causing a few sparks to fly out of his mouth between sharpened teeth and a wave of faintly luminescent dark red to ripple across his skin. A nether-based hybridization, then. Maybe he and Techno could bond over that, Phil thought, unconsciously assuming the two would stay there.

Surprisingly, it took less time for the newcomers - Wilbur and Tommy - to decide to stay than it had taken Techno. All it really took was Phil lying to the group of soldiers that came by (yes it was just him in this house; no he hadn’t seen any dangerous hybrids; of course he would tell them if he had) for Tommy to latch onto him. Wilbur was more reluctant, but eventually he had to admit that he preferred living with Phil to being on the run constantly.

It was a strange, mismatched family, one Phil knew he could get executed for harboring, but he wouldn’t give it up for anything.

That’s why when he heard about the new crackdowns on “hostile” hybrids, he knew he had to act quickly to get his family out of danger. 

For several years now, they had been living in peace. Tommy had grown up into an absolute terror of a preteen, fully utilizing his magma cube heritage to set all his problems on fire and never quite growing out of biting people. Techno had developed a fascination with the old stories of tragic heroes over the years and between training sessions with Phil’s old military issue sword, he quietly made plans to become a scholar in one of the more tolerant of the surrounding kingdoms. He often tried to drag Wilbur into sparring with him, but Wilbur was much more interested in the guitar he had purchased from a traveling trader. He too made plans to leave home and gain fame as a musician.

And Phil was...happier. Softer around the edges. When he had been the same age as his eldest, he had also had dreams of traveling the world, but the draft and his injuries had made those dreams impossible. He found that he didn’t mind so much though. He was more than content with a quiet existence surrounded by the people he loved.

This peace was promptly shattered one hot summer as news from the capital finally made its way to the village. One of the king’s advisors had attempted to assassinate the royal, revealing himself as a hybrid sympathizer in the process. The attempt had failed, but the repercussions were felt far and wide. In a flurry of new decrees, hybrid rights shrank even further.

Phil could no longer bring the boys to the village. Even when it was just him making the trips, there was always an air of distrust around the locals. Despite all the precautions taken over the years, it was common knowledge that the family “wasn’t quite right”. All it would take was one person reporting them and it was all over.

This country was no longer safe for them. He began to plan.

He started trying to get in contact with anyone who could get them passage out of the kingdom. Although he tried to keep quiet about his efforts so as to not alarm his kids, they were nonetheless concerned about his frequent absences and uncharacteristic secrecy. The tense atmosphere that lay over the whole country seeped its way into the isolated homestead at last.

Finally, Phil was able to secure a meeting with someone who said he could smuggle them out of the borders. The meetup was three days’ ride away. He put Techno in charge, told them he would be back in a week, and left with hope in his heart. Finally, he could ensure a better life for his family.

He never even made it to the meeting.

Now, in the present, Phil kneels before a throne in a long, cold hall. The man in the throne is draped in gold and jewels and fur and silk. Phil has nothing but the prison rags they threw him in a week ago.

The king looks bored at the proceedings. “Charges,” he says softly, gesturing to the guard to Phil’s right.

The man straightens up nervously and withdraws a sheet of paper. “Harboring hybrids and colluding with terrorist forces, Your Majesty.” Phil grits his teeth in anger. He hasn’t colluded with anyone!

The king still looks exceptionally bored. He’s staring out a window, as though whatever’s out there is infinitely more interesting than the criminal before him.

The guard to Phil’s left clears his throat. “Your Majesty, uh, the three hybrids he was harboring were all hostile breeds, um, sir. A piglin, a guardian, and a magma cube.”

This grabs the ruler’s attention. “A magma cube and a guardian? Those are quite unusual.” For the first time, he properly looks at Phil, taking in the dried blood on his face, the bruises around his wrists, and the furiously defiant look on his face. “Philza… You look somewhat familiar. Have we met?”

Phil opens his mouth, most likely to swear, but the guard on his left kicks him in the side and he doubles over. “He used to be a soldier, Your Majesty,” the guard on his right says. “Says here he received some award.”

“A soldier, and now a traitor, hm?” The king has some sick delight on his face, as though this is all some performance just for him. “Well, did you catch those criminals he was hiding?”

The right guard stiffens noticeably. “We...when we got to his house it was already deserted, Your Majesty. Someone must have warned them.” Phil closes his eyes in exhausted relief. They were alright. It didn’t matter what happened to him, as long as they were alright.

The king looks disappointed, but waves his hand. “They can’t run for long. Have border security increased.” He looks out the window again. “I was under the impression guardian hybrids were extinct. It would make quite a nice addition to my court, don’t you think?”

Phil saw red. “Stay away from my sons, you motherfu-” the guard kicks him again and this time, he feels something snap.

“Your sons, eh?” The king lets out a delighted laugh. “I was planning to just execute you, Philza , but you are simply too interesting to kill. But I can’t leave you unpunished, now can I? Imagine what kind of message that would send to the people. No, your fate needs to be just as interesting as you.” He gestures to someone behind Phil. An attendant in mage’s robes steps forward. “Create a new Hardcore world. Ten year’s time.” 

The mage hurries off. Phil’s blood runs cold. The king laughs again. “If you can survive ten years, Philza, all your crimes will be pardoned. I’ll even keep your pet hybrids alive when we hunt them down, so you have some motivation to come back. Wouldn’t a reunion be nice?”

There is a sound behind him, a sibilant whisper and then a roaring rush of air and finally what sounds like the ocean but distorted and far away. Someone unlocks the manacles around his wrists and he is roughly tugged to his feet. The world spins around him, the wound on his head throbbing violently, and when it rights itself at last Phil is staring into a massive green portal. 

The last thing he sees before his world fades to green is the king, once again staring out the window, a faint smile on his face.

Techno pulls his sword from the chest of the last soldier and steps around the body. The castle is massive, and this attack lasted almost three days before they were able to gain the upper hand and make their way in. He waves a hand to his fellow rebels and they move in, checking rooms for any survivors or information.

His brother steps up beside him. “So this is the one?” Wilbur is clutching a bow in one hand. He was never the best at close combat.

“They say there’s a smaller portal in one of the lower levels. Accordin’ to reports, it should still be open. The list of active worlds should be in the same room.”

The two make their way down darkened hallways. At some point, Tommy joins up with them, bragging about how cool he was during the skirmish. Techno and Wilbur exchange long-suffering looks, knowing this wouldn’t be the last time they would hear of his so-called incredible feats today.

The only way they know they’ve found the right place is the faint green glow coming down the corridor, followed by a strange rushing sound. They pick up the pace and soon enter the portal chamber. The portal itself is smaller than the stories they’ve heard, but no less intimidating in its size. The swirling vortex of energy is almost hypnotizing and Techno finds himself moving closer to it without thinking.

This is the closest they’ve been to finding Phil in five years.

Tommy picks up an enchanted book from a pedestal and begins to leaf through it. “Crossed out means they’re dead, green means they survived their sentence, black means they’re still in there?” There are hundreds of names in the book, each followed by a length of time. The vast majority are crossed out, with only a few names in green. All the survivors had sentences of less than a year, he notices. Finally, he finds the only name still in black ink.

“He’s alive! He’s alive, and he’s still in there, we have to-”

“Tommy, you’re staying here,” Wilbur cuts in with authority. Tommy gives an indignant screech and keeps talking but Wilbur powers right over him. “Look, we don’t know what’s on the other side of the portal. It could be anything! Not to mention we need someone here to watch this side.” 

Techno is glad Wilbur is here to be the voice of reason. This is the kind of situation he’s just not equipped for. 

Tommy continues to grumble under his breath, but it’s obvious that he’s been appeased with the offer of another important job. “Yeah, well, fine , but if you’re not back in - in three days, I’m going in after you!”

Techno and Wilbur share another look. Obviously it won’t take them three days to find Phil, right? This is an acceptable compromise.

They step into the portal with fear and excitement. Finally, they can get their father back.

Finally, Phil can come home.

Chapter Text

Every morning Phil rises with the sun. 

He forces himself out of the warm bed and fixes himself a simple breakfast. He spends a quiet, peaceful few minutes watching the sky color and change over the ocean. He straps on his armor, grabs his tools, and prepares his supplies for the day’s tasks. He tends to his small farm and checks the fences for any monster damage. He sets off to work on his current project.

It’s the same routine he’s done every morning for years now.

Routine is by far the most important thing he’s learned in the long years since his banishment. Before he was sent to this world, he had always assumed that the most difficult part of Hardcore was the first few months, when you had no home, no food, and no weapons and everything was trying to kill you. And it was difficult. It was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced.

What no one had ever mentioned about Hardcore, however, was the hopelessness that sets in. Once you’ve made shelter, grown food, and become as safe as you can expect to be, what do you do then? Phil remembers weeks going on months of not being able to drag himself out of bed in the mornings, the bone-deep exhaustion of knowing he would still have to go years in this empty place. The depression turning to apathy turning to numbness. 

Without the routine keeping him going, he surely would not have survived the first year.

On day 1,839, Phil stares out at the sunrise over the sea. He’s sipping from a mug of tea - the closest he can grow to it, anyway. This world doesn’t seem to have quite the right mix of herbs available. Light floods in through the windows, bathing everything in gold and red. He idly notes that it’s colder than it has been in a while; might be time to start preparing for the change of seasons.

Still, it’s quite a nice day, and he mentally reviews his plans. More shoveling sand. The Nether won’t clear the lava by itself, after all! He drains the rest of his mug, dons his armor, and grabs his hat from by the door.

He sorts through shulker boxes as he walks out into the sunshine, making sure there’s enough space for the many tons of sand he’ll have to get in order to start the next phase of the project. His farm is fine - most of the crops have already been harvested, and the ones that remain are well tended to by the irrigation system he put in place - and nothing breached his defences overnight. Time to head to the desert, then.

A few steps off his land and the ghosts appear.

They’re not really ghosts, Phil knows this. They’re not real at all. He never expected to make it out of Hardcore unscathed, even if he did manage to make it to the end of ten years. No one can spend all that time alone and not come out of it changed.

There’s no consistency to the images his mind tries to trick him into believing. Sometimes he sees his children as they were when he left, sometimes he sees them as they were when they first came into his care many years ago. Sometimes he sees them as the king threatened to make them, bloodied and in chains and-

He forcefully shuts down that train of thought, pushing and compressing it down and retreating into a calm nothing. It’s not real.

Today’s ghosts are a variation on the usual lineup. For one thing, Tommy isn’t there. For another, they’re older than his brain usually projects them as. Instead of the normal teenagers or children, they look to be in their twenties and fresh from some sort of conflict. The fake Techno has an elegant sword strapped to his side, bloodstains covering both it and his clothes. There’s another, larger sword across his back, a hatchet on the other hip, and what looks like a knife tucked into his boot. The fake Wilbur has only a bow and quiver slung over his shoulder and looks significantly less disheveled than his brother, though the deep bags under his eyes indicate he’s had his fair share of hardships. 

All in all, they’re fairly good imitations of his sons. It’s almost enough to break the carefully blank expression on Phil’s face. 

The ghosts stare at Phil with twin expressions of shock. The fake Wilbur steps forward and calls out in a shaky, desperately hopeful voice. “Phil? ...Is that really you?”

Phil carefully weighs the pros and cons of interacting with the ghosts. On one hand, he is as always starved for human interaction and Chat, nice as they are, are no substitute for actual face-to-face conversation. Even if the other half of the conversation is just his brain firing off signals in a desperate attempt to save his sanity. On the other hand, the sheer emotion in fake Wilbur’s voice is already enough to make him uncomfortable. This could be one of the bad visions.

He decides a short passing hello couldn’t hurt and tunes back into reality. The ghosts, who he vaguely recalls trying to talk to him, are now silent, eyes full of confusion and concern. Oh. Had he been talking out loud that whole time again?

He clears his throat. “Good morning, boys!” Honestly, it’s a good thing he has ghosts to talk to or he would have completely forgotten how to talk to people by this point. As it is, he knows there’s probably something wrong with his speech by the looks the fakes are giving him. Is it the intonation? The volume? The-

“Phil, we’re-” Fake Wilbur’s voice cuts out in the middle of the sentence and he tries again. “We’re here to take you home, Dad.”

Phil laughs softly. It’s not mean-spirited - he’s genuinely amused, if not a little disappointed. “Yeah, okay. ‘Take me home.’ Sure. Look,” he holds up his arm slightly, allowing the loose sleeve to fall around his elbow and revealing the timer branded into his skin in enchanted ink, “Still five years left on my clock.” He turns to go, raising his voice to be heard over the panicked shouts behind him. “If you’re going to try to get my hopes up, at least do it right. Wilbur never calls me dad.”

With those parting words, he shakes out his wings from where they’ve been wrapped around his shoulders for warmth, takes a few steps, and lifts into the air with one powerful movement.

He doesn’t look back at the ghosts. He simply climbs higher and higher into the sky, losing himself to the isolating freedom of the endless open.

He spends the rest of the day just as planned, shoveling literal tons of sand into shulker boxes and rambling away to Chat. They’re not especially talkative today, but they still give him enough of an anchor to not get lost in the mindless repetition of the task.

By the time the sun starts to set, Phil’s body feels like it’s trying to kill him. His arms and back are aching and the sun has surely left burns on any exposed skin. Probably best to drink a weak healing potion tonight before he starts to turn red, then. Tomorrow he can bring his sand to the Nether and hopefully get started on the next portion of his project.

The wind feels cool on his face as he flies back towards home. Unlike this morning, he takes his time with the trip, coasting along on updrafts in order to give his muscles some relief. As he soars along, he is struck by the beauty of the landscape unfolding in front of him. No matter how many times he sees this view, it never gets old.

As the sky darkens he speeds up, wanting to get home before the monsters start emerging from the woods. Just because he can handle killing a few undead doesn’t mean he wants to.

He circles in for a landing just as stars are beginning to show. During his descent, he notices two figures sitting against the side of his house. One of them is gesturing wildly, the other methodically cleaning blood off a sword. The ghosts from this morning? That’s odd, he hasn’t had a hallucination this stubborn since the early days of his banishment.

The ghosts stop their conversation as he touches down just outside his fences and start heading his way. Not again.

The lanterns placed around his house do a good job of warding off the creatures, but there’s always a few that come through anyway. Short after landing he is faced with another sight that never gets old or stops being so sickeningly terrifying - a creeper pulling itself out of the darkness. 

Phil watches, one hand on his sword, as misshapen claws emerge from the oily shadows and haul the rest of the abomination out from whatever realm it calls home. The creeper gives a low, rattling hiss that sets the burn scars littering his right side to aching and advances. It moves with an unsteady, stumbling gait, but he knows better than to think it harmless or helpless.

The fake Techno moves forward, hatchet in hand. He almost laughs - what good is a hallucination against an actual threat? He’s learned his lesson in not letting ghosts distract him from danger. Faster than the fake Techno can react, Phil whips his sword around, cutting a neat X into the throat of the monster. Gunpowder comes pouring out the wound and the vines holding the creeper together wither in seconds, leaving it a crumpled, slowly dissolving mess of bone and plant matter.

“Holy shit!” The fake Wilbur yelps in shock. Phil ignores him, more interested in sifting through the gunpowder to see if it’s usable. No luck, too bloody. He brushes his hands off on his pants and stands up. Time to go inside and start dinner before any other monsters decide to attack.

Before he can go too far, the fake Techno stands in his way. “Phil. Are you… are you alright?”

Phil gives him a confused look. “Yes? Why wouldn’t I be?” 

He’s not quite sure why he’s decided to humor the visions. A sign that he’s finally losing it for good, perhaps? He’s not quite sure; there’s something about these ghosts that’s not right. They’re a little too - oh. He’s muttering to himself again. He laughs nervously in an attempt to save some face. “I’m perfectly capable of defending myself, you should know that! Out here, you can’t let your guard down. Good way to get blown up.” The scars ache again and his hand unconsciously flies to his neck, rubbing anxiously at the place where the shrapnel had torn through.

“You could be safe though. If you come back home with us.” Techno’s using that careful, gentle tone he gets when the usual monotone isn’t convincing enough. When they were all younger, he used to try to get Tommy to do his chores with it. Of course, he never had much success, as Tommy would - 

Push down the thoughts. Don’t think about it. They’re not here. You just need to survive.

The false images of his sons stare at him pleadingly. They look tired, scared, and devastatingly sad. Perhaps that’s why Phil says what he says next.

“Would you like to come in for dinner?”

He leads them back to the house and starts up the stove, mentally cursing himself all the while. He shouldn’t be indulging these hallucinations, it’s not healthy, it’s not fair to his real sons who are somewhere out there, being hunted down and - 

Don’t think about it.

Chat whispers a few reassuring words to him and he absentmindedly thanks them out loud, not noticing the flinches from the figures seated at his table. They’re quiet, just watching him move about the kitchen. He vaguely notices that their gazes often fix on his wings. He doesn’t like them watching him like this, with that terrible sadness, and he can feel himself disconnecting from the situation, watching the scene through his own eyes like it’s happening to someone else.

He finishes the stew in a half-remembered daze and pours it into one of his battered handmade bowls. The heat seeping through the clay brings him a little closer to reality, and he remembers his houseguests. “Sorry, I’m not going to pour you two any,” he says with a little laugh. “I don’t really think hallucinations need to eat, yeah?”

There’s an ear splitting screech as wooden chair legs grind heavily against the floor tiles. Wilbur is on his feet, looking distraught. “Phil, we’re real! Please, please , just listen to me!” He takes several unsure steps towards Phil, arm outstretched and reaching for him. Phil stumbles away until his back meets the wall with a dull thud.

“Don’t - stay back -” His mouth is suddenly dry. He’s shaking. There’s no air in the room.

Techno is standing now too. “Wil, I don’t know if you should -”

Something touches Phil’s shoulder-

When he comes back to himself, he’s crouched in a corner, one hand raised in front of his face and the other hanging limply at his side, stinging with pain. His wings are curled around his body protectively. His sword (when did he take it out of its sheath?) is lying on the ground a little ways away. The ceramic bowl is in pieces nearby, stew all over the tile. He doesn’t remember anything after making it.

The ghosts are arguing in hushed tones. The fake Techno has his sword out. The fake Wilbur looks to be near tears. Phil ignores them both. They’re not real.

“Why did you do that? He’s obviously not in his right mind, he could have hurt you!” Techno slides his sword back into the sheath at his side in an angry motion.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think he would do that, I just - it’s Phil! He’s our dad!”

The fake Techno gives a long sigh, calming himself down. In a softer tone he says, “I know. I want to get him home as much as you. But as much as I hate to admit it,” he closes his eyes, “he doesn’t know who we are right now. And from the looks of those scars, I don’t think he’ll be lettin’ anyone come close to him anytime soon.”

Phil slowly unfolds himself from the corner. The ghosts turn to him, ready for another confrontation, but he simply walks by them, eyes blank and unfocused. He has to clean up the mess.

“Gods, Techno, scars are one thing, but how on earth did he get wings?” Sweep up the shards.

“I don’t know, Wil. I’ve never heard of anything like this before.” Mop up the spill.

“And we thought we could save him in three days. It could take weeks to get him to believe we’re not figments of his imagination , let alone get him back through the portal.” Dry the floor.

“Tommy’s gonna think we died or something.”

“Tommy,” Phil murmurs softly. The ghosts glance at him. “Why isn’t he here too?”

By the time either of them can think to answer, he’s already gone again.

Chapter Text

On day 1,840, it rains.

Phil wakes up to the soft tapping on his roof. He didn’t sleep well last night, and the fogginess of exhaustion clings to him even after he finishes his morning cup of tea. He stares out his window at the grey sky and notices, out of the corner of his eye, that the door to the shed is opened just a crack. Better check to make sure the spiders haven’t gotten in again.

On rainy days, his routine is slightly different. Instead of taking his construction materials, he grabs his fishing pole and tackle box before heading out. Ever since the beginning of his banishment, he’s spent rainy days fishing instead of mining or building or whatever else might be on his schedule. He’s especially grateful for this little ritual today -  braving the Nether on this little energy sounds like a perfect way to get himself killed.

(There’s another reason for his fishing trips, though he doesn’t like to admit it to himself. It was bad enough when the only injury acting up with the weather was his old war injury. Now, he’s accumulated so many cuts and burns and poorly healed fractures that his whole body is a web of scars and aching pain. Sitting at the pier is the only thing he can bring himself to do on these days.)

It’s warmer out today. The rain still has the gentle humidity of summer months - refreshing rather than freezing. He estimates that it might be around September, but he can’t be sure. A proper sense of time passing was one of the first things to go in his banishment, and he doesn’t have enough knowledge of astronomy or patience to track the equinoxes and solstices. The most he can do is watch his days grow shorter and hope the winter isn’t too cruel.

Water drips off the brim of Phil’s hat as he makes his way out to the shed. He hasn’t gone in there in a few days, and he’s almost certain he locked the building up when last he left. Tentatively, he tightens his grip on his sword and hopes that wild animals haven’t gotten into his wheat storage again as he creaks the door the rest of the way open.

It’s dark inside the shed, illuminated only by a few bottles of glowing dust. Torches would be far too dangerous inside the dry, dusty area, after all. Phil narrows his eyes, trying to see through the gloom, and spots a flash of color towards the back. He draws his sword and steps forward, only to falter as the scene is revealed to him.

Instead of pests or monsters, the figures sleeping in the straw are familiar. Too familiar, Phil thinks with something like horror. His sword slips through shaking hands and falls to the stone floor with a clatter. The ghosts jolt awake, reaching instinctively for weapons. “Phil?” The fake Techno mumbles out, voice softened by sleep. 

Phil backs up, turns, and runs.

Hallucinations can’t open doors. Hallucinations can’t sleep, or move things, or knock a sword out of his hand. But no , the ghosts haunting him can’t be his sons. He’s been through this before, believing a lie, thinking he would be rescued only to wake up as alone as he’s ever been. He’s gone through the cycle of hope and heartbreak so many times, too many to count. 

He can’t accept another falsehood.

(He can’t accept that his sons have gone through a war without him there to protect them.)

The line between reality and delusion blurs.

It’s nice down at the water. He sits under the covered portion of his dock, feet skimming the water and wings stretched out behind him. Back in the real world, there was always something about fishing that was meditative for him - the steady rhythm of reel and throw, the waves lapping at the shore, the push and pull of tides. The only difference in this world is that Chat absolutely loves it when he goes fishing. 

Probably because they get his undivided attention. For a bunch of voices in his head, they’re quite needy.

He spends a good few hours talking to Chat. Despite the fact that he probably shouldn’t indulge his hallucinations, he can’t help but have a soft spot for the collection of voices. They’re just so encouraging and kind; they even remind him to eat and drink when he’s too detached to remember himself! 

There’s a tug on his line and he carefully reels it in. Another salmon. Chat goes wild.

When the ghosts show up, he ignores them with a vengeance. It was hard enough calming down after this morning - he doesn’t need another episode like that. They seem content enough with sitting to the side and listening to him entertain Chat though, so it’s not too much effort to tune out their whispers.

He almost breaks when the second set of ghosts appears.

A young Techno shuffles over to his side, sits down next to him. At this age he’s so short his hooves don’t even come close to touching the water. Wilbur and Tommy watch from a distance, as small and wary as the day he found them. 

There’s a moment where he doesn’t know where he is. There’s a moment where he forgets that his sons are either full grown or dead, a world away. There’s a moment where he believes he’s not alone.

But there’s a vast difference between the lake in his memories and the ocean stretching out infinitely in front of him, and he grounds himself to the rocking of waves against worn wood. Push, pull. Inhale, exhale. 

He smiles gently at the child ghost. These, at least, he knows how to deal with.

He plays the scene out; a memory from a decade ago, recreated a world away. It’s second nature to strike up an easy conversation with the child at his side. He has to concentrate in order to hear Techno’s replies - he was always so quiet, mumbling his words or just making piglike sounds when language failed him. Luckily, he’s had a lot of experience at carrying a conversation over the years. Talking to himself, Chat, hallucinatory children - it’s really all the same. Just ramble until something talks back.

It’s equally easy and familiar to get the other two to let down their guard and come closer. Despite Tommy being borderline feral and Wilbur having intense trust issues, they were always quick to melt when faced with actual, genuine love and care. As the afternoon drags on, they slowly creep closer and closer until they too sit at his sides. Chat loudly coos phrases like “ Dadza ”, “ Pog ”, “ Awwww babies!! ”

Though he usually tries not to interact too much with the visions his mind conjures up, times like these are a special exception. He’s always been a sucker for kids - as evidenced by him adopting three of them - so when the child ghosts show up, he just can’t say no to them. He can’t bring himself to regret it, either. Many of his hallucinations are distressing, sending him into panics or making him forget altogether where he is. Last night’s encounter with those strange ghosts comes to mind.

...They seem to have left at some point. He hadn’t noticed.

The exhaustion creeps back upon him. This morning’s adrenaline rush from the paradoxical ghosts sustained him for a while, but he can feel himself starting to crash, the relaxing environment sending a heaviness through his bones.

He’ll just rest his eyes for a moment...

A hideous gurgle and the scrape of bone against wood snap him instantly into motion. His hand is reaching for his sword before he even opens his eyes. Instead of the leather-wrapped hilt, however, his fingers close around empty air. Where - 

This morning. The shed. The ghosts. His sword.

The Drowned has clawed its way up onto the dock, bony fingers carving scores into the planks. It gurgles again, seawater spewing out of its mouth and lapping towards Phil’s boots. The animated corpse is half bloated, half devoured by sea creatures. One of its legs has either been bitten off or carried away by the currents. The message that part of its body is gone hasn’t made it to the creature’s rotten brain, however, and it attempts to get up before crumpling to the ground again and writhing towards its target.

Phil slams the end of the fishing pole into the thing’s head so hard that the skull caves inward. It’s a good thing he enchanted it with an Unbreaking spell. Several more hits and the Drowned isn’t even twitching anymore. 

As the now-inanimate corpse crumples to dust and bits of flesh, Phil inspects his fishing pole for any damage. There’s none to be seen (of course, he would never botch an enchantment) but it is now covered in gore. As are his armor and hands. And, if that disgusting feeling is correct, part of his face. Great. Now Chat is calling him “Killza” and “lmao”-ing at him, whatever that means.

Apparently he closed his eyes for longer than he thought. The sun is far lower in the sky, though it’s not quite dusk yet. He curses himself for being so careless as to fall asleep completely unguarded. Truth be told, he was never in much danger from the Drowned, his shimmering netherite armor being more than a match for the creature’s blunt teeth.

If it had been equipped with a trident or somehow found one of the weak spots in his armor before he woke up, that would be a different story. Zombie bites to a non-vital spot back in the real world are rarely fatal if treated correctly, but Phil hardly has access to the medical supplies needed to properly treat that sort of wound. When he was bitten back in his first year alone, he spent weeks bedridden in his ramshackle hut, feverish and delusional. Finding the book on potion brewing in that stronghold was a lifesaver in more ways than one, and he keeps a potion of regeneration on him at all times now. Just in case.

He packs up the day’s catch and his supplies and turns to go. Time to go home and begin the smoking process. And wash off the blood. Wait, what’s-

The sword.

His breath catches. He stumbles to it, nearly falling over as he bends down to retrieve the weapon with shaking hands. It has weight. It gleams purple in the sun. 

It can’t possibly be here.

He’s mumbling mindlessly, brain not even registering the sounds coming from his mouth as it races to somehow explain this impossible occurrence. Okay, Phil. Think it through.

He went back to get it before going down to the water-

No, he wouldn’t have gone back to where the ghosts are. He definitely wouldn’t have forgotten about it.

He never dropped it in the first place-

No, he can remember the clang as it hit the cobblestone, the puff of loose chaff it sent up. That was real.

Maybe the sword in his hands right now isn’t real. 

…

The blade cuts neatly into the remains left by the Drowned. Another spurt of blood covers his boots. 

It’s real.

So how can it possibly be here?

It takes about half an hour of sitting on the ground, regulating his breaths and calming his heart, before he feels prepared to go back home. He’s resigned to the fact that those damn ghosts will be there to meet him. 

The mix of emotions churning in his chest has settled into a simmering anger. How dare they come into his life and put everything he’s worked for in danger? How dare they give him false hope of return and then throw him into a panic attack at every turn? How dare they take his sons’ faces and use them to hurt him?

(How dare he conjure up these shades. How dare his mind betray him so violently.)

Every step on the way back is careful and deliberate. The anger quickens his stride.

Just as he suspected, the ghosts are there when he throws the door open. They startle; the fake Wilbur starts to say something but cuts himself off at the look on Phil’s face. Or maybe he’s caught off guard by the blood splattered all over him. Either way, there’s not a peep out of Wilbur or Techno as Phil drives the sword into the floor. “When I get back,” he says, voice deadly calm, “We will have words.” Then he sweeps back out of the house.

The water barrels are full from today’s rain, so Phil takes his time washing the blood off. He viciously thinks that it serves the ghosts right, having to wait in anticipation and dread of the coming conflict. Chat’s disapproval is palpable at this. He reluctantly concedes that he probably shouldn’t be so mean. It’s hard not to revel in the anger, though - it’s been a while since he felt anything this vividly. 

He definitely shouldn’t have driven the sword into the floor. That’s going to be hell to fix.

He feels pretty stupid now, stabbing his own floor just to intimidate figments of his imagination.

By the time he’s ready to go back in, the anger has cooled somewhat. It’s still there, bubbling under the surface, but at least now he won’t explode at his visitors.

The ghosts are still sitting there in silence. They have identical looks of sheepishness and guilt and Phil almost laughs at this, because it’s so familiar. He’s seen this expression before, when he found out Wilbur had hypnotized a villager, or when Techno broke one of the windows, or dozens of other little mistakes from their childhoods. He has the insane urge to start with “I’m not mad, just disappointed”.

Instead he says, “You brought me that sword.” On the surface it’s a simple statement, but a keen listener would notice the uncertainty tinting his words.

The ghosts exchange glances. “Yes,” The fake Techno responds, “why do you -”

“How.”

Techno frowns. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Phil.”

“I mean, you’re not real, so how the fuck are you doing this?” His anger is getting the better of him, but he can’t hold himself back. The words come spilling out, louder and louder. “Moving my sword, opening doors, turning the fucking lights on, it shouldn’t be possible! Just - what do you want? Why are you doing this to me?! ” Exhaustion hits and he slumps down, head in his hands, whispering again “...why are you doing this to me?”

Without looking up he can sense the two crouching in front of him. He peeks through his fingers at them. They don’t look angry as he had expected - just deeply sad and concerned. Techno reaches out a hand tentatively. “Phil, can I -”

“ No. ” Phil brings his wings around him, vanishing beneath a protective cocoon of dark feathers. He hears Techno retract his hand.

“Okay. That’s fine.” The calm voice is back. “Phil, we’re not trying to hurt you. We just want to bring you back home, where you can be safe again. Where you can be with us again. Don’t you want to leave?”

“Of course I want to leave,” Phil chokes out. “I’ve wanted to leave every single day for the last five years, but it’s just not possible, I can’t just leave, I can’t -”

“Shh, it’s okay, we can stop talking about it,” Wilbur says and Phil lets out a hysterical little laugh at having to be comforted like a child by his own sons. Wait, no, they’re not his sons-

“Do you want us to talk about something else?” He shrugs noncommittally. As much as he hates to admit it to himself, it’s nice to hear other people talking outside of his head.

“You should probably get off the floor, first. It’s not too comfortable down here.” Phil heeds Techno’s words, pulling himself up and staggering drunkenly over to his bed, where he collapses. The stresses of the day - the encounter in the shed, the monster attack, the latest breakdown - have taken a toll on him. The ghosts’ words of reassurance are actually starting to make him feel a little better, though. When did they get so good at calming people down?

“After you were arrested and banished, we had to,” Wilbur says, and Phil realizes with a start that he’s been talking out loud, “Tommy wasn’t coping well - fair, considering he wasn’t even a teen - so we ended up having to calm him down a lot, after nightmares and stuff like that.”

“Where is Tommy, anyway? Why isn’t he with you two?” Phil pulls himself up into a sitting position, folding his legs under him and leaning against the wall. Almost unconsciously he begins running his fingers through his still-damp feathers and straightening them out. He was overdue for a good preen.

“He’s guarding the portal back in the real world. We didn’t want to take him with us in case it was too dangerous.”

“So you just left him in the castle of a man dead set on killing you? How is that any safer than here?”

Wilbur grins widely, orange eyes glinting. “Well, it’s not exactly his castle anymore.” He pauses for dramatic effect and Techno rolls his eyes, as though he wouldn’t do the exact same thing given the chance. “Phil, would you like to hear the story of the revolution?”

It’s an extraordinary, incredible, unbelievable story. Wilbur’s tale of espionage, grand battles, rebellion, and freedom instantly draws Phil in. The boy was always a skilled orator, and it seems like those skills have only gotten better. Chat is just as invested, cheering at the victories and cursing the king’s name at the losses. As Wilbur describes the final battle in stunning detail, Phil can almost hear the cries and clash of swords and smell the gunpowder thick in the air from breaching the gates. 

It leaves Phil with wonder in his heart and a new dilemma plaguing his mind.

On one hand, the story is simply unbelievable. The king has been in power for decades. His corruption is rooted too deeply into the kingdom for a simple group of hybrid rebels and visionaries to overcome. The idea that his reign could be coming to an end at this very moment is an impossible dream. And the idea that his sons could be some of the ones responsible for the king’s downfall? Every father wants to believe his sons will achieve great things, but freeing an oppressed group and ending a dictatorship seems a little too far-fetched for it not to be a product of his own mind.

On the other hand, he doesn’t believe he could ever dream up something as fantastical as that story. Not in such meticulous detail. He could never imagine that one son would become a general in a rebel army, one would be the most dangerous and powerful fighter in all the land, and the youngest would grow up in encampments and battlefields, learning to fight at an age where most children would be learning basic arithmetic. 

None of the ghosts that tried to trick him in the past had stories this intricate.

Once again, Phil doesn’t know what to believe.

Techno has stayed mostly silent throughout Wilbur’s story, only speaking occasionally to add details or correct him on some points. Once Wilbur finishes, he clears his throat and asks, “Can we ask you some questions, Phil?”

“Sure,” murmurs Phil, still caught up in the possibilities of what could be. 

“What kind of metal is your sword made of? The armor, too. I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve seen a lot of weapons.”

“Oh, you mean netherite?” At Techno’s blank look, Phil clarifies. “It’s a rare material, only found in the Nether. More durable than anything I’ve ever seen, and takes enchantments with no problems.” 

“Do you know magic , Phil?” There’s delight in Wilbur’s voice, and Phil finds himself smiling along.

“If you want to call it that, sure. It’s really just a matter of carving the right symbols in the right order. Time consuming, but definitely worth it.” There’s a small pile of loose feathers on the bed next to him now. Between the rhythmic motions and light conversation, he’s feeling much more at ease.

“Are you saying you’ve been to the Nether?” Techno asks. Back in the real world, hardly anyone has been to the hell dimension. It’s far too dangerous, not easily accessible, and there’s always the chance of letting some terrifying creature back through to wreak havoc.

“These days, I feel like I spend more time there than I do in the Overworld.”

There’s a few minutes of peaceful silence before Wilbur asks his next question. “Who were you talking to at the dock today?”

The question puts Phil slightly on edge. He doesn’t want to argue anymore with his hallucinations about how real they may or may not be, but this line of questioning seems sure to lead there again. “...just some ghosts. You couldn’t see them?”

Wilbur looks shocked. “Ghosts? Like dead people?” Techno gives a shaky bruhhh from his seat at the table.

“Not really - well, I don’t think they’re dead anyway. I just call them that because it’s easier than saying ‘hallucinated versions of my kids who insist that they’re real’.”

“So that’s what you think we are then?” Wilbur says sadly. Phil keeps his face blank and his eyes focused on his work combing through feathers.

“You’re more convincing than most, I’ll give you that. But this isn’t the first time my own brain has tried to trick me into believing in a rescue, and it certainly won’t be the last.” He finally glances up and meets Wilbur’s eyes, then Techno’s. “I already know I’m losing it. You don’t need to speed up the process.”

This time, the silence is decidedly more bleak.

Phil stretches his wings out and ruffles them, enjoying the feeling of the feathers lying against each other properly. Proper wing care was difficult to learn at first, but he thinks he’s adjusted rather well-

“How did you grow wings? What happened to you?”

His breath catches and - 

( - he’s tired he’s hungry he’s cold he’s afraid- the void stretches out above and below and the stars look on dizzyingly - he doesn’t know where he is - he can feel his body changing - the dark figures around him whisper and it almost sounds like words - )

His hands are shaking. Why are his hands shaking?

“Phil?” Why does Wilbur sound so worried?

“Phil, can you hear us?” When did Techno get up from his chair?

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” His smile and his voice are both polite, blank, empty. Like he’s talking to a stranger. 

They don’t speak again for the rest of the night. 

Chapter Text

Day 906

His vision is going blurry again. It’s been doing that a lot recently. 

It’s hardly the worst of his symptoms. That honor would go to the nausea. Or maybe the constant cold. The tremors running up and down his arms, maybe? The slowness of his thoughts?

...Probably the blackouts, now that he thinks about it.

Another wave of fatigue hits him and he resists the urge to break into tears. It’s getting harder to keep himself from breaking down, but he digs his fingernails into his palms and counts backward from 20 to calm himself down. If he gets stuck around 7, well. No one needs to know.

“This is insane,” Wilbur says casually. He’s sitting next to Phil on the roof, legs dangling carelessly over the edge and head thrown back to see the stars. There’s a ring of bruises peeking out from the ornate metal collar around his neck. 

“Shut up. You’re not even real.” His voice is dull and lifeless. A few hours ago, when this ghost had first shown up, he’d screamed at it to leave him alone until his voice went hoarse. Now, he can’t find the energy to go above a whisper. He’s so tired.

“I may not be real, but this is still insane.”

The night is dark and quiet. Phil keeps one hand clenched tight around his bow and his eyes fixed on the sky. He can’t fail now.

Like everyone else under the current reign, Phil grew up hearing stories of Hardcore. It was the king’s favorite punishment for rebels and dissidents - throwing them into a world where survival was possible but not probable. During his time in the army, it was a common source of gossip. Being banished to another world was seen by some as an honor - it showed that the king thought you were strong, that you were capable, that you would be able to redeem yourself if only you could survive this trial.

There were other stories passed around, as well. Some said there was another way out of Hardcore than simply surviving your sentence.

If you killed the dragon that waited in the void, you would be allowed to come home.

Phil never put much stock into these rumors. But now, with eight years left on his sentence, he was willing to try anything.

The strange abandoned structures that dotted this world contained many treasures, if you were brave enough to fight off the monsters that lay within. But Phil wasn’t interested in weapons or jewels or potions, he was hunting for the knowledge that lay within the old libraries. It was in one of these books that he found the information he needed.

The book told the tale of a brave adventurer who, using alchemy and eyes taken from endermen, made their way to the dragon’s lair. There, they destroyed the crystals protecting it, avoided its killing breath and mighty wingbeats, and slew the beast with a blessed axe. They returned to their world triumphant, carrying the head, the egg, and bottles of dragon’s breath.

Phil figured he could deal with all of that except for the wingbeats. Armor could deflect claws and teeth and dragonfire, but it couldn’t do much against being thrown into the void.

So he began to plan and prepare. He worked through for weeks making sure everything was ready for his assault on the dragon. He had armor and weapons stronger, sharper, and more resilient than anything anyone back home had ever seen. He had potions that would protect him and make him powerful. He had eyes of ender stored and ready to unlock a gateway to the void. 

It was late one manic, sleepless night that he discovered the answer to his dilemma. There, in an old tome on magical brewing, a potion that could make him lighter than air. All he needed were the wings of a rare creature called a phantom.

As he discovered how to find such a creature, his heart sunk.

Phil has been awake for 70 hours. 71? He can’t tell. Numbers are making his head hurt right now. A lot of things are making his head hurt right now.

One of these is Wilbur. The ghost is now standing on the edge of the roof, staring up at the starry sky in awe and singing softly. Phil doesn’t think his voice sounds quite right. He doesn’t remember…

...What does he remember?

Does he remember what his son’s voice truly sounds like? 

He swallows down another wave of tears. He thinks he remembers hearing, once, that sleep deprivation can affect emotional responses, making people overly sad, angry, or just numb. He’s been cycling through these in turn since yesterday afternoon. 

They had been told in the army how to resist torture, what to do if their captors deprived them of food or water or sleep. He never could imagine that he would be subjecting himself to this torture willingly. Another wave of chills runs through him, though it hardly changes anything. His hands have been shaking nonstop for hours.

“I don’t think they’re coming.” Wilbur’s face is bruised and bloody, and he raises a hand to absentmindedly scratch at his neck where collar meets skin. Phil starts to wonder how he got that way and then shuts that thought down hard.

“It’s from the king.”

What?

“I’m sure you remember what he said. You’ve forgotten so many things, but not this.”

No, he could never forget the sick smile on the king’s face or the words he’d spoken.

“He said he would hunt us down. He said I would make a good pet. Remember?”

It’s not real. It’s not real it’s not real it’s not - 

“Sure, I might not be real, but somewhere out there your sons are being hunted down like animals. That is, if they haven’t already been captured.”

Stop it.

“Or killed.”

Stop it.

“Do you want me to leave, Phil? I don’t think you do.”

No. Please don’t go. Please.

He closes his eyes, bites down on his lip so hard he tastes blood. 

“I don’t think your phantoms are coming tonight. Maybe tomorrow? Do you think you can stay awake that long?”

The moon has changed its place in the sky somehow. He feels disoriented, dizzy, and scoots back from the edge a little more. Another wave of dark spots rolls across his vision. Wilbur smiles at him, a manic grin revealing sharp teeth. 

“Don’t worry, Phil, I’ll still be here! We’ll get through this one together!”

There’s a flicker from the side of his vision. He blinks hard, trying to clear his head of the false images. And then a hiss, a flash of green eyes and grey scales, and a sharp pain on his cheek. He flails out wildly, bow connecting solidly with flesh, and something shrieks. 

They’re here.

He looks up to see the phantom he just hit returning to circle high in the air, accompanied by two others. Bringing one shaking hand to his cheek, he can feel three lines gouged into the skin. Any higher and it would have taken out his eye.

Wilbur says something but he doesn’t listen. He raises his bow and pulls back the string, enchantment runes lighting up across it and manifesting an arrow already nocked and ready. The shot goes wide. His hands are too shaky. 

One of the phantoms breaks formation and begins another dive, shrieking. He fights down the tremors, pulls back, and shoots once more. The phantom goes down with an arrow in its wing, struggling on the ground for several seconds before finally lying still.

Another wave of nausea and dizziness hits but he pushes through it. He’s come too far to fail now. He will make it home. He will kill the tyrant king. He will save his sons.

The remaining phantoms attack in unison. He takes a deep breath and shoots once, twice - the first arrow skims a shallow line along one’s body, the second sticks solidly into the other’s eye. It dissipates into smoke and scales in midair. 

The final phantom, now thrown off balance, careens past him and impacts with the roof. It twists and thrashes, trying to get airborne again, but Phil is faster. He slams one boot onto its body, pinning it down, and stabs his knife into where the heart should be. It gives a terrible squeal, twitches, and falls limp. 

Phil falls to his knees, the adrenaline rush from the fight making his vertigo even worse. The shake in his hands returns with a vengeance. He laughs, an exhausted, insane thing.

“Good job, Phil!”

There’s something touching his shoulder. There’s a knife in his hand. Phil solves the problem.

It’s not a monster. It’s his son, looking at him with fear and betrayal. It’s his son with a bloody line across his throat, just above where the collar lies.

No.

He stumbles backwards. No, it can’t be - he wouldn’t - 

His foot finds nothing but air and he is falling, falling - 

When he wakes up, he is surrounded by blood and grey scales.

His hands won’t stop shaking.

Chapter Text

When Philza wakes up on the morning of the 1,841st day, the house sounds alive.

His memories of last night get hazy at some point, but he vaguely remembers the ghosts bickering over sleeping arrangements. Looking at them now, it’s obvious who won that argument. Techno is slumped against the wall, covered by his cloak. The soft red fabric rises and falls with every wheezy snore, and there’s a faint furrow to his brow. Wilbur has taken the coveted armchair, long limbs splayed out and head resting comfortably on the cushioned back. He’s mumbling softly, unintelligibly, and his fingers keep twitching. He always was a bit of a restless sleeper. Phil shakes his head fondly and goes to make a mug of tea and fry some eggs.

It doesn’t look like it’s going to rain again today, but the sky is a dreary grey and there’s a definite chill sneaking in through the cracks. As the water begins to heat, Phil once again thinks about plans to weatherproof his house for the winter. 

Every winter he’s endured in this world so far has brought with it at least one disaster. The worst by far was the first winter, where he lived in a literal hole in the ground and only had a few months to stockpile food and supplies before the temperature got too low to go out safely. Winter of year three was a close runner-up; part of the roof collapsed in on him while he was sleeping, burying him in snow and broken boards. The repairs would have been hard enough, but the subsequent illness made them damn near impossible. Maybe this year he would try incorporating enchantments into the house itself?

He laughs softly to himself. Maybe he could just migrate south for the winter, like the other birds.

The boil of the kettle rises to a shrill screech. In the corner, Techno’s eyes fly open and he jackknifes to his feet, instantly drawing his sword and looking around wildly. Phil hurriedly moves to remove the kettle from the heat and Techno’s eyes snap to him, no recognition behind them. For a moment, Philza has the unnerving feeling of being a prey animal, caught in the sights of a predator.

The moment passes. Techno blinks, shakes his head, and lowers the sword carefully. “...Sorry. I thought - never mind. Sorry.”

At a loss for words, Phil just shrugs and says “‘S’alright mate, don’t worry.” 

It’s worrying to him, though. When he first took Techno in, the kid wouldn’t sleep without a weapon on him. He was horribly jumpy from what Phil would later learn was over a year being chased down by the military and bounty hunters and whoever else saw his wanted poster and decided a homeless hybrid child would be easy enough to catch. And now it seems this ghost has reverted to that state of vigilance verging on paranoia, even if it’s not nearly as severe as before. 

Is it because he’s been through a war, as Wilbur said last night? Or are his hallucinations turning into one big feedback loop, fueling themselves with wilder and wilder imaginings?

It’s too early to think about these things. The past two days have been stressful and unproductive enough; Phil doesn’t want to lose another day of progress to an existential crisis.

So instead of raising the subject or comforting Techno as his instincts (and Chat) screamed for him to do, he tilts the kettle slightly in the ghost’s direction. “Tea?”

Techno wrinkles his nose and Phil laughs. It’s a predictable response to an exchange they’ve had hundreds of times.

There’s less food than expected when he opens his icebox. He could have sworn there were more potatoes in here last time he checked. 

“ghosts ate it,” suggests Chat, followed by several variations on “ hungry bois inc”.  

“Nah, ghosts can’t eat things,” Phil replies, removing some eggs and cracking them onto the still-warm furnace top. Wilbur gives a particularly loud mumble at the sizzling and attempts to burrow deeper into the armchair.

“raccoon” “raccoon” “yeah probably raccoon” 

“I hope it’s not another raccoon. Remember how hard that was to get rid of last time?”

“i like raccoons” “mmmmmm eggs” “omelette arc” “POG”

They are so fucking weird, honestly. “No omelette today, we’re on a tight schedule. I want to make good progress on the NetherVoid.”

“The what?”

Phil thinks he’s fairly unshakeable, but he comes pretty close to fully jumping and shrieking. He had completely forgotten about his guest. 

“It’s - uh, it’s,” he takes several deep breaths to slow his heart rate and smooths down his puffed up feathers, “it’s gonna be a big, empty cube in the nether. Completely pitch-black.” Techno still looks confused. “It’s cooler than it sounds, I promise.”

“Yeah but uhh, what’s it for?”

This throws Phil for a loop. “To look cool, I guess? It’s not really… for anything. I’ll probably make a blaze trap in there, and I’ve got a few other project ideas, but it’s mainly just for the sake of doing something. It passes the time.”

“But why -”

“Stop interrogating him, Technoblade,” Wilbur says sleepily, having finally woken up. “What’s for breakfast?”

Why are these ghosts so insistent on trying to eat his food?

“Guess we’ll starve then,” Techno says, not sounding too bothered about it. Phil makes another mental note to stop accidentally talking out loud. 

After Phil finishes his breakfast and the ghosts finish eating something that looks like field rations, he gears up for the day’s work and heads outside. The ghosts rush to follow him out the door.

“I don’t suppose we can convince you to not go to literal hell and come with us back home instead?” Wilbur asks, long legs easily keeping up with the shorter man.

Phil pushes forward without hesitation. “Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Let me just follow some hallucinations off into the woods. I’m sure nothing could possibly go wrong.”

“I don’t remember you being this sarcastic when we were kids,” Techno snorts.

“You just didn’t notice it then, mate.”

The Nether portal has a tendency to spit out horrors from the underworld every once in a while. It doesn’t happen too often, but Phil only needed to wake up to a zombified piglin scratching at his door like a stray cat once before he decided to move it a little farther from his home. Now it stands beyond a hill, looming menacingly amongst the pine trees. Normally Phil would fly over to save some time, but the moment the ghosts saw him preparing to take flight they kicked up a fuss, so he decided to take the slow way to appease them.

He stubbornly ignores all attempts to get him to wander off the path.

(He remembers stumbling into the woods in a daze, reaching for the shadow of a figure just beyond the next tree - he remembers the arrow going straight through his hand - )

He can hear the portal before he sees it. The soft, sibilant whispers are uncomfortably similar to the portal that brought him here, but he’s long since conquered that particular anxiety. The swirling purple glow and ominous black frame are nothing like the Hardcore portal, anyway.

The ghosts are significantly less nonchalant than him. Wilbur hangs back, looking at the portal with dread and recounting the arrows in his quiver. Techno, on the other hand, walks straight up to the portal, staring into its depths with wonder. “Do you hear that?” He murmurs.

“The creepy whispers? Unfortunately, yes,” Wilbur shudders dramatically for effect and Phil snorts from where he’s double checking his potions and bottled water.

“No, it sounds like...singing…” 

Well, that’s concerning. Wilbur voices his thoughts. “ Okay , maybe you should stay here.” 

Techno shakes his head hard and takes an unsteady step backwards, away from the portal. “No, it’s fine, I’ll be alright. I’ve already got voices in my head, what’s a few more, right?”

What?

Wilbur rolls his eyes. “I swear I’m the only sane one in this family. No offense, Phil.”

“Uh -”

“Tommy doesn’t hear voices either,” Techno interjects.

“Tommy thinks antagonizing Dream is a good idea. Please do not compare us.”

Phil steps up to the portal, ignoring his sons’ bickering. “Here we go,” he murmurs to himself and steps inside.

As purple mist overtakes his vision and he feels himself getting pulled away from this reality, he sees the ghosts turn and start sprinting after him. A strange, warm feeling fills his heart.

(They came after him.)

He’s deposited unceremoniously out the other end of the portal and instantly gets hit with a wall of hot, dry air. Spreading his wings slightly to keep balance, he takes several wobbly steps forward until he can brace himself on the wall of his Nether base. The transition between the Overworld and the Nether always leaves him feeling disoriented. Chat is quieter here as well, almost muffled. For a moment, the loss of his only companion sends a spike of acute loneliness through him.

The solitude doesn’t last long. Two more forms emerge from the portal, stumbling on the new terrain. Techno straightens up quickly, hooves easily finding purchase on the blackstone, but he’s almost taken out by a flailing arm as Wilbur goes down hard. He crumples to the floor, trying desperately to heave in air. Even from his spot on the far side of the base, Phil can see the gills on Wilbur’s neck fluttering wildly, trying to find moisture in an atmosphere devoid of any. 

He’s making horrible choking sounds, hands scrabbling uselessly against the stone and eyes wide and panicked. This must be what it’s like to watch someone drown, Philza thinks, and stands paralyzed, unable to comprehend the scene before his eyes. He’s watched his sons die before, broken and bloodied, but never so visceral. Never so real.

Techno falls to his knees next to his brother, pulling him up and cradling him in one strong arm. With his free hand, he pulls a flask from his side and carefully raises it to Wilbur’s lips, assisting him in leaning forward and slowly sipping from it. He pours the remaining water over Wilbur’s gills with more gentleness and care than a nearly 7-foot tall half piglin has any right to possess. 

Wilbur’s choking, rasping breaths die down into soft wheezes. He relaxes his hand from its death grip on the front of Techno’s cape and slumps down into the arms around him. Though he’s no longer unable to breath, he looks horrible, brow beaded with sweat and face deathly pale. The water is only a temporary reprieve from an environment that seems to be actively trying to murder the guardian hybrid.

Techno looks around wildly, meeting Phil’s eyes. “What are you doing ?” His words are harsh and Phil finds himself flinching back. “He needs help!”

He can’t comprehend what’s happening. The world blurs and shifts in front of him, a thousand scenes of tragedy coalesced into a moment frozen in time. The lava bubbles and the voices in his head scream and his eldest son wheezes helplessly and Techno’s eyes pierce into him accusingly - what’s wrong with you? Why won’t you help? 

He can’t move.

Then a single, powerful command, cutting through the cacophony in his head, all the voices coming together for one purpose.

HELP HIM.

His movements don’t seem to be his own. He stumbles forward like a puppet pulled along by untrained hands, barely conscious of his surroundings, gaze fixated on the ghosts.

(Can he honestly still believe they’re not real, after all this?)

(The alternative seems so much worse now.)

When his knees hit the stone he doesn’t feel the jarring impact. Instead he stretches out a trembling hand, a shimmering orange glass bottle clasped in it, and drops the potion to the ground between the three of them. The glass dissolves on impact, showering them with the contents. The liquid evaporates almost instantly with contact, leaving behind only a vaguely refreshing feeling and small orange particles hovering around the area. Wilbur’s pained gasps settle down into normal, measured breaths.

Techno starts to say something but the sounds aren’t making any sense. The world is still too loud, too much. He still feels disconnected from his body, limbs moving without any conscious input, but he’s too emotionally exhausted from everything that’s been happening to care. It’s easier, in a way, to be a passenger in his own body.

That’s why when his hand once again reaches out he can only feel mild curiosity. That’s odd, what is it - 

His palm makes contact with Wilbur’s shoulder and his entire world shrinks to that point. 

The distance is gone, he’s back in his own body and he can feel tears welling up. Wilbur blinks blearily at him and mumbles out “Dad?” Phil takes in a deep, shuddering breath and raises the hand to his son’s forehead, smoothing back the sweat-soaked hair from unnaturally warm skin.

He gradually becomes aware that he’s repeating the same words over and over. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m -”

Wilbur cuts him off in as firm a voice as he can manage. “I’m fine, it’s okay, we’re all okay. Just gotta - ugh - catch my breath a little.”

There’s a hand on his shoulder and he nearly lashes out before realizing it’s just Techno - and isn’t that an unbelievable thought - and relaxing. The two points of contact ground him to reality and together, they huddle on the floor in silence and try to collect themselves.

After a few minutes Wilbur manages to squirm his way out of Techno’s grip and rises to his feet with considerable effort. “Good as new,” he croaks out, swaying back and forth.

Phil reluctantly follows him up. “You should probably go back to the Overworld.”

Wilbur waves him off. “No, we already came all this way -” (It’s literally ten minutes from his house, Philza thinks but doesn’t say) “- and I would hate to have us turn back now. Besides, whatever you gave me seems to have solved the issue. Was that a potion?”

“Fire Resistance. Are you sure you don’t want to go back? It can’t be comfortable here, even with the potion…”

Techno finally stands up. “Good luck gettin’ him to change his mind. He’s just excited to see what another realm looks like.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not excited to meet some of your long lost family members, Techno,” Wilbur teases.

Phil wants to push the issue but acquiesces, resolving to keep an eye on the time to make sure the potion effect doesn’t wear off unexpectedly. He leads them out of the bunker and into the hellish landscape, only flinching a little when Techno decides to test the Fire Resistance and stick his hand into a lavafall. “Warm,” he declares, shaking the molten rock off. Phil despairs at having raised children with no self-preservation.

Normally Phil would fly over to his build site from here, but it’s been well established that these ghosts can’t fly and hate being left behind (not that he wants to leave them alone in a place like this) and he doesn’t keep elytra around for...obvious reasons, so they take the long way once again. 

Philza is well accustomed to this route, having traveled it many times before gaining his wings, and he crosses the terrain with the ease of years of muscle memory and practice, calmly shooting down ghasts and steering them around herds of undead piglins.

“They won’t hurt you if you don’t bother them,” he informs a distrustful Techno. The piglin hybrid has taken to this realm like a fish to water, but seeing hordes of zombies milling around aimlessly was enough to throw even him off. Techno nods in acknowledgement but keeps one hand on his sword. Phil understands the need for constant vigilance and doesn’t say anything about it.

It’s once they run into a group of still living piglins that they encounter some problems. Phil is wearing gauntlets edged in gold, which should be enough to deter them, but the group becomes hostile nevertheless. The biggest among them, a brute with a jagged looking axe, snarls menacingly and approaches, brandishing the weapon. 

Philza positions himself in front of the ghosts, spreads his wings slightly to appear larger, and speaks loudly and firmly. “You don’t want to do this, mate. I’m not trying to get at your territory, just passing through.” He’s not sure if they can understand him, but the tone is what’s important. He holds his sword at his side, deceptively at ease but still threatening.

The brute isn’t having it. Phil raises his blade and prepares to deflect the first blow.

It never comes. Instead, his vision is blocked by a wall of pink and red - Techno has stepped in between him and the brute.

Piglins are large, intimidating creatures. At almost 7 feet tall, Techno is even more intimidating. He snarls back at the brute, who pulls back with a confused huff. Phil shares a glance with Wilbur, who looks equally as puzzled. Good to know they’re all on the same page, then.

The brute and Techno communicate in some strange language of growls and grunts and excessive posturing for several minutes before the brute backs down, bowing their head submissively. They rejoin the rest of their group, who all stare at Techno in wonder. “Ah jeez,” Techno says, finally returning to comprehensible speech, “I think I might be their king now.”

Phil can hear Chat, faint as they are, joyfully chanting “ BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD ”.

“...What’s a Blood God?” He wonders aloud. Techno freezes.

“What did you just say.”

“Blood for the Blood God? I don’t know what it means, Chat won’t stop saying it…” He trails off under Techno’s fierce stare.

Wilbur cuts in. “Isn’t Chat your weird rage voices, Technoblade?” 

Techno ignores him. “How do you know about them, Phil?” They’re both subconsciously shifting their stances to get ready for some kind of confrontation. Wilbur looks between them worriedly but doesn’t say anything else.

Probably because they’re a figment of my imagination, same as you, Phil doesn’t say. Oh, they’re reacting anyway. That one must have slipped out. He laughs nervously. “I mean, you already knew I was hearing voices, yeah? Chat is just what I call them.”

“What are they saying right now?” Techno sounds strangely desperate. Phil has to concentrate hard to make out exact phrases, but the urgency with which the question was asked spurs him on.

“Still a little bit of Blood for the Blood God, pog, Dadza… a lot of them are just saying Techno? They’re pretty quiet right now actually.”

Techno frowns. “That’s not what they’re saying to me…” he mutters, seemingly to himself. A second of contemplation, then he shakes his head. “They’re too loud right now, I can’t think about it. Especially with them here.” He looks over at the group of piglins, who are still watching everything. One of them walks up and gives Techno a roughly carved golden circlet, then backs away hurriedly. He gives the circlet a considering look, then settles it over his long pink hair, nodding solemnly at the piglin. With the deep red cloak, gold crown, and general air of power, he looks more regal than ever. He opens his mouth and Phil almost expects him to give a speech, a king addressing his people. Instead what comes out is, “Yeah this is gettin’ weird, let’s just keep going.”

When they finally crest the scorched peak blocking them from the build site, it occurs to Phil that he might not have properly emphasized the sheer scale of the project to the ghosts.

In front of them is a landscape devastated by explosives and hacked away over long days of mining. At the bottom of the man-made crater, lava rises up in great uneven eruptions, tugging in any undead piglins unfortunate enough to be close to the edge. The air is thick with ash and smoke and the whimpering cries of ghasts. It looks terrifyingly inhospitable and hostile, even compared to the rest of the Nether.

It’s a scene fitting for a place compared to hell, and one Phil is all-too-familiar with.

Pickaxe in hand, he makes his way down into the build site. The ghosts hurry to follow him, still gaping at the sight. “You did all of this?” Wilbur asks in awe.

“Yep, just detonated the last round of explosives a few days ago. It’s really coming along, but I hit an underground lava lake which is slowing things down a bit.”

“It’s incredible!”

Phil laughs. “This is nothing. Remind me to show you Endlantis.”

Reaching the edge of the lava lake, Phil sets up his equipment and renews the Fire Protection on all of them. “So what now?” Techno asks, watching a strider and its pup make their way across the lake.

Instead of answering, Phil grabs one of his shulker boxes, removes the top, and holds it over the lava. Far more sand than should be physically possible pours out of it, flooding endlessly into the lava. When the sand is just visible over the top of the lake, he caps it and grins at Techno. “Now I do that ,” he gestures at the pile of sand, “until all this lava is gone.”

Techno looks at the sand, and then out at the shifting, scalding red waves. “That’s gonna take so long .”

“Yep!” Phil agrees cheerfully, already moving on to the next spot.

One of the worst things about the Nether, when you ignore all the deadly bits, is the absolute lack of any way to tell time. Not even clocks work here. Phil can’t count how many times he’s lost track of time and nearly passed out from lack of food, water, or sleep. There have been occasions where he’s gone into the Nether on a short mining trip only to come out and find that days have passed. It reminds him uncomfortably of the months he spent trapped in the End, surrounded only by the endless void and the -

Don’t think about it.

Anyway, today is more manageable than most, as he has to stop at 2-hour intervals to splash down more Fire Resistance, but by the time he snaps out of his work-related daze, he knows it’s been much longer than he originally planned.

Wilbur is asleep again, half burrowed into a mound of soul sand. A litter of piglin children has been steadily stacking more sand on top of him, giggling every time he rolls over and disturbs the pile. Groups of piglins have been coming and going at a rapid pace, each delivering some kind of gift to Techno, who looks less than thrilled at all the attention. He always hated social situations. When he sees that Phil has snapped out of his trance, he unsubtly breaks away from the latest admirers. “Can we go now?” He hisses. Phil can’t help but break into laughter.

When they finally return to the Overworld, the sun has long since set. As usual, Phil’s whole body aches from the day’s work. It’s not unpleasant, however; it reminds him that he’s still alive, still moving forward. He looks down at the tattoo on his wrist. 1,809 days to go. He looks forward to the shapes of his sons silhouetted against the lamplight, and wonders if this isn’t a terrible way to live.

 Even if they’re not real, even if his mind has finally gone, what’s so bad about being happy? Why shouldn’t he let himself enjoy this, even if it doesn’t last?

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to just let go.

Chapter Text

On day 1,842 Phil wakes up to an empty house. 

He gets up. He eats breakfast. He straps on armor with hands that only shake a little. He stares at the door for twenty minutes and tries to convince himself that he’s alright, really, he can keep going.

The door opens.

“Morning, Phil,” Techno says, depositing a rabbit on top of the furnace. “Wilbur’s waitin’ at the portal, but I thought - uhh, are you alright?”

Philza clears his throat. “Yeah. I’m fine.” It comes out rough. Techno looks at him dubiously but decides not to say anything, instead preparing the rabbit to be cooked.

“So, Tommy should be comin’ through today.”

“Oh yeah? Should be nice to see him.” That wasn’t true. If the current set of ghosts was anything to go by, meeting this version of Tommy would surely bring nothing but trouble. Despite this, he had to admit that he was looking forward to seeing his youngest for the first time in five years. Even if it was just a specter.

“Don’t speak too soon. He’s been so annoyin’ lately.” Techno’s currently rummaging through his cabinets, looking for seasonings. “I’m actually surprised he waited three days like we agreed. He was so impatient for weeks before we even got to the castle. I bet Tubbo’s havin’ to hold him back.” Phil has no idea who Tubbo is.

“Right, he was…” Phil searches his memory for what Wilbur had told him the other night. “...guarding the portal, yeah?”

A snort. “Yeah, you could call it that. The castle was completely secure by that point, so there wasn’t much need for a guard. We really just didn’t want him goin’ through the portal first, in case things were dangerous over here. Good idea on our part.”

“Mate, if you think it’s dangerous now, you should have seen it when I first got here.” Phil laughs. Techno doesn’t. He keeps his gaze fixed on the cooking meat, but his eyes keep darting to the exposed scars on Phil’s neck and face. “...Anyway. Back to the Nether again today, want to come?” He doesn’t really expect any answer other than yes. These ghosts are so clingy.

“Uhhhhh we should probably wait for Wilbur to get here with Tommy.” Why does Techno look nervous? “And then maybe we could talk about going home?” Ugh, not that again. Phil gives a frustrated huff but decides not to say anything.

Arguing with ghosts gets so tiring.

They’re standing by the treeline where Philza first encountered the ghosts thirty minutes later when they start hearing voices through the trees. Loud ones.

“- don’t worry, I paid off your son to watch the portal.”

Incoherent sputtering. “Fundy is - he’s not my son!”

“That’s, heh, that’s not what he says.”

“Just because he accidentally called me ‘dad’ once -”

“- six times!!”

“- six times does not make him my actual son -”

They break through the trees.

He’s so tall . That’s Phil’s first thought.

His second is, I think I’ve made a terrible mistake .

“Dadza!” Tommy yells, breaking into a run towards him. Wilbur grabs the collar of his jacket, forcing him to slow his pace, and mutters something to him. Phil can’t hear. He can’t take his eyes off his sons.

They reach him and Tommy stands awkwardly across from him, hope and uncertainty shining in his eyes. “Uh, hi Phil,” he says. “Long time no see?”

He’s so tall. Gods, his voice has gotten so deep.

His breath hitches and to his horror, he can feel a tear running down his cheek. “You’re real, aren’t you? This...this is all real.” He sways on his feet, certain he’s about to collapse, but a steadying hand lands on his shoulder. He glances up to see Techno looking at him with concern. He’s real. He’s here. They all are.

He’s not alone anymore.

He can’t completely remember how they got back to his house. He can remember Tommy stepping forward to embrace him, only for Phil to flinch back. He can remember becoming overwhelmed by the noises and sensations. He can remember three sets of hands reaching for him as his knees gave out. After that… nothing.

He comes back to himself sitting in his armchair. His sons are scattered around the small house; they all snap to attention when he shifts. “Phil! Are you alright? You went catatonic,” frets Wilbur.

“Yeah, it was spooky. You just got all blank and collapsed,” Tommy adds.

Phil stretches out his stiff limbs, almost hitting Wilbur with his huge wingspan. “Sorry. I’m alright.” Normally he would just leave it at that but… these are his sons. His real sons. They deserve more of an explanation from a man who has been stubbornly denying their existence for the past three days. (And didn’t that hurt to think about?) “It was just a little too much to handle all at once. I got overwhelmed. I just can’t believe…” His voice cracks embarrassingly.

There’s a flurry of voices trying to console him all at once before they cut themselves off. After a moment, Techno tries again. “I know. It was hard for me and Wilbur to believe when we got here, too. But it’s all gonna be okay now.”

Phil laughs wetly. “Feels a little pathetic to be forcing you all to take care of me. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

Surprisingly, Tommy speaks up. “Nah, big man. You’re the one who’s been stuck in the fucking wilderness for years, you deserve it.”

When did his youngest son get so mature?

“Oh, he never got mature. He’s just pretending.”

“Oooh I’m Wilbur Soot and I am so ma-ture and smart, mimimimimi. ” Tommy scowls at his brother, who simply laughs at him. Phil laughs along. Some things simply do not change.

“Hey, Phil,” Wilbur says nervously once he’s finished teasing Tommy. “Do you think… I mean, could I… maybe… canIhugyouplease ,” he finishes in a rush.

Phil’s heart aches. He hates that he has to carefully consider this. He hates that he has a history of lashing out at things that try to touch him. He hates that he can’t just say of course, you’re my son, I love you. He almost wants to say no, to spare everyone the trouble of having to deal with his neuroses and fucked up violent instincts. It’s hard to believe Wilbur even wants anything to do with a father who almost watched him choke to death without lifting a finger.

But on the other hand… he wants this more than anything.

So what he eventually says is, “If I get all panicky or spacey you have to stop, okay?” and opens his arms up.

Wilbur wraps his arms around him and it’s the warmest, the safest Phil has felt in five years.

When they finally break apart Phil pretends not to see Wilbur surreptitiously wipe at his eyes. It would be hypocritical of him to say anything. 

“My turn then?” Tommy asks with a hopeful grin. Phil barely nods before Tommy is barreling into him, all bones and lanky limbs.

“When did you get so tall, you little shit,” Phil mumbles, voice muffled by Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy doesn’t respond, just squeezes tighter. Phil can feel him shaking in his arms and gently wraps his wings around the both of them.

Like with Wilbur, he doesn’t mention the tears once they detach.

Turning to Techno, he spreads his arms again slightly. “Want a turn, mate?” 

“...Later.” Phil’s not overly surprised - Techno has never been a very touchy person, and is probably feeling just as overwhelmed as Phil at the idea.

Tommy, fully recovered from his own bout of emotions, bounces on his heels a few times, translucent maroon flickering over his face. “Alright let’s get out of here, yeah? Fundy was being a bitch so I don’t think he’s going to wait much longer.”

Leave?

He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud until Tommy gives him a weird look. “Yeah? The plan was to find you and bring you back, not find you and leave you here.” Techno and Wilbur are looking at him with concern now. Phil moves back a few steps from them.

“But I can’t leave now,” he finds himself saying. “The radishes will be ready for harvest in a week, I need to be here for that, and I need to prepare for winter, and I haven’t finished the NetherVoid, and - and -”

“What the fuck is he talking about,” he distantly hears Tommy say, but it doesn’t register over his increasingly panicked thoughts. How could he leave? There’s still so much to do here. There’s still so much time left on his clock. To leave now would be to abandon all he’s known for years in favor of a world that seems more distant than ever, a world he can barely imagine - one that is far more alien and intimidating than the one that’s been his home for the past 1,842 days.

He runs his thumb over the counter on his arm, a nervous habit he’s never seen a point in breaking. If he goes back now, will he even be able to adjust to a life where he’s not alone? 

(Is there anything left for him there?)

They’re all talking to him but the sound doesn’t cut through the static. Instead, he watches their faces. Tommy, mostly confused, thrown into a situation he doesn’t understand. Techno, carefully calm but with fear and worry bubbling just below the surface. Wilbur, clearly devastated but trying not to show it.

And he comes to a realization.

He’s already let his sons down far too many times; this time will be different. If he can’t return for his own sake, he will do it for theirs.

He takes a deep breath, clearing the fog from his mind (had he forgotten to breathe in that whole time?) and holds up a hand, effectively quieting the room. “Sorry,” he begins, avoiding eye contact. “I...of course I’ll go back with you.” Wilbur and Techno visibly relax, shoulders slumping as all the tension leaks out of them. Tommy still looks confused, but he can read the situation well enough to not call attention to the heavy atmosphere that’s fallen over the house.

“Jeez, gave us a scare there, Phil,” Techno grumbles good-naturedly. 

Phil gives him a wry smile. “Sorry, my mind’s all over the place.” He and Techno share a commiserating look, both understanding the issues that come with a brain that fights back sometimes. Actually, Chat’s been rather quiet today. The shock of it all must have silenced those particular hallucinations; hopefully it won’t be a permanent silence, as Phil thinks he would miss them if they left entirely.

The first step to leaving is apparently deciding what to bring back. This, of course, becomes a much bigger production than Phil could have guessed. After popping open the trapdoor and guiding his guests down into the basement he could have sworn there were actual stars in Tommy’s eyes as the teenager took in the armor, weaponry, and valuable materials lining the walls. 

Techno isn’t much better, instantly making a beeline for the shimmering swords. He picks one up reverently, testing its weight and balance and nodding appreciatively at what he finds. “We’re taking all of this,” he declares. Wilbur and Tommy nod vigorously in agreement. 

“Classic Philza - gets banished to another world and becomes insanely rich instead of dying like a normal person.” Wilbur’s rifling through a chest of minerals, eyes getting wider and wider with each new find. He pulls out a chunk of blue crystal, jaw dropping. “Is this diamond? ”

Phil cackles at the dumbfounded look on his face. “Would you believe me if I said I forgot this wasn’t normal?” 

“Phil, you’re - I honestly think you might be richer than the king at this point. This is a disgusting amount of wealth, we’re going to have to cut off your head next.” Phil wheezes even harder at that.

“I’ve got even more stuff stashed in the Nether and at Endlantis.”

“What’s Endlantis?” Tommy asks from where he’s shoveling enchanted books into a shulker box. It’s a good thing Phil has an unconscionable number of shulker shells, or moving all this would take days, possibly weeks. 

“Remember those old stories about the End?”

“That place is real? Wait, isn’t there a dragon there?” Tommy’s voice goes high and squeaky in his disbelief.

“There was a dragon there. I murdered it and terraformed the hell out of the place. I can show you later, if you want?”

“Philza, that is - that is so incredibly poggers ,” Tommy whispers, eyes sparkling.

With the four of them working together, the basement is quickly dismantled. It’s shocking to Phil to see everything he’s worked for packed away nice and neat in little boxes. At the same time, it feels like there’s a weight off his chest. It makes going home feel real and, even more importantly, achievable. 

As he closes the trapdoor, Wilbur claps him on the shoulder. “Alright, where to next?”

Phil grimaces. “Back to the Nether.” Wil’s face falls and Phil quickly adds, “You can stay here if you want, it’s fine -”

Wilbur cuts him off firmly. “I’ll be okay, just - let’s have one of those potions going before we go in the portal this time, right?”

Phil nods, ducking his head and avoiding Wilbur’s eyes. The guilt from yesterday’s near-death experience sinks its claws into his lungs again. Gods, how could he have been so stupid, he put his son’s life at risk, he -

“Phil. It’s alright. I’m alright. It’s not your fault.”

“I almost got you killed,” he mutters bitterly, still looking away.

“And I just stole at least 20 pieces of diamond from your house and I don’t plan on giving them back. Call it payment if you want. I’m telling you though, I’m not upset, please don’t feel guilty on my behalf.”

Philza can sense this is not an argument he’s going to win and sighs deeply. “I can’t believe I raised my children to be criminals,” he despairs dramatically. Wilbur just snorts at him and mumbles something that sounds like “hypocrite”.

When they go through the Nether portal this time there is none of the drama and fear of the last visit. Wilbur, still glowing faintly orange from the potion he drank before stepping through, waves away Philza’s worries. “I’m fine ,” he insists. “Go grab your supplies, old man. I’ll keep an eye on these two.”

With no one to wait up for, Phil spreads his wings and takes off, weaving between basalt spires and lava falls. The Nether is full of tricky updrafts that could easily throw a less experienced flier straight into a wall. Luckily, Philza is far from inexperienced. He relishes the adrenaline rush of getting so close to danger before swooping away at the last moment, the exhilaration forcing a wide grin onto his face.

Arriving at the build site, he props open the top of a chest and surveys the contents with approval. Dozens of pieces of unrefined ancient debris, excavated while clearing space for the NetherVoid, stare back at him. Oh, the boys are going to love this one! He empties the debris into a shulker and fills the empty space with as much gold and quartz as he can fit.

It’s painful to know that he’ll never get to finish this project. The giant concrete outline of the cube will always be there, like the bones of some long dead, long forgotten creature. The landscape will remain marred by explosions, never to be repaired. Once he leaves, no human will ever see this area ever again.

A group of piglins watches him as he turns to leave. At least someone will know he was here and remember him. Not all of the work he’s done will go to waste.

When he gets back to the portal, Tommy is playing in lava.

Why are his sons like this.

“He seems to like it,” Techno explains, shrugging. From where he’s half-submerged in a small lava pool, Tommy spots Phil and yells a greeting at him. The translucent spots on his skin flicker with the lava, creating an almost hypnotic pattern of red and orange and black. Four or five small magma cubes surround him, splashing around or cuddling up happily.

“They’re like dogs or something,” Tommy says. “Look at this guy!” He holds up a tiny slime which burbles and promptly melts through his fingers and reforms in the lava below. Tommy seems to melt a little bit in response. “I’m gonna name him Slime Henry.”

“Great name. Very original,” Techno deadpans. “Don’t let Sapnap get his hands on this one.”

“I’m gonna guard Slime Henry with my life.” Tommy dumps the newly named Slime Henry on top of his head and emerges from the pool, bits of molten rock dripping off him. “Can we go to the End now? Wilbur keeps falling asleep and it’s kind of freaking me out. Just a little.”

Wilbur does look half asleep, propped up against a blackstone jut. “Not all of us -” he yawns widely, displaying sharp teeth. “Not all of us can be Nether boys. Some of us are just simple fish boys.”

“You’re gonna like the End a lot more, Wil.” 

The End portal is housed in a decaying stone structure Philza calls a Stronghold. As they enter, he explains that he didn’t build this, it was a preexisting part of the world. It makes Techno wonder more about the origin of Hardcore. Was this world created specifically for Phil’s imprisonment, or did it have a longer history? Were there people living here before who built these mysterious structures, and if so, what happened to them? He can’t wait to get his hands on some of the books Phil found here.

The portal itself is horizontal and surrounded by a ring of blue-green eyes. Every so often one of them will twitch. Techno suppresses a shudder and focuses on the portal itself instead. Unlike the portal to Hardcore or the Nether, it’s completely opaque - anything could be beyond those shifting stars and inky backdrop. “So we can just go right in?” He wonders aloud.

“noooooo” “NOOOO” “not safe don’t go” “scary”

Phil jumps, having been staring transfixed at the void. “What? Oh - yes. It’s safe. Here, follow me.” He slips into the portal easily. The last thing to go are his wings. They’re the exact same deep black as the void. Techno waits until his brothers have gone through - so no one could sneak up on them - and then enters the portal himself.

The first thing he sees on the other side is the endless dark sky. The second thing he sees is a huge expanse of water, lit from underneath, glowing beacons piercing the surface and extending infinitely into the heavens.

He’s standing on a black glass walkway, suspended over a massive...the only way Techno can describe it is an incredibly intricate fishtank . Coral trees grow far below, schools of tropical fish darting in and out. He can see the wreck of a strange purple ship half sunk into the sand and beyond that, the skull and spine of an enormous creature.

Chat is absolutely silent.

“This is incredible, Phil!” Tommy shouts from further along the walkway. 

“Can I swim in it?” Wilbur asks, voice gone quiet with amazement. 

It’s amazing. The work, the time that must have gone into constructing this...completely unbelievable.

Something feels wrong .

“Phil? What’s that?”

“Where are you - what are you doing?”

Techno turns. At the end of the walkway stands Phil, cloaked in inky black feathers. He’s standing over something - another small portal? He looks back at them, eyes empty. “They’re calling me,” he rasps. 

And before Techno can do anything, he touches the portal and vanishes.

Chapter Text

HELLO, SURVIVOR.

Philza floats in the void. He is surrounded by countless stars, piercing through the empty black. They speak to him.

SURVIVOR?

The air here is cool, but not uncomfortably so. It feels like the first hint of relief after a fever. It feels like home.

SURVIVOR, WAKE UP.

He is awake. Around him, infinity revolves on some unknowable axis.

DID WE BREAK YOU/HIM?

“Send me back.” He’s pleasantly surprised to find that he once more has control over his body. 

YOU’RE ALRIGHT!  the stars say. At a different time, Phil could have laughed at the earnest innocence in their...voice? Voices? The words enter his mind as easily as one of his own thoughts. 

“Send me back.”

BUT YOU’LL LEAVE US AGAIN/WE DON’T WANT TO.

“ I don’t care. Let me go back, or I’ll - I’ll -” His threat peters out with nothing to sustain it. The stars collectively send him the feeling of amused tolerance.

YOU LEFT TOO SOON LAST TIME. WE WEREN’T DONE YET.

His hands go cold, then numb. Looking down, he can see liquid darkness covering them. As hard as he tries, he can’t make himself move away.

( He remembers this.)

“I don’t want you to change me anymore, I just want to go home!” 

SURVIVOR -

“Stop calling me that!” 

There is nothing that can be gained from shouting at the uncaring universe. He does it anyway.

YOU ARE OURS/OUR SURVIVOR. YOU ARE MEANT TO BE HERE.

“I’m meant to be back home with my sons.”

WE CAN HELP YOU FORGET ABOUT THEM.

The fear runs cold down his spine, and he breathes out a shaky “W-what?”

THEY ARE HOLDING YOU BACK/TRYING TO TAKE YOU AWAY FROM US. WE CAN TAKE THAT AWAY/MAKE YOU BETTER. IF YOU WANT.

The worst part is, Phil can’t even sense any malice in the stars. Just an honest attempt to help him. It doesn’t make him any less angry, however. “Why the fuck would I want that? What I want is to go home, and be with my family, and not have you all being fucking creepy and go back to being my normal Chat! I want to not have to look over my shoulder constantly, or worry about surviving the winter, or get shot by skeletons every other fucking day! I don’t want to be your Survivor, I just want to be safe!” His voice breaks and he cuts off short, not wanting to betray too much emotion. They probably know everything he’s feeling anyway.

BUT...WE DON’T WANT YOU TO GO/LEAVE US.

He says nothing, staring out into the void.

WE’LL MISS YOU.

Silence.

YOU CAN BE HAPPY HERE. WE LOVE YOU. WE CAN PROTECT YOU. PLEASE, SURVIVOR.

He cracks. “I’ll miss you too,” he says gently, trying to console the stars before they have the cosmic equivalent of a tantrum. “Well. I’ll miss the normal you, when you’re not trying to kidnap me and change me even more.” His hands are still numb. “But I was always going to leave or die. You know that.”

...YES. WE KNOW.

The stars give off the distinct impression of sulking. Now that his anger has died down, Philza finds himself feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the stars. They’ve been his only companions for years, after all. “Isn’t there any way I could bring you with me?” He can’t even picture life without them anymore.

OUR PORTAL TO THAT WORLD IS CLOSED.

“So? Couldn’t I just open it like I did here?”

YOU WOULD DO THAT FOR US?

It’s incredible how he’s apparently adopted an unknowable, cosmic hivemind of beings with the average emotional maturity of a seven-year-old. “I’ve done it once, how hard can it be to do it again?”

IT’LL BE MORE DIFFICULT. YOU HAVE MANY ENEMIES/MORE RESPONSIBILITIES.

“If it’s what needs to happen for you to let me go, then I’ll do anything.” There’s no immediate response. Fractured whispering enters Phil’s head, as though the stars are arguing amongst themselves in private. He curls his darkness-covered hands into his chest, hoping to restore some feeling to them. To his surprise, the inky substance recedes just slightly, displaying wrists now freckled the purple-black of obsidian.

WE WILL MISS YOU.

“...I know, mate.”

SURVIVOR? WE WOULD HAVE SENT YOU BACK ANYWAY.

He laughs. “Of course, you just wanted to be stubborn, huh?”

...YES.

The stars spin faster around him. His eyes close.

GOODBYE, SURVIVOR.

Philza opens his eyes and he’s standing motionless on black glass. Tommy, Techno, and Wilbur are arrayed in a lopsided semicircle before him, each with a hand on their respective weapon.

Phil abruptly realizes he hasn’t breathed in quite a while.

Tommy’s eyes go wide at the first gasping breath, relaxing his stance and stepping forward. “Dadza? Is it really you?” Phil can’t speak over his hacking coughs. Something wet drips down his chin and he knows instinctively that it’s more of that liquid darkness. How did it get in his lungs?

Techno attempts to pull Tommy away but the boy easily wriggles out of his grasp, coming even closer to Phil. “Are you good? What - what on earth happened to your hands? ”

Looking down, Phil has to smother a gasp. The void drips from his hands, collecting on the small talons growing from his fingertips and falling to the glass below. They, and the rest of his hands, are the same velvet purple-black of an enderman.

He couldn’t escape without being changed one last time.

“I think it’s time I told you how I got my wings.”

“The rumors about killing the dragon to escape Hardcore were bullshit. Obviously.”

The black glass is cool beneath him. Underneath, a school of brightly colored fish darts by, illuminated by the shifting glow of the beacons. Phil lets himself reminisce about the weeks he spent carefully transporting them here, carefully crafting the unique ecosystem, before pulling himself back to the present. His hat lies on the floor nearby, a rip cutting through it from when Phil misjudged the sharpness of his new talons.

“Honestly, killing the dragon wasn’t even that difficult. I’ve come closer to dying from fucking... baby zombies than I did to that thing.” All three of his sons, leaning against the wall, look vaguely ill at the mention of undead children. “Yeah, they’re just as horrible as you’re probably thinking. But the dragon - she went down pretty easy. Probably should’ve been my first hint that it wouldn’t work, but…”

Against his back, the return portal hums. “I was too blinded by hope. I didn’t even wait for the body to fall before going through the portal. And then I woke up back in my house. Still in Hardcore.”

(He tries to run to the door but his legs give out, throwing him to the floor of the cabin. He lies there, unable to move, unable to comprehend, staring blankly out the window at the perfectly blue sky. It’s a beautiful day, and he feels like he is dying.)

“So I went back and I did it again. And again. Every time, the same result: I end up back in my house like nothing ever happened.” He tilts his head back, preferring to look at the stars than risk eye contact. “I was convinced that I had missed something, because there was no way I could have spent all that time and risked my life for nothing, right? And then finally, I found the other portal.”

(He’s been to the End so many times the endermen don’t even acknowledge him anymore by the time he finds it. A single patch of darkness, deeper even than that surrounding it, hidden behind one of the massive obsidian pillars jutting out of the alien landscape. Like the return portal, it hums as Phil approaches, beckoning him.)

“Once again, I didn’t hesitate for a second before going in.”

(He reaches out with a trembling hand. The moment his fingertips brush the void, he is somewhere else, somewhere new.)

“The other side was… it was still the End, but a new, different part of it. Instead of just one island, there were thousands of them. In the distance, I could see this huge ruined tower. I thought that if I went there, I might find another portal, one that would actually take me back to the real world.”

(The journey to the tower is harsh. Each time he throws an enderpearl to bridge the gap between floating islands, the cold seeps further into his bones. By the time he stands at the foot of the ruined structure, he’s shivering uncontrollably, hands too unsteady to even hold a weapon.

Something is moving inside.

He burns the branches of a strange, spindly tree for warmth, coughing at the fumes. With still-numb hands, he picks up his sword and fights his way through the armored sentries, only saved from falling to his death by quick reflexes and desperation.

There is nothing at the top of the tower. He looks out over the islands and the trees and the ruins and the void and realizes that he doesn’t know the way home.)

“The thing about the End is, it all looks the same. Once I went too far out, I couldn’t find my way back to the portal, if there even was one. I figured out later that the area I was in was hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers away from this starting island. At that time, though, I thought that if I went far enough I could find my way back.”

(It’s been days since he went through that portal. There’s no way to tell time in the End, so he watches the numbers on his arm slowly tick down instead. He’s running out of food.)

“As you can probably imagine, I wasn’t prepared in any way.”

(He bites into one of the purple fruits, nearly falling over as it teleports him to the left by several meters. Though the vertigo threatens to make him vomit and the cold eats at him, he repeats the process until the fruit is gone and he’s lying freezing and weak on the porous stone ground. 

A wandering enderman stares at his shaking body, reaches down and places a long-clawed hand on his shoulder. He shrieks in a voice rusty with disuse and twitches away from it violently.)

“I kept going. There was nothing else to do.”

(After a few weeks, the chorus fruit doesn’t bother him much. He can’t feel the cold anymore.)

“Eventually, I found something new. Instead of the normal ruined towers, I found the remains of the city. Well, what a city would be if most of it fell into the void, I guess. And hanging above it all was this ship, just floating in the sky. Before you ask, I have no idea how it worked. I made my way up there and found this thing called an elytra - basically man-made wings used for gliding.”

(It’s one of the riskiest things he’s ever done, if not the riskiest, period. There’s a popping noise from the shulker behind him and then he is in the air, rising swiftly towards the ship hanging in the sky above. His fingers are barely touching the stern when the levitation wears off, leaving him dangling in the air hundreds of feet above the ground. With enormous effort, he raises his other arm and cracks a pearl open on the deck, immediately falling over upon teleporting over. The dizziness is getting worse.

Below the deck he spots a brewing stand, three shimmering potions hanging off of it. Something happens - he blinks and tastes melon - he looks down and sees an empty bottle in his hand. When did he…?

It doesn’t matter, he decides. What matters is that the dizziness is almost all gone and he doesn’t feel quite as sick from the shulker bullet and he’d almost forgotten what warmth felt like but it’s so nice, he could fall asleep right here. And why not go to sleep in the safest place he’s found in over a month?

When he wakes up he sees the wings on the wall. The gray color is eerily reminiscent of the phantom membranes he fought so hard for, but the look and texture is all wrong - more like a bird than whatever phantoms are. They’re soft, too; he runs his hand over them, marveling at the intricately designed feathers. Almost without realizing, he drops his nearly broken chestplate to the floor.

The wings fit like they were made for him. There’s not a doubt in his mind that he might not make it as he leans over the prow of the ship and falls into the starry sky.)

“With the elytra, I could cover a much farther distance than I could by pearling. It made me more reckless, but at the same time, safer - I would fall off an island and not worry at all because I knew I could glide back up to land. Eventually, I stopped taking it off.”

(He tries to take the wings off, once, after wearing them for weeks on end. He pulls as hard as he can and still they don’t budge. The pain resonates throughout his whole body. He doesn’t try again.

The feathers have turned pitch black.)

“Even with that, though, I knew I was reaching my limit. It had been months since I first entered the portal and I wasn’t making any kind of actual progress. The food I found in the End was keeping me going, but it wasn’t keeping me healthy, and the constant exposure to the void was getting to me. I was pretty much constantly hallucinating at that point - if you thought it was bad when you got here, you can’t imagine what it was like in the End. I could have been going around in circles for all I know, just following whatever visions my mind came up with. I was on my way to a slow death.

“Eventually I just collapsed. I can’t really remember anything after that, but...”

(He’s lying on the ground again. He doesn’t know how he got there. He doesn’t know how long he’s been there. To get up now seems like an impossible dream - his limbs are far too weak to move. He just wants to rest.

Where was he trying to get to, again?

Surely there’s nothing out there but the void. It’s all he can remember.

The voices are back, whispering incomprehensibly in his mind.

He curls in on himself and one of the wings on his back moves to cover him further. That shouldn’t happen, he thinks, but can’t follow that line of thought any further. It’s nice, anyway - the feathers are still soft and he almost feels warm.

There’s a sound from in front of him, a distorted gurgle and chirp. Looking up, he stares straight into the purple eyes of an enderman. Oh, he thinks, unable to muster up the strength to be afraid. This is how it ends. 

The monster bends down and he instinctively flinches back, squeezing his eyes shut and preparing to feel claws slicing through him. 

The clawed hand lays, clumsily but gently, on top of his head. He cracks an eye open, once again meeting the enderman’s gaze. It vwoops softly, inclines its head, and begins carding its talons through his tangled hair. In his mind, one of the voices grows louder. 

it’s time it’s time it’s time rest now we’ll keep you safe

The enderman makes a clicking sound and solemnly blinks at him. He blinks back, then again and again until his eyes close for good and he is lulled to sleep by the gentle touch - the only one he can remember.

Still half-awake, he feels the enderman gather him up in its long arms. It carries him in long, slow steps, the rocking putting him further to sleep. 

Then he is weightless, and he remembers nothing else.)

“The next time I woke up I was back on the starting island. I don’t know how I got there, but according to my timer days had passed since the last time I was awake. I just...staggered to the portal, went back home, and passed out again. When I was finally lucid enough to form actual intelligent thought, I realized that something had changed me while I was stuck in the void.

“All in all, I came out of the End four months later with horrific malnutrition and exposure sickness, a bunch of fucking voices in my head, and wings permanently stuck to my back.” Voice now gone hoarse from talking, Phil blinks out of his daze and nervously looks at his sons. “Any questions - oof! ”

Trapped at the bottom of a giant group hug, Phil has never felt warmer or safer.

“Is it weird that I’m nervous?”

They’re standing in front of the portal back home - their real home. Unlike the Nether portal or End portal, this one has no frame. It’s simply a rip in reality, glowing a green so bright it’s nearly white.

Tommy shakes his head. “Pretty sure that’s normal,” he says lightly.

“What if -” Phil starts, then cuts himself off, looking away.

Tommy gives him a questioning glance. “What’s up, big man?”

“No, it’s - don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t be burdening you with my problems.” 

Tommy sighs loudly, rolling his eyes. “Well, that’s fucking stupid.” He cuts Phil off before he can start protesting. “I’m serious! Just because you’re our fake dad doesn’t mean we can’t help you with your issues.” 

Philza looks at Tommy. For a moment, he can see the ghost of the child he left behind, the one he unwillingly abandoned all those years ago. Then Wilbur and Techno crash into the clearing and the ghost is gone, leaving only the competent teen . “Are we ready to go?” Wilbur asks, obviously more than ready to get out of Hardcore.

“Wiiiiiiilllllbur!” Tommy whines. “Phil’s being weird again!”

“Don’t call him weird, he’s traumatized -”

“You are such a suck up oh my god -”

“We should just go while they’re distracted,” mutters Techno. 

Phil turns away from the portal. They’re much too far away to see his little cabin, but for a moment he imagines he can see it peeking through the trees, forever waiting for someone to come back. A crow stares at him from a branch, its eyes filled with stars. “I’ll find you again,” he promises. “Goodbye, Chat.”

He turns back. The portal beckons.

It’s time to move forward.