Chapter Text
For most of his years, Philza Minecraft traveled the world, exploring and fighting and being the hero people came to expect of him. He made many friends, powerful fighters and sly speakers alike, and lost a fair few as well.
But eventually, he got caught up in it all, in the violence and the ego and the crack of sword splintering bone and the rush of adrenaline in his brain and the mindless confidence and power and ruthlessness — and he decided he had had enough.
He left in the night, never to be seen again.
Phil traveled to the far edges of civilization, where his name wasn’t a thing of folk legend, and farther still until he was the only person for miles.
The next village was a day’s travel away, in good conditions, on horseback. He’d been warned that the trail he’d chosen was cursed by ghosts, the forest haunted by wolves and dark brambles and other such forces of evil. The sort someone called a hero to deal with, and avoided unless they were ready to face unspeakable horrors.
In short, it was the sort of place no mortal dared to step.
But Philza had made his name as a hero, fighting supposed evil and destroying cults which worshipped twisted gods and facing the Lady Death nearly every time he touched his sword. The forest of wolves did not frighten him.
Out here, an hour into the dense woods, he found the river that fed the nearby towns. He settled in at the foothills of a mountain, a short walk from where the river widened from high rapids to slow, winding waterway. He camped for weeks in the spring, gathering ores from a cave system nearby and setting up a makeshift forge and gathering wood with his freshly made tools. He hunted and built and spent long days at the river resting old wounds and relaxing.
The wolves, he found, were respectful enough. They never seemed to tread on his ground, and paid him no mind when they ended up at the river at the same time. They lurked and watched, but determined him to not be prey.
They made reasonable enough neighbors.
It was a year after he’d finished building his small cabin when he stumbled upon his actual neighbor.
They only met in passing, as Phil was returning from purchasing a pair of cows in town. Phil’s path took him past the shallow river bend, through a clearing of tall grasses he’d made his fishing spot. Across the river were the wolves, drinking and splashing through the water like month-old pups. Phil skirted the far edge of the clearing, keeping himself between the cows and the predators. As he passed, he kept an eye on the pack at the river and caught a glimpse of his neighbor.
It was a piglin. A tall, hulking brute of a piglin no less. He splashed in the river with the wolves, and a low, booming laugh carried across the clearing before the piglin caught sight of the blond. The piglin froze, and the pack of wolves snapped to attention, bristling in Phil’s direction.
The human urged his horse and the cows onward, raising a hand in what he hoped would be a lazy wave as he passed.
He didn’t spot the neighbor again until a month later, when Phil had to make an emergency trip to the river to clean his work clothes after Henry the cow decided he deserved a mud bath.
He was elbow deep in the freezing water, racing the sun before nightfall, when the relative quiet was broken by a soft “oh”.
Phil was on his guard instantly, reflexes hampered only by the twinge in his old knee injury. The stab of pain kept him kneeling, but his hand was on his blade before he’d even looked up to see the piglin across the water from him.
The piglin was larger up close, with a white shirt stretched across wide shoulders and a heavy red cloak draped over one arm. A few wolves flanked him, and if Phil wasn’t so busy worrying about a fight with the beasts, he may have commented on how well-fed and soft the animals looked.
“Oh, sorry,” the piglin huffed, “I thought you were at your cabin, they said— I didn’t—“
“Holy shit, mate,” Phil wheezed, “You startled me is all. Hi. What brings you here?” He couldn’t stop himself from glancing warily at the wolves.
“Ah, I’m just here to soak. Very boring, nothing fancy,” the piglin looked at the wolves for a moment before not quite meeting Phil’s worried gaze. “Don’t mind them. They won’t bite. Mostly. Just don’t like… attack or whatever. Chat’s— ah— They’re house trained. Or. Forest trained, whatever.”
The hesitation in the words was enough to melt the tension from Phil’s shoulders, and he reached down to rescue his tunic from the water’s flow.
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” Phil hummed. The piglin shuffled in place. Phil began to scrub his shirt again, using the fine sand from the riverbed to help get the mud loose. “I’m Phil, by the way,” he added.
“Heh?” The piglin stumbled over his words for a moment, “I’m uh, Technoblade?”
“That a question, mate?”
“No?”
“If you say so.”
He began to see Technoblade around more often after that. Sometimes they’d cross paths on deer trails in the forest, or while Phil painted in the field, but mostly at the river. The wolves would play and the two would sit and talk as Phil scrubbed his clothes or they soaked in the waters.
They had a fair bit in common, it seemed. They’d both had many brushes with Lady Death. Techno had encountered several gods, and liked to tell stories about them. Phil had encountered many of the same, and liked to listen.
They talked about all sorts of legends: the green god of trickery, the gods of sleep and nightmares, the Lady Death. Technoblade’s favorite, though, was the god of blood.
They spent the year idly talking and walking the forest as Technoblade showed Phil the best hunting spots and watering holes and even helped wrangle a few sheep to the farm.
It turned out the piglin was particularly fond of horses, and even had a small herd of them that ran free in the plains beyond the forest’s edge. He helped care for Phil’s horse for the year, tending her hooves and taking her through the fields.
“So why’d you move out here, mate?” Phil asked as they watched the herd of horses during the second summer since they’d met.
Technoblade shrugged. “It’s been my home for as long as I can remember. Never really felt like leavin’ if you know what I mean.”
“Didn’t you say you spent a while in the arctic?”
“Yeah, for a bit. Big war up north; they needed a spare sword, I wanted an adventure,” Technoblade scoffed. “Turns out it wasn’t too good for my… bloodlust. So I came back home to take a break.”
“Fair enough,” Phil replied.
It didn’t take too long to realize there was something strange about his piglin neighbor. Technoblade seemed to appear from nowhere, most often startling Phil as he worked by suddenly standing where he wasn’t before. The piglin talked to his wolves like they spoke back, muttering low conversations to “Chat” when he thought Phil wasn’t listening.
Phil was pretty sure the guy drank blood, as well. More than once, he’d found the remains of one of the piglin’s hunts devoid of the blood that should have been expected; not a stain on a blade of grass, nor a trickle from the carcass itself.
Phil figured that if his friend was some sort of vampire, it would just be another tick on his adventuring bucket list.
On top of providing him a strange, kind, but mysterious neighbor, Phil’s new forest home was host to miles of natural beauty. Phil would take his cane on longer treks, when he’d journey up the mountain or to the far side of the forest to capture the seasons with his charcoal and handmade paints. The cliffs and rocky paths would aggravate his knee, so the cane was a welcome helper on his travels.
The best sketching sessions were the long ones. He would travel out in the early dawn and settle at a large rock, sitting still and silent until the animals were willing to wander through his chosen domain.
It was on a gentle sort of sunny day, several hours into one such wait, that Phil first saw the white stag. The creature was majestic, with antlers almost as wide as it was tall. It glided down a nearby path, pausing just long enough for Phil to commit the image of its brilliance to memory before drifting away again.
The stag must have been ancient. Phil could almost imagine the local legends of the beast; stories of a forest guardian or spirit or god.
He caught glimpses of the mysterious stag from then on, and tried his best to memorize its antlers and stance each time he spotted it.
Several times, Technoblade wandered into a sketching session, and his wolves became the subject of Phil’s art. Those were odd days. The wolves were… difficult to capture. Phil wondered if it was because of the wind in their fur that they seemed to have no edges. They merged with the shadows in the foliage and he settled on it being a trick of the light mixed with aging eyes.
He didn’t need any more divinity in this lifetime, after all. He’d seen enough of the gods during his travels before he made his home here.
They were perched on a cliffside just above the treetops, with Phil painting the fire red sky across the plains, when Technoblade pointed out the white stag.
“Look, it’s Carl,” Technoblade said, “Look at him go, Chat. He’s so majestic out there with his herd.”
The wolves snapped to attention as he spoke, coming to stand at the cliff’s edge, following the piglin’s gaze. Phil said nothing to disturb the moment, flipped to a new page, and attempted to capture the smile on his friend’s face.
“Phil, did you know that albino deer don’t have visible spots? See we figured that out ‘cause Fossil over there found Carl when Carl was still so tiny. Phil, he could ride Fossil’s back, Phil. Look at him now, he’s so… he’s showing off with those antlers, isn’t he?”
“He looks like a little shit,” Phil joked.
“Aw come on, Phil, now Chat’s angry,” Technoblade whined. Sure enough, several of the wolves had started to bark and growl, tails lashing. “Chat, please. Chat, we like Philza Minecraft, I’m not gonna beat up an old man for being rude to a deer.”
“I’m not that old, mate!” Phil cackled, returning to capturing the fire in the sky before they’d have to return for the night.
The forest was burning.
The Blood God felt it in his soul. Every ember sent a spark through his veins; the magic writhing in his bones.
They were bringing war to his lands.
He wasted no time sending the pack to investigate, and his hounds tore through the trees with ease. They left a trail of blood and stardust in their wake as they surrounded the intruders. One by one the soldiers of the enemy fell, and his magic fed off the destruction.
The Blood God coalesced to walk with his wolves as they destroyed, reveling in the blood and soaking the pools into the cloak trailing behind him.
He passed Lady Death as she did her work. He spared her a fond nod, and she tilted her hat in regretful thanks.
They were reluctant and ancient friends. Though she was far kinder than he about their shared prey, a god of blood and a god of death were bound to one another. They fed off each others’ work; a cycle of death and destruction and chaos and rebirth.
“Why this place as their resting spot, Reaper?” He asked, his divinity seeping into his voice with his anger, “Why my domain?”
“They chase one who has my favor,” the Goddess replied, “She chose you as her savior.”
Yes, he could see her. She ran from the wolves with no fear in her mind and pure determination on her face. She ran and she ran and she did not know she would never leave his forest.
“You would have her spared?” He growled, the void lining his voice with static.
“It is her time, tonight,” the Reaper gathered another soul, crystalizing it with a touch and dripping it from her necklace of stars. “But the other, she wishes to save. You favor those who fight, do you not?”
“We shall see if she is strong enough to impress, then,” he tugged on his wolves, turning them all to the woman who fled with all her mortal strength.
“We shall,” Lady Death agreed.
The Blood God released his form, leaping through the pack’s eyes until he followed the woman.
The woman was unremarkable, even by mortal standards. A forgettable face and a form too thin for fighting, she ran without practiced strides and stumbled through the overgrowth. She clutched a bundle to her chest as she ran, a long cloth tethering the thing to her torso alongside her single cradling arm.
He pushed his wolves harder, let them snap at her heels. He lifted her blood from the soil, gathering it with the rest, but she never stopped running.
She spared the wolves no sideways glances, barreling through the mists and trees like a mindless wretch. His wolves raced along the blood that poured from a wound in her shoulder, and the woman yelped with the pain of it.
But still, she ran.
He understood why the Lady Death had found this one favorable. She clung to life, but not her own. She ran past the divine without a second thought, sparing her own death no mind as she raced to reach safety for the babe she held close.
She certainly was a fighter, and The Blood God found his hounds straining wildly against their tethers. They pulled further into the world, the pack ripping the world with their fangs, tugging his shadow tight.
He breathed himself into the world, the thrill of the hunt sinking into his bones. He loosened the reins on the pack, their tethers of magic and blood stretching to their limit.
Reality rippled as the Blood God entered the world in its entirety.
The chase was over. The hunt was only just beginning.