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Phil looked out over what was left of the battlefield, and gave a small smile.
It was a messy thing, war. It was something that came with much heartache, much desperation, blood and bile, sweat dripping all in the name of something that was often far above the men that fought. Oftentimes it was a useless endeavor in the end, a futile effort made by thousands when only a few hundred returned.
One side fought and won, and the other side fought and lost, and made both sides suffer all the more for it.
Wars were messy and destructive, tearing down the homes and lives of everyone in the vicinity, each battle the potential spark to something far more catastrophic. War came with plague and pestilence, famine, ever-present fear. Each battle was a place of suffering for hundreds, the dead and dying either left to rot or stacked up to burn. The pyres would turn the bodies to ashes to be scattered across the lands, rising with the smoke and riding the wind away from such bloodshed and horror.
But these battles were different for Phil. For him, he found battlefields to be something of a scene of beauty.
Not conventional beauty, of course not. There was nothing beautiful about the grass stained red, mud covered cheeks and the terror of a soldier’s first kill reflected in their eyes. But it was a place where ends were met, and that was something that he thought beautiful.
Reaching up, he tugged at the ribbon holding his hair back, allowing the strands to slip loose around his chin. The ribbon had been a gift, something to tide him over between visits, something to grasp when it felt like the one thing he wanted was merely a dream.
The ribbon, as simple as it seemed to be at first, was special. It didn’t truly do anything, despite the fact that it was obviously magical in nature – but it was made of void, the black of it deeper and more vacuous than anything that could be naturally dyed, shining with swirling pinpricks of stars. It made his eyes hurt to look at, despite the fact that some days it was all he could do to stare at it and murmur prayers into the little tear of reality that it was.
“Hello there, love,” he whispered, ribbon held tightly to his chest as he stood upon a small knoll, barely elevated above the red stain that was the battlefield. “I hope you enjoy the gifts. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I haven’t gotten into something quite this big in years.”
The souls that he sent to her would be enough of a message to tide both of them over for now, he thought. She always liked it when he joined into these petty human wars, teasing out the stories of a soul’s last moments facing him, her angel. Even if they came tinged in fear and desperation, the terror that someone felt when facing him – honestly, she seemed to enjoy them from what Phil had been told. They were a reminder of what kind of fighter her angel was, what he was capable of.
He could almost imagine her laugh, the weight of her hands on his shoulder, the chill lips pressed to his cheek.
You haven’t, no, she would say, eyes crinkling as she smiled at him. You should join Techno more.
“I know I should keep up with him more,” he said to the phantom image of his love. “He’s always gone ahead of me though, y’know? Stubborn little shit, doesn’t know when to take a break.”
You could keep up, if you wanted to. You cover ground much quicker than he does, anyway.
Phil hummed, his own smile growing. “I know – but the last time I did you scolded me to hell and back for being reckless. I knew what I was doing, y’know,” he teased lightly. The last time he did something like that he had spent weeks in the void with her, body struggling to be put back together after he had experimented a bit too much with his wings and a riptide enchanted trident.
Another laugh seemed to echo in his mind, and he closed his eyes as his smile faded. He missed her dearly. It had been a while since anyone had managed to land a killing blow on him – even though it was something that Kristin, his wonderful Death, didn’t approve of, he craved the feeling of her taking him in her arms again.
You belong among the living, Phil, she always murmured to him. There’s a reason that I can’t take you permanently.
A damn shame, if you asked him. Kristin always tried to make his visits last as long as possible, but even she could only control so much. Her domain was the end of creatures, and clearly he had not met that end yet - so he was stuck here, waiting for someone to send him to visit his wife once again.
Alas, staring out at the ashes of the battlefield, pyres of the fallen beginning to light, he knew that it would be a while longer before he got to see his wife.
Not Techno though. There was a small amount of envy there, standing at his fallen son’s side, knowing that he would be getting some time to talk to Kristin while Phil was stuck here on the mortal plane. Tech deserved it though, he didn’t spend enough time with his mother as it was, too much of a stubborn little shit to fall.
“Technoblade never dies!” The triumphant, laughing phrase had been a joke at first, but then the warrior had met his rival, Dream. It seemed that even now, centuries later, the competition that Techno held up with the godling made him loathe what he perceived as the failure of dying, even if it meant a visit to his mother.
A foolish thing, Phil thought, though he knew that his son intended no harm from it. He had always been fiercely competitive about the smallest things at times – at one point he had taken over an entire kingdom purely for the fact that he wanted to have more of a farming output than a rivaling kingdom.
That had been an interesting few decades, before Techno eventually left that kingdom and returned to wandering at Phil’s side for a while longer.
The family didn’t always stay together, wandering apart for years, perhaps decades at a time, but they always found their way back together whether they meant to or not. Often, it came at the most unexpected of times, when Phil thought that his boys would be half a world away.
“You shouldn’t leave your back open to a potential enemy, you know,” a voice behind him spoke, and Phil laughed quietly as he turned. Speak – or think – of the devil, and he shall appear.
He shifted one wing to welcome Wilbur into his space, taking in his battered uniform, the cracked glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t know that you were here, Wil. Is this where you’ve been?”
He received a nod from the brunette, who glanced down at Techno at their feet with a soft snort. “He finally went down, huh? How many did it take this time?”
“Not sure exactly, but there was a good crowd,” Phil answered. Despite the fact that they had apparently been on opposite sides of this battle, there wasn’t truly any anger between them. It wasn’t the first time that the members of their family had found themselves wearing opposing uniforms, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, immortal to immortal – they would always remain the same like this. They were the only ones that would stick around for the ages, a war that lasted a handful of years was barely a blink to them, certainly not worth grief between them.
Wilbur hummed, looking at him properly. “So, anarchist, what’s been happening with you in the last few decades?”
Phil smiled at his son and sat down on the bloodsoaked grass, shifting Techno’s body so that his head laid in his lap. Beside him Wilbur sat with at least a little more delicacy despite the ruined state of his uniform, and took pink hair in his hands, carefully brushing out the long strands.
They were all touched by death, immune to it to a certain point, and there was nothing that Phil could appreciate more. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost any of his sons.
“Is Tommy with you? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“He should be back at camp by now, probably helping the healers,” Wilbur said with a shrug. “We’ve got a pretty good stash of potions, our forces will be back up and running within a few days if everything goes to plan.”
A hum, and the blonde shrugged. “I’m not sure that we’ll be waiting for that long, the king wants to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.”
They shared the plans and advantages of their two sides, uncaring of the careful secrecy that those plans had been kept under with everyone else. They both knew that unless one or the other truly cared about what they were fighting for, neither would share the information. And if one of them really cared, then the entire family would move together, and nothing could truly stand in their way then.
It had happened before, the results devastating in their decisive action, kingdoms toppled before they could even begin to put up a defense. But that hadn’t happened in a long time, and no one gathered here had sent word, asking for help, so there wasn’t any true stress upon them.
Beats of silence stretched between the two of them, before Phil reached over to pull Wilbur closer, a kiss pressed to his forehead.
“I’ve missed you, Wil. It’s been too long.”
Wilbur hummed and nodded, having to fold himself down to rest his forehead on Phil’s shoulder. His hands continued playing through Techno’s hair as they waited, idly twinning braids together, delicate and loving, even in this temporary death.
By the time that Techno’s wounds knitted back together and he gasped in a breath, the sun was setting over the battlefield. Ashes settled over the grass, the sunset bathing the landscape in burning orange light, and Tommy had found his way to their gathering to join them.
When the pink-haired warrior sat up, he blinked a few times – coming back to your body after time in the void was a disorienting process at best, especially when your body had to be pulled together by the goddess of Death.
But Techno had his family to hold his hands, steadying him as he wavered, Phil placing a warm palm against his son’s back where the metal had been parted around a lucky blade.
“Welcome back, mate.”
Red eyes turned to him, then to Wilbur and Tommy, before he sighed. “Great. Everybody’s here to witness my defeat.”
Phil laughed, as Tommy punched the newly revived Techno in the shoulder, only to recoil when he forgot that he was still wearing armor.
“Fuck, man-”
“Tommy, that’s metal, you probably shouldn’t punch it,” Techno pointed out in his usual deadpan.
Wilbur snorted, leaning over to pull Tommy close, arm slung over his shoulder. Phil watched them, smiling to himself, fingers twisting around the ribbon in his grip. The three siblings bickered, the goddess that they all held so dear to their hearts watching over them.
They all had their own ribbons, their own scraps of void to tie them to their mother, the plane of death.
Phil used his as a hair tie, Tommy kept his tied around his wrist most days, Wilbur would often tuck his into a pocket as a sort of loose sash, Techno kept his wrapped around the hilt of his favorite sword. It marked them as family, as immortals, though only a few people would ever recognize it as such.
In the dying light of the setting sun, they sat all pressed together, feeling the whisperings of love from their goddess Kristin.
Rest well, lovelies, that whispering voice said. You’ll have each other come tomorrow.