Archive of Our Own

Expeditions weren't as uncommon as Wilbur had thought when he had first become an archeologist. Really, he thought that most of his job would be spent in a lab or writing papers on what had been found by other people. Not that he was exactly upset about it, in fact he was extremely excited!

His first expedition in all of his years at working at Somnolent Industries, to a newly uncovered series of catacombs that lay underneath the ruins of an ancient kingdom that no one really knew about. All records had been thoroughly destroyed, manuscripts burned and art defaced and eroded away after too many years of being exposed to the elements. But the catacombs had been entirely sealed until one of the outermost tunnels had been broke through during construction for a new development.

The historical significance of such a site was enough to shut down the project immediately, which Wilbur took no small amount of joy in. Even without the catacombs that were running underneath it, in Wilbur's opinion it was way too close to such a relic of times past. Even if the old castle was mostly destroyed by looting and revolutions and time, it was still enough of a monument that it seemed sacrilegious to modernize anywhere near it.

But Wilbur didn't have any sort of control over that, and he had to keep himself satisfied with finding something in the catacombs that would keep the entire place off limits forever.

It took a solid week to get everything in order: the plane tickets, housing, packing up all of their equipment that they could carry with them and getting prepared for hours upon hours spent underground. Wilbur was lucky that neither him or his two other party members were claustrophobic. He had seen a few of the camera pictures of the catacomb that had been broken into, and already was prepared for an adventure of hunching over to not hit his hand against the ceiling.

It would just be like his last time caving, though hopefully this one wouldn't end with him dangling over a drop with only a single rope between him and certain death. That had been one hell of an adventure, it had only been a month and Wilbur was already itching for another one.

His spelunking buddy, Schlatt, hadn't shared the feeling. The man had sworn off caving for at least a year, leaving Wilbur with no partner for some of the riskier expeditions. Until this catacomb expedition showed up, and suddenly Wilbur's time was booked for months.

It seemed like only yesterday that Wilbur had first gotten the news that he had been chosen for such a groundbreaking expedition, and now he was sitting in the cabin of a plane that was flying them across the world.

His two other coworkers were sitting across from him.

Phil Craft was one of the top scientists in the field of battlefield archeology and so was essential to have on a trip to one of the most war hungry kingdoms that had been discovered. While they weren't expecting to really see a battlefield there, it would be important to have him to see the effects on the bodies and what grave goods had been included. Wilbur hadn't really talked to him, they were in two separate areas of the research center but he had absolutely heard of his prestige in his field. He would absolutely love to pick the man's mind on what he thought about the evidence of advanced warfare that had been found in the castle that was so close to the catacombs.

Thomas- who always asked to be called Tommy- Innis was another one of the top archeologists at their Institute, despite being rather young. He was six years Wilbur's junior and yet he was already up and coming in the field of experimental archeology. Hopefully he would be helpful to discover how exactly they had constructed such elaborate catacombs in the early centuries of the common era, and- barring that- would be good for figuring out things that were around the catacombs as well. In the exact inverse of Phil, Wilbur knew far too much about Tommy. He knew about his parents and where he went to school and his favorite color and exactly what he was thinking about at any given moment.

Then there was Wilbur himself, who was only there because he was the only cultural resource manager that had the qualifying certifications and diplomas. While the place they were going wasn't exactly a bustling metropolis, it was close enough to civilization that there was some inherent bureaucracy involved with public property and exactly who had jurisdiction over whatever was found there. Wilbur was the only on in Somnolent Industries with enough interest and credit to be sent on such an unprecedented mission.

(The fact that he had a few forays into the world of the anthropology of death certain didn't hurt when it came to choosing who to send.)

Phil Craft was passed out in his seat, head lolling with an eye mask keeping him from waking up in the low light of the airplane cabin. No matter how loud Tommy talked, or how many times he accidentally jostled the man with an elbow while explaining something, he stayed sleeping. Wilbur had to hand it to the man, when he fell asleep he was out.

"Well- see I think that the best thing that's going to come about this is the fact that I'm going to be able to get something published." Tommy grinned, showing off teeth that were the type of perfect that came from having braces. "I mean, a catacomb from this early CE? That's not exactly unprecedented but depending on how the bastards did it, it could absolutely be noteworthy."

It was pretty easy for Wilbur to get caught up in Tommy's energy. He was fresh out of college, bursting with energy and the type of excitement that came from someone's very first expedition. The guy was just built for that sort of energy. Wilbur had been annoyed by him at first- mostly because he had joined the team during Wilbur's most jaded years of working there- but Tommy had grown on him.

(Tommy said that he had grown on him like a flower coming up through concrete, and Wilbur had told him that it was more like a fungus.)

"I'm more excited to see the burial rituals. You can tell a lot about a society from how they treat their dead, and this could be a gold mine of information!" Wilbur beamed, drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair. "There could be manuscripts down there, we could figure out more from the society." If whatever records had been stored down there were still legible, the amount of information they would uncover would be immense.

Of course that would mean that SI industries would send even more groups of people in various specialties to help sift through it all. At the very least, with such a small beginning group, Wilbur knew that all of their names would be front and center on the breaking news stories.

"Of course you're interested in the burial rituals, you're a wrong'un you know," Tommy said, matter of factly as he nodded his head. "Only wrong'uns decide that they're going to dedicate their lives to looking at dead people. Unlike me, I've dedicated my life to seeing if I can explode things in the same way that our ancestors did!"

"Is that why you have a mark on your record for suspension?" Wilbur found it very easy to tease Tommy, he just left himself open for so many jokes that it was almost sad.

Tommy's face dropped into an expression of rage, and he reached over the aisle to try and slap at Wilbur. The movement was finally enough to jostle Phil enough to wake him up.

The man snorted, jolting up in his seat and dropping the book that had been sitting- unread- in his lap. "Wh- did we land?"

"No we still have- shut up Tommy- we still have a few more hours." Wilbur had to raise his voice to speak over Tommy's peals of laughter. "Tommy just thought that he should wake you up in the rudest way possible."

"Oi!" Tommy once again tried to reach across the aisle to hit him, and once again failed to reach him.

"Tommy get back in your seat, if turbulence hits and you get thrown out of it and hit your head I'm not even going to get the first aid kit. I will just let you bleed on the ground." Phil shifted back in his seat, picking up his book and flipping to his last page. "Stop trying to hit Wilbur."

"Then tell Wilbur to stop being a dickhead!" Still, Tommy slumped back in his seat. "I'm just telling him that he's a bit weird in the head for wanting to be around dead people so much."

"And I am just trying to tell Tommy that my area of expertise is not just the dead people. I'm barely here because of that, I'm here for the legal part of everything." Someone needed to be able to work with the neighboring areas to decide who gets jurisdiction over whatever is found. Obviously they'll have to work with local scholars about it, they probably have more information than what they were sent with.

"Tommy stop judging Wilbur for his specification, Wilbur don't be weird with the dead bodies." Phil gave a casual little wave of his hand. "If I fall asleep again, and I'm woken up before the plane lands, I'm going to throw the two of you out the plane and do all of this alone."

Wilbur and Tommy rolled their eyes in unison, but stayed back in their seats. Phil didn't actually end up going back to sleep, and soon of them started to discuss what they all thought about the trip and what they were going to find.

Phil was rather optimistic, saying that what little records they had of the Empire proved that they were advanced at least to the same degree as the Romans. That the catacombs- if they were truly completely sealed until now- would be entirely preserved. That there was going to be a wealth of information for all of them to discover.

Tommy was mostly excited about this being one of his first real expeditions away from Britain. It wasn't his first field task in any sense of the word, but it was his first international one. As much as Wilbur enjoyed to make fun of him and needle at him, it was something that he was glad to experience. Besides, he knew that he gave his superiors just as many issues when he was in Tommy's place.

As much as Wilbur wanted to be excited about the expedition- and believe that he truly was- most of his mind was focused on the implications of anything that they actually found. The paperwork would be intense, and most of Wilbur's job was all about paperwork. The second that they touched down and got squared away in their hotel room, Wilbur would have to immediately start calling people to figure out who was at the top and who he had to brown nose in order to retain a bit of power in this situation.

Which of course meant that he couldn't go out with Tommy and Phil when they wanted to go out to eat. Wilbur was too busy calling every lab and college that could point him in the right direction, and so the other two left him alone with a promise to bring him back leftovers. The sun had already set by the time the others came back to the hotel, and Wilbur had only just barely loosened his tie as he paced around the room.

Phil sucked a breath through his teeth, setting a Styrofoam container on the desk before moving past Wilbur. "Good luck, mate." His voice was just soft enough to not be picked up by the phone.

Wilbur bobbed his head, mouthing rather mean words that he wished that he could say to the person keeping him on hold, and Phil had to slam a hand over his face to keep from chuckling.

All of their attempts at being quiet were immediately ruined by Tommy opening the door.

"Wilbur! You missed out on the best dinner ever, really we missed you. You missed out on everything, honestly, there's was so much cool shit out there and yet you spent the entire day just talking on your phone." Tommy shut the door with his foot and threw his bag onto one of the beds. "I mean really- Phil you agree with me right, people of your advanced age are always talking about how being on your phone rots your brain. You agree that Wilbur's rotting his brain, right? And that he should have come to dinner with us?"

Phil's lips quirked up in a smile, and he sent an apologetic shrug towards Wilbur. "Don't be rude, mate, Wilbur's handling the stuff that neither of us want to deal with. You should thank the guy, he's making sure we aren't put in jail."

"Oh, well y'see Phil- I would never be put in jail. No one would ever jail me and even if they tried I would tell them no thank you sir- it's always best to be polite- and then they would just let me go free. So while someone might you need Wilbur to keep you out of jail, I'm fine on my own."

Wilbur rolled his eyes, but was quickly distracted by the person on the other end picking up. "Oh, hello yes is this Professor Jeremy? I'm Wilbur Soot from Somnolent Industries, I'm in the area for the catacombs that have recently been discovered."

It took another hour after that for Wilbur to file everything away and get verbal permissions for complete expedition as well as being able to have a foothold in to barter for the actual rights to some of the things found, depending on relevance. The only reason that Wilbur didn't continue to try and get further is because Tommy threw a pillow at his head and told him to go to sleep.

In the guy's defense, they were going to have an early start the next morning and Wilbur would put good money on none of them being morning people.

At four thirty in the morning, Wilbur's suspicions were proven mostly right.

Tommy looked like a zombie, hair going in every which way and eyes downcast. He only groaned in response to Wilbur wishing him a good morning, and had only barely shambled to the shoddy coffee machine that came with their hotel room. He stayed at that machine for just barely long enough for Wilbur to be concerned that he was drinking all of the capsules that they had.

Wilbur felt like he was moving through syrup, his mouth tasted disgusting and there was a distinct crick in his neck and his knee from sleeping in an awkward position on the plane and then not quite fitting on the cot that they had gotten. A three bedroom was just slightly out of their possible price range, and Wilbur had said that he was fine with just taking the spare bed. He did not expect the spare bed to be made solely with dwarves and Phil Craft in mind.

Speaking of the man himself, he seemed to be the only one of them who was fine with waking up before dawn. He had gone to sleep with the rest of them and yet he had basically bounced out of bed and was packed before Wilbur had even forced himself to splash water on his face. Phil had attempted to engage them in conversation, and was swiftly shut down by a death threat and a withering (but silent) glare.

Still, despite most of them not having the best time in the mornings, they were workers first and foremost. They packed up their bags and hefted their equipment onto the ATV that they had rented in order to reach the site in the first place, all in complete silence. It was the sort of companionable, quiet, silence that came with like-minded people who were all too tired to have a conversation but not tired enough to be angry about it.

Tommy fell asleep on Wilbur's shoulder during the drive, both of them having sat in the back while Phil drove in order to keep the delicate equipment from bashing into each other. Wilbur couldn't force himself to knock him away, reasoning that the guy wasn't drooling on his shoulder so it wasn't the worst that it could be. Besides, Wilbur wanted to be nice to him when they were going to be stuck together for the next few weeks.

For all Wilbur knew, he was going to fall asleep on Tommy's shoulder in the coming weeks and he didn't want to get pushed off then.

Phil looked at them both through the rear view mirror and grinned, not needing to say anything to earn Wilbur flipping him off. He just chuckled and shook his head, continuing to drive on through the rolling fields as they slowly left the city behind.

It was gorgeous, Wilbur loved this part of the job. The sights, rolling landscapes that stretched on to infinity without being touched by human hands in centuries. The promise of finding something that could change the world- even if it was just the world of anthropological archeology. Wilbur hadn't found something as interesting as Phil Craft had, he didn't have his name published on any big study about war or the way that humanity dealt with it, but he was young enough that he had time.

Maybe this trip would be his big break, maybe it would be the next one, it didn't really matter.

The site of the breakthrough was almost entirely unremarkable. A sink hole in the ground like any other natural occurrence that Wilbur had drove past a thousand times, the only thing making it special being where it was and where it led.

They set up their supplies and began to get ready for the descent. It was something that Wilbur was used to doing, in a far different context, and he found himself helping Tommy get set up. Knocking his hands away to get at the hard to reach buckle so that Wilbur could do it for him.

"I can do that for myself-" Tommy protested as Wilbur tugged to test his gear.

"We are about to go underground, even if we think it might just be a catacombs we don't know for sure," Wilbur said mildly as he stepped back, "I'm the only one here with actual caving experience, you know, I know how dangerous underground can get. Especially when we don't know if there's any structural issues, we might have to drag you out by this."

"Don't say that," Phil reprimanded from where he was hefting a light up. "Let's not talk about that sort of stuff before we actually go in."

"What, are you scared of closed spaces? Because Phil- I know you're probably used to huge expansive battle fields but you should learn about the art of-"

Phil cut him off, waving his hand emphatically- "I'm not claustrophobic, I just have a healthy fear of the underground." He did seem to glance a few too many times into the entrance for Wilbur's liking, and he hoped for all of their sake's that Phil wasn't lying. Wilbur had been on one too many spelunking adventures where the person he was with had a panic attack, it wasn't pretty.

It was stressful for all involved and Wilbur would very much like to devote himself to studying the catacombs. He had an entire specialization in that field and he would be right pissed off if Phil wasn't as prepared for the trip as he made himself sound.

"Well then I'll go first. I've been in caves that weren't entirely up to code, and I have some experience with free climbing." Though he didn't have as much experience as he sometimes liked to claim. He had gone on a few trips, but most of them had ended earlier than planned due to weather. Wilbur moved closest to the dip, crouching down slightly to keep himself from toppling over, and carefully let himself slide down the dirt incline.

He stood in front of a yawning opening, the darkness almost oppressive with few stray beams of sunlight trickling in. Phil handed him one of the industrial flash lights that they had brought and Wilbur flipped it on. The difference was quite literally like night and day, allowing Wilbur to see the packed dirt floor and carefully dug out arches supported with brick.

"Looks pretty well made, Phil, don't think you'll need to be scared." Wilbur laughed as he gave a gentle tug on the rope tying him to his team. "Looks just like any other catacombs, let's get this show on the road. I don't want to have to drive back to the hotel only to barely get any sleep."

His advice- which he thought was pretty sound- was met with grumbling as the two others slid down with him.

"Hm." Phil frowned as he looked into the passageway. "It seems very Roman in nature, even though it's completely out of the way for that. I know that the Roman Empire was expansive, but I don't think they ever got as far as the islands."

"What's the word for when two things happen at once- like when they're in two completely areas and yet they look similar?"

"Convergent evolution," Wilbur said, automatically as he began to walk further down the corridor. There were alcoves dug into the walls, a slight decline to the floor that was just going to lead them further and further underground. Odds were the alcoves weren't actually for storing remains, but for grave goods or whatever organic material had been left as tribute for the dead. Any remains would be long gone by now, but Wilbur made a note to look at them closer once they've gotten a better grasp on the catacombs.

"Yeah! It could be like- convergent evolution of design. Something like that." Tommy shrugged, sweeping his own flashlight across the corridor before turning to Wilbur and accidentally catching him right in the face. "Shit- sorry Wilbur- anyway I wanted to ask something."

"Yeah?" Wilbur said, mostly absentmindedly as he continued to lead the group down the incline. In a strange reverse of what was usual, the ground smoothed away into rock that had been set into the ground instead of the packed dirt that they had been walking on before. He frowned. That wasn't usual, and it certainly would take some incredible work to try and get the stone all the way underground.

"What do you think about this? You're the death guy- is this what the catacombs would look like? Because I will not lie, I was expecting a lot more bodies and a lot more bones."

Wilbur frowned, realizing that Tommy had a point and he didn't even notice. He was the one with a degree in death rites and rituals, and yet he still didn't notice that there was something wrong with this. It was beginning to not seem like a catacomb tunnel at all, instead the alcoves stayed empty and there were no carved murals of death and religious iconography. All of the hallmarks that usually came with multiple being buried there were simply- nonexistent.

He really hoped that this was a genuine historical site and wasn't just some rich person's pet project that they had stumbled into. They were heading deep underground, in the direction away from the city and towards the ruins of the castle, so it wasn't exactly likely for it to be a fake.

But still, things weren't adding up. The Deigh Empire was known for their bloody battles, that was almost all of the information that they had on the empire in the first place. War recollections from other territories that they battled against which therefore weren't the most reliable considering the nature of wartime propaganda, but they were too consistent. This was not the burial place of warriors, and Wilbur was beginning to think that it wasn't a burial place at all.

One thing was for certain: it was old. The air had a certain musty quality to it, tasting the same dry and stale way as other tombs that Wilbur had gone into. No one had been down here for years, and probably a lot longer before that considering the lack of dust on the floors. Everyone expected tombs to be dusty, but that wasn't exactly the case. Dust only came about through a combination of things, most notably dead human skin cells. So, no humans shedding their dead skin? No dust.

"I'll be honest, Tommy, I'm not....sure." Admitting that he was wrong was strange to Wilbur, but at the very least he was amongst peers. "All of the things that I would normally be looking for are absent, there doesn't even seem to be any bodies interred in the walls. We're probably not that deep in, so there's always the chance that they built more tunnels than they ever got the chance to use."

"Wouldn't surprise me," Phil interjected, "This looks like it took a lot of work, I don't see anyway that they could have easily expanded upon this."

"We won't know till we get deeper in." Wilbur just had to hope that they found some evidence of burial, or even just something on the walls. He felt a little useless despite being chosen for this mission because of his degrees, what use was the anthropology of death when there was no death for him to study. "Tommy, how's the slack on the rope?"

"We're still good, Wil, it's not like we're exactly going around corners."

He gave a little hum in response, running through his mental checklist of what he could look for that would justify his presence in the team. The walls were packed earth that were supported by bricks, the alcoves were uniform in both size and distance apart, and the tunnel seemed to be in just one direction. While that would make getting back out easier, it was concerning if they were going to try and categorize this as a catacombs.

There was no twisting web of corridors that Wilbur was expecting- or that he had prepared for. No bones that had been used for decorating or that were lovingly interred with respect. The tunnel was certainly old enough to belong to the Deigh Empire, but without an actual reason other than it being old, Wilbur feared the worst in terms of preservation. It was hard enough to get a government to respect an actual burial site, let alone a simple corridor.

"Hey, Wilbur." Phil paused to the side of him, reaching out a hand to take him by the arm. "Fork coming up."

Wilbur tore his eyes away from the walls and looked ahead, seeing that Phil was right. There was a gentle fork in the path, going diagonally right and left. He pulled up a mental map of where they were, trying to remember which direction would bring them closer to the remains of the castle and which would veer them off course. "Let's go left, I think that's the right way to go."

"Oh great, you think that's where we should go," Tommy mocked, good-naturedly even as he elbowed Wilbur in the side. "If we get lost I'm putting it squarely on your shoulders."

"How would we even get lost, we have a rope leading us back to the surface."

"Well what if the rope gets cut and dragged away and then we get lost?"

"That's not going to happen-"

"-Guys do you see that light down there?" Phil interrupted their bickering, frowning as he began to move forward. Wilbur, being attached to Phil's line, was pulled with and had to scramble after him.

"Do you think you could give us some warning before you start walking?" Wilbur grumbled as he caught up, doing his best to examine the walls as they walked at Phil's pace. Despite the fact he had a good foot on the man, when Phil wanted to walk fast he could. It was easier to keep pace because of his long legs, but that meant that he couldn't exactly give himself time to study what could be essential clues.

"I'm not just going to let the light go out. What if there's someone down here with us?" Phil hissed, gesturing for them to keep their voices low. As much as Wilbur hated to admit it, the man had a point. The entrance had been technically opened and unsupervised for a week by the time that they had gotten down there, for all they knew someone had already broken in and was exploring.

Wilbur didn't carry any weapons on him, but he did have a heavy industrial light that he could probably use as a bludgeon. But even the idea of doing something as physical as that was enough to turn his stomach. Even if he studied death, that was very very different than potentially killing someone in self defense. Hopefully, if anything like that was really necessary, Phil would be in the front.

(Wilbur quietly figured that out of all of them, Phil would have the least issues with bludgeoning a man over the head.)

They slowly moved as a trio down the hall, and after a few more steps, Wilbur could finally see the light that Phil had mentioned. It was coming through a few cracks in what had otherwise seemed to be a normal wall. Less like there was a door there and more like something was covering up an opening. Wilbur's breath caught in his throat as he realized that they would have to move away ancient stone in order to get into the entrance.

"Phil, do you really think we should be doing this?" None of them had any experience actually moving heavy sheets of stone, nor did Wilbur want to risk damaging the area around the stone by moving it and having it crush what could be a mural.

"Wilbur we just found a light shining from a secret room in an ancient catacombs of a long forgotten empire. I think it's basically out duty as scientists to look at the weird light." Tommy nodded his head after speaking, as though his words alone made it the plan.

It was, in fact, going to be the plan, but Wilbur didn't want to give him the satisfaction of that.

"This is a horrible idea, and if we end up releasing a new plague onto the world I'm having them name it the Innis Sickness," Wilbur jostled Tommy with an elbow and forced him in front. It was both to make sure that Tommy was the one faced with the wall and to keep the rope from getting tangled up. Just in case that room was full of spiders or snakes, Wilbur didn't want them getting tied up in each other and getting seriously hurt.

"Jokes on you, that sounds fucking amazing. I would love to have a plague named after me. Phil- you agree with me right?"

Phil let out a long suffering sigh as he ran his fingers along the almost invisible seam that was letting in the light. "Please do not joke about releasing a plague, don't put that out in here. I'm right next the entrance, don't- don't make me think about it."

Tommy and Wilbur both chuckled to themselves, snorting behind their hands as Phil dug his fingers into the crevice.

"Tom, come over here. Get on the other side and help me move it. We're going to move it forward and then towards you, okay?" After a little maneuvering and Wilbur walking where he was directed in order to not be in the way, he watched as his two coworkers forced the stone out of it's indentation and dragged it just far enough away for them to fit through.

The sound of stone grinding against stone was one of the worse things that Wilbur had the privilege of hearing in his near three decades of living. But eventually, there was enough of a gap that Phil stopped and turned his head to look inside. Whatever he laid eyes on in there, it was enough to freeze the man in his place.

"Come on, what is it? Are we getting the Innis plague or not?" Tommy began to move around the boulder, tugging the rope from where it had been almost stuck underneath the boulder.

"I think we have something a lot harder to explain than a plague." Phil's voice was strained as he tightened his grip on his flashlight.

Which was of course far too interesting for Wilbur to not immediately crowd around his shoulder to look into the room. He was expecting something similar to other things that had been found in like areas. Grave goods, perhaps a body, maybe an unlucky adventurer that had been locked inside.

What Wilbur was not expecting to find was a person. Not a skeleton, not a corpse, but instead a person with flesh and muscle still on his bones. The man was standing in the center of the room, one hand outstretched like he was warding off an attacker and the other one grasping the hilt of an ancient broadsword. Clothed in the metal armor and leather straps of the first millennium, Wilbur had a sinking feeling that he had been down here since the catacombs had been in use. He was encased in a layer of ice, not enough to be a cube around him but instead turning him into an ice sculpture. There was no sign of melting, even though they weren't deep enough underground in order for that to be scientifically possible.

Wilbur wasn't even sure how he was frozen in the first place.

"I can't believe I have to go over here and you won't tell me what-" Tommy paused as he saw the man in the room. "We're all seeing the ice man, right?"

Wilbur let out a panicked little laugh as he shrugged, "I was hoping that this was a mental break, I don't know about you- Phil wait what are you doing?"

The oldest member of their group, the one who should be the most responsible and reasonable out of all of them, was walking into the room that held nothing but a frozen man who seemed to be in the middle of drawing his sword. One that- Wilbur figured- had not been dulled at all through being frozen.

"I'm testing out a hypothesis. I want to see if this is really ice or something else-" Phil gave a little wave of his hand, like anything he had said would make them feel better. His hand reached out to lightly touch the arm of the man, as if to see if he was truly encased in ice. Which proved to be one of the worst ideas that they had made on the trip as a whole- though Wilbur was also regretting eating the leftovers from last night.

The second his hand made contact with the man, the ice immediately exploded outwards.

Phil threw his hands up, covering his face with them to make sure that nothing embedded itself in him. Wilbur pushed Tommy out of the room, entirely to safety behind the stone as he whipped his coat over his face. The ice stung like hail, but melted almost instantly upon hitting them.

Tentatively, Wilbur lowered his arm to see that the man that had been encased in ice was now kneeling on the floor, breathing heavily.

Phil let out a low breath as he looked down at the man who was very much alive. Not frozen in the slightest, audibly breathing, and beginning to rise to his feet.

The second that he noticed that he wasn't alone, the man's hand went right to his sword. It cleanly left the sheathe until it rested on Phil's shoulder, the blade just an inch away from cutting skin.

"Whoa! Whoa mate, hey-" Phil laughed, backing up slowly so that the blade was no longer in imminent danger of cutting his neck open. "Not here to hurt you, honestly a bit confused on how you're here at all."

"What are you? An Anglo?" The man had a thick Scots accent, words mangled but surprisingly understandable.

"Not- not exactly." Phil slowly nodded his head to himself as he tried to figure out how to catch someone up on what was probably two millennia of geopolitics. "Let's just call me a scholar."

A fair amount of respect entered his eyes before immediately getting shuttered off. "Are you working with Dream? Did he put you up to this?" He adjusted his grip on the sword, swinging it until it was pressed against Phil's chest.

"Hey, mate, if you want to ask questions I'm going to have to insist on you putting the sword down. Okay?" Phil tried for a charming smile with his hands raised to his chest. "We don't know who Dream is, which means that we're definitely not working with him."

Old gears began to turn in Wilbur's head, information that he had brushed up on specifically because of where they were going. Of the few scraps of information that they had on the Deigh Empire- most of which was information by other countries that they went to war with- there was one notable aberrant in the information. Somewhere between 420 AD and 421 AD, one of the kings was suddenly replaced by his head advisor. It came in one of the many lulls of information that they had on the Deigh Empire, peace times for every territory that surrounded it. All they knew was that one attack was headed by King Techno MacLann An Ferbasach and then the next was headed by King Dream MacLuaths Forranach.

Physical descriptions of either King were sparse, mostly detailing their incredibly destructive military tactics or detailed armor. Both kings were known for being ruthless on the battlefield, both kings were known for their absolute merciless ways of dealing with their foes on the battlefield. A few scholars had speculated that maybe they were the same King, and the name inconsistency was because of different kingdom's talking about them, but Wilbur didn't believe in that.

"Oh my god," Wilbur breathed out, taking a hesitant step into the room and drawing the man's attention. "You're King Techno MacLann."

His face screwed up in confusion, blade wavering slightly as he kept it pointed at Wilbur. "I would have thought that was obvious."

Wilbur couldn't stop a panicked laugh from leaving his lips. Well, he certainly had found something that would revolutionize the public's perception of the Deigh Empire! It would certainly be something in the papers: Ancient Emperor Unearthed! Wilbur Soot Tells All! Not that anyone would believe the story, no matter how much Techno could tell the papers, everyone would think it was nothing but speculation.

In defense of the potential media's reaction, Wilbur probably wouldn't believe it. He barely believed it and it was happening in front of his eyes.

"Now." Techno sheathed his sword again, straightening up and adjusting the bracers on his arms. "I will allow you to escort me back to my castle, I have a traitor to dispose of."

Phil and Wilbur went silent, exchanging a look as they almost dared the other to be the one to tell the warrior king that it had actually been over two thousand years and Dream was long dead. Neither of them wanted to be the one to break it to him that he had completely lost his chance for revenge. Wilbur also figured it wouldn't help for Techno to find out that Dream was the beginning of the end for the Deigh Empire.

Tommy, however, did not have any reservations about informing an ancient man about the future that he had missed. "Oh, Dream? Sorry dude, he's long dead." Tommy had poked his head around the entrance to the room, eyes wide as he looked at Techno. "The entire- uh- the entire world that you knew is also very much long dead."

Wilbur began to slowly take steps backwards, not wanting Techno to swing his sword and end up getting disemboweled. He had figured that they would be able to slowly introduce Techno to the modern world, but Tommy just tore the band-aid right off!

Fantastic.

Techno looked at him, eyes narrowed as he glanced up and down. "Who's runaway page is this? Why is he speaking to me?"

A hand raised to muffle his laugh, Phil shook his head. "He's not a page- uh, my liege. He's another scholar, with the two of us." Phil gestured between him and Wilbur, still slowly sidling towards the exit. Putting further distance in between them as Techno's hand continued to thoughtfully caress the leather hilt of his sword. "He's also...not wrong. It's been a long time since you were shut away, and I think you might be unprepared for what the world has come to."

"It cannot be the bad. As long as the Byzantine Empire is still around, I can adapt."

Wilbur stifled his own snort, slapping a hand over his mouth as he averted his eyes. "About that-"

Techno's expression dropped, his shoulders slumping. "Next you're going to tell me, Rome has fallen."

Their silence spoke volumes and Techno threw his hands up in frustration. He scoffed, a rough noise in the back of his throat, and shook his head in disgust. "What is the world coming to?"

Tommy snickered, though he did a rather pathetic effort to keep the noise muffled, as he leaned against the entryway. "If it makes you feel better- er, no that's not going to make you feel better at all." He briefly met Techno's eyes before dropping, pretending to be as casual as he could be.

The old king's face stayed contorted into a scowl as he looked between the three of them, before pointing at Wilbur, "You."

"Me?" Wilbur squawked, stiffening up as he was met with the full force of Techno's attention. His mind wandered, flipping through his mental catalogue of every single war crime that Techno MacLann had committed and how there were records of just how the blood soaked into the elaborate carvings on his armor.

"Yes, you. You will inform me of everything that I have missed in my absence. Without my court, I need to reassemble a work force. You will be my new advisor." There was absolutely no room to argue, not that Wilbur would. He was pretty well educated in the realm of the Deigh Empire, as well as anyone could be. For all that they were a warfare focused empire, there were reports of how they treated their war dead.

(Wilbur remembered being bent over books in the library, scanning for any primary sources on war time burials that were in the right time frame as the Deigh Empire, let alone ones that were involving it. The sheer stress of trying to figure out something so niche and obscure had driven him to his wits end, to the point where he was one more dead end away from calling the office and changing his major.

If only that stressed nineteen year old could see him now, suddenly picked to be the King's head advisor.)

"I'm honored, really your...majesty." Wilbur spoke slowly, picking each word carefully and precisely. His brain was absolutely on fire as he tried to remember what the court politics were at the time of Techno's ruling. He had never been so relieved to have a specialty in first millennia kingdoms. His father always said it was far too specific and he would find absolutely no work.

Look at him now, dad!

"Of course you are." Techno nodded his head, squaring his shoulders as he began to walk forward. "Now, tell me about what's become of my kingdom."

"Oh, hey hey hey-" Phil waved his hands, quickly moving to stand in his way- "Let's not be too hasty. A lot of time has passed, and I think it might be better for you to learn exactly how much of it has passed while you've been down here in a place that's more familiar to you."

He narrowed his eyes at Phil, and Wilbur worried if he was going to have to step in to stop his superior from getting impaled on a broadsword. "I think I know full well what I can and cannot handle, scholar. I demand to be taken out of this hall of bones and to somewhere more comfortable."

Wilbur noted that down, the fact that they referred to the catacombs as a hall of bones, and he drummed his fingers against his thigh in order to keep himself from questioning the Deigh King on the true purpose of the place. There would be a time and a place for that, Wilbur would make sure of it, though he was sure he would have to walk Techno through the modern world first.

"That can be arranged, but Phil really does have a point. I think it might negatively affect you if you go and see how much the world has changed. None of us are joking, MacLann, the world has truly moved on from the Deigh Empire."

The scowl only deepened, the King's eyes seeming near black under the shadow of his heavy brow. A derisive scoff left his lips and he shook his head, "I bet it was that fool MacLuaths, I always told him that he would be the downfall of the Empire and yet he still tried to usurp me again and again."

Wilbur held his tongue, the knowledge that Dream MacLuaths was in fact considered to be the beginning of the end of the Deigh Empire pressing against his teeth. Nothing good would happen if Techno were to get that information and Wilbur knew it. At best it would send him into a violent tirade about what he had lost and the betrayal that had shut him away, at worst he would become violent.

As much as Wilbur wanted to learn about what happened to the great MacLann line, he did not want to risk Techno swinging that broadsword in any of their directions.

"I think MacLuath is the least of the issues, actually." Tommy raised his hand to call attention to him, tapping his foot nervously as he bounced slightly. "You were- You had horse drawn carts, right? Back then?"

Techno's mouth relaxed from the heavy scowl, but his eyebrows didn't relax as he squinted at Tommy. "What...are you- yes, scholar, we had horse drawn carts. We were not uncivilized."

"We don't really use horses anymore. I mean we still have horses- we- horses are still around big man don't worry about that- we just don't use them as a major source of transportation." Tommy stumbled over his words, gesticulating wildly as he slowly approached. "We have uh- shit- Phil how do I explain what a car is?"

Phil's eyes went wide as Techno's focus was suddenly turned on him. "I don't think we should be starting off Techno's education with a car. I think electricity is going to be enough of a shock to him."

"How are we going to get him back to the hotel if we don't explain what a car is? We're going to get him in and then when it starts moving he's going to take his sword out and decapitate all of us. Imagine the toll that having three dead bodies and a panicking ancient king would have on that poor, poor ride share driver. Phil, really, you have to use your head for shit like this, my guy."

Techno continued to turn his head, tracking the conversation as well as he was able. As Tommy continued to speak and ramble, he seemed to decide to write both of them off as completely inane as he turned to looked Wilbur in the eye.

The first thing that Wilbur noticed was that Techno was a bit shorter than him. It took him a while to notice just because he was used to being the tallest in the room that it didn't even register, but Techno was about Phil's height. Wilbur knew that people were shorter in the past due to a variety of environmental reasons, but it was a completely different thing to see it.

For all that the reports spoke about King Techno MacLann's power and intimidating aura on the battlefield, for all that they spoke that he was the tallest man in any army cohort that he fought with, Wilbur never realized that he was just going to be five foot eight. Tall for the time but nothing noticeable in the modern age. It was off putting to the worst degree, Wilbur felt like he was disappointed in a weird way.

He was over a head taller than a king renown for his brutality on the battlefield, he could probably rest his arm on his head if he wanted to (and if he had a death wish).

"Advisor, please escort me out of this hall of bones." Techno gestured with a gauntlet covered hand at the entrance, which was still partially blocked by Tommy.

"Wilbur don't let him order you around! He's not the boss of you," Tommy protested, though he quickly changed his tune as Techno went to unsheathe his sword. "Actually- actually- you know what? I think we should get him out of this hall of bones, I think that would be the best option for all of us. We can continue this conversation in the open air."

Techno relaxed, allowing his sword to slide back into it's sheath. "I'm glad you see my point, page."

"I'm not a page!" Tommy squawked, frowning. "I did not go to university to get called a page, I'm just as much of a scholar as these two!"

"You are very loud and rowdy for a scholar, do you know that?" Techno sniffed, looking him up and down. "Are you sure that you're not a page? Maybe a squire?"

Wilbur inserted himself in between the two of them, an easy smile on his face as he spread his hands. "Now, let's not get into an argument. We are in a hall of bones after all." It was very much a fish for information. Wilbur wanted to know if this place had any sort of religious significance, any holy meaning that would make fighting a bad idea.

Slowly, the quartet moved towards the exit. The passageway was not wide enough for them to walk side by side so they moved in pairs of two. Techno and Wilbur at the front, Tommy and Phil behind them. Techno MacLann carried himself like a king, shoulders straight and cloak barely trailing on the ground. Despite the fact that he had just been betrayed (from his perspective) and slingshot into the future, he didn't seem to have any hesitation.

Wilbur wanted to study this man.

He could just barely hear Phil and Tommy talking behind him, probably figuring out what they were supposed to be doing with Techno considering there was absolutely no proof that he was ancient and he had no documents. Wilbur, personally, wasn't exactly opposed to identity fraud, especially when it came to something that couldn't be avoided like this, but he knew that Phil would probably disapprove of the method.

(Or maybe he wouldn't! Maybe the battlefield archeologist would be completely fine and down for transporting documents to make an ancient lost king into someone with a birth certificate and residency papers and everything he would need to legally exist in Europe.)

"Wilbur." Techno began, pausing thoughtfully after drawing his attention. "You say that years have passed, yes?"

"Around two thousand, yeah." Wilbur knew that it wasn't quite two thousand, but it was about there. "A lot of things have changed, in the years that you've missed. not just in terms of technology advancing, but the world has changed. Empires rose and fell and states and countries and- there's a lot for you to get used to."

"And everyone I know is dead."

"And everyone you knew is dead." Wilbur echoed, looking forward and not at his face. He couldn't even try to imagine what it felt like: to have your last memories be of getting betrayed and locked away, only to wake up two millennia later with the world having changed irreparably and having nothing to latch onto as familiar. The hall of bones was abandoned, there were no other noblely buried next to him and only the empty alcoves where they should have been.

"What is known of me?" Techno's voice was soft, soft enough that Wilbur knew that neither Phil nor Tommy could hear them.

Matching his tone, Wilbur hummed out. "You were one of the most feared kings of the Deigh Empire, but we don't know much about you. Your empire sort of...devolved, after your disappearance. There's not a lot of primary sources from your empire, most of it is from the opposite side. Everyone you've fought, all of the countries that knew your name and empire, that is where we got most of our information. Which means that it's not entirely reliable, especially on anything deeper than your war tactics and technological advancements."

"I had a son," Techno breathed out, shoulders stiff as they held their straight line. "I can't remember the last thing I told him before I went off to battle."

Wilbur had no idea that was true. Nothing was known about the King's home life, and most reports about him were more fearmongering than anyone wanting to unearth the humanity of their foe. Rumors about him being born in blood, being a god given form on the battlefield, a chained monster that wasn't even human in the first place. There was no sources about his family, about what religious practices he led, nothing about who he was past his armor.

"I'm sorry." It sounded weak even to his own ears, how was he supposed to express the sheer heartbreak of losing your family- only to find out that no one even remembered them. How was he supposed to make Techno feel in any way better about the fact that he had been ripped away from everything that he knew?

"It is life." Techno shrugged, slowly nodding his head. "It is life."

They moved the rest of the way through the catacomb tunnel, towards where the daylight was streaming in, without speaking. At least, Techno and Wilbur did- Wilbur was pretty sure he could still hear Tommy talking to Phil behind him. Hopefully he was able to convince the man into working with them to make Techno a legal person- after all none of them had a time machine to send Techno back.

(Wilbur was also pretty sure that none of them wanted to kill Techno, meaning that identity fraud or keeping him in one of their basements were the last remaining options.)

Techno raised his hand to shade his eyes from the sun as they approached the cave in, looking up at the sky. A slight smile curled his lips, a certain amount of stress leaving the line of his shoulders as he looked up at the blue midday sky.

Wilbur supposed that the sky had stayed the same, especially this far out from a city. It was the same sky that Techno fought under, same sky that he had raised his son. Even if he knew the illusion would soon break the second that Techno saw the city in the distance, at least right now he could look up at the wispy clouds slowly drifting across a blue expanse.

At the very least, there was something familiar about the sky.

Techno had very little trouble getting a foot hold in the earth, pulling himself to the surface and grimacing as the sun hit his face with no shield. Wilbur, Phil, and Tommy were quick to follow him, unclipping from the rope the second that they were on the surface. Tommy began to roll it up, the entire excursion for the day coming to a short and surprising end.

They had barely been underground long enough for the sun to noticeably move across the sky, let alone enough time for them to be expected to talk to the people at the university or give any report back to Somnolent Industries. They had time, but really any amount of time was not going to be enough to prepare them to explain the full person that they had found. Still, they needed to break down the equipment that they had set up expecting this to be a routine excursion underground. The cameras and testing kits had to be carefully put back into their cases and even more carefully packed into the back of the ATV.

Wilbur did none of that hard work.

Instead he just stayed by Techno, a hand on his shoulder as Techno stared at the equipment and the car with open mouth, wide-eyed horror.

"Do you see what we meant when we said that you missed a lot?" Wilbur said, as gently as he could as he led Techno to sit on the ground. There hadn't been rain the other night so it was relatively dry- a good thing considering Wilbur did not want to risk putting Techno's ancient clothes in a washing machine. That would be destroying a piece of fashion history and he was pretty sure Eret would have his head if he did something like that- at least, without letting them get a good look at it first.

"That is not a horse, or a carriage," Techno breathed out as he stared at the car. "What is that?"

"It's something called a car, humanity invented it once populations got too big to feasibly use horses for everything and travel began to go further distances." Wilbur decided to go with a far simplified version of the truth, mostly because he did not want to risk seeing what Techno's reaction to a bullet train would be. Even if he knew that Tommy would absolutely try to get him on one of those just to see what his reaction would be.

(Which isn't to say that Wilbur didn't want to see what would happen if they put an ancient Celtic king on a bullet train. He did, he very much did, but he knew better than to have that be Techno's first exposure to travel faster than what a horse could run.

It could be his third, after a plane.)

"Did humanity think that they were too good for horses?" Techno's nose wrinkled with distaste, a slight sneer twitching his lips upwards.

"Not really, it just got inconvenient." Wilbur leaned back on the grass, supporting himself with both hands behind him as he watched his two coworkers do the heavy lifting. "People still love horses, still race and ride 'em too."

"We are going to be seeing a horse race." Techno decided, nodding his head as though merely saying it put it into fact.

"Little complicated that," Wilbur clucked his tongue. "You technically don't exist, and if you did, then you'd be legally dead. You have no papers, no identification, and I'm sorry but an ancestral sword and historical armor is not enough to convince people that you're a king from two thousands years in the past."

"Well, why not?" Techno seemed rather put out and annoyed. "I am a royal king, they should respect me. My reign was sanctioned by God, they should understand what they are dealing with."

Wilbur opened his mouth, and then closed it. He wasn't sure exactly how to explain to Techno MacLann himself that the divine right of kings no longer existed or was respected. Or about what had happened to the last monarchy that had properly employed it. He decided against it, it would come up in some history lesson now or later and that wouldn't be Wilbur's issue.

"I mean, would you have believed if someone from our modern world was transported back to your time? And we came talking about cameras and cars and the lack of horses?" Wilbur gestured at each in turn, pointing at Tommy when he got to lack of horses as though it was his fault.

Techno pondered it for a moment, head slightly tilted. "No, I suppose I wouldn't."

The two of them sat in silence as Phil and Tommy began to finish up packing the car up. Phil drummed his hands on the side of the car, gesturing for the two of them to get up.

"Alright, let's get this show on back to the hotel." A final slap of the side of the car and Phil got into the driver's seat.

"Shotgun!" Tommy shouted, before almost slamming his door shut as he hopped in.

"I do not understand what either of them just said," Techno said, serious enough that Wilbur had to stop himself from bursting into laughter. "There is no show, what is a shotgun?

"Oh uh- Phil's just saying that we're leaving now, to go back to the hotel where we can figure out what to do with you, and Tommy's just saying that he's sitting up front with Phil."

Techno frowned, even as he nodded his head. "Then why do they not just say that?"

Wilbur had nothing to say to that other than to laugh and stand up. He brushed dirt from the front of his pants before holding out a hand to help Techno to his feet. "Well, welcome to the twenty-first century, King Techno MacLann. We have a lot to catch you up on."

He tried not to whimper at the feeling of the hard metal gauntlet grabbing his hand, especially as Techno almost yanked his arm out of its socket to pull himself up. They walked to the car and piled in, Techno staring at the seat belt like it was a snake about to bite him before Wilbur reached over to strap him in.

"This was not necessary on a horse and cart, I will have you know." Techno tugged at the strap going over his chest with a scowl.

"Yeah well it's necessary in a car, mate." Phil grinned at them through the rear view mirror. "I'll have to show you some of those wear your seat belt documentaries."

"Phil we want to acclimate him to the future, we do not want to scare him right off the bat," Wilbur said, buckling himself in. For all that he knew that Techno was no stranger to blood and gore, he really didn't want the first moving picture that Techno saw to be people dying horrifically in car crashes. He was used to seeing moving pictures and still the images had branded themselves into the back of Wilbur's eyelids for years when he first saw them.

"I think we should let him listen to music," Tommy said, with the sort of smile that made Wilbur want to immediately disregard any suggestion that he had.

"Your music taste sucks," Wilbur said, instead. Even if it was a little self deprecating considering that most of Tommy's music taste he got from Wilbur himself, but there were still some outliers that he didn't want blasting through the speakers.

"No fighting in the car," Phil said, pressing on the gas. "I retain full rights to just push you out onto the road and make you walk back to the hotel."

"Is that an option?"

"No Techno, it's not an option," Phil sighed, going a little under the speed limit while they were still on rural roads. He didn't want to freak Techno out too badly. "I was just joking around with them."

"Ah." Techno nodded his head, cheeks slightly flushing.

The rest of the ride to the hotel was silent aside from short lived conversations. Every time that Wilbur glanced over at the ancient king, Techno had a death grip on his knees or on the handle of the car door. Every little jolt that the car made on uneven asphalt had him sitting stiffer and stiffer, and Wilbur wished that he could do anything to make Techno feel at least a little better.

He doubted that he could do anything that would make sorry you got stuck in time for two thousand years and when you came out of it, everything you had worked for was gone and no one even knows that much about it any better or easier to swallow. There was also nothing he could do about Phil's driving.

The second that they got into the city proper, Techno was glued to the window. Staring out at it and taking in all the sights of a modern city with open mouthed awe. It was the closest to pure, genuine happiness that Wilbur had seen since they had woken Techno up. He seemed to take in everything with an incredible amount of grace, considering the difference between what he would be used to.

Phil's driving got a little better once they were on city roads, meaning that there was less rocking that made Techno panic. Eventually they came to the valet parking of their hotel and began the process of all climbing out. It was easier to keep the equipment in the back- or at least most of it. The most expensive of the pieces was carried with them to avoid having them get broken or stolen, which was something that their gracious employer was clear would not be credited back to them.

Tommy was carrying Wilbur's share of the equipment this time, as Wilbur made sure to never let Techno be alone for more than a few seconds. The last thing that they needed was for a Celtic king to be let loose on a city, with no concept that he can't use his sword on people and even less concept of modern money.

"No- No Techno you can't have your sword out please keep it sheathed," Wilbur begged, holding Techno's hand there. "It is illegal to have weapons like that out, and if it's sheathed then they'll just think that it's a replica and they won't try to grab it."

"They should know better than to take my property," Techno protested, batting Wilbur's hands away. "It's my sword."

"Exactly, it's your sword, you can take it out when we get to the room." Wilbur began to slowly walk them forwards, getting them closer and closer towards the elevators. He was pretty sure the lady at the reception desk said something derisive about cosplayers but that was the preferable option. He'd rather everyone in the hotel think that Techno was some weirdo historical actor rather than look deeper into how he was wearing actual plate mail and his beard was braided with real gold.

Phil and Tommy were already on their way up to the room, meaning that Techno and Wilbur were in their own elevator. Which was good, considering that the undignified yelp that left the old king's mouth was definitely not something he wanted anyone else to hear.

"This is a devil box." Techno stamped his foot on the floor, then froze up as though he was going to be sent into a free fall.

Honestly, Wilbur was just happy that this one wasn't encased in glass like some of the ones at the lab. That would definitely make him freak out even worse than this. He made a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat and gripped Techno by his bicep. "Hey, don't worry. These things can take thousands and thousands of pounds of weight before it becomes dangerous, and I promise that you're going to be fine."

"This is not right, I hope you know this." Techno scowled, crossing his arms over his chest as he glared at the doors like they had personally offended him.

"You can complain all you want once we're back in the hotel room, okay? You can be as weird and eccentric as you want, but I promise you that attempting to punch anything on that panel is just going to get us into trouble okay." Wilbur was more than a little tempted to tell him that if he pressed the wrong button then they would drop all the way down to the button, but he wasn't that mean.

That sort of joke was only funny to play on people who weren't completely fine with chopping his head off or trying to get him executed.

Techno leveled him with a glare that he was sure had sent men and armies to their knees, but jokes on him Wilbur had faced up to academic scrutiny with his life's work on the line. There was nothing that was going to break him after that harrowing six hour ordeal. After a brief staring contest, Techno broke eye contact to glare at the panel.

Glaring at it was fine, he wasn't about to punch it which meant that it really wasn't Wilbur's issue. For an elevator ride that took barely two minutes, it felt so much longer when he had to constantly be on guard to make sure that Techno wasn't about to bust a hole in very important technology that would keep them from being stuck in an elevator for hours.

(As the elevator dinged and the doors opened, Wilbur had the briefest of ideas to tell Techno about elevator horror stories. About the doors closing on someone and dragging them until they died. About the car getting stuck between floors and the second you were almost onto the floor above, it dropped and cut you in half. However, that would make getting him back downstairs much harder than it had to be.)

Wilbur pressed the key card against the reader and it beeped, as he opened the door he saw Technoblade jolt at the noise and had to stop himself from snorting. The room was just as they had left it: clean, clinical, and barely used. Techno seemed utterly fascinated with everything inside, from the hanging lights to the coffee machine to the faucet.

(Wilbur was rather relieved that he seemed to understand the basics of what the bathroom was, he did not want to have to go through the trouble of explaining what happened there to a god when he hadn't had coffee in far too many hours.)

Phil was already making a fresh pot on the Keurig, making the whole room smell of coffee beans and scaring Techno off with the mechanical whirring.

Not even his fear of sounds coming from the coffee machine was enough to distract him for long. Above everything else in the room, what he really seemed to enjoy was the beds. The second that he figured out that they were beds, he barely took off his armor before making himself comfortable. Tommy snickered from where he was perched on the table as Wilbur nudged the pile of historically important and invaluable armor a little off to the side so he wouldn't trip over it.

(Wilbur was just beginning to regret the room that they had rented. It was fine when it was just three of them- two beds and Wilbur was fine on the cot- but now that they had a fourth it got a lot more cramped and a lot more complicated.)

"You live like a king." Techno's voice was muffled with his face pressed down onto the soft sheets. "No- not even I lived this well- you live like a god." He rolled onto his back, grinning up at the ceiling before glancing at Wilbur. "Now. Why don't you tell me what I've missed?"