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The diamond sword is still dripping with his son's blood, seeping into the broken stone where Phil had dropped it in order to cradle his dying son and hear his last words. The words sound like they could be nonsense, at first, and Phil can barely comprehend them through his racing heartbeat and the tidal waves of shock that are still pulsing from some painful point in his back and slamming against his rib cage, more fiercely with every passing minute.
But as he looks out onto a fractured world and the chaos growing in the crowd below, Phil does not think to hear his son's words as lies. He hears the words of a dying man telling him that Phil's oldest friend is a traitor, and Phil feels like he has no choice but to believe him, lest his splintering soul take another blow that leaves some permanent scar.
Black feathers flutter around him, on the ground, brushing over Wilbur's soot-stained coat. Phil would recognize those feathers as he own in a heartbeat, except there were far too many of them. He wasn't molting. They couldn't possibly be his—but the numbness in his back is whispering a different story, on that Phil refuses to look to either side of him to confirm. He can't do it, not when Wilbur is tipping his chin up to the cracked ceiling and straining to make his voice heard one final time.
"Phil? Phil— and he has eight withers, ready to go."
There are people staring up at him, mouths moving, but to Phil they may as well be silent. They are looking at him with such horror and sorrow that Phil finds himself failing to understand, because there is suddenly a much bigger problem to deal with. The panic flooding every bit of his body organizes these things for him, and pushes everything — his son's quivering body, the dust that is coating the inside of Phil's mouth, the way his back burns like it had been on fire — all of it is pushed to the wayside in favor of the one truth Phil knows above all else: survive.
"Oh, gods, I need to get out of here," Phil realizes abruptly. Words fall from his mouth in a panicked stream of consciousness, hands tightening reflexively around his dying son before a second, stronger instinct overtakes him, and he has to let him go.
Wilbur just giggles as Phil lays him to rest in the rubble. The mania dancing in his eyes is not an expression Phil recognizes or wants to remember. "You need to go. Go as fast as you can, Phil, go on!"
Horrified laughter bubbles up past Phil's lips at the whole hysterical situation. He has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, because otherwise he won't ever be able to stop. "I gotta- I—"
"Bye, Phil." Wilbur's fingers tighten around his one last time before falling to the floor. That brushing of his fingers against Phil's burned arm is what fully snaps him back into action, and he stands up straight before he can consider the consequences of it.
"Guys, Techno's the traitor, run away." Phil is shouting the words before his brain catches up to the pain suddenly blazing through his body, radiating outwards from the center of his back and through his wings that Phil is still stubbornly refusing to turn his head to. Ignorance is bliss, and as long as he's still able to stand, and walk, then this is a problem to touch on once the world around him stops screaming for his help.
Chorused cries of his name touch his ears as Phil frantically sorts through the pile of discarded things he's so suddenly accumulated. "Get away, get away, get away!" he shouts over their shock, voice strained with focus as he navigates out of the rubble-filled cavern. There's no clear way down, so he's forced to jump into the pit brought about by the explosion. He had hoped that the layer of water seeping in might be able to break his fall, but it's to no avail. When he lands on the stone, his ankle crumples instantly, sending pain lacing up his legs that's only calmed by the cool water spraying against his back, dousing some of the fire there for a brief moment.
"He's got eight withers." Phil repeats his son's words urgently. He thinks they might have gone completely unheard over Techno's booming voice. His friend is demanding everyone to be quiet and to let him give some sort of speech, but from where Phil is hauling himself up the side of a cliff, he's still unable to make out exactly where Techno is. It's only when he finally reaches the top, and stands back up again—his knee wobbles and the absence of weight on his back threatens to tip him sideways, but Phil refuses to let that cause any more faltering—that he spots him.
Shoving something that vaguely resembles food into his mouth, Phil leans as much body weight as he can manage on the oak fences that still stand, looking out over the bluff to where Techno stands tall and proud in full netherite, sword drawn and teeth bared to anyone who might dare get closer, particularly a familiar-looking blonde teenage on the other side of the ravine.
Phil feels his shoulders start to sag a bit, and forces himself to shake his head, stay alert for as long as he possibly fucking can. There's no shot he'll be able to throw himself into this fight, not when he's lacking any and all armor, decent weapons, food. He's given them all the warnings he can muster, and none of them are fucking taking it. By now, Phil's voice is too painfully raw to shout at them again, no matter how much he wants to
From behind Techno, another netherite-clad figure fires a flaming arrow into the distance, and Phil is struck with a new kind of shock as he finds himself recognizing the man underneath that helmet. What the fuck Sam is doing beside Techno, Phil doesn't know, but that's an entirely different problem to sort out at another time, when he has room to breathe again.
The problem to sort out now it— well, Phil doesn't fucking know, either. He can barely listen to Techno's speech, the words fading in and out as his heartbeat races so much louder in his ears. Something about the mythology his friend is so fond of going on about but—
Phil's eyes light up at the sight of iron in his mess of an inventory, enough to make a set out of. Techno's speech continuing in the distant background, Phil throws down a crafting table and manages to pull together a full suit of iron armor. The boots, pants, and helmet go on easy enough, even if it's a bit of a struggle to pull them on over Phil's swollen ankles.
The chestplate, though, presents a challenge. Phil doesn't have the tools he needs to fit it to his back, and the idea of twisting around to figure out the best way to do that now makes his body freeze, still unwilling to look back at what he's sure is some sort of carnage. He can't look. He won't. The chestplate falls from his grasp, left forgotten as the welcome distraction of Techno's voice suddenly surging in intensity.
"You want to be a hero, Tommy?" Techno steps backward. There's a look in his friend's eyes that Phil has seen before, but Phil's never felt quite so conflicted over it.
Tommy steps back, too, every line in his body braced with tension and barely contained despair that Phil can see plainly even from so far away. In all the letters Phil had read from Wilbur, in the pictures his crows brought, he had known what Tommy looked like, but he never would have imagined that smiling kid to be gripped with so much terror in his expression. "Technoblade, don't do this."
"Don't to this, Techno," Phil echoes, hands digging into the oak fence he's leaning beside. He knows that he's too far away, and his voice is far too quiet for anyone to hear, but he finds himself begging anyway, staring desperately at his friend like it could somehow make any difference here.
It changes nothing. The sky grows dark, and within seconds, two withers screech as six skulls are ripped from Death's grasp and reanimated to a new form. The sound of a deep, unholy bell tolls, the sound of it reverberating down Phil's spine and leaving him shaking with barely the strength to stand. Locking eyes with one of the wither's heads, Phil claps a hand over his mouth and backs away.
"Okay, okay, okay," Phil murmurs to himself with growing intensity, backing up into a fence that almost sends him toppling to the ground. His other hand fumbles for a weapon, pickaxe first, then finally closing around the string of an unfamiliar bow. Phil runs his finger over the enchantments laid within the wood. Infinity, thank the fucking gods.
"Philza, Tubbo, everyone, where are you?" He can hear Tommy screaming his name from across the destroyed land, and it's all Phil can do to clutch the bow tight in both hands and respond.
"I'm on it, I'm on it, I'm on it," Phil repeats as loud as he can muster, hoping Tommy can hear him from so far away, hoping he understand why Phil can't jump down to join them on the ground. He pulls the bowstring back, an arrow materializing itself perfectly aligned in his fingers. Stretching his arm back sends some fresh pain racing down his shoulder, but Phil clenches his teeth together, forcing himself to breathe through it. A little at a time, he draws his arm back until the pain radiating from his wing throughout his back is just manageable enough that he can let the arrow fly.
The spike of agony that hits Phil upon releasing the arrow the first time causes it to spiral off course into empty air. His entire body feels off-kilter, unbalanced, like there's a great weight missing from him. Phil cannot turn around to see exactly what more he has lost.
It's not any easier to draw back the bowstring the second time, either, but Phil forces a shaky breath to keep his hands level, and prepares himself for the pain that follows upon release this time. The arrow strikes one of the withers, and from the second that hits true, all of the chaos around Phil folds down into a single focus where all he can do is fall into a rhythm. Pull the bowstring back, breathe through the pain, loose another arrow onto the creatures below.
He misses more shots than he hits, and Phil finds that his hands are trembling to an uncontrollable degree far sooner than he expected them to. As he slowly makes his way around the side of the cliff's edge, Phil refuses to stop firing, even when his fingertips start bleeding from the effort. When he can, he makes a few callouts, but even those are few and far between, and are largely lost to the deafening chaos around him.
It's only when he adjusts his grip back over to his sword, relaxing his aching fingers for a split second, that his loses his balance. Something about the sword in his hand, the unfamiliar weight or the way it's still gleaming with his son's blood— it's enough to make Phil flinch, hands skittering right back over to his bow just as he takes one wrong step and lists off the side of the cliff. He lands on his feet, though not without some pain, and then the momentum refuses to let up from there, tugging his unbalanced body further down. Phil tumbles forward again, this time falling a further distance that practically takes him to the ground. The iron armor absorbs the impact of it, though not by much. Phil's legs seize with pain, but he refuses to let that be what makes him falter now, of all things.
There, across this colorful island, there's something that Phil sets his eye on as the wither is defeated and the people around him cry out in celebration, or distress, Phil still isn't too sure. What he knows, in this moment alone, is that there's a set of discarded netherite armor, and if he's going to continue to stay on the ground like this, he needs to don it.
He picks up a crossbow, next, adjusting to the new weight in his hands while he navigates over the river to join where everyone else has gathered. In the whole chaotic crowd of people, Phil is still immediately able to pick out Techno's voice despite him being invisible, as he gruffly orders that no new governments will be formed today.
Then he turns to Phil, and although his crossbow is still raised, the tone of his voice does an immediate switch that has Phil's body rocked with relief. "Phil. You've been here for like, ten minutes, how are you already so stacked!"
Phil can't see his friend's face with the invisibility effect he has, but the light, humored tone of his voice is enough to get Phil laughing, too, finally dropping his own aimed crossbow in exchange for an unbloodied diamond sword. He laughs loudly, unrestrained, long enough that even Techno steps away again, but Phil doesn't care, and he can't stop himself.
Even after everything, he and Techno are still alright. That's more than enough to settle Phil's soul for a few minutes more.
Then everything after that gets...admittedly, hazy.
Phil goes with Tommy and the rest, leans on chests and obsidian walls as he listens to them talk of rebuilding. Now that the main battle seems to be over, Phil can feel his adrenaline start to wane, and that's a realization that fills him with a chilling dread.
He rarely stops moving, even in the somber moments where the people around him are talking of grief or rebuilding. It's hard to stay still for longer than a second, because every moment he isn't moving is a fresh reminder of the pain burning outward from his back, like there's still a fire roaring strong within what might be left of his stiff and bloodied wings.
Tubbo's the president now. Phil's got some job in his cabinet, and the reconstruction of L'manburg, he agreed to it, he remembers doing so, but it all fades in and out in a pain-smeared haze, accompanied by ringing ears and slow steps heavy with a limp when no one is looking his way.
Feathers are still fluttering around his heels with every step he takes. Everyone he meets—some old friends, some tentative new allies—all of them look at him with that same horrified expression, mouth closing shut around words they clearly hold themselves back from saying to him. Phil closes his hand around the blood staining his palm and takes a deep, unsteady breath. He holds conversation with them so easily that were it not for the visible display of his suffering behind him, he could almost trick himself into thinking they were only looking at him that way because of his son's blood staining his skin.
But it does not last. Even for someone who has lived as long as Phil, his strength is not infinite, and there are not an infinite amount of things to do to keep him distracted from his own body for long enough.
It all culminates when, after everything is said and done, Phil is sitting on top of some old battle tower, watching the sun finally begin to set on this wretched day. He doesn't quite remember how he managed to drag himself up here, but it had been something to do, something to keep him awake in these fading moments of mobility. He knows he doesn't have much time left before his body collapses in on itself, and he knows he needs to get somewhere safe— but he doesn't know where on this server he could possibly go.
And then Techno runs by underneath him, heading toward the bridge back to L'manburg. He's alone, and Phil's heart skips a beat with the realization that his time has run out. There are no more distractions, and if he doesn't go now, he will collapse up here on the tower instead, and that will surely leave him to a much worse fate. So Phil rolls an ender pearl between his palms, and braces for the impact as he tosses it out onto the oak planks.
Techno startles when Phil lands in front of him, eyes flying wide and hand almost drifting to his sword before he realizes who's landed in front of him.
"Hiya, mate," Phil says, wincing upon hearing how strained his voice sounds. The sudden velocity of the ender pearl has left his legs trembling like a newborn calf. He longs to collapse, but Quackity is somehow right beside them, silently observing, and Phil doesn't believe for a second he could let his guard down around this stranger. He keeps up a conversation with Techno while Quackity passes on, ignoring the concerned look growing in his old friend's face as best he can until Quackity disappears entirely.
"You doin' okay, Phil?" Techno asks cautiously. He's never been any good at hiding his worries, at least, never around Phil. "Your wings, uh, they're sort of..."
"Don't," Phil interjects. "Don't tell me. I know— I know they're bad." He swallows tightly, wondering why his vision was suddenly getting darker again, out of nowhere.
"Phil, they're- they're not just bad, man," Techno says, sounding more aghast than Phil has ever heard him speak before. He starts forward, and Phil lacks the strength to step away. "What the heck happened?"
Phil's throat locks up before he can start to explain. The crash is finally upon him in all of its horrible fullness, with every second he forces his body to remain upright, his reserves of energy deplete faster and faster. "Do you have somewhere we can go, mate? You do, right?" he asks quietly, voice shaking with the effort of keeping himself together. "I just— mate, I can't- I don't know if I can—"
Nodding gravely, Techno comes to his aid, a pillar of support that Phil had forgotten the steadiness of in the time they'd been apart. Keeping his hands far away from Phil's back, the two of them make a long trek through a forest. This, too, passes in a blurry haze for Phil. All he can focus on is the rhythm, breathing in and out, one foot in front of the other. He thinks Techno tries to talk to him through it, to keep both their minds off the gruesome sight, but if Phil responds to him, he doesn't remember a fucking word of it. He only knows that his ankles ache when Techno helps lower him down into the base and he has to stand on his own again, managing it for only a brief second before he staggers against a wall, biting back a pained groan.
"Phil! Phil." Techno jumps down quickly, rushing to Phil's side and pulling his mangled wing away from the wall. "Phil, alright, you're going to be okay. I've got golden apples, I'm gonna fix this, alright?"
Summoning every last ounce of strength within him, Phil pushes his head off of Techno's shoulder, digging his hand into the chestplate to steady himself while he finally starts to turn his head. "I need to see," he demands. "Before we- before you do anything, Techno, I need to see what happened."
There's a pale, sickly look on Techno's face, but he obediently clicks his jaw shut, and nods.
Phil finally turns his head, stiff muscles struggling to complete the job and look all the way around after so long forcing himself to stare straight ahead.
When his eyes do fall upon the damage, it's enough to immediately make him wish he hadn't.
Feathers, blood, then bone. No part of his wing has been spared, every part of it is mangled and bloody and broken form the force of the explosion he had taken on to protect his son. Phil chokes on a sob of grief and terror as he takes in the stick-thin bones that once held strong muscle and glossy feathers, all of that now melted and torn away until only a skeletal frame remains. Blood has congealed in every available space, and only once Phil recognizes that does he now know the stickiness of blood in his clothes and on his skin is truly his own, with only a little blood from Wilbur mixed into what stains his hands. It all looks the same, in the end.
Phil's eyes snap back to Techno, whose expression mirrors Phil's own horror. "Techno," Phil chokes, and finally, his body gives in.
Techno's hand around his arm keeps him from entirely collapsing to the ground, but it's a close thing. Phil screams in agony as his mutilated wings press against the ground, releasing every pent up emotion he'd been holding inside his chest since the moment the detonation tore his world apart. His chest shudders with sobs he can't let out without hurting himself more, pained tears burning the corners of his eyes as he scrambles to hold onto Techno's hand where he's lifted it over Phil's chest.
He doesn't quite reach it in time. His hand falls limp at his side, the thud of it against his rib matching the exact moment Techno calls out his name again.
"Help," Phil rasps, fingers twitching, shoulders jerking in barely suppressed agony. After all this time of keeping himself stitched together at splitting seams, it's a horrible kind of relief to lose himself here, in the safety of this closed space and comfort of his oldest friend. It does little to make it any kind of bearable, though. "Techno- help."
"Yeah, I've got you." Techno's hand tightens around him, but it isn't enough to keep Phil from slipping further. There's a grim look on his face, a kind of despair that Phil doesn't want to try and decipher just yet. He still looks haggard from the battle, but Phil knows that he won't leave him now. Not after this. "I'll- I'll fix th- I'll help you, Phil."
Phil's jaw quivers, head unable to support itself anymore. "My son," he pleads to Techno, nonsensical, fading fast. He hadn't had a moment to stop and process it before, and now it was all cascading down on him, too fast, too much. Grief surges, and tries to steal his voice, but he has to force the words out and spill his soul to the only one he trusts. "I killed my son, Techno."
A pained look flashes in Techno's eyes, followed by some murmured response that Phil doesn't manage to make out through still-ringing ears. His eyes fade next, and then his consciousness follows fast after, as Phil is swept away into the dark.