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It never seems to stop snowing in the tundra.
Techno hadn’t expected anything much different, but it can be quite annoying sometimes. Like now. He’s been wanting to do some work on the expansion of the side of his cabin for a few days now, but the intensity of the storm outside has made it difficult to see even a few feet in front of him. Besides, he hates the cold like any other hotblooded piglin would—why go out and freeze to death when he can stay inside where it’s warm?
The voices tell him he’s a wuss, but he knows he’s just being practical. Why waste his time outdoors in the snow when he has plenty of organizing to do inside too, where it’s nice and warm? Phil’s not much different, he reasons with the lot, because he’s been inside for days too while visiting; he’s not dumb to try and leave during a storm like this. That, at the very least, calms down some of them, but for the most part that information changes nothing. What a bunch of twerps.
He sighs. At least he and Phil were able to move Bob, Hubert, and Fool to the basement before the storm hit. All his other valuables—the blocks of emeralds, stacks of diamonds, and other essentials—were easy to move on his own, but animals? They’d have probably died from hypothermia or something. Phil’s better with that kind of stuff anyway.
Techno glances around his relatively barren cabin and, though it’s actually real sad looking, he’s happy to be far enough away from the others to avoid getting griefed again. Seriously, all people seem to like doing on this server involves robbing others and starting wars over governments that do nothing good. It’s not like Techno was any different with his involvement in the Manberg vs Pogtopia war, but fights like that just aren’t conducive to peace in the long run. Governments are bound to crash and burn, and he’s not going to stick his neck out to try helping people that rob and vandalize his property. Not anymore.
Eventually, only a few more days pass before the storm finally lets up. Techno hums as he stares out at the returned view of the horizon, the morning’s sunlight a warm orange as it casts through his windows. Now’s a better time than later to go out and gather some supplies, huh?
“Alright,” he says. “Let’s go say goodbye to Phil before he leaves.”
If the voices had physical form, he’s sure they’d be clambering over themselves to be the first to wish Phil farewell. Techno rolls his eyes and gears up, making sure he has his Orphan Obliterator just in case he comes across one of the others, and exits the cabin. You can never be too careful on this server.
Phil is already packed up and ready to go as he does. He stands on the nearby steps, staring, similarly to Techno just moments prior, at the rising sun. The rays dress him in soft hues and make him look younger, Techno thinks. He wonders if it makes himself look any younger, too.
Clearing his throat to announce his presence, he approaches to stand at his side. “Headin’ out?”
“Yep,” Phil replies. His eyes remain on the sky for a moment longer, as if searching for something, before finally turning to look at Techno. “You’re all good here, mate?”
He nods. Something nags at the back of his mind, and it’s not just from the concern of the voices. “You don’t have to go back there, y’know.”
“I know,” Phil acknowledges. When he smiles it’s one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, the very same that look haunted and exhausted. All at once he looks older, the weight of grief heavy and apparent on his shoulders. “I want to though. It’ll be good to rebuild, I think.”
Shrugging, Techno chooses not to argue. The idea of rebuilding L’Manberg never settled quite right in his stomach, and really, he can already tell it won’t amount to anything good, let alone anything better than what it had been like before. But Phil is going back to help anyway, maybe out of some sort of guilt over Wilbur’s death, and Techno doesn’t mock the differing ways others deal with loss. That is cruel, even for him.
“Okay,” he says instead. “Well, you know where to find me if ya need me. Don’t lose that compass.”
As if on cue, Phil pulls out the compass Techno had given him. It points directly at him towards the cabin, and Phil chuckles.
“I won’t,” he assures, and Techno believes him.
With that, Phil walks down the steps and out into the snow. Normally he’d spread his wings and take flight—his go-to mode of travel the air—but with his left wing left in tatters from the explosion, he has no choice but to walk. Techno doesn’t think of himself as a very sentimental guy, but not seeing Phil fly makes him…melancholic. He wonders if there was anything he could’ve done to prevent such an outcome from happening, but the voices remind him that the full extent of Wilbur’s plans were unknown to everyone, including him, and that the injury was just one casualty of many that day.
Sighing, Techno turns to begin walking the other way. There’s a forest nearby he’d planned on spending the day chopping down wood for the cabin’s expansion, and he doesn’t want to mindlessly burn daylight reminiscing on what if’s. He’s too old, has too many burdensome memories, to do that.
The forest, predictably, only has spruce. Techno doesn’t mind; he can get the dark oak and birch he needs later. Rather than use the Axe of Peace, he spares it and its durability despite it having mending to use a different one. This is how he spends most of the day: chopping down trees at their base before hacking them up into smaller pieces to fit in his inventory. He gets a message a little before ten from Phil saying he made it back safe. Aside from that, he’s left with himself, the voices, and silence.
Techno only takes a few breaks to eat lunch and check the sun’s position for the time. A few of the trees drop apples that he munches on occasionally, tasting crisp and ripe. He saves most of them to turn into golden apples back at the cabin. Sticks that fall are shoved into his inventory too, for torches and future weapons.
It’s only a little past four when he reaches a clearing somewhere near the center of the forest. He blinks. Well, that’s unusual. Not the clearing itself, no, but what’s in the clearing.
An injured wolf lays in the center, looking nearly gored with the amount of blood around its unmoving figure. At first Techno believes it to be dead and thinks, Man, that sucks, before turning to chop down a nearby tree. But the voices demand he at least investigate, weirdly adamant about it, so he has no choice but to acquiesce if he doesn’t want to hear about it for the rest of the day.
Turns out the wolf isn’t dead, he realizes as he approaches. Techno watches its eyes blink open at the crunch of his footfalls in the snow, head only able to raise ever so slightly before slumping back to the ground. It lets out a pained, panicked yip as he gets closer. Clearly, it wants to run away from a potential attacker but physically can’t with its injuries.
He glances over it for the cause. It’s then he notices the claw marks tearing up the wolf’s side, nearly completely unseeable from all the blood matting down its once pristine white coat. Polar bears do live around here, he thinks. The voices are speaking over each other now, crying for him to either help or put it out of its misery. Techno thinks it’d be easier just to kill it but, again, a majority of the voices are pleading for the former and he’d really rather not hear about how he could’ve saved the wolf.
Techno rummages around in his inventory before procuring splash potions of healing and regeneration. They’re the only ones he has at the moment, but at this point it’s not like he’s going to get ambushed. Nobody but Phil even knows where he is. “Alright, don’t freak out, or something.”
He’s not the greatest at comforting people, let alone animals. The wolf just stares at him with shallowing breaths. Techno sighs before throwing them down on the ground beside them, wincing at the sound of breaking glass.
All at once the wolf’s eyes widen, a loud and startled bark tearing out of its throat. Techno gently tries to calm it, but at the sight of his raising hands the wolf cries and tries with all its might to shy away from any possible kind touch he could give it. As the potions work to heal the lacerations along its torso, it gradually becomes possible, and the wolf clambers up on unsteady feet to run.
It only bothers to spare him one last glance back before disappearing past the trees.
Techno stares after it. “Not even a ‘thank you,’ huh? You’re welcome, I guess.”
Turning his gaze down again, he chews on the inside of his cheek at the sight of the wolf’s blood in the snow. The voices are one part elated at the wolf’s recovery and two parts suddenly desperate for blood, and Techno has to force down the urge to give in.
“Quit it,” he snaps, voice uncharacteristically angry. “I’m not doin’ that.”
The sudden shift in tone quiets them down. Techno exhales through his nose with a shake of his head. Rising back onto his feet, he stalks back over to the tree he’d originally wanted to cut down before the wolf fiasco.
He gets through a few more hours of chopping before he notices another wolf—or, no, it’s the same wolf, it’s still got dried blood all over it—come trotting back into the clearing. Techno pauses mid-chop. Slowly, he lowers his axe before holstering it back onto his hip. The sight of a weapon might spook it, he thinks, and doesn’t want to end up having to kill the thing if it decided to get aggressive and attack him.
Surprisingly, the wolf walks up to him with a confidence it didn’t have before. Techno’s brow raises as it slows to a stop just a few feet away and drops onto the ground…an apple?
When he doesn’t move, the wolf nudges it a bit closer with its snout. Oh, so it wants him to take it.
“Uh, thanks.” Techno takes a measured step forward before kneeling down. He watches the wolf all the while, unsure if this is an oddly elaborate trap, but it only lets out a happy little bark when he finally picks it up.
It must’ve smelled the other apples in his inventory, he discerns. That’s awfully thoughtful of a gift for a wolf, but hey, it’s the best thanks he’ll get from an animal, so he takes it. Definitely more thoughtful than Bob, at least.
Techno stands up, apple in hand. The wolf continues to stare at him, expectant. Does it want him to eat it, too? A bit weird, but whatever. He takes a bite and the wolf barks again, tail now wagging, and Techno laughs. What a weird little thing.
Even when he finishes the apple, the wolf doesn’t leave him alone. Techno returns to chopping down trees, moving further away from the clearing as he does, and the wolf follows him. The sun begins leisurely lowering for the day, its light disappearing to make way for the moon and its starry night, and still the wolf sticks to his side like glue. You’d think he’d tamed it, but no, it has no collar, no loyalty, yet acts like it has both anyway.
Techno appreciates it. When nighttime hits the mobs come out, and for the next hour he’s out he’s essentially guarded by the wolf. It attacks and kills any approaching mobs for him; after it does, it barks and runs around him to draw his attention to each carcass before they disappear into a pile of bones, rotten flesh, or other dropped item for him to collect. It's endearing.
Eventually, he decides to call it a day and head home. Techno picks up the bones of the most recently downed skeleton and, pausing, looks between them and the wolf. He hadn’t considered having one before, at least not since coming onto this server. The wolf sits, tongue out and panting, to his left, and he thinks it’d be good to have it as a companion.
Holding up the bones, he asks, “Ya want ‘em?”
Excited, the wolf leans back on its haunches and jumps up, trying to take them from his hand. Techno takes that as a yes and, chuckling, lets the wolf have them. It only takes one of the bones to tame, a rarity he’s not all too shocked by, given the animal’s affinity for him. But the wolf certainly doesn’t say no to having a few more.
“Nice,” he remarks, and the voices seem to agree, pleased with his decision. “What should we name you?”
He’s given a variety of answers all at once. Techno does his best to parse through them all as he and the wolf head back. Half the names are idiotic jokes like Hamburger or are just too inappropriate for Techno to even want to repeat, but amongst the garbage he settles for…Max.
“How’re we feelin’ about the name ‘Max’?” He knows consulting the wolf on it is redundant—he’ll name it that regardless, he knows—but it feels necessary.
The wolf’s tail wags, ears pricking up before he runs a few circles around him in its—no, his excitement. Max it is, then. He’ll have to get a proper collar and name tag for him later.
They make it back to the cabin right as it hits nine. The lone clock on his wall says so, anyway, so that means it’s dinnertime. Techno was originally planning on feeding Bob, Hubert, and Fool and eating some steak before passing out, honestly, but now he has another member of their bunch to take care of.
Steak should be good for him too, he thinks as he climbs down to the basement. Max stays upstairs as he does, though his head peeks through the trapdoor down to watch him. He’s a strangely sedulous creature. Techno appreciates that. Maybe he can find another wolf and breed them, create a whole pack of wolves that will be this loyal and protect him.
But that’s for another day. After finishing feeding Bob, Hubert, and Fool, Techno climbs back out and busies himself making dinner for him and Max. Halfway in he stops to light a fire in the fireplace. Max quickly settles down right in front of it, letting out a sigh of content at the warmth. His eyes droop but never quite close as he watches Techno cook.
Techno eventually plates them each their steaks and sets Max’s down in front of him. “Here ya go.”
Languid, Max rises to his feet and begins to eat. Techno takes a seat on the floor beside him. In silence, bar the soothing crackles of wood burning in the fireplace, they share their first meal of many together. Outside, snow begins coming down. Luckily for them, it’s not nearly as heavy as the snowstorm from before.
He sends a message to Phil telling him to stay safe. Phil is quick to respond—he always is—that he will, and Techno purses his lips as he stares out at the blurring view of the horizon, the night’s moonlight a frigid black as it casts shadows through his windows. He doesn’t know what lies beyond that horizon. What the others on this server will do next. What kind of up and coming tyranny will plague them all and destroy countless more lives.
Techno glances over at Max. Ideas churn in his head, but they’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s first light.
All he knows is that, among all the variables left unknown, he’ll be ready for whatever comes next.