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They trip through the portal, and Phil’s stomach drops.
Not that it wasn’t already on the fucking floor. Through the floor, even. All the way in fucking hell, where apparently, that goddamn eye beast thinks they belong. Phil trips through the global portal and ends up by the cornucopia, Tubbo shrieking in his ear and a vague ringing in his ears.
His lungs hurt, clogged with thick dust from the crumbling marble ceilings. He can still see Chayanne in his mind’s eye, terrified but hiding it well. Tallulah, openly terrified. All the other eggs, dirty and frightened. He can still hear Foolish’s voice in his ears, shouting, screaming. He can see Fit’s face, and that thing . He can’t believe how tall it was, towering over them. And El Quackity…
“Phil, lasso me,” Tubbo demands, shoving his face into Phil’s space. Phil doesn’t jump– just stares at Tubbo and the dust in his hair, the blood running down his face, and then blinks.
“What?” he asks.
“Lasso me, lasso me,” Tubbo says, already pulling out his glider and shoving it onto the floor, struggling to open it. “We can fly, you can fly–”
Phil inhales, the very action sending bolts of pain through him, and his wings extend without so much as a thought. It’s strange, having muscle memory for something you haven’t done in months. His feathers ruffle, and every inch of him aches with the effort.
“I don’t know if I can, Toby,” he says, and Tubbo shakes his head.
“You take the paraglider, I have water, we can– you can fly us out, can’t you? Can’t you? We have the coordinates–”
“My wings are– I can’t–”
“Can you get us there, Phil?” Tubbo asks, shoving a lasso into his hands. The other end is tied around Tubbo’s waist, and Phil looks at him. He sees Tubbo face and the blood and his own sword crushing through Tubbo’s sternum with the thick crack of still-wet bone, and he exhales. Then he nods.
“I don’t know,” he says, “but we can try.”
“Go,” Tubbo says. “I have a water bucket.”
“Okay,” Phil says, and he fumbles for his grappling squack, and fires.
Flying isn’t something that just comes naturally. It’s a skill that has to be learned and honed, a sport like any other. There are specific muscle groups linked to certain maneuvers, stretches specifically created just for avians who fly professionally, all sorts of things in order to make someone’s wings in perfect shape for all types of flying. Long distance, sprints, racing twirls. Phil is known for being able to do them all– or at least, he had been. He can remember the training, the time he’d put into it. The things he’d had to do in order to instruct his body over and over and make it used to the strain.
It has been more than six months, and his muscles scream.
His shoulders ache. His forearms burn with the stress of pulling Tubbo behind him. His legs cramp and his lower back throbs. The pain is immeasurable, uncountable, uncontrollable. Phil can grit his teeth but it doesn’t stop the flashes of white behind his eyes as he spreads his wings and flies, desperate. He can barely see the horizon as he goes, but he does anyway, listening intently for Tubbo and pushing down the instinct to curl into a ball and sob with the pain.
They land, and it’s a brief moment of relief before they’re off again, Phil firing his grappling squack and Tubbo shouting something unintelligible into the wind behind them. He trusts Tubbo to land the water bucket shots every time he lands, but he only has to a couple times before his MDA pings he’s getting close; his wings are numb by now, the shoots of pain frequent and intense, making him shudder and twitch every three seconds or so. Behind him, Tubbo is yelling, screaming into the wind, and Phil would join him if he wasn’t so out of breath. Every inch of him is on fire– and not in the good way, not in the Bolas way, just in the torturous way.
He keeps seeing Chayanne. Flashes of yellow on the landscape below. Hope, like a flower, blooming in his chest. But every time he sees it, or sees Tallulah, a black fist crushes that hope with a quick blink.
Finally, he sees water, and the boat. His wings are on the verge of giving out and he barely gets Tubbo out and over the water before he stumbles, cramps, and pulls into a nosedive.
When he slams into the water, it’s cold– it shocks him, and he inhales by accident, coughing as he breaks the surface. His wings are wet and heavy but he can’t bring himself to care, spitting out clumps of water and dust mixed together into a thick, glue-like paste. He feels like a cement mixer, and ahead of him he can see Tubbo crawling out of the water and onto the back of the boat, hair plastered to his forehead. Somehow, he finds the strength to lift his arms and make his wings spasm in a way that pushes him forward, towards the boat. He feels Tubbo’s hands on his arm and then the faint sound of him shouting, and then Fit invades his gaze and two other hands grasp him, dragging him onto the boat.
The wood is hard beneath him and Phil lies there for a second, still spitting up water and gunk. Fit and Tubbo are talking, and he clues in just as Fit says–
“Phil, we have to go get the others.”
“I can’t,” he says. Neither of them seem to hear him. His wings lie limp and lifeless behind him, waterlogged and exhausted. His entire back is on fire and his feathers are dull, the weight dragging him back as he forces himself to stand. His body feels like one gigantic bruise.
“We have to get others,” Fit says, the elytra on his back ruffling. Phil envies him, but only for a moment.
“I can’t ,” Phil insists. He rummages through his inventory, and comes up with a lasso in his hands. “My wings are gone, dude, they’re– I can’t fly, it’s not physically possible. I can’t get anyone–”
It doesn’t matter how much he wants to. It doesn’t matter how much guilt gnaws at him, tearing through his stomach lining with teeth that gnash and chew.
“I will, then,” Fit says, determination writ on his brow. His face is impenetrable, but Phil sees his own guilt reflected back at him. “Here, the lasso, I’ll–”
And then he’s gone, and Tubbo is left supporting Phil with one hand, and Phil is still reeling. They have one singular moment to breathe. Phil spits onto the deck, and Tubbo follows suit, red blood mixing with water and then disappearing as another wave washes up onto their feet. They stumble forward and Phil shakes Tubbo off, then shakes off some of the water from his wings. Even that little motion sends acres of pain flashing through him, like sparks of electricity up and down his spinal cord. He thinks he might be dying.
He kind of hopes he is.
God, Chayanne.
“Phil,” Tubbo says, looking at his MDA. It’s ringing, and vaguely Phil realizes his is too. Everything is still a little fuzzy in his ears. “Shit. Meteor. We need to go, we need to–”
And then they’re on the move again.
He has no choice. He runs.