Chapter Text
Maybe they're lost.
Jebidaiah Leeroy Schlatt figures that could be an explanation as he looks at the two men who have summoned him, in the proper fashion, here at the crossroads where the mountains and the dark oak woods meet.
Even as he looks at them he thinks, no. People like them don't get lost at night, not even on roads as twisty as these.
They'd done everything right. They'd flipped the coin at a minute to midnight. They'd stamped their feet the moment it hit the ground in the center of where the two roads met.
Schlatt made sure that was a stipulation in his summoning ritual, that you had to stomp your foot so that the sole of your boot or shoe or whatever hit the gravel at the exact moment the coin did. It's such a tricky little thing to time. It requires experience, luck, and stubbornness. You can't do it more than once in a night, since the summoning window is so small; mess up, and you have to come back.
It has kept all but the most determined and desperate from bothering him. The determined and the desperate are Schlatt's favorite customers. One believes by virtue of their need- causes they always feel are just but never quite look that way from the outside- that they can outwit him.
The other knows they can't, but hope he will be kind.
In fairness Schlatt follows the rules, for the most part. Tit for tat, give and take. Of course he cheats, it's in his nature, but there's stories of people getting one over on old Schlatt the crossroads broker. Some of them aren't even just stories.
These two are neither determined nor desperate.They aren't like the anthropomorphic mobs that mark this server, not goatmen or sheeple or taurs. One is an aetherian, the other an honest to damn piglin.
Schlatt hasn't seen an aetherian since before he was the Crossroads Broker, and he's never seen a piglin outside the Nether. They both have full enchanted armor sets and weapons. Schlatt can practically smell the experience and he can See deeper than what's on the surface. These aren't players. These are fellow Gods- travelers in a foreign land praying not at the shrine of the Ram Upon the Clouds or any of the more palatable of the local pantheon, no.
They've come to his crossroads.
They've come for him.
"Now isn't this interesting," he says. "Of all the people to ring my doorbell. If I'da known you were coming I'd have baked a cake." He smiles, wide, because he can't help it, really, and takes a drag from his cigar. The sheer amount of possibility in the air is making the back of his neck tingle like it hasn't in centuries. His tail might even be wagging a little. This could be fun. "What can I do for you, gentlemen?"
"You're the God of Deals around here, right?" the Angel asks. He's wearing a striped bucket hat, of all things. "Take a soul, give youth and wealth, that sort of thing?"
"Haven't sold youth in a while," Schlatt says thoughtfully, "but that's one of my standard arrangements. I can do most anything- gold, prestige, the return of the dead. In return I get paid. Soul, extra lives, had someone offer a firstborn once. I try to avoid those, they get messy."
"What do you even do with firstborn kids?" the Piglin asks. He's big- bigger than Schlatt, which is impressive for this part of the server.
"Mostly they get sent off with the next person to wander by," Schlatt admits. The piglin snorts.
"But neither of you need anything I could give," he says curiously. "if you wanted it, you'd have it, no middle man."
"We don't need a middle man, exactly," the Angel says, "we need a negotiator."
Schlatt cannot stop his eyebrows from raising. "Oh?"
"We're lookin' to get around with less trouble," the piglin says. "Do some mining, some light invasion, maybe, overthrow a server or two. But that's a few hundred years in the future. What we need right now is allies. Leverage. Supplies. Stuff you get when you talk pretty."
Schlatt blinks.
Oh. Well this just went from intriguing to the most interesting thing to happen since someone tried to make a deal for him kill his own daddy.
So, to summarize," he says, "You summoned a God on a server you're passing through because you heard he made Deals and thought that translated well into negotiating for supplies?"
"Well, does it?" the Angel asks curiously. "I'd hate to have wasted our time."
Schlatt chuckles darkly. He's no Angel of Death, or- whatever the piglin has going on- but he can read what's between those words easily. "Oh you're really bad at this," he says.
"Yeah, that's why we called you," the piglin says. "If we were good at it we wouldn't be having to tryhard every second I sneeze near a carrot cart."
"What you're looking for, then, is a long term contract with me as an employee," Schlatt says, "that takes me out of this server and with you, is that a fair assessment?"
The Angel nods. "We'd be moving around a lot."
"Why would I want to leave my place of power to follow the two of you?" Schlatt sits on air, tapping ash from his cigar before he grinds it out on the bottom of his hoof and tucks it away into his waistcoat. "This is negotiating. I'm your customer now. Convince me."
The piglin says, "It won't be boring."
The Angel adds, "definitely not."
"What do you two consider boring?" Schlatt asks.
"Being stuck answering idiots at a crossroads," the piglin offers helpfully.
"Only able to make deals with poor people," the Angel adds. He's got Schlatt there. Most of the people who seek him out are in dire straights. Their Deal with him often ends with their death, or their destitution, or the breaking of their will. Farmers, trappers, miners. Kings don't come to the crossroads.
"If I go with you, what happens then?" Schlatt asks."What is it, explicitly, you want me to do?"
"When we travel," the Angel says, "we sometimes have a hard time integrating into towns. Dealing with the locals. Soothing hurt feelings. It makes it difficult to get information for jobs or where the next Tournament is being held."
Tournament contestants. Yeah, they have the look.
"So you need someone to do the delegating and travel planning." Schlatt says.
"I mean we also get into a ton of fights," The piglin says helpfully. "Lots of dead people."
The Angel nods in agreement. "Yes a good many people do wind up with the side effect of dead when they cross us, would that be a problem?"
Schlatt snorts. "No. It just means I'd add a mortal peril clause to the contract."
"How many lives you got?" The Piglin asks.
"Enough that I don't feel pressed about it but not enough that I'd want to waste them on a pillager you pissed off because you stepped on his crossbow, if you get my meaning."
"Well there will be more interesting people to cheat out of their extra lives," the Angel says. "definitely more gambling opportunities. At the very least you'll get to hurt people before they can hurt you and then take their stuff. Is that up your alley?"
Schlatt glances between the two. It doesn't do to seem too eager during the early stages of a negotiation but truth be told he doesn't need to be sold on the idea too much. Stay here and make Deals with starving mobs, a muttered half-suspicion trapped in folklore, or follow two other Gods on an unknown road? Dangerous, sure, but it's no fun unless there's some danger.
Besides It's not like Schlatt's in the server pantheon officially, so nobody can bitch if the Crossroads Broker takes a leave of absence. Summonings should work regardless of where in the multiverse he is, as long as potential customers have a crossroads to do their summoning on.
Schlatt digs into his pocket. He withdraws a coin- roughly the same size as the one used in his ritual but very different in its markings- and neatly flips it.
The two who summoned him watch it fly through the air, watch as he catches it and slaps it down onto the back of his hand. He looks at it, shrugs, and puts it away. Then he looks back up at them.
"Terms," he says, and the ground beneath them rumbles. "I go with the two of you. I will be your negotiator for matters martial, material, and economical, within reason. Where you fight, I fight, your enemies made mine. These terms will hold until certain conditions are met to break our contract or it is made void by the accomplishing of stated goals."
He steeples his fingers. "In return, I make Deals freely with whoever comes looking. You do not prevent me from these Deals, interrupt my summonings, and you do not-" he rolls his eyes, "warn my customers."
Last thing he needs, honestly, losing clout because someone tries to warn the poor saps.
"We wouldn't dream of it," the Angel says. "How do we proceed?"
"Are the terms fair?" Schlatt asks.
"I'd like to see 'em," the piglin says.
Schlatt snaps his fingers. A scroll appears mid-air with the terms written out in softly glowing golden ink. "Three hundred years is the renegotiation point," He gestures and the scroll copies itself, floating over to the two men so that they might read.
They do read. Closely. Smart of them, honestly. Schlatt is content to wait.
"This bit here, about transforming," the Piglin says, "what triggers that?"
"Extreme danger or work necessity mostly, though I can do it whenever I want." Schlatt says.
"Work necessity is related to the secondary subcontractors the paragraph mentions?" the Angel asks.
"Sometimes I get summoned for a bit of bloodwork. It's rare it's just me alone, so I've got a system worked out with other Summons. The list of subcontractors is at the bottom, if you want to check for potential conflicts of interest."
They do haggle a bit over some terminology, add in clauses for pay and board and shares in treasure looting and the potential portioning of blame for war crimes. Schlatt's impressed. By the time they wind down, the contract is almost entirely water-tight. It's also fair. A lot fairer than some Deals Schlatt has made in the past fifty years, but he's not complaining.
One final readthrough as the dawn light just barely begins to peek through the trees and an accord has been reached. "Seems good to me," the Angel says, holding up the contract for one last look. "Do we sign in blood?"
Schlatt snorts. "No, you just hold it and think a signature, Mr-" his amber eyes narrow as it comes to him. "Philza Minecraft."
Oh.
Oh fuck.
If this is the Philza, then the Piglin can only be-
"I, uh, don't know if you can read my signature," he says.
Well shit. This just went from the most interesting thing to happen in centuries to the most interesting thing to happen in the entire history of Jebidaiah Schlatt's life.
"That's the best part about being a God of Deals, Technoblade," Schlatt says with more amusement than he actually feels because oh damn. Oh DAMN. "I can always read the signatures, even if it's in Piggish."
Their names appear on the lines at the bottom of the contracts, which disappear in a whiff of smoke to an archive only Schlatt can reach and only Schlatt can read.
He shakes their hands, first Philza's, then Technoblade's. When this is done, he says, "Deal," and his head cranes back, eyes alighting with the same yellow fire that conjured and then banished the contracts. Around him is the rush of a multiverse of chaos and order and death and life and chance rolling through the conduit of his body in a way that for the first time is almost painful, binding the Crossroads Broker to the mission, journey, and fate of the Angel of Death and the Blood God.
Then everything snaps back.
The road is quiet. The forest stirs with the first movements of animals as the sunlight finally brushes across the leaves of the forest, cutting down across the front of the mountains to do so.
Schlatt's feet- for the first time in a quarter century or more- are touching the gravel of his crossroads.
He opens his eyes and looks at his new employers. He snaps his fingers and a pack drops out of thin air.
So does a big, heavy, iron-headed railroad hammer.
He shoulders the pack, slides the hammer into the loops at the bottom, and says, "Okay, first of all, I'm hungry as fuck. Let's go get breakfast. I know a guy."
Philza laughs. "Do you know a lot of guys?"
The Crossroads Broker grins. "As a matter of fact, Philza, I do."
He follows the other two gods up the road, away from the place where the mountains meet the woods, and into whatever the future might hold for him.