Chapter Text
List of the Gods:
Philza: God of death
Techno: Blood/War God
Wilbur: God of knowledge and the arts
Dream: God of betrayal/trickery/deceit/general treachery
Sapnap: God of hunting and destruction
George: God of hiding and secrets
Nikki: God of love and beauty
Tubbo: God of nature
Quackity: God of luck and lust
Tommy: God of bravery, youth, and freedom
Ranboo: God of the sea and weather
Y/N: God? of chaos life
…“I’m making a bomb that can kill gods , Y/N. Isn’t that wonderful?”...
No, Wil-
You’re falling. The earth under you crumbles and finally gives way as you scramble to stay on your feet. You’re running…
There’s a face that flashes through your head over and over like a war cry, half-forgotten. It’s a face that whispers blood to you.
“Don’t let him win. You have to go back.” The voice is raspy, like it’s being used for the first time in eons. It sounds familiar, you think to yourself. It fills you with an unfathomable sadness, for some reason. You’re not sure why.
The voice gets louder and louder as you fall through the void. It’s terrifying. Light years come and go like minutes as you float in stasis. You scream, but it doesn’t drown out the noise.
“You have to go back, Y/N.”
You bolt out of bed with a scream. When you run a hand over your face, it comes away damp. Unfortunately, that’s pretty par for the course recently. What were you dreaming about? You hear the thump of Fundy’s hurried steps up the stairs, even though you don’t see him in the darkness.
“Turn the light on?” Your voice is a little timid when you ask, but if he hears the tremble in it, he doesn’t mention it. A spark flies from his hand to the piles of half-melted candles that have merged into one massive monstrosity at your bedside, and his face is illuminated as they flicker to life. His ears are pressed flat against his head, his tail curled around his left leg.
“I’m worried about you.” He says softly, going to sit on the edge of the bed. “The nightmares have happened since I found you-”
“Before.” You interject calmly. He rolls his eyes.
“Ok, and my point still stands. You can’t get through a night without waking up in a cold sweat. You’re practically an insomniac! How you get by on that much sleep is astonishing-”
“I’m not tired.” You assert, swinging your legs out of bed.
“I’m getting dressed, so I suggest you leave the room.” You say flatly. He looks like he wants to say something, but he just clomps down the stairs without another word.
The nagging feeling in your brain doesn’t go away, even as dawn sends the sun creeping over the horizon. There’s something you desperately need to remember. You’re running out of time. These have been your two immutable truths, and yet, you’re no closer to figuring out what it is you forgot in the first place.
Fundy jokes about you having been some kind of noble, but that doesn’t feel right. You stare at your reflection in the mushroom soup, run your hands over your face in hopes the motion will somehow restore the identity you’ve lost. Nothing.
You don’t have a name, so Fundy normally just says “hey you” when he wants to get your attention. No one else around, anyways. No point. You only notice him trying to get your attention when he’s repeated the phrase a third time.
“We’re running low on food. I have business to attend to. Make a trip into town?” He asks, sliding over a small bag of copper pieces. “There’s a list in the chest by the door.” He says, rising from the table. “You can take my horse.” You nod, rising from the table. The soup remains untouched, and he frowns distastefully.
“Not a fan?” He asks in a flat tone. Surely he isn’t surprised by this. You haven’t eaten much of anything since you woke up. The food tastes flat and unnatural, like it wasn’t meant to sustain you. You freeze up, not wanting to insult his cooking. Your hand goes to the back of your neck. “It’s uh- I’m just not hungry.” It’s the truth, but it’s clearly not a satisfying answer. He sighs.
“You won’t eat meat, you won’t eat vegetables-” He mutters to himself as he walks through the kitchen and to the only room in the house you’re not supposed to enter.
Better now than later, you suppose. It’ll get dark if you put it off too much, and when mobs start spawning you’ll be forced to stay in town. Fundy always said he’d no idea how a human like you had survived that long in the forest by yourself. You told him you had no idea. That was the answer to almost every one of his barrage of questions.
You look over the list. Wheat, carrots, potatoes, beetroot, chicken. Simple enough. You grab the bow that hangs in the frame over the chest, put a stack of arrows in your inventory. Just in case.
The path is not very big, and Fundy’s horse is decidedly unsuited for the environment, a huge, clunky beast that followed you absolutely everywhere when you went outside. Wirt seemed adamant about defending you at all costs, despite the fact that Wirt was a chronically lazy horse and wasn’t really adamant about anything.
“C’mon, Wirt. We have to get going.” You say, tugging the lead in the general direction of town. Here, the trees are too low to ride him anyways, you’ll just end up scraping your head on the branches.
As you make your way down the path, the light fog making a home in your lungs, you feel strangely at ease. You can hear the far off hissing of spiders and the occasional groan from the dirt, but it doesn’t bother you. Apparently, the dead have been coming back for some time, no matter how old the corpse. Even bones were brought back sometimes. Fundy says it’s because of the gods. Fundy says a lot of things.
A rustle in the trees snaps you out of your thoughts. Your hands reflexively go to your bow. What could it be? If it was a spider, it’d be harmless enough, but a zombie or skeleton you’d need to kill now before it gained on you. Logic says you should fire the bow, but against all your instincts, you hold.
It’s- a dog. You think, although frankly it looks more like a wolf, a hulking gray beast with a thick coat of fur and gleaming red eyes that immediately runs at you. You can’t find it in yourself to think any last words-
The dog-wolf barrels into you, panting and drooling on you before licking your face repeatedly. To your shock and surprise, a voice worms its way into your head:
“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh I found you! Hi! Hello! Hi! I finally found you! Thank goodness thank goodness safe, safe- you’re safe-” The voice is male, but fairly high pitched, although it could just be the excitement in the voice. For a moment, you look around, confused, thinking someone must have been looking for their dog, until the dog clambers off of you clumsily and wags its tail at a million miles a minute.
“I found you! I found you and you’re safe and Techno will be so proud of me-” The name makes your guts clench. Techno. Why do you know that name? Why is it important? Why does this dog know you? The dog licks your face.
“ Don’t cry, don’t cry! Apollo is here! Apollo has found you! Apollo will fix everything!” The dog says cheerily.
“ Apollo…” You echo. “Um- do I know you?” You ask. The dog whines, and its tail falls between its legs.
“ You don’t remember Apollo? This is bad, this is very very bad-” Apollo says hurriedly. “Not much time, we go now, right now, leaving this place-” The dog starts to tug on your sleeve in a random direction off the path.
“Now hold on, Apollo.” You say as the dog starts to drag you with considerable strength. You hold onto the lead tightly, but your grip starts to falter. Wirt neighs dejectedly.
“Now hold on, Apollo-” You mutter. The dog doesn’t let up as you dig your feet into the slippery, damp ground in vain. You had an errand to run. Fundy would be worried if you weren’t back in time.
“Apollo. Drop it.” You command, and to your surprise, he listens.
“Explain. Who sent you? Who do you think I am? Why are you here?” You ask.
Apollo tilts his head. “ Master sent me, obviously. You are my friend. And master’s friend. And I brink you back, and you free master, and you get rid of the evil men, then we play forever and ever and Apollo gets all the treats-.” He says, like it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Back where?”
“ The realm of the gods.” He says, as if it were the most normal sentence in the world.
“I don’t follow.” You say.
Apollo makes a frustrated sounding whine at the back of his throat. “No time for silliness! We have to make it to the shrine by the solstice- ”
“What shrine? Why the solstice? Why me? Who was I?”
Apollo snorts and starts walking into the woods. “You will follow Apollo now, if you want your questions answered. Apollo will be a good dog. Apollo is taking you to the shrine.”
You frown. On one hand, Fundy will be worried if you don’t make it back. On the other hand- this strange talking dog is the only lead you have on your identity, and frankly ignoring this seems like a bad idea if you want to find out what happened to you. There’s a deeper part of you that trusts this dog, and you always go with your gut. So against your better judgement, you drop the lead and begin to follow the dog.
“Go home, Wirt. You know the way back from here.” You say, tucking the copper pieces into Wirt’s saddlebags and shooing the horse. The horse does not budge.
“C’mon, Wirt, please . Fundy’s gonna think I stole you! And his money. What if he finds more amnesiacs in the woods and they die because you refused to move, hm?” You ask.
Apparently, moral arguments don’t work on horses, because Wirt just blinks at you and stands there. It probably doesn’t help that horses can’t understand English.
“Fine, then.” You sigh. “Come with us. But I’m not taking responsibility for you. If you come, you’re an escaped horse. A horse vagabond. An equestrian criminal. You’re telling Fundy, I hate you and your dumb ears. Is that what you want?”
Surprisingly, the horse gives no reaction to you insulting its master. Probably, once again, because horses do not speak English. Apollo barks.
“ Come, Y/N! No time! No time! We must haste, haste to shrine fast. Bring big hoof beast. We’ll need it.” Apollo says, which you're unable to even begin to understand because at that moment the large gray wolf-dog begins dragging you rather messily through a bush. Wirt follows you in that usual languid pace, your flailing limbs acting as a pretty effective path clearer.
Despite the slow horse trailing behind, you and Apollo actually make good pace, with Wirt catching up to you when you rest for the night in a small clearing. The trees are only getting denser, and you’re shocked at how easily Wirt squeezes himself through gaps, considering he is a 1-ton horse.
“ Sleep? It is cold. Y/N build fire, Apollo will get a tasty bird for dinner!” Before you can respond, the dog bounds into the woods. Y/N. Every time you heard it, thinkgs got a little fuzzier. Every time you tried to think of the syllables, they drifted out of your reach. What was that word... The last slivers of pink dip below the horizon. It’s getting dark. You’ve never been out this late before. Fundy says before the dead returned, people would camp in this forest all the time, using poultices to ward off spiders during their active phase. But these woods are dangerous now, especially without Apollo. You start collecting some dead branches as firewood. Your throat is parched.
You listen hard, and you can hear a river nearby. You thank the gods for your good luck as you make your way to the river by ear, making sure to mark a tree or two with the tip of your arrow as you pass for good measure.
The stream water is cool and inviting as you use it to splash your face. Suddenly, a hand lurches up from the depths and pulls you in.
You scream, but your throat just fills with water as you cough and sputter, struggling to get to the surface. The rotting flesh burns your skin to touch as it locks you in a tight embrace. You use all your strength to finally break the surface, but the thing clings onto you as you drag yourself out of the water gasping for breath. You shove it away, but its decomposing fingers are locked around your ankle. You scream again, this time in sheer agony. So this is how you’re going to die. And you were so close to finding out the truth-
Thunk. The arrow goes straight through the drowned’s skull, killing it instantly. You scramble out of the thing’s grip as you catch your breath. Fundy looks irate.
“I take you in, give you a place to stay, and you steal my horse ? What kind of person steals a horse! You’re lucky I saved you, you know. Half a mind to just let you die there-” You’ve never been more relieved to see the fox hybrid.
“Fundy! Thank goodness. Look, I promise I didn’t steal your horse.” Wirt clops up behind you. Fundy looks unimpressed.
“I mean- he just followed me! I tried to send him back, but there was this dog, and-” You stumble over your words. You must sound like a loon.
“What? It told you to take my horse and go get yourself killed in the middle of the woods?” Fundy mocked, not realizing he was surprisingly on point.
“Well, yes!” You reply. “His name is Apollo.”
Fundy pauses, his furrowed eyebrows raising in surprise. “You said- Apollo?” He asks, squinting at you. “What did this dog look like?”
You shrug. “Uh- huge, gray, kinda wolfy, big red eyes, kinda like a spider, honestly-” Fundy’s eyes widen.
“The hound of the blood god.” He says quietly. “No one’s prayed to him in centuries! I don't know too much about him. Tubbo is my patron, the patron of most hybrids, but I remember my grandfather telling me the stories.”
“The- blood god?” You ask. “Look, Fundy, I’m really sorry about your horse. I just- this dog knows who I am! Or seems to, anyways. It’s kind of complicated, and I don’t really- I couldn’t miss the opportunity. We need to get to some kind of shrine by the solstice, apparently.”
Fundy looks pensive for a moment before plucking the arrow out of the drowned and putting it back in its quiver. “Ok.” He says.
“Ok?”
“I’ll help you, I guess. If you’re not lying to me, but that's basically impossible. Even though you stole my horse. And my money. And you didn’t bother coming back to say goodbye.” He adds for good measure.
“Thanks.” You say. The wind is finally starting to get through your soaked layers of clothing, and you shiver. “Uh, can we get a fire going?”
Apollo returns a few minutes later, carrying a large rabbit. “ Not bird, but close enough. ” He remarks as he lays the kill down at your feet. He sniffs the air, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end when he sees Fundy. “ This friend? ” He asks.
“Yes, Apollo. He’s gonna help. It’s fine.” You say. Apollo cautiously approaches Fundy, sniffing him cautiously.
“ Ok. This one not a spy. I can tell.” He says. Fundy looks a little shocked by Apollo’s appearance still.
“So- you can hear him talk, right?” You ask.
Fundy shakes his head. “Uh- no. But I’ve never seen a wolf that big before, so- I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I believe you.”
The night is cool, and your damp clothes finally dry out next to the heat of the fire. You’re still not that hungry, but Fundy forces you to have some, and your stomach is full as you look up at the cool night air, Apollo acting as a warm, furry pillow for you. Wirt is- doing whatever weird stand-sleeping thing horses do, and Fundy’s made himself comfortable under the nearest tree, digging out a little space near the roots.
You make good time, with Fundy there. According to him, the shrine is only three days travel from here, but the solstice is in two. You don’t get a lot of sleep the second night, with Fundy and you taking turns riding Wirt, keeping low to avoid the branches. Apollo is a machine that never seems to get tired or slow down, no matter how much he walks. At your current pace, you’ll make it.
The morning of the third day dawns, and if you squint through the thicket you can see a simple stone building, overgrown with ivy and weathered from years of disuse. Apollo wags his tail excitedly. “ Yes! We made it! Quickly now .”
As you approach the shrine, the details come into focus. It’s a small building, simple, stacked stones that smell of earth and dust and salt. There’s a metallic tang in your mouth as you approach this place, a momentary jolt at the back of your psyche. You tear the ivy off the mantle, seeing an inscription etched deep into the stone a very, very long time ago.
It reads:
“ Blood for the blood god. ”