Chapter Text
“I’m bored ,” Philza had complained all those years ago.
A young angel accompanying a young goddess in her dark, swirling void. He’d gone there with orders from the council to check on their newest godling, and he had returned soon after for good company. Phil was rarely bored when Kristin was around, but things had been getting increasingly tedious as his partner grew into her responsibilities.
She never did forget how to cause mischief, though.
He remembered the sparkling look in her eyes, the one that told him he was either going to have the best or the worst time in his life, and with a flick of her wrist he was no longer in the inky abyss he’d spent his years in.
He was somewhere green. Somewhere bright. Somewhere loud.
He was in the Overworld.
He had to admit, it was fun for a while. After the immediate irritation at being flung onto another plane without any warning, he began to actually explore the new world. He spawned in the middle of nowhere, but after a few days, he stumbled into a village.
It was mostly occupied with humans, although he spotted several Avians dotting the crowds. Their wings were similar to his, although they were far smaller, far more intricate. Theirs had to actually be able to fly, while Phil mostly used magic to soar through the air.
He got some supplies, met some folk, and, most importantly, heard about a dragon in some place called the End.
Nobody seemed to know how to actually reach said dragon, though, so he just started walking once more. He passed through several more villages, camps, kingdoms–anything that looked like it had information, he stopped at.
He learned of some long-standing feud between Avians and Elytrians (he wouldn’t admit that he didn’t know the difference between the two), as well as the nature of hybrids.
He learned the birds and the bees from a biology course, which actually did involve several birds and bees. Phil thought the photos were a little… Well. Hybrids without any human genes in them tended to look a little disturbing, but perhaps he was just being close-minded.
He learned about merlings who helped him explore the seafloor. He didn’t find anything about the dragon, although he did stumble across a very cool ship that had sadly sunk into the waves. He wondered about the mortals who had probably died in the wreck, and he wondered when he had started to care so much for them. After all, Kristin would take care of them in death. That’s what she always did. She spent so much time attending to her humans, Phil knew because that was the only time she wouldn’t be with–
Ah.
Cheeky witch.
Ignoring the life lesson his partner seemed to have attempted to teach him, he continued on his journey to the End. He discovered the Nether with their piglins and their blazes, both with varying levels of sapience depending on the individual. Most of them tried to kill him, though, so he fought right back.
Finally, finally, he tracked the stronghold down. He found a small portal, ancient, before even his time. He placed his hands on the plated metal and he gave. He gave all the power in him to the square threshold, and it rewarded him with swirling darkness that reminded him of her.
In he went, into the floating islands made of endstone, into the abyss just like Kristin’s but fuller, louder, into the fiery twinkling that came out of the dragon’s large mouth.
He killed it easily.
He was an angel, after all.
It really shouldn’t have affected him at all.
It took less than five minutes.
He collapsed afterwards.
It was an embarrassing thing, he thought, to pass out after a battle you didn’t take a single hit from. He forced himself back up, crawled over to the new portal pulsing with his own magic, and when he fell into it, it was like every shred of energy had been sapped out.
He managed to walk again after a week of lying in the grass. How he’d missed grass. But he would have much rather not been in the grass, instead with Kristin in her peaceful void where he never felt this… depleted.
He’d done the thing. The thing that none of the mortals had gotten even close to doing. He’d done it, but he was still in the Overworld.
He wondered what the hell Kristin was getting at.
After a few months of lodging in a small town–L’manberg, they called it–he finally felt strong enough to go out on his own. He could move, he could run, he was ready.
He was not ready.
The second he launched himself off the ground, he fell right back down. He strained his wings, but they weren’t the problem. He was.
Despite his body being fine, his magic stores were utterly empty. Perhaps the portal had been too much for him? He knew the End was far away, but it wasn’t like he was casting on his own. There was already a structure set up for him, a path made long ago by those much wiser than he could ever be.
Even if he could fly, where would he go?
He’d spent the last–well, he wasn’t certain how many, one? Ten? Ten thousand?–years chasing after the rumoured dragon. Without something to do, he was…
Aimless.
Phil sat down on the village outskirts, staring up into the sky and utterly missing his partner.
“Hey,” a girl’s voice said, and he looked up for the first time in what must’ve been a while judging by the way his joints crackled.
He was met with the sight of a teenage girl. She had big, unruly white hair and floppy sheep ears.
“Hello,” he said evenly and definitely not sadly.
“Do you have a job?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Do you? Like, one that pays? Or at least one you go to regularly.”
“I… do not.”
She grinned like he’d given her the biggest prize in the world. “Then boy, oh boy, do I have an offer for you!”
And so, Phil became a coffee shop owner.