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Phil’s wings shed bits of down into the vent as he crawled through it. He tried to pluck them up at first, and then he had to abandon that for a dumb idea because it meant a lot of wriggling, so after a while he gave up and just kept going.
He’d covered his tracks like his crows had taught him, even if he couldn’t ever tell them that because they’d get big heads about it. Playing feral after he was caught, like he’d never seen a fucking bowl before. Tearing up bedsheets like he was a fledgling doing it to test out his beak, visibly hoarding food under his bed even though it couldn’t hide shit, anything he could do to make his actions now seem perfectly fucking normal.
The pricks who’d kidnapped him wanted him cooperative, even if they never answered any of his questions or let him rest or anything. They’d given him a fancy room, more food than he’d ever seen in his life, fresh water that tasted like it’d come right up from a spring and clothes that never itched. All they’d asked for in return was that he trained, running laps or listening to instructors who goaded him to fight them with wooden swords and use his wings as bludgeons, who seemed confused that he hadn’t fledged all the way yet, and that suited his purposes, too, if he had to play the long game here, so he wasn’t too fussed about it.
They insisted on calling him Philza Minecraft. He wasn’t sure how they’d read his mind for that one, since he sure as fuck hadn’t spoken a word to them about his name and he usually just told other people it was Phil, but that was fine, he could handle that. Long as they couldn’t read his mind for anything else, he was fucking golden.
He shuffled forward another inch, aiming for the light he could see in the distance and avoiding any branches with noise coming through them, and finally after a fucking hour he was over another cell. He pressed his face to the metal and peered into it a while, wincing at the obsidian floors– what the fuck was in this cell, a Warden?-- then dug out his diamond shard to fuck with the edges of the vent cover.
It took a while to get the screws dislodged. Phil cursed to himself and applied more force, pressing down on one side of it in case that got it loose, and the vent cover shot sideways. Phil fell through with a squawk.
Something caught him before he hit the floor. Phil flapped and kicked to get loose, scrambling over to a bed kind of like his and mantling his wings up big, and the other person bristled back, hooves up like he was ready to intercept a blow.
“Oh, shit, you’re a piglin,” Phil blurted, rooting around in his inventory for gold, and the piglin kid stared at him, tilted his head when Phil realized he had jack fucking shit on him because of the prisoner thing and gave up.
The kid was head-and-shoulders taller than Phil, with bright dark eyes and a little scar on his snout and clothes just like he’d been given, plain and practical, nothing like the hoglin leather that piglins liked to wear at all. He said something in Piglin that sounded surprised, maybe, and kind of annoyed, and pointed at the vent.
Then he made a bunch more gestures at his ears and also at his whole body, hoof out like he was measuring height, and Phil had to snicker. “‘S not my fault you wouldn’t fucking fit,” he said, standing on tiptoes to look how far he’d fallen. Had to be at least eight blocks. He’d have a hell of a time getting back up there before morning, with how his feathers were coming in. His hands itched for a tool. “Thanks for catching me, though, that’s fucking poggers. Did you hear me up there?”
He motioned at his ears. The piglin made a noise of agreement, following his gaze up to the vent. Phil could see the gears in his head whirring as he came to the same conclusions about distance. He said something unimpressed.
“Fuck off, I can fly,” Phil told him, fluffing his wings for emphasis. “You could– could boost me, in fact, that’d work. Did they steal you too, make you run around for them and shit? Do they fucking talk to you instead of just barking orders?” His voice came out a little weird there. He swallowed and said, wishing he wasn’t sounding like such easy fucking prey, “I’m Phil. Phil. That’s me.”
“Tec’no,” the piglin said, bapping his own chest, or it sounded like that, at least.
Phil made a face. He took a second to feel the syllables in his mouth. “Techno?”
Techno nodded.
“They gave you some pretty sick security,” Phil said, waving around at the cell, and Techno wilted, said something shrill and indignant, which Phil couldn’t blame him about. His room was set up like it was supposed to contain ravagers or something.
The walls and floors were obsidian, lit by redstone-powered lights that someone Techno’s height still wouldn’t be able to reach. The bed was directly against the floor, no wood on it to splinter into weapons and no blanket, just bare, and Phil couldn’t even see a door. Must’ve been some kind of redstone mechanism happening there, too, for whenever the bastards keeping them trapped wanted to drag them out.
Phil’s stomach felt tight. Maybe it was different for a piglin, being closed in by ceilings with no room to leave, but if he’d been in a cell this cramped, he thought he would’ve lost it by now. “This is fucked,” he told Techno, pouring his vehemence into his tone. “All this shit’s fucked.”
Techno shifted his ears at Phil’s words, attentive but visibly unsure; his gaze was on the diamond shard in Phil’s hands. He asked something that seemed like a question and patted himself down a bit, pointed at the door.
“They patted me down too,” Phil guessed, and contorted to tug at the side of his shirt. He got the hem bunched up in his hands and held it out as best he could. “I put a hole in my shirt lining, though, and it fit in there.”
Techno sidled up to inspect it and nodded. He tugged his own shirt ruefully.
“Yeah, makes sense they’d search you more too,” Phil said, eyeing him. “Why the fuck is that, did you kill some of them or something?” He made a stabbing motion. Techno looked at him mournfully and showed him empty hooves. “You could’ve. I’d kill these fuckers if I could, and then the whole murder’d have some fun. That’d be sick.”
Techno didn’t seem to have a problem with Phil inspecting his cell, so Phil did that just to be sure, tapping the walls until Techno pointed out where they opened and getting a boost up to the redstone lights to see if he could fuck with the wiring. He flapped back with a cut-off yelp when it zapped him, though– his fault, he’d touched it with skin and not just the shard– and then Techno was catching him again, depositing him carefully on the floor with hushed, alarmed chatter.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, mate!” Phil whispered, and Techno narrowed his eyes at him. “I don’t fucking speak Piglin, it’s hard enough getting gold on a good day.”
They screwed around with some other fixtures Techno pointed out, though, and dug out some redstone that Techno brightened at and hid in a corner where it wouldn’t glitter so much, and then Techno’s ears pricked and he froze and pushed Phil back toward the vent, body tensing like fishing line reaching the end of its give.
“Shit,” Phil hissed. Techno’s hearing was definitely better than his. Phil hadn’t heard any change outside the cell door at all. “Listen, I’ll come back for you, alright? We’re– we’re allies, piglins have those.”
Techno shifted anxiously and herded Phil toward the vent. Phil thought about the bare fucking cell and being stuck there with just– scrutiny, captors who wouldn’t say anything and maybe didn’t even speak your language, and the training that’d given him and Techno matching bruises, and held out the diamond shard.
Every instinct cried out against it. It was shiny and practical and he needed it, it was a good tool, but– but Techno might need it more, and he was clever too, obviously, and Phil could replace it easier than Techno could. No one was bothering to pat Phil down, apparently. It was like they didn’t think he was smart enough to play a few tricks.
Techno stared at him, wide-eyed and trembling. Phil surged forward and pressed the shard into his hooves, folding them around it so there couldn’t be any fucking mistake, and Techno jolted back and scrambled to grab something under his mattress, came back to shove it into Phil’s hands.
The emerald gleamed like a cat’s eye in the dark, cradling a core of reflected light that shed green shadows on the creases of Phil’s palm. It had a delicate gold link attached to it to make it an earring, a tiny chain to let it dangle.
Oh. Phil’s hand wandered up to his smooth earlobes. His mouth was so dry he had to try twice before he could get a word out.
“Thanks,” he whispered. “So it’s– it’s a deal, then. I’ll come back here and get you, if you don’t come to get me first.”
Techno nudged him toward the vent again, crouched to let Phil get a foothold in his hooves.
Phil felt kind of fucking weird, loose and vulnerable like he’d been blown out over the ocean by a storm, too far to see dry land. The emerald was a cool familiar weight between his fingers.
“Wait,” he said, voice coming out kind of small, “before I go, um. Do they know your name too?”
Techno said something that sounded urgent, gesturing towards the door again. Phil shifted his wings, wishing he knew how to make his question with gestures, wishing he could’ve stayed longer, and said, “Never mind, dude. We can– uh, we can figure all that out when we’re out of here, okay? You can just boost me up for now, I’ll fucking come back for you.”
Techno nodded at him seriously.
It took some flapping once Techno jumped to get Phil up there, but he managed to fold himself back into the vent eventually, getting the cover back on to hide his passage. It was smaller than it’d felt on the way in, harsh metal pressing down on him from all directions and an hour of crawling before he’d get back to his cell, the one he’d marked with scratches by the entrance to let him know he’d made it.
He hid the emerald in his mattress after he got back into his cell, breathing slow and careful so any guards outside wouldn’t register that something had changed.
First he kept it out, though, turning it over to feel how smooth and polished it was. Until holding it so long made it as warm as his skin, like it’d just come from Techno’s hooves.
The vents had branched off at a lot of different points, and Phil was pretty sure he’d heard their captors’ voices echoing up from some of them, next to kitchen sounds and training sounds and the noise of a huge server full of strangers– full of tools to get him out of here, too, if he was lucky. And nobody had come in to shout at him for escaping yet. So that’d work out fine, then, if he was smart about it. Give him another week, another visit or two with Techno to figure out a plan, and they could manage something. Phil had a feeling that Techno could do a lot of shit with access to a diamond shard.