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Phil feels like ultimately, the fault behind all these cults-- beyond the fact that they’re just idiots-- is that they’re a tad too predictable.
Maybe it’s more just human habit that’s repeating itself before him, the constant repetition of mortals trying to find some meaning in their fleeting time, but genuinely, he had hoped there would be some creativity to be found within a group whose entire thing is devotion. Oh, the beauty of a life being set upon one thing. To worship, to adore, to kill, senselessly, to sacrifice the innocent and then take credit for the supposed power it’ll soon grant.
Not that Phil would label many things innocent, for nothing truly is, after they’ve learnt to make choices, but the murderer behind the knife finds the heart innocent, so it makes the act indecent all the same. Distasteful, in all truth, in Phil’s own opinion.
Predictable, either way.
It's always a betrayal down to the roots. Against every so-called devoted follower he may find, when brought face to face with him, they always hold doubt in their bright eyes. They have a wariness and a fear within them, a selfishness that screams for their survival above all.
Phil almost pities them sometimes. Their goal is something that can’t ever be achieved, because it is in their nature and in their very blood to fight and persist. They cannot accept death with a steady smile and exhaling breath. They cannot go into the dark with a look of love, they cannot go into the quiet with the weight of complete trust.
They chose the wrong god to worship, Phil thinks. Technoblade would be a far better choice for most of these people. And it also would be funny as shit to let Techno know he has another cult again, the next time he visits.
Eh, little point in putting in the effort. Too much work, even if it is for a good chuckle. Phil would also rather not let these hands continue any further, not when they’ve spoken his beloved’s name in vain, and used her image for their own conceited egos.
The building is an old, broken down thing, isolated by the cover of a forest, the nearest town a few days away. It might’ve been an orphanage, once, something along those lines.
Phil looks upon the broken windows and the crumbling walls with a judgemental curl of his lip, one brow raised to the way the front doors are nonexistent, the old wood having rotted themselves right off the hinges.
Always within the old buildings. Always in hidden spots, tucked away in the dark, and then dirtied by the effects of time. It’s like a confession, in placement alone. They know they’re in the wrong, so they hide themselves in the damaged and worn-down spots of the lands. No one will find them then, they presume.
Phil stalls at the doorstep with the soft whisper of his feathers touching the ground, the dirt unsettled beneath his feet. He looks at the doorway, dragging his attention across the uneven beam. He watches a spider weave away in the corner, wrapping up a fly that was freshly caught in its web.
“Eat well.” Phil wishes kindly, to such a small, focused thing, and he hears a soft rustle of leaves from behind his back.
He does not turn around to see what it was. He goes inside.
There is much left to be desired inside. There is dust upon everything, dirt across the floor, small bits of vegetation crawling up the wall. Some remains of furniture exist, a picture frame here and there as Phil heads down the halls, observing the echoes of the past, but overall, it’s an abandoned building. It’s a last resort and a poor spot for devotion. He has no temple to belong to that he can really compare it against, but Techno has had a few, in all these centuries. Those buildings are grand structures, towering and tall and a sign of protection and prosperity.
This is pathetic. And again- predictable.
There is a set of stairs leading down into an old basement, where all the current company is probably residing, hiding their mistakes underneath the dirt.
Phil stands upon the top of the steps, and he hears the sound of someone screaming, someone’s begging cries, laced with terror in every note. He hums, walking down the stairs with the curious wonder of what he’ll see at the bottom.
Something creaks upon the step behind him, following in his footsteps, and he pays it little mind.
It’s not a simple, one-room basement when Phil arrives at the last step. It’s more of a hallway, a long collection of storage rooms meant for things other than the scattered items of a cult. Maybe once upon a time it held old books and extra supplies, their use meant for children, little orphans living in the building above. Now it’s been refashioned into a mediocre living situation, with cots and food and water stacked around the dirty shelves.
Phil goes through some of the things with an unimpressed boredom. There’s little treasure to be found here, nothing valuable to see, not even a single coin left dropped to the floor. Phil hears the screaming voice from before now pleading for mercy, crying out in a sobbing manner. There’s an extra cult robe sitting folded upon one of the cots here. It’s a dark gray and torn around the edges, with sleeves that stretch too far, and a hood that hangs low over the wearer’s eyes. It’s so ridiculous looking. Phil doesn’t know why this is the go-to for these sorts of people.
He leaves behind the robe, and leaves behind the useless things, and skips the rest of the storage rooms to go attend the main event, the screaming voice starting to lose its shout. It grows more quiet in every second he gets closer, and when he pushes the door open, the voice has been reduced to a whimper, a choking kind of a crying, ragged and wounded.
There is a human sacrifice upon a stone-carved altar. Phil has a sense of appreciation for the craftsmanship of the altar itself, the swirling designs cut into it. There’s blood stained down the sides of it, ruining the work, and there’s a dying body trying to speak, mouth left open to try and take useless breaths.
There’s the voice, Phil thinks faintly. So that’s the cause of the screaming, although he already had a hunch this is what was happening. Some unlucky bastard held down to be used as an unwilling offering, a dagger dug straight into the heart. Or- near the heart. He’s dying too slowly for this to be a good stabbing placement.
“Wha- who are you?! Why are you in here!?” One of the cult members cries out, noticing Phil’s presence within the dim candlelight. Phil has no intention of actually replying to them, but if he did, he would falter for a moment in distraction of seeing the body on the altar turn his head towards him, eyes looking out through the dark.
Brown eyes. Simple color. Very common, Phil’s pretty sure, but there is something about them that he finds intriguing. The look of wild desperation, frantic hope. Like a dying animal seeing rescue, seeing one single way out.
He takes in the expression on his face, a bit muddled, with how his own blood is splattered out over his cheek, with parts of his hair plastered down to his forehead from sweat. He is dying, and he is doomed, and he is looking at Phil with relief, near adoration.
Phil almost smiles. More devotion is to be had in this one than any other fool within the room.
And speaking of fools, they gather around him at once, speaking nonsense threats and attempts of intimidation. Phil moves his focus to the wall above the altar, a painted portrait of a woman looking down, her eyes covered by a black veil, her hands stretching out to the person below. To the soon-to-be corpse below.
Phil’s feathers shift upon his back.
He hears the way their words stutter upon seeing it, and he sees how they all flinch back when he lifts his head to look straight at them. Shrouded faces covered by low hanging hoods, too shameful to devote themselves in true fashion, too cowardly to admit their mistakes. He does not answer their quiet rising question of who he is, what he is.
He looks at them.
Something looks over his shoulder with him.
They all drop to the ground, collapsing into themselves, knees buckling to hit the floor, and in an instant, the room falls nearly silent, once the last body has settled. Phil hears nothing now but the very small gasping wheezes of the boy on the altar, so very faint, but more alive than the rest of the people at his feet.
He makes his way over. He steps over a body here and there, careful to not trip and to not knock over one of the standing candles arranged on the ground. There’s a circle of some sort drawn on the floor- he sees it now, a thing of unknown symbols and color, and there’s maybe a character or two that he truly knows, but the rest feels like gibberish.
He disregards it. He moves to stand beside the altar, looking down at the knife dug into the boy’s chest. It raises and falls with each struggling breath of his, and Phil lifts a hand out to pull the blade out. It’ll give the mercy of a quicker death, if nothing else.
The boy’s hand jerks up and catches onto the end of Phil’s sleeve before he can get a hold on the handle. Phil turns his head in surprise. With all the blood pooling down, he wouldn’t have expected him to have the energy to actually grab onto anything.
Phil leans closer in to look upon the boy’s face, to see the same look of before. Wide-eyed hope. Fingers dig into his sleeve with a tugging insistence, a little plea for help, and to it, Phil gives a sympathetic sound.
He shifts his weight to lean into the edge of the altar, giving his other hand to wrap lightly around the one that’s clinging to his sleeve.
“Better to not struggle.” Phil suggests, whispering as some sort of show of respect. “It’s much easier to just make it quick, I promise.” He insists, reaching for the knife again, only to be stopped by the slightest tug on his hand. He’s not doing a favor by faltering, he knows that very well, but those eyes.
There is such a wanting ache within those eyes, too much trust given to a face that you’ve just met. Phil supposes he shouldn’t judge too much. Blood loss is bound to impair one’s judgement pretty hard, and perhaps with the wings, and with his murderers put to death, Phil can only be seen as divine intervention. A saving grace, an angel coming to save him.
Save me, those eyes scream. Help me.
“I really can’t.” Phil tells him, reaching for the knife again, ignoring the insistent pull that comes with it. “But you do make me wish for it.”
Perhaps he should pray for it. Ask gently to the shadows in the room, to the eyes over his back, to the rotting color seeping out from the corpses laid out across the floor. It’s been a very very long time since he’s requested anything from his beloved, and he hates to do it, truly-- he doesn’t like to demand anything of her-- but she likes to be generous when she can.
She likes to indulge him, whenever possible.
The choking breaths come to a stop about the same time that Phil lifts the knife out from the boy’s chest. The room goes entirely silent, and gets darker in each passing second, with the candles beginning to burn out, flames dying and turning to smoke.
Phil looks up to the portrait on the wall, an attempt of her image painted by naive hands. She looks beautiful in every form, and Phil stares long enough for the room to go completely dark, pitch black with the last candles going out.
He stares into the dark and drops the knife to the side, hearing it clatter against the ground. He’s vulnerable to her in more ways than one, and he’s curious for a moment on how to go about this.
He thinks of the building above, an orphanage meant to give away unlucky children to loving families. A son, Phil considers. He’s always found human children to be cute, though too fragile to be anything worthwhile to him. This one wouldn’t be the same. If he’s already been given to his wife’s hands, then he’ll be something more than mortal once passed over to Phil.
“Would it be too sudden to ask if you want to start a family?” Phil questions the dark, and he swears he hears the echo of her laughter ringing from down the hall. Always in the next room, always just out of sight.
The candles light back up, a little burst of flame rising back to life.
Wilbur gasps for air in the same second.
Phil leans forward and holds his hands to the kid’s arms, shushing his panic with quiet words, but they’re mostly unheard in the rush of coming out of the quiet, returning back into the warmth of life. Wil coughs and heaves in air, legs trying to kick up, Phil pressing more of his weight down.
“What- what the fuck? What-” Wil chokes, head twisting up and to the side, eyes squeezing shut in a wincing grimace. “What was that? What was that-?”
“You’re okay.” Phil says slowly, keeping still until Wil’s attention gathers onto him, recognizing his face as his lungs begin to hyperventilate within his chest.
“I don’t-” Wilbur’s expression twists up and then breaks apart, tears coming fast within his eyes as he begins to sob. His hand tries to reach up, trying to grab back onto Phil’s sleeve, just like before. “Oh, god. God. What’s going on?”
“You’re safe.” Phil promises, letting up his hold so that he can pull Wil into his arms, lifting him up from the altar as if he’s fulfilled his purpose of being that bloody sacrifice, a perfect offering given to waiting hands. “Shh, you’re safe. No one’s gonna hurt you anymore.”
“They- they said-” Wilbur tries to explain, clawing at Phil’s shirt, and his words are drowned in the noise of his cries. “They were gonna-” He tries, and he stops suddenly, holding his breath. Phil pauses with him, wondering why he's gone so still, and then he realizes Wil’s head has shifted to look towards the floor, where all the cult members now lay dead, left to decompose and return back to the dirt they came from.
“You can breathe.” Phil gently reminds, cradling Wilbur a little closer to his shoulder, swaying a bit in where they sit, as if to rock him into something calm.
Wil struggles through an inhale of air, a few tears dropping down his face.
“You’re alright.” Phil reassures again, so very softly. He’s never cared too much about crying children, dissuaded by all the fuss they bring, but this one is very different in the fact that it's his, now. His to soothe and his to hold and his to put back together, to piece into something whole. He’ll find that wide-eyed hope again and again, he’s sure of it. He’ll have it in every time he returns to Wilbur’s view, he’ll make sure of it.
“Can-” Wil breathes, a little more steady, in a sense, but still afraid. Hesitant.
“Yes?”
“Can we…leave, now?” Wilbur asks, and Phil doesn’t need to look to know that Wil’s eyes are kept shut, refusing to look upon the room, upon the blood left behind on him, upon the corpses on the ground. “Please. Get me out of here.”
“You want to go?” Phil reconfirms, and with Wil’s frantic nod- “You want to head home?”
Wilbur stiffens up a bit. He calms, if only for the sheer confusion upon him. “I don’t-?”
“Let’s go home.” Phil decides, sound and sure. Wilbur eases with the certainty of it, and he doesn’t exactly resist when Phil pulls away from the altar, leading him through the room to head to the stairs. He’s maybe too in shock to truly think of arguing, or too eager to leave the horrid place behind. Phil doesn’t mind it. He’ll work with what he has, and go from there.
This will be fun, he thinks.
He can’t wait to see Techno’s reaction when Phil's tells him he’s now a father.