Chapter Text
“I’m ready.”
Techno bites his lip as the wall of lava seals behind him. He had a feeling Dream would be saying this soon.
The guy doesn’t look good, but that’s to be expected. He’s visibly thinner and paler, even in the orange glow of the lava, and his mask is streaked with dried blood and filth. Even though it’s broken, it doesn’t reveal much, Techno muses silently. Just the upper right quarter of Dream’s face and a single bloodshot, sunken green eye that’s practically glowing with hatred and rage. His pale gold hair has gotten long and hopelessly tangled, almost brushing his shoulders and greasy and matted with filth and blood, and he’s visibly exhausted.
And that’s just Dream’s face.
The kid is battered, his orange prison jumpsuit covered in huge, long-dried bloodstains. It’s shredded in places, revealing half-healed wounds and more bruises than Techno can count. From the awkward way Dream’s standing, he’s probably sprained his ankle, and his hands are filthy with more dried, crusted blood under his greasy, broken nails. His breath is raspy, and Dream pauses and lifts his mask slightly to cover his mouth while he coughs, his single visible eye screwing shut with pain.
Blood flecks his lips and his palm when he lowers his hand.
Techno clenches his teeth.
“When?” He asks, and even though he can’t see it, he can sense Dream’s cold, unsettling smile.
“Now,” he replies, “take care of Sam and let me out of this creeper hole. And let’s just say I have the means to make it worth your time, the favor owed aside. Quackity, oh, he wants it, but he’s sure as hell not gonna get it.”
He turns and pulls a book out of his small chest of belongings.
Techno freezes.
It’s a thick volume bound in dark leather. Strange runes are inscribed on the front in glowing magenta, and the book seems to hum and the air temperature rises when Dream opens it. The tome is clearly ancient, and for some reason it feels wrong.
Techno can’t describe it. Just looking at the book raises the hair on his neck. That book, wherever it came from, isn’t supposed to be in mortal hands.
For one of the few times in his life, Techno’s instinct isn’t to fight, but to flee.
He hastily stifles his sudden fear, and instead draws himself up to his full height and demands, “‘The hell did you get that from?”
“Schlatt gave it to me,” Dream says vaguely. “He said he found it in the Nether. In a temple in a soul-sand valley. It was locked inside, and the inscriptions on it said to never open it under any circumstances, so naturally he went in. And he found this. That old drunkard was a fool, really, giving this up for my allegiance. The knowledge… there’s so much I’ve been using, more than enough to get control back and kill anybody who dares try and stop me once I fully translate it. Luckily you’re on my side, Blood God.”
Techno hesitates, but he’s not sure why.
“R—right,” he blurts, hoping Dream didn’t notice him slip for a moment. “What is that thing, exactly? And how long have you had it?”
“According to the temple, this book has had quite a few names across time and space,” Dream says, running his fingers reverently over the cover. “Book of Sins. The Darkhold. Tome of the Deep. Scroll of Erebus. I’ve just been calling this nifty little collection of dark magic the Revive Book. And I’ve been using it since shortly after your execution, Techno.”
Techno scowls.
“Why haven’t you broken out of here yourself, then?” He asks. “If that book or whatever is that powerful—“
“I need the element of surprise, for what I’m planning,” Dream cuts him off. “I believe you’ve heard about that egg, huh? About the blood vines? Well, the Red Banquet—before you ask, I have credible sources—is in a few hours, and I’m gonna put a stop to it. And then… well, beyond that, you don’t need to know.”
Something about that last statement makes Techno’s blood run cold.
Just then, the curtain of lava parts, revealing the platform and Sam, who’s standing at attention with his sword slung over his back. The hulking creeper hybrid is scowling.
“Time’s up,” he snaps. “Time for you to leave, Techno.”
“Alright,” Techno sighs, stepping onto the platform. It retracts, and as he steps off, he says, “I’m real sorry about this, Sam. It’s… nothing personal.”
Sam freezes, and his black eyes widen, glowing slit-like green pupils shrinking as he processes the meaning. “What—“
Techno plants his boot in the man’s gut before he can reach for the broadsword on his back, sending Sam toppling backwards into the lava, and Techno quickly looks away as the cries get more blood-curdling until they finally stop.
Sam’s burning body slowly sinks into the lava’s surface, skin bubbling and spitting, eyes open and frozen in a final, desperate scream.
Techno feels an unfamiliar knot in his throat.
Normally he doesn’t flinch at killing. It’s in his blood; he’ll kill anyone, even children, especially children, without hesitation. But for some reason, he feels almost sick and wrong, and… guilt.
He feels guilty, somehow, as he sends the platform back, and that disgusts him.
Dream laughs behind him, clapping as he steps onto the platform with the Revive Book under his arm. “Bravo, Technoblade, bravo! If only that had been that bastard’s last life, but oh well, one can wish.”
Techno growls.
“I’ll take you as far as the L’Mancrater,” he huffs. “But then you’re on your own. You’ve cashed in on that favor, and now I don’t owe you anything.”
Dream hums. “Fair enough. You’re in my good graces for now, Blood God.”
Techno scowls, but he doesn’t reply. That book under Dream’s arm feels… bad, and somehow it seems to be whispering to him, alongside all the other voices in his head.
Take me.
Take me with you.
Kill Dream.
Take my power.
My power is rightfully yours.
Techno clenches his teeth and ignores it. He’s gotten used to ignoring voices in his head, and this one is no different. Something’s off about the Revive Book’s magic, and deep down he knows he wants no part of whatever Dream plans to do with his newfound freedom.
He has a bad feeling about this.
———
Two days earlier
After the many, many centuries Philza had been alive, he was no stranger to ruined cities.
He was the Angel of Death, after all. He’d laid waste to villages countless times in the name of kingdoms that no longer existed; he’d traveled from one end of this world to the other, watching countless civilizations rise and fall as he carried out the will of his Master. Hell, he’d been a conqueror in the Antarctic Campaign a mere two and a half decades ago with a younger and more violent and hot-blooded Technoblade by his side, and they’d slaughtered so many innocents together that Philza had long lost count.
He was a servant of Lady Death herself. He’d seen much pain and suffering in his time.
But this…
Philza frowned, gazing down the cliff at the still-smoking ruins of a city in the desert.
He’d been out hunting nearby when he’d heard the explosions but he hadn’t thought much of it at the time. He’d assumed it was some poor soul spawning themselves a Wither and having things go horribly awry, or maybe a band of mercenaries testing out a TNT cannon, but a few days later things had been suspiciously quiet for an even more suspicious amount of time, so he’d sent a few of his crows to investigate. They’d returned with disturbing news; Philza had decided to come take a look at things himself.
One of the sleek black birds settled on his shoulder, cawing loudly.
There was something… off about the ruins of the city below him. There was no cold, sleepy feeling in the air that Philza was accustomed to—being the servant of Mater Mortis meant he could… sense a strange aura around a place, for lack of a better word, where people had suffered and died, like a battlefield or the smoking ruins of a city—and there were no signs of struggle or conflict.
Something wasn’t quite right here.
Philza leapt off the cliff, spreading his wings and swooping down towards the gates. They hung ajar, the morning sunlight turning the wood from a deep, soot-stained brown to a vibrant umber. A sign above them dangled, broken and charred, and the words Welcome To El Rapids painted on it were barely legible.
Strangely enough, a skeleton horse was hitched to a bench in front of the sign, and it whinnied irritably. It must’ve been tied here for days, judging by the dirt on its bones and how the saddle on its back sat askew.
After giving the skeleton horse a gentle pat on the nose, Philza drew his sword slowly and walked through the gates and into the ruined city.
The buildings and structures were barely recognizable as such, and the distinct odor of gunpowder and burning hung in the air like a curtain as the rubble shimmered in the mid-morning heat. All was quiet, except for the rhythmic thump thump of Philza’s boots, the crackles and pops of still-burning fires and the occasional clatter of shifting debris, and the restless chatter and rustling of his crows, which followed him loosely through the wreckage.
Not a soul had died here. Philza could feel it.
It seemed like something or someone had blown up this town on purpose, but it must’ve forced the inhabitants to flee first for some reason.
That is, if there had been inhabitants at all.
Woah what, the crows cawed. What happened. Dadza! OMGWTF. Where is everybody? Hold tf up. Quackity. EL RAPIDS??!!!!?!??! What.
Philza shushed the loudest of the crows, which were hopping around his feet, jabbering insistently.
And then, as he was passing a bar that was still mostly standing—even though the roof and most of the rear walls were missing and the inside was strewn with rubble—he heard the music.
Philza froze in his tracks, and the crows fell silent.
It was from a jukebox, coming from inside the bar he stood in front of. The slow, soft and mournful tune was haunting, strains of music echoing through the empty wreckage like the voice of a ghost.
The jukebox couldn’t’ve been playing during the explosion, Philza realized.
He frowned.
Someone was here.
He couldn’t identify the song, though; it was too quiet to make out any words.
The crows started chirping. Old Mexican love ballad. The words are in Spanish. Someone is inside the bar. Dadza go look go look go look—
“Hush,” Philza said.
The crows quieted down, settling in the ruins as they stared at him with beady black eyes, still whispering and chirring to each other as Philza cautiously opened the door to the bar with a hand on his sword just in case.
The door groaned, and fell off its hinges with a loud clattering sound.
Philza cringed.
The crows chittered, laughing quietly.
Philza rolled his eyes and stepped into the bar.
The music was still soft, strains of guitar echoing from a battered record player sitting on the bar, which was miraculously still standing. There was exactly one person here, sitting on a surviving barstool, slumped over the counter and surrounded by empty liquor bottles, and even though Philza couldn’t see their face from his angle, he recognized the beanie over a mop of shaggy black hair and the filthy, ragged-looking white wings immediately.
Quackity stirred from his nearly comatose appearance, slurring briefly along with the record player for a few seconds before lifting a nearly empty bottle to his lips and gulping down the contents.
Then he hurled the bottle at the nearby wall with startling speed, and Philza jumped in alarm.
“Quackity?” He blurted. “What are you doing here? What happened to this place?”
Quackity tensed.
His feathers, caked and stained with soot and filth and sticking out oddly like they hadn’t been groomed in days, tried to puff up, but Quackity flinched in obvious pain and drew his wings in tight against his back.
Philza winced. Even though their relationship hadn’t been the best, what with the whole putting him under house arrest and trying to murder Techno ordeal, he couldn’t help but feel pity for the kid. Philza had dealt with wing neglect with Wilbur; back when his son was young, he’d broken a wing in a nasty fall and had refused to fly or touch them out of fear even after he’d healed.
After some deep feather grooming and muscle massaging and a good bath, Wilbur’s wings had been good as new, but this…
If Quackity found it painful to puff up his feathers or open his wings in the slightest, he must not have flown in a long time. Judging from the amount of filth and dirt staining what had once been pure white feathers a strange, sickly brownish-yellowish color and the ragged bald patches in places, he hadn’t groomed his wings in far too long, either.
He needed special care, and soon, because with his condition, it was only a matter of time before Quackity would start losing flight feathers, and then he’d be in real trouble.
“Quackity, your wings look awful,” Philza said.
“Hmnh,” Quackity croaked dully. “Don’t care.”
Philza hesitated awkwardly.
Quackity was drunk, he realized with a growing sense of dread, and probably drunker than Philza himself had ever gotten in his long life.
“Why are you here?” Philza repeated softly, sinking onto another dusty barstool.
Quackity snorted.
“I don’t even know anymore,” he mumbled, his face twisted with a miserable, humorless grin as he reached across the bar and slowly uncorked another bottle of expensive whiskey, pausing to gulp down a mouthful and grimace.
Philza winced. The poor kid was a mess.
Quackity’s suspenders hung loosely off one shoulder, and his shirt was stained with soot and alcohol, unbuttoned to his clavicle. His dark eyes were dull, and his left eye had been turned a whitish gold by the jagged scar bisecting his face, which Philza had never noticed before. The poor kid’s eyes were puffy and red, like he’d been crying, and…
“You’re bleeding,” Philza pointed out.
Quackity glanced down at his bruised, battered hands—sure, his knuckles had scabbed over but blood and pus oozed out of the visibly infected wounds—and muttered, “Oh.”
Then he took another swig of whiskey.
His scarred eye twitched.
Philza remembered Techno cheerfully telling him about bashing Quackity’s face in with a pickaxe after the kid had gotten in his way.
“How much have you drank?” Philza finally asked.
Quackity’s eyes seemed to fog over. “Don’t know. Don’t care. Not enough to kill me yet.”
Philza frowned.
“What did you do?” He demanded.
He remembered Techno getting like this once, back during the Antarctic Campaign when he’d been frequently harassed for his Piglin features. Personally Phil thought Techno looked rather dashing, but most humans didn’t share his sentiment and treated him like most monstrous hybrids, or in other words shunning him and treating him like dirt. Techno was still naturally untrusting of humans because of this, even after all the time that had passed.
If Philza recalled correctly, Techo had tried to drink himself to death once after being nearly killed by an angry mob—it hadn’t exactly worked since his Piglin half gave him a very high alcohol tolerance—and it seemed that Quackity was attempting just that.
Strange. The kid had always been flippant and utterly uncaring about the consequences of his actions, but something must’ve finally gotten to him.
Quackity scowled at him. “Oh, ‘re you gonna use me, Phil? Like everybody else?”
It was quiet again.
“No,” Philza said, choosing his words carefully as he took a glass and poured himself his own shot of whiskey. “I want to know what happened.”
Quackity cackled loudly, pressing his hand over his left eye. “I blew this place up.”
Philza’s blood ran cold.
Suddenly he wasn’t in a half-destroyed bar anymore. He was back in the control room; Wilbur was standing there, arms spread with that look of fractured, deranged glee behind his eyes, smiling and laughing like a madman while L’Manberg went up in flames behind him and blathering on about his unfinished symphony.
Wilbur was shoving the sword at him.
He was begging.
Tears shone in his eyes; a crazed smile on his face.
“There was a saying, Phil… by a traitor. Once part of L’Manberg… It was never meant to be.”
“I beg your pardon?” Philza blurted. His claws must have unsheathed themselves at some point, because they were sinking into the bar top.
“I blew it up,” Quackity giggled deliriously, sniffling loudly and pausing to take another gulp from the bottle. Most of the whiskey ended up on his shirt rather than in his mouth. “I did it, Phil, I fuckin’ did it, I blew it all to hell. God, I can’t believe I did it. I hate myself. I fuckin’ hate myself for doing this but I was so pissed and they fuckin’ deserved it, okay? They just… just… they just…”
Quackity slumped back against the bar top, sobbing hysterically and shaking like a leaf.
Philza winced.
“Who did what?” He asked tiredly.
He might not have been on the best terms with Quackity, but honestly the scene was so pathetic he couldn’t just leave the kid here.
Besides, he kind of wanted to know why Quackity had apparently blown up a whole city, and the crows did too. Phil could sense dozens of eyes on him, and when he glanced up, he saw the birds perched in the rubble and on the half-standing walls, watching and chattering quietly amongst themselves.
“Schlatt was right, I’m the end piece of a goddamn loaf of bread,” Quackity snarled, raising the bottle back to his lips with a violently shaking hand. “Everybody touches me but nobody fuckin’ wants me— ack—“
He choked on the whiskey, coughing and sputtering. Then he leaned over and vomited into the rubble.
Philza fought back his own nausea.
He’d managed to stay out of the Manberg-Pogtopia conflict, for the most part, but he’d watched from the shadows, and the rumors about the Schlatt Administration had given him a bad impression, to say the least.
“They forgot,” Quackity slurred, covering his head with one of his wings. “Karl forgot me’n Sap hates me and wants me gone. So I’m going. Cheers.”
It was uncomfortably quiet, except for the record player and the frantic muttering of the crows.
Wedding’s off? Karl is forgetting. SAPNAP WHAT? Oh no oh no oh no. HELP HIM! Shit man. Dadza! Kinoko Kingdom… Oof. Break up Karlnapity? Uh oh. HELP QUACKITY! Karl forgot.
Philza shot the crows a warning glare.
“I don’t think killing yourself is the answer to your problems,” he sighed. “Nor is blowing up a city.”
“We built it together!” Quackity hissed, lurching upright, his face contorting into a snarl. “We built this place and I just wanted them to be here with me and we could fuckin’ be happy…”
He sagged forwards against the counter, screwing his swollen eyes shut and muttering under his breath in Spanish.
“I l—love them,” he suddenly choked, suddenly seeming more lucid. “I w—went back and I tried to say sorry but Karl forgot me… he’s… he’s forgetting everything and Sap hates me and said that he barely knows me anymore and that he can’t handle it and… and…”
He paused, his entire body shuddering.
“He told me it’s too much,” Quackity continued dully. “He told me it’s just too hard with Karl forgetting everything and me being gone and he just can’t deal with me and my bullshit anymore and he told me I needed to leave and it’s all my fault and without them I can’t fucking… I just can’t… c—can’t… RRAAAAAAGH!”
He whipped around and hurled the whiskey bottle across the bar at the crows, which scattered as the bottle smashed into pieces against a big chunk of concrete.
Then he broke down sobbing again, sliding off his barstool to the floor and wrapping his neglected, filthy wings around his body.
Philza sighed.
Ignoring the rational part of his mind, he took a deep breath, tapping into the magic Lady Death had granted him for the first time since Wilbur had been born.
He slid off the stool and pressed his hand against Quackity’s clammy forehead.
“Sleep,” he murmured.
Quackity’s sobs faded and he went still; his breathing evened out as he slipped into a magically-induced coma.
Philza sighed again.
Sober Quackity was going to be very displeased when he made his appearance tomorrow morning, he thought to himself, carefully picking the boy up and slinging him over his shoulders.
It was going to be a long ride to the arctic.