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There’s a crack in the strange, glassy material they’ve set the eye into, like it’s moments away from splintering apart. How much time do they have?
“I’m sorry,” murmurs Philza as a feather tugs free from his left wing and drifts lazily into the portal. “I’m so, so sorry, but I need to leave now.”
“You don’t have to leave,” says Techno, and Phil smiles, taking a step forward cup the emerald dangling from a pointed ear.
“This will not be the end,” he says, pinching the jewel between two fingers before letting his hand slide away. “I’ll find you, mate. I promised, didn’t I?”
Promised when he’d discovered a bloody teenager fighting tooth and claw to win in Hypixel’s tournaments, promised when he’d found him again, alone and starving in the Nether years later, promised when he’d grabbed Techno by the wrist and dragged him out of hell.
Techno blinks several times as his vision blurs, smearing his friend’s face into a mess of muddled flesh tones and gold and earthy greens. “Promise?” he asks, and his voice trembles in a way he hadn’t thought possible.
Phil closes his eyes and sighs, gentle and pained. When he opens them again, Techno can see glints of vivid purple amidst the blue.
“Promise,” he says, voice barely audible above the thrumming of the portal.
A pause.
“You know—“
“No,” says Techno, too flat. “Don’t. Just don’t.”
Philza pulls his hand away to hold it up in a familiar shushing gesture, and Techno falls silent.
“You know,” he starts again. “I never really—“ he chuckles, quiet and chirpy and nothing like his usual laughter. “You know. I’ve seen so much, but I never really—“ his voice shakes and he cuts himself off with a small wince before continuing.
“I’ve seen so much, but I didn’t start living until I found you.” His smile returns, crooked and tired and horribly earnest. “Brave little thing.” Philza fumbles with his cloak for a moment, unpinning the little feather-shaped broach at the front and attaching it to Techno’s instead.
“So thank you,” he says softly. “For the life. I wouldn’t have shared it with anyone else.”
Techno can feel his eyes begin to burn with tears. “Phil,” he whispers, and his oldest friend takes a step back as another feather swirls away.
“I’ll see you again,” says the Angel of Death, who has eyes like the tundra and hair like frostbitten gold and a laugh that can be heard even in the thick of battle and is known by one person, and one person only. “I’ll see you again, mate.”
“Take me with you,” Techno doesn’t say. He is a fighter at heart who never, ever gives up, a creature of the Nether, of scars and hunger and of a burning desire to survive. He doesn’t meld easily into the harsh theatricality of the overworld, nor does he belong with the song he can just barely hear drifting from the portal.
”Take me with you,” Techno does not say, because he knows when he is beaten.
“Promise,” he repeats instead, and is rewarded with a whoosh of laughter.
“Promise,” echoes Philza, and steps backward.
There’s a soft sound, like a muffled sob, or maybe a sigh, a pale greenish glow, and then nothing.
The hum of the portal begins to die down as the stars in the center, the pane of universe they’d captured together flickers out. Purple particles drift through the room, sputtering into nothingness as they hit mossy walls.
And so it is that Techno’s world ends not with a bang, but with laughter and unshed tears and a promise already broken.
He lets out a trembling little breath. Inhales.
“Goodbye,” he whispers to the useless, cracked portal, to the crumbling stronghold.
On his way out, he stoops to pick up a glossy black feather lying by the roughly hewn doorway. It has a strange sheen to it, as if the universe had caressed it before loosening it.
Techno smiles, running a finger over it. “Goodbye,” he says again.
He does not look back, even as he runs a finger over the feather. Techno is a fighter at heart, and all good warriors are know when they are beaten. “Damn,” he mutters after a moment of scrubbing at his eyes. “Guess I really am an orphan now.”
He leaves the stronghold in silence. There’s not much point in talking when there’s no laughter to answer him, anyway.