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Techno had no words left to say except, “why?”
On his knees before Wilbur, he felt himself dissociating. His hands were sticky with fresh blood, up to his elbows, same as his silk shirt and half his face—he’d torn someone’s throat off with his bare teeth. The violence had been indiscriminate, indescribable. Nothing could have stopped him, not even himself, and there was the true horror of what had unfolded.
He genuinely couldn’t understand what train of thought his godson had fathomed to bring him to the conclusion that yes, actually, his father’s kingdom should be exterminated, and yes, at the hands of his godfather. Where he’d obtained Techno’s name was less of a mystery, he thought bitterly, as Phil hadn’t exactly been tight-lipped about that secret, and no doubt he would have told his son about it.
Techno just never thought— he never could have imagined Wilbur, tiny little Wil, hopping around the sacred home of the chimera like a little bluebird as a child, he never thought he’d be capable of this.
So: “why would you do this?”
Wil wasn’t smiling now. He didn’t do much besides look down at Techno with contempt and shove his hands into his dark coat’s pockets, the wind billowing around them. Techno was too drained to even feel the cold, but even if he could have, his cloak had been lost to the massacre. Wilbur reeked of industrialization, of human-made machinery and factories and coal and oil. Smoke, fire, destruction; those were the notions of the traitorous Crow Prince. There laid a crown of freshly-fallen ash upon his brow.
“Alexander,” Wil said, “follow.”
Techno got up. Techno moved behind Wil as they stepped away from the remnants of the town square, the bodies piled up there. He knew the Prince Consort was there, in front of the pile, only recognizable by those horns around his head. The children—the gravest sin, on his hands. He couldn’t remember what had happened, what he’d done, but Techno tried to look back, to see if the too-young princes and princesses had escaped his blood-fueled haze—
“Look at me,” Wilbur said.
Techno looked ahead.
“My Father always said this would all be mine someday,” Wil stated. Burnt leaves fell apart under his boots. “The Palace, the woods, the creek. You, even; the Crow King’s Blade.” Techno wasn’t as surprised by this revelation as he maybe should have been. “It was promised to me.”
“You used me,” Techno said.
“Without use, the knife grows dull.” Wilbur turned to look at him. “If I can’t have this place, Technoblade, then nobody can. I will raze the Fae strongholds to the ground if I have to.”
And what of me? Techno thought. What are you going to do to me?
As if reading his mind, Wilbur said then, “you’ll be most useful by my side. You’ve proven my Father’s little trick still works. We’ll be done in no time. Come on now,” he said, “follow along, Alexander.”
Ah, crap, Techno thought.
“Yes,” Techno said.