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There are some constants in Techno’s life.
A crow watches over his cabin from the treeline every morning, on the same branch of this tall, thick oak tree that’s probably older than the village he lives in. He doesn’t know how long it’s been doing that, but one day, he notices it and from that day on it always appears there, right after he prepares himself a cup of tea and steps out into the chilly morning to wipe away the last remnants of sleep from his senses.
Another thing is that the forest goes silent whenever he steps in it. He has to hunt every so often, seeing as the other villagers aren’t very fond of the idea of employing him unless they absolutely have to. He has a handcrafted crossbow, something basic but efficient, with a string that needs to be replaced way too often and a couple of bolts. He slings it over his shoulder, with nothing but some dried fruits in his pockets and a water can hanging off of his hip, and goes off into the wilderness. The moment he steps past the treeline separating his village from the wildlife, the world falls eerily silent.
Eyes follow him wherever he goes. The villagers don’t like his presence, yes, but there’s something beyond their curious and judging glances. It feels more like his own shadow has eyes that track him, trailing after him no matter how far he runs.
And lastly, the only thing in this list that no one but he knows or cares about, is that he has a friend. One that doesn’t exist, trapped in the forgotten stories of old, with blank, almost bored features etched onto cold stone.
Ironically enough, the only thing in the entire world that doesn’t see Techno as a bad omen for his differences, hurl insults at him or quietly tell him to wander away, is a stone statue of an unknown god standing guard over the deserted ruins of his worn-down, destroyed temple. He has no mind to think ill of Techno, no air in his lungs to pass out venomous judgment. Only a stone sword, balanced carefully by his feet, and he can’t even swing it.
He’s just a lifeless statue. But he holds all the secrets Techno plans to take to his grave.
–
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Techno deadpans, looking down at the broken crossbow in his hands. The weapon, now made up from 3 unconnected, misshapen wooden pieces and a limply-hanging string, lies innocently in his grasp. “Wonder what did that.”
It’s truly a mystery. Maybe it was a sign from the gods that he’s fallen out of their favor. Surely it’s not because of the very obvious signs of tempering visible on the cracked contraption on one of the wooden pieces, meant to hold the bolt. That’d be insane.
Admittedly, it wasn’t his brightest idea to only take his primary long-range weapon to hunt– but in his defense, the harassment from his neighbors had been mostly limited to refusing to offer their services to him so far, or to leave trash at his doorstep when he’s away for longer than an hour. Now this– this is a step-up from that. He could even call it a murder attempt, if he was feeling dramatic enough.
“You’re right,” he says at last, to his only friend in possibly the entire world, “I should’ve done an inventory before coming out here.”
The stone statue at his back, standing aloof on the stone pedestal he’s sitting against, stays unsurprisingly quiet. The forest is quiet around them, not a single sign of life audible.
Well, aside from the obvious. The crow that has been tailing Techno religiously for the past two months still lets out a croak or two whenever Techno quietens down a tad too long, beating its wings from its perch at the shoulder of the statue. A right riot, the little beast is. Techno has been trying to teach it to bring him gold coins in exchange for scraps. It’s a work in progress, but he’s hopeful.
“Don’t really have any sting left after last week,” he sighs wearily, ripping a small piece of jerky from his stash to chew on it. “Guess I’ll have to go back to my old bow. Hopefully they left that one alone.”
The satchel at his hip is getting a tad too light. He swallows down the food and goes to close it up, only remembering to pull one of the bigger pieces out at the last second.
“Your share,” he half-jokingly tells the man keeping guard over this side of the forest. He sets the jerky down at the feet of the statue, then leaves the broken pieces of his crossbow next to it after debating it for a moment too. “And something extra for this once. Don’t think I’ll get much more use out of this anymore. Maybe you’ll figure something out.”
As he pushes himself off the steps with a small groan, a flutter of wings is followed closely with his little companion, the crow, landing next to the jerky.
Frowning, Techno reaches to shoo it off, “Hey, no! Stop that.”
Seeing as the crow insistently ducks underneath his hand to hop closer to his prize, he quickly grabs a smaller piece out of his satchel and extends it. “Here, leave that alone. It’s not for you.”
As if understanding him, the crow’s movements still. Its little head turns to look at Techno’s hand, tilting to one side once it catches a glimpse of its own share of jerky, and then hops closer to catch it with its sharp beak. Techno barely avoids getting pecked– or maybe the crow allows him to. The smart glint in that bird’s eyes is undeniable, after all.
Letting it have its own meal, Techno straightens up on his feet and looks around. The sun is finally reaching its peak, the heat of noon slowly etching into his bones. It’s about the time he gets a move on. He still needs to check his traps from yesterday. Without his crossbow, those will be his only source for food and if he’s lucky, trading.
He looks up at the statue one last time. He can barely spy its relaxed features past the glare of the sun haloing around its head, but for an unbelievable second, it almost looks like its eyes are looking down at him.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Techno says to the forgotten god standing guard over the wreckage of what once must’ve been its home for centuries. It stays quiet.
As he steps away, a shadow flits over his head. When he glances up, he sees the crow is back to following him– it keeps up with him the entire way as he follows his route and circles back to his village.
Techno gives it another piece of jerky when they’re back by his cabin. It’s just a small reward for being such good company, if nothing.
–
“It’s the half-breed again,” someone whispers at his back.
“I thought he died during his last hunting trip?”
“Maybe he did. Who knows what kind of trickery his kind uses?
It’s a tad amusing, in an ironic way, that they actually think he can’t hear them. He does have a good hearing, better than most, but even if he didn’t, they’re literally two feet away from him. Ducking in close doesn’t mean much when you don’t know how to use your inside voice.
“Well, I heard the butcher kicked him out for trying to sell him animals he killed with black magic.”
“Can’t believe we actually let him live amongst us. What if he curses us one day–”
“Here,” A fairly heavy sack is plopped down on the counter in front of Techno without fanfare. A burly man with a fairly-long, braided beard stands behind it with his arms now crossed over his chest, his brows furrowed unhappily. He nods down at the sack, “That should cover it, lad.”
Techno reaches to pull the thick cover off the wares, eyeing the brand-new, dismantled crossbow parts carefully. They seem alright. He covers them up again. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just go away.”
That’s about the friendliest a villager can get when he’s concerned. Having paid beforehand and not wanting to push his luck, Techno turns around and walks away with his new purchases clutched safely in his hands.
As he passes by the gossipers, they watch him carefully without trying to hide their glaring in the slightest. He doesn’t say anything to them.
On the way back to his cottage, he passes by a kid yelling on top of his lungs about the new print of their village’s newspaper. While there isn’t much to write about around here specifically, the Lord of this land -as well as at least a dozen more towns around them and beyond- is known for his love for excitement and glory. His escapades and campaigns get printed every other day.
Giving into the boredom and his horrible habit of keeping an eye on what’s going on around him at any second of the day, Techno stops the kid. “How much is it?”
“It’s only one copper, my good sir, good choice–” the kid starts, before catching the sight of Techno, and he trails off awkwardly. His eyes stay stuck on the unnatural pink of Techno’s hair, and a pointy ear barely peeking past the curtain it provides.
Unphased by the staring, Techno pats his pocket to grab a copper coin. “Here.”
“Uh, um,” fumbling with the pages in his hands, the kid just pulls out the small stack of a print and pushes it into Techno’s hands, carefully avoiding skin contact. “It’s alright, sir, this one’s on the house.”
Not waiting for a response, he spins in place and dashes away in a rush. Techno looks after him, unimpressed and still holding a coin in one hand as well as a brand-new, crinkled newspaper in the other.
Well. At least he got to save a copper, so there’s that.
As he continues wandering back at a slow trot, he flips through the latest print. No one bothers him, although he does hear some whispers. One particularly brave man kicks a pebble his way, but it simply rolls a foot away from his boots and comes to a stop. It’s a bit of a pathetic throw, if he’s being entirely honest.
There isn’t much to read on through most of the print. The first niece of the Lord is getting engaged, the King has declared the first day of each month to be the best day of that month, a random, heroic lady saves a kid from getting squished beneath a tree. The crossword puzzle looks a bit challenging– which is not a thing that happens often.
But the most important part is the first page, which is entirely reserved for news that matters the most: The potential of a war.
South Is Declaring Superiority Over North, the title reads in bold, big letters, Our Lord Thinks Otherwise! is written in a smaller font right underneath it. The following paragraph describes years-old drama about this and that, nonsensical things that nobles worry about like gifts sent from other Lords and embarrassing actions taken in the biggest ball of the year– it all kind of goes over Techno’s head, to be entirely honest.
Well, all, except for the part that describes the Southern Lord threatening to send in his troops to collect the debt he considers the Lord of the North, Techno’s Lord, owes him, off of his people, if he doesn’t start paying up soon.
The next time he lifts his head, he’s stepping onto the little porch of his cottage, and he comes eye-to-eye with his little crow friend resting on the railing casually, its feathers puffed up and beak tucked beneath its wing. The wind chime hanging on top of the railing slowly rocks back and forth in the mild wind.
“If they start a war because of their stupid pissing contest, we’ll go down in history as the subjects of the dumbest Lord ever to live,” he informs it completely seriously, unlocking the door as he talks. Once the door clicks and swings inward to let him in, he glances back over his shoulder and sees the crow still watching him carefully.
“You can come in if you’re cold out here,” he casually offers, feeling a tad crazy for trying to talk with a crow. But as if to prove his worries unneeded, the little bird suddenly takes flight to slip inside with a snap of its wings. Wherever it goes to hide in there, Techno has no idea, but he lets it be.
“Time for dinner,” he hums, and shuts the door behind him. It’ll be a nice change to prepare food for two -well, one and a half, or rather, one and one-eighth? How much do crows eat? He has no idea, safer to go with one and a half and stow away the leftovers for later- for this once.
–
“-what a buffoon,” Techno hums blandly the next day, flipping through the rest of the newspaper by the statue. He’s back in his spot, this time early in the morning, and the air is a tad chilly. He absentmindedly hugs his jacket closer to his chest with one hand.
He’s close to the final page, the one with this print’s crossword, but the tellings of his Lord’s escapades don’t seem to end. Every time he thinks he’s at the end of it, there’s one last story printed in bold, rounded letters. All he’s gathered from finishing this print is that if the South decides to declare war over all of them, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong for it.
There are two pages on the affair between the youngest Southern princess that fled her homeland in the hopes of finding love and the current Lord of the North, who got her pregnant, and then sent her back home without so much of a goodbye. The paper writes that as ‘a proof of our blessed Lord’s virility!’ but Techno simply rolls his eyes and skips to the tiniest mention of how the South takes her back in and offers to support her through her journey to parenthood.
At last, after finishing another vivid description of his Lord’s desacrament of what was probably a holy site for many in the southern capital and now is comparable to a bathroom that had two rowdy teens in it all alone, he finds himself coming face-to-face with the puzzle section. The relief he feels is almost enough for him to sigh.
“I hope that was more enjoyable for you than it was for me,” he remarks at his guests, the statue and his crow, setting the paper down on his thigh and trying to straighten it up as much as possible. “Because I kind of want to dig my eyes out.”
Caw, the crow very shrilly answers.
Techno huffs out a chuckle. “I’ll take that as a no.”
Caw!
The first two clues are a fun, decent brain exercise, noted down as ‘the practice of lending money for interest’ and ‘a deep, wide, and usually water-filled trench around a castle, designed to discourage attempts at invasion’ -usury and moat, Techno gleefully jolts down- but then he gets to the third one and it says ‘the third wife of our dear Lord, the Rightful King of the North and Ruler of All’ and that’s about when he sets the paper down on the pedestal next to him in defeat. The crow leans over his shoulder to peek at the paper and then lets out a choked sound, something that reminds Techno of laughter.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he says tiredly, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “but don’t be surprised if a full-blown war actually breaks out.”
The bird quietens down at that– or rather, it just falls silent coincidentally as Techno says that. Because it’s just a bird and it cannot understand him. Like this statue at his back, or the shadows tailing his steps, the ones that don’t belong to him. That thought feels like a cold bucket of water being poured down his head.
“I heard that a few villages over, they started drafting people into the army.” His eyes dart down to his hands– takes in the calluses he has from wielding his bows and daggers, the occasional sword practice he does for fun with that wooden sword he’d carved two years ago for fun.
If they arrive here– if they take him–
“I don’t think I’m cut out for that,” he breathes out. It tastes like a lie on his tongue.
–
Two weeks later, the letter gets to his hands.
–and you’re to report to the closest outpost for your admittance into the greatest army the world has ever seen, in the name of our gracious Lord–
Fate must be laughing at him right about now, but Techno sees no humor in this. They’re going to war– and he probably won’t survive long enough to see the end of it.
By the end of next week, he’s getting his basic training in weapons. The crow continues spying on him, flying over the encampment in huge loops.
He doesn’t know it then, but the statue disappears from its place a few hours after the last time visits it. The forest goes back to its lively chatter.
–
“We should sneak out tomorrow,” the troublemaker of their barrack whispers gleefully one night. “I heard there’s a festival happening. I bet they’d love to treat a soldier or two before sending them off to fight for their freedom.”
Ignoring him, Techno turns around in his cot and squeezes his eyes tighter. It’s been three weeks since he arrived here as one of the freshest recruits on this base, and he still has trouble sleeping. The constant noise of 24 people staying in the same room isn’t helping either.
“No way, what if we get caught? You know we’re still on thin ice after that stunt with the horse carriage a month ago–”
“–which wasn’t our fault, according to the final ruling the Commander gave,” another guy corrects.
“Whatever. I just don’t wanna get in trouble, man.”
The first guy snorts. “Don’t even worry about it. If anything goes wrong,” -he lowers his voice here, not that it means much with Techno’s hearing- “we could just blame the freak. Say that he made us go or something.”
Someone scoffs, “Why would they believe that? The guy’s literally just sleeping in his cot.”
“Why wouldn’t they? Didn’t you hear about that new guy, Evans? Apparently he’s from the same village as the freak. Says there’s something wrong with him.”
“Yeah, like being antisocial as hell.”
“Like everyone he gets into a fight with ending up worse kff,” the guy corrects his friend. “Remember Saint? The guy from the chow hall? He refused to give the freak any food because he was being picky. Saint was found dead a week later, ripped to shreds by some animal out in the woods.”
“We’re staying right next to cave terrain, dude. There are bears and wolves all around us.”
“Yeah, well, none of them could be big enough to leave the marks this guy had on him. I saw it with my own two eyes.”
“Doesn’t prove your horror stories right about this guy.”
“It does if you think about Officer Jenn’s unfortunate drowning accident in the water canal after yelling at the freak for messing up his paperwork. Or the other newbie that got blinded because of a crow attack, just minutes after he punched the freak.”
“Fuckin’ hell...”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
“And after all that, you still want to throw dirt on him?”
“Well, if he doesn’t know it was us, he can’t do shit, can he?”
“I’m not going to take any chances, man. Just stay the fuck away from him.”
–
“-quick, ladies, quicker! My grandma runs faster than you lot, and she’s fuckin’ dead!”
Letting the yelling of his superior fly right over his head, Techno dives down into the mud and starts crawling to the finishing line. This is one of the last training exercises as well as tests they have to take before being assigned a position. He has no intentions of slacking, not when he’s so close to being dropped in the middle of a battlefield.
“Come on! Pick up the pace!”
When he arrives at the end, it’s a quiet affair for him. He climbs back up to his feet, stumbling a bit from the extra weight of the mud clinging to his clothes and armor, and realizes with a start that he’s the first one to finish. Not only that, but the second place is years away from him, three obstacles behind, still trying to climb the rope section.
“Good job, soldier,” A voice says next to him.
With a flinch, he whips his head to look at the older man sizing him up with furrowed brows. His superior is still by the training course, yelling out profanities, but this guy is a complete stranger to Techno.
He has the armor of a higher rank, one that Techno isn’t familiar with. Maybe a General? Techno guesses this is the guy they are meant to impress.
He snaps a salute, quick on his feet, “Sir.”
The man snorts a bit, “Save that for your Commander, son. What I care about isn’t that, but rather, how efficiently you completed that run.” His attention turns back to the other trainees running around cluelessly, “Tell me, were you ever enlisted before this?”
“No, sir.”
“And did you want to join when the mandatory enlistment was announced?”
That’s a trick question, isn’t it? Tentatively, Techno answers, “Not really.”
The man nods, once, and reaches to pat him on the back. “Well then, congratulations. You’re now going to be tested to see if you can lead a squad of your own out there.”
He doesn’t seem to care at all about Techno’s hair color, or his ears, or his popularity amongst his peers. That– that’s what draws Techno in.
Hook, line and sinker. At that moment, his future is already etched in stone.
–
Maybe Techno is too optimistic -though he really doubts that- but he lets the rumors be and doesn’t think much of it. It’ll be the same as it has always been– he won’t be making friends any time soon, but he’ll be free to do his own thing.
Or, that’s what he guesses. Right up until he’s staying up late one night, doing extra practice for tomorrow morning’s sword drills, and he hears the distant shrieks of a crow.
Goosebumps rise along the skin of his arms. It’s nothing, he guesses, but then just as he settles back into the correct form, a shadow flits past the treeline and he flinches back, turning his sword towards that way.
Silence falls over the forest again. As quietly as he can, Techno sneaks his way into a line of bushes and crouches down. He’s not stupid enough to go and wander alone in the outskirts of the encampment.
It must be the correct decision, because moments later, there’s a commotion as a few people slowly approach his position, hissed whispers and dull footsteps echoing in the quiet night. There’s a shrill caw! from the same direction, a loud, protesting sound that gets muffled, along with the sounds of fluttering wings.
Stepping into the clearing he’d been training in is the men he’s supposed to be leading. His squad, despite not being allowed outside the barracks past their sleep time -neither is Techno, admittedly, but that has never stopped him- is out and about, and planning to cause trouble from the panicked way they’re moving.
“Faster!” One of them hisses.
“You grab the thing if you think you can do a better job,” another grunts back, sounding winded.
“Stop the chatter,” the one leading them at the front says. He gestures at the clearing, “This should work.”
The group spread around the space, and suddenly, Techno spies what has them looking that rough. Two of them are clutching together at a small, black bundle of feathers, keeping it from shrieking or escaping– a crow.
No. Techno’s crow.
“Alright,” the one up ahead, most likely the owner of the idea of this stupid affair, hums out. “Set it down. Everyone, start praying for XD. Hopefully he’ll accept the offering.”
The offering? Wait, is that– are they trying to sacrifice Techno’s crow? To the deity of the unknown?
His hand tightening around his sword, Techno looks around. They’re too far away for him to make it in time to the Commander. He doesn’t know what he would even say– that his squad is breaking rules, maybe.
He wishes he had his crossbow now. It could’ve helped him scare off these guys, but now, all he has is his sword.What can he even do?
There’s another frantic struggling from the crow as one of the guys pulls out a dagger. It’s almost like the bird knows what these people are trying to do– it tries to twist its beak past the fingers holding it shut, trying to peck and bite. There is hissing and cursing as they try to get it back under control, and Techno lets them do their thing to look up at the sky.
The moon shines brilliantly. It’s almost eerie, how bright it is. There is not a single cloud in sight, nor any other crows that may be watching their sibling’s fate.
Techno turns his attention back to the scene playing several feet away just as another flash of a shadow flies past at his peripheral vision. His eyes dart its way– but there’s nothing there. Just trees, with their branches reaching far and wide in the sky.
He can feel eyes watching him. He just doesn’t know where.
When he looks back at the group, they have the crow pinned on the ground. One of them is quietly reciting the standard sacrifice prayer in a monotone voice as the crow weakly twitches its wings, trembling beneath the rough hands holding it down. Its beak is still held shut by one of the soldiers.
“No,” Techno shakes his head in denial. When his eyes dart down at his own shadow, there are countless eyes blinking back at him from the endless void of it. He doesn’t know what to do. He says the first thing that comes to his mind, which is a breathless, half-meaningful prayer of, “Stop them.”
There is no answer. But when Techno looks back up, there’s a wave of darkness rising from the treeline across him, and his squad don’t even see it coming– they’d always been weak on spatial awareness, Techno couldn’t train it out of them– and just as it's about to swallow them, one of them lifts his head and lets out a panicked gasp.
Stunned, he stays where he’s hidden, silently watching the chaos unfold. The rest of the ritual is filled with panicked running and curses. By the time the shadows recede back down into the earth, where they belong, the soldiers are long gone and the crow limply lies where it was discarded, quiet and still.
Techno quickly walks to its side, still halfway convinced that it was all a dream.
It isn’t. The crow is dead, with a deep stab wound leaking blood all over the ground.
Techno buries it in the same clearing. He doesn’t say anything the next day, but his men look at him with distrustful, scared eyes, and he stares right back at them.
None of them mention the events of last night, but the silence speaks all the words they swallow down. The crow never makes an appearance around the encampment ever again.
–
“This is fine,” Techno tells himself. Maybe if he repeats it enough times, he’ll start believing it himself.
It’s silent in the cell, has been since he was first dragged in here, cuffed and gagged with three guards watching his every move until he was chained to the wall like an unruly mutt. Not that it’s an inaccurate way to describe his behavior so far– he’d bitten at least four hands on the way.
He doesn’t know what they’re waiting for. Maybe they aren’t aware that he’s just another footsoldier, because he has his own cell -and what a luxury that is- but the lack of torture is… unexpected.
Wiggling a bit to try and get some of his weight off his arms, he grunts again, “Just fine.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have spoken so soon– because as the night falls, footsteps echo down from the hall leading to his part of the dungeon. With his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth from dehydration and arms having gone numb long ago thanks to being chained up for so long, he wearily lifts his head and watches the shadow of a person walk closer and closer to his cell.
“How unexpected,” A man’s cheerful voice says. Following his words, he steps into the view, coming to a stop behind the bars separating them, and gives Techno a smile. White teeth, sun-spotted face, light hair. His clothes are colorful and flowy, that of a noble. “I didn’t expect anything but a few corpses from this battle. Imagine my surprise when I received the word of your arrival, Sire..?”
Hah. That’s funny. Does he really think Techno is a knight or something? Anything other than a simple hunter and reluctant soldier?
Ignoring the implied question, Techno shrugs nonchalantly. “Yeah, not my best moment.” He nods up at his hands, “Any chance you can get these off? My hands are starting to go numb and I kinda need them to survive.”
The man simplt stares at him. “You don’t say.”
Techno pointedly wiggles his fingers. They move slowly, stinging with each movement.
The jingling of keys are loud in the cell as the man goes to unlock the barred door.
“You may address me as Lord River,” he steps in, not locking the door back up. Techno feels a sliver of hope for the shortest moment, before a hooded figure, silent as a shadow, slips away from a shadowed corner of the hall to follow him in, a fairly big rucksack hanging off of his shoulder, and pulls it shut tightly behind him.
“I was hoping to have a civilized conversation with you, man to man.” The Lord’s eyes slowly climb up to halt on where Techno guesses the tips of his pointy ears are peeking through his hair. When he speaks again, he sounds a tad breathless, “But I guess that might be out of question.”
The closer he walks, the crazier he looks. Suddenly, Techno feels a lot less confident in his ability to survive the next hour.
“You’re being very quick to dismiss that option,” Techno chuckles nervously, shifting against the chains. “We could still sit down and have a nice chat, with tea and some sweets maybe–”
“Oh, don’t worry, my dear guest. We will have a chat indeed.”
With a small twitch of the Lord’s hand, the hooded figure steps forward and kneels down, setting the bag on the ground. The first thing he pulls out is a hammer. The second is a dagger.
“A very long chat, even,” the Lord continues, and the grin curling at the corner of his lips speaks of trouble of the worst kind.
–
Time passes in a blur. Some hours are easier. Some are… decidedly not.
He loses most of his fingernails during the first visit. They threaten to start up on his teeth too, but that ends up being a bluff as the hooded person warns the Lord of him choking on his own blood. The cuts and bruises are added on top of each other each session, but dislocated fingers only start during the second session. By the time a week has passed, he’s certain he has several broken ribs.
They’re careful to not harm him beyond repair. A healer visits him every day, eyeing him up the same way a butcher might a pig, and does whatever she can to keep Techno alive. Painkillers are not required, she jokes once when Techno mumbles about it deliriously, and that’s that.
There’s no mercy to be had in a forgotten, forsaken hell like this one. On the nights Techno is just too gone in his fever and pain, he dreams of his men taking over this stronghold, butchering the Lord and his torturer right in this dungeon. Then, they turn around and leave him chained in his cell to starve to death, occasionally checking in to laugh at his misery.
He starts praying during the second week– or what he thinks is the second week. Time is a blur, more often than not, but he closes his eyes and thinks of all the gods he can name and asks for the mercy of a quick death. None of them answer. He remembers the crow pinned down on the ground by a dagger, of his prayer being answered only when it was too late to save it.
He is the crow now. He doesn’t think he’ll get to see his prayers being answered now.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been hearing it, or whether it's a hallucination or not, but at some point, the crow’s -his crow’s- croaks accompany him to sleep. That’s when it comes into his mind.
Years and years of standing guard over a temple ruined beyond recognition, offering small blessings to someone like Techno– this one deity has to be merciful enough to give him a quick death. He, whose name is forgotten in time, who was called as the Angel of Death by the elders of his village– he, who had been a friend to Techno for so long. Surely he’s watching Techno’s slow death, waiting for him to ask for help.
“Please,” he whispers past dried lips after a session, the taste of coppery blood on his tongue. “Please.”
Or maybe not. Days pass, nothing changes except for the wounds getting deeper on his skin, and his sanity feels more frail, the blood painting the floor of his cell builds up higher and higher. It’s too quiet.
He waits for his death.
He opens his eyes. The sun peeks into the cell through the bars of his small window. His cell smells of death and rot. His eyes slip back shut.
Awareness arrives with a loud crack. Tired beyond belief and lagging behind, his brain takes a moment to catch up with the pain as he glances up. His arm, bent out of shape, greets him before it dawns on him, and he’s screaming–
“–not done yet,” a voice murmurs kindly, “up you get.”
He’s hoisted up, the sharp pangs of hunger pain mixed with dull throbbing from his injuries echo through his body. His eyes focus onto the sight of his healer, taking in the calculating glint in her eyes, and–
–and the knife digs deeper into his thigh. He gurgles out a groan past the blood clinging to his lips, his lungs scarred and pained from his earlier coughing fits.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” the Lord says kindly, smiling at him. “Just tell me what I want to know, and it’ll all go away. I promise.”
Techno spits at his feet. The knife digs in deeper, before suddenly getting ripped out–
–and it doesn’t stop.
One sleepless night, looking at where his missing pinky used to be, he realizes that he can't hear the crow anymore.
He stops praying.
–
The universe's touch is soft and kind, and its gift is far heavier on his shoulders. His fingers glide through iridescent feathers, shafts a thin line of solid moonlight. He can picture himself touching the skyline, diving through white clouds to emerge up into the unobstructed sun shining upon the earth.
I love you, the universe breathes out to him, a goodbye and a see you later folded into the same breath.
I love you, because you are love.
–
When his eyes flutter open, sleep that resembles one of a thousand years obscuring his senses like a weighted blanket– a sunny day welcomes him back. The grass dances along with the tune that the wind is playing, cheerful and free of worry. Sunlight is gentle on his skin, a soft kiss on golden skin that treats him like glass, and the sky is smiling down at him.
The world says hello to him with each breath it takes, hidden behind the chirp of a bird or the rustling of healthy leaves. So he gets up, spreads the new wings at his back wide and says hello right back at it.
There’s a whisper skirting at the edge of his mind, something that welcomes him like a warm spring sun shining down at him after months of harsh, dark winter. Someone is praying to him– he wakes up more for it, draws strength from the selfless company it offers.
For this once, it's a kind day in a kinder world.
–
Time passes fast when life is enjoyable.
His body reforms itself in the physical world soon enough. The whispers strengthen– with something eerie clinging to each prayer sent his way, an unnatural order of things propping up his weary, forgotten self made up from faith and ideas.
One mere mortal shouldn’t be able to bring him back from the edge of nothingness. There he is, standing on the cliff that hangs between existing and not, and he’s been one step away from both ends, the passage of time erasing every single touch he’d left in the mortal world -because what is a god without his followers?- and this person has unknowingly caught him and pulled him back to solid ground. It’s not your time, the whispering voice seems to say into his ear, not yet.
He’s still too weak to wander around. There are shadows lurking around, things that would delight in stuffing themselves full with a weakened god, and one as old as himself at that too. So while he is curious about this mortal, the answer is simple.
He goes back home. Its floors are rotting and the roof has caved in, the garden overgrown and animals escaped or perished. He pulls up his sleeves and tends his farms, catches new animals, shoos away the birds that interrupt his work too much. On rainy days, he goes fishing, and during storms, he hunts for a touch of adventure. The giant monuments he'd worked on before feels smaller than they used to, the memory of an endless void and the towers that stretch as if to search for its limits hidden just behind his eyelids, but he doesn't neglect their upkeep. He watches the sunrise each day, and welcomes the night with a friendly grin at dawn. He lives, and he thrives.
Each day brings newly found strength to his limbs, a new tinge of wonder to his experiences. The mortal’s offerings allow their senses to blend in with his, and he experiences things in a way he never had before. The idea of there being a mere mortal, a human, at the other side of this connection between a god and his worshiper pales more and more with each passing day. There is a treasure waiting to be discovered out there.
He reaches a hand to the line where the sky meets the ocean, wind rustling through feathers made of starlight and love at his back, and tries to imagine what might be waiting for him outside of this little safe haven he’s created for himself.
He flies whenever he feels like it. Gliding through the forests that expand on chunks upon chunks, dipping his hand into an ocean that's so big he can't see the other end of it, dodging through lava falls and fireballs the ghasts shoot at him, dancing between the edge of everything and nothing with the void's relentless maw stretched wide beneath him– there is a wonder waiting for his exploration behind each corner. So much to see, so much to relearn.
I love you, it feels like the world whispers to him each day, with every new moment, I love you, I love you, I love you. There are no words that need to be said between him and the universe; In a world so big, his gratefulness is welcomed but not needed.
This is what they call a god: A man so beloved by the universe that it speaks to him. Through him.
The sun shines brighter down on him, he smiles back at it. The rest of the world waits for him.
–
Something is wrong.
The warm connection he’s had with his last worshiper since his reawakening is slowly growing frigid. He only realizes it when he goes to heal the last of the cracks clinging to his skin, the last few marks left from his once-fate of fading away into his final rest, being forgotten as a god. They have grown bigger since the last time he worked on them, they’re worse.
His mortal is losing faith in him. And it might just slowly kill them both.
Phil is a lot of things, but inaction has never been in his blood. He’s made from starlight and diamond dust and supernovas. There is nothing that could contain him, keep him from where he wants to go: And now, he wants to help the only person that saved him from his certain end.
This was why humanity had once abandoned him: His habit of getting his hands dirty, becoming too involved in mortal affairs. What makes a god a god if he breaks bread with his subjects? If he favors one over the other, regardless of the given offerings? If he speaks like them, looks like them, acts like them?
His torn down temples and burnt down records found their ends hundreds of years ago, but they’re all still fresh in his mind. However, inertia is a slow death, and he refuses to give into it.
He takes a step, and the veil between this dimension and the mortal world thins to let him past. The next breath he takes is tainted with the scent of metal and agony.
He blinks, and in front of him stands two guards guarding a cell underground, looking at him with wide, surprised eyes. The uneven stone floor beneath their feet is stained with old and fresh blood, there’s a pitiful lump of rotting fabric and gore curled into itself behind the bars behind them.
The pull he can feel in his chest strengthens. There, this is his believer. The one that brought him back from the edge, the one currently losing his faith. The one he’s abandoned to their fate for so long.
His wings rise defensively.
Not anymore.
–
“Oh, mate,” The man's lips press together in a thin line, pity heavy in his eyes, “let's get that thing off of you.”
Two hands, fading into wicked sharp talons at the fingertips, reach for his face. Fear spreads in his chest ice cold, and Techno jerks back as much as the chains allow him to. Their sharp clang echoes in the crumbling cell.
The hands stop advancing.
“Shit, okay, it's okay. I'm just tryin' to help.” The wings at the man's back frantically beat the air once, twice. He keeps his hands up, as if to show that they're empty. Maybe he doesn't realize that doesn’t mean much if someone truly wants to cause harm. The guards that now lay dead outside his cell had made sure to teach him that. "I'm not doing anything, alright? I just want to get that muzzle off of you."
He must think Techno a fool. He huffs, shaking his head negatively.
"No?" The man seems confused, "mate, that can't be comfortable. Come on, it'll only take a moment."
He presses harder against the wall at his back, the cold seeping through the thin layers of the rags he wears. The manacles around his wrists come up as much as the chains allow from where it is bolted securely to the ground, hovering in front of his chest protectively. He’s captured, restrained, beaten down– but he refuses to show his tender underbelly. Not like this.
They stand at a stalemate for a short moment that feels like eternity. Techno stares the man -the thing- down, unmoving and unrelenting, right up until there’s a commotion heard outside, yells and clangs of metal on metal finally arriving at their door. It breaks the stillness fallen over them.
His brows relaxing a tad, the man nods once, sharply, in acceptance. “Alright, fine. How about those manacles?”
Techno draws short at that. He wants to shake his head again by default, not wanting anyone to invade his personal space ever again, not after these past few months– but he has to be realistic here. The war has come to his footstep and he’s not going to be fighting an entire army -two armies, if his men are still insistent on abandoning him to his demise- with his hands tied up.
Reluctantly, he offers up his wrists. The edges of the wounds from when he’d tried and failed to twist his way out of them for so long are still visible.
But uncaring of the ugly mess of scars and dried blood glaring up at him, the man gingerly reaches to wrap his fingers around his forearm. His hand is light as a feather on the bruised limb, as if he’s treating the most precious treasure in this world.
His eyes dart up to Techno’s for a mere second before he focuses back down, something foreign painting his face. He runs a finger over the metal clinging to Techno’s wrist. It’s tight, too tight– but at that gentle touch, it shatters into a million pieces, raining down to the ground around them like powdered snow.
“There we go,” the man says with a kind smile on his face, “better?”
Pulling his wrists away from his grasp, Techno warily watches him. When he maps over his own wrists, trying to rub feeling back into the damaged skin, he realizes they’re no longer hurting. A glance down at them confirms his guess: The man healed him.
When he looks back up, there’s a knowing look on the man’s face. “Don’t worry about it, mate. Let’s first focus on getting you out of here– you can ask all your questions later.”
Then, he offers Techno a hand to pull him up onto his feet. This time, Techno doesn’t hesitate to give him his hand. It feels more significant than that.
They walk out of the cell together. He doesn’t realize it until his savior’s talons are dripping blood and he has a stolen sword clutched tightly in his hands– but those dozens of guards waiting outside?
They don’t stand a chance.