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The cells are always shrouded in darkness, and within the darkness, there is always the sounds of the other creatures kept locked in confined cages; nothing but the stone walls of their cell, measly straw scattered or kicked beneath their feet and the ever-present chill of near-constant darkness.
Wilbur has been captive here long enough that the empty, lightless world no longer poisons him with fear; the discomfort of cold unfelt as he sits in the corner of his cell, as far as he can get away from the cage door on what meagre scrapings of old straw he could gather beneath him. His wings drape around him like a cloak, giving him another defence to the cold, and although Wilbur tries to keep them preened and healthy, they’ve been ruined by human’s hands; blood feathers plucked, flight feathers trimmed as an extra precaution even if he’s never left the cell without a chained collar around his throat, weighed down by humans far too strong for him to overpower.
He might’ve been able to, once, but now he is underfed and malnourished; a human’s trophy that rots in the darkness.
Wilbur wrapped his arms tighter around himself, a gentle hum on whispered lips, listening to the way the sound echoed quietly off the damp walls in replacement to the birds that could never be heard down here. He presses his fingers into his arms, head pillowed on his knees, trying not to think of the way his hands feel like ice; cold as stone to the touch after having fought for so long against the walls that trap him; blunted nails that have soaked his blood; the bricks chipped and cracked with previous attempts at escape, back before the humans had broken him.
The cold stone echoes back his song, but it is hardly heard above the sounds of the other creatures that are also trapped in the darkness with him; the sound of gentle braying or growls, snarling and pacing; creatures that haven’t long since been held captive and yet have their spirits broken. Or yet to be deemed better used as ingredients, fur cloaks and mounted trophies.
Wilbur was once a trophy that basked in the light. Always chained, because the humans that kept him could never risk losing their prized possession, but a display piece not just for his wings, but his songs and his music. The humans always found him entertaining, and for a time, even if he rebelled and fought back, they didn’t hurt him. Until he hurt one of them, and they choked him to the point that he could neither sing or speak for days.
Now Wilbur’s songs are for him and him alone, no matter how they treat him. He had hoped his defiance would be a measure of freedom; a knife or a too-heavy hand and he’d never have to wake up in the darkness again. But that day has yet to come, and that leaves him in his dark corner, rocking himself in comfort, singing as soft as the wind.
Around him, his world remains dark and lifeless save for the noise of the other beasts; solitary in black and grey and only the faintest touches of light that comes from hung lanterns beyond his barred cell where the others stand in rows; no privacy here in the darkness. Wilbur listens to their voices, how they rise and fall with his softened song; hear the snores where some have let the darkness lure them into sleep before they will have to face tomorrow and another day of confinement, maybe training, maybe led around by heavy chains and shackled with too-tight collars.
Wilbur has sung for them, sung for the ones that came before, and if he is to wake tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, then he will sing for the ones that come after too.
So long Wilbur has spent in the darkness, and yet there are still moments when he’s not completely broken, and he finds himself dreaming of freedom. Of blue skies and eddying winds and the whisper of a breeze that promises spring and summer and even the cold touch of winter. He dreams of autumns colours and the sea’s sharp spray and the feeling of rain on his feathers and sand beneath his talons. He recalls the taste of strawberries, recalls the feeling of grass beneath his fingers; of open fields that stretched for miles and miles; for winding streams that touched both mountain peak and ocean depths.
Wilbur lets his song lift louder, to calm the still-prowling beasts, hoping to soften their own fears as the darkness has consumed his own, leaving him worn, weathered and near-defeated.
Not yet, but soon he hopes. Soon eternal sleep will take him.
The dream shattered beneath the clanking of a key being turned in a lock.
Wilbur’s voice stutters in his throat as his movements become instinctive; body turning away from his cell door and the sudden sharpness of light that pours in through the opening, painting the cellar stones into pyrite bricks. He wraps his arms tighter around himself, turning deeper into the corner of his cell, drawing his wings around himself. They’re dull, once as rich as the soil and the red woods that grew from it, but now they’re near-rotten on his back, black like soot and riddled with dirt, dust and the filth of the cell. It is a childish instinct that sees him clamping his eyes shut, as if that would bring him protection from those that invade the constructed peace hidden away in the dark.
But if they wish to hurt him, there’s nothing Wilbur can do to fight back.
Something ugly and foul coils in Wilbur’s chest at the thought that he doesn’t want to fight back.
If they are to hurt him, let them hurt him beyond repair.
The men come with heavy steps and something sharp in their throats; words rotten with violent malice and edged with an urgency that sparks fear more than the gravel of their voices. Around him, Wilbur can hear the animals stirring from their sleep the sound of straw and paws shifting on the cold stone; the clanging malice of a cell door being opened beneath the disgusted complaints of the two men that cannot stand the stench of the cellar.
They bang on the cell doors; animals snarling, threatening, warning the humans as they head deeper into the cellar, doors yawning open with ghostly wails and sudden fear lighting within the beasts when the keepers hurt them, seemingly mindlessly.
Wilbur’s head snaps up instantly, his body tense in abrupt fear as the scents of blood on the keepers’ hands draws around him; the welling panic of his own sun-burnt wheat, of bramble-thorn pain scratching against his skin. He doesn’t want to think what it means that the men are coming closer, passing all other cell doors, coming closer to the his; the smallest in the row, furthest from the door, pressed into the stone of the building’s foundations, always damp, cold and uncomfortable.
Wilbur pushes himself deeper into the corner. This might be the end, but he’s still scared. It’s the only thing that reminds him he’s still alive.
Another cell door is wrenched open and this time there is a roar—a yell of pain a fright from one of the keepers and the sound of the cell door clanging shut before a weight slams into it and a hissing snarl of an Ironback yet to be tamed. It didn’t appreciate the keepers entering it’s territory and Wilbur feels a bubbling warmth of amusement as the keepers curse it, one sounding pained. It means that another will be hurt in retaliation, but there’s something satisfying that the fresh scent of blood is one of the men instead of the creatures they keep.
“Leave it. I’m not getting killed just because Varras wants the creatures dead. Just hurry and kill the bird so we can get out of here.”
Bird.
They mean Wilbur.
He can taste their anger like ash in his mouth. He can feel his own curdle with a fear the thought conquered; thought that when Death came for him he would greet her with open arms. Instead his heart races and his breath comes short. He doesn’t understand why they want to kill him now; doesn’t understand what reason he’s given them as the smell of his fear grows as thick as the darkness.
Wilbur doesn’t want to drown in his fear when their knife comes for him. He tries to calm himself, to lose his mind in memory and imagination; a song on the edge of his lips but it is drowned beneath steel-toed boots and the creatures’ territorial claims as the lantern light beats back the darkness and Wilbur’s like is merely grains of sand now, a whisper in the dark, a prayer that he’s dead long before he feels it—
Heavy footfalls halt outside the cell door; a sudden illumination of pale lantern light blinding when it has been so long since Wilbur had seen a naked flame so close; the feeling of its heat licking his body like a curse in world of pyrite stone and winter cold.
The men sneer at him, but even out the corner of his eye, Wilbur can see one of them holds his weight oddly; the Ironback having managed to deal more damage than simply breaking skin, but in the face of his fear, the satisfaction of knowing one of them is hurt is another noose around his neck.
The sound of the cell door open is like the drop of a guillotine, the shorter barging his way into the small kennel space with his dagger angled down; Wilbur startling even when he knew it was coming. He presses his back against the cold stone wall, wings wrapping tighter around himself, nails digging into unfeeling flesh, but he doesn’t beg or plead because he knows that it’s fruitless, mouth hung open in horror as he wonders which breath will be his last—
Something bangs—something heavy, something wooden and dense—and Wilbur watches the two men jerk their heads back the way they came. It’s a door, he realises belatedly; the one that stands between the cellar and the dwelling above;
And a sudden rise in noise that does not belong to the keepers. Shouting pounds the quiet with rageful echoes; feet on creaking wooden stairs that sets Wilbur’s panic aflame once more, staring at his cell door that has been cast wide; the keepers behind it that abandon their intent on killing Varras’s songbird having turned to face the newcomer and the rage he brings, far more fierce than theirs, so much that Wilbur can taste it.
The arrival of other is a distraction. There’s more yelling, more shouting and fighting from above; words undiscernible under Wilbur’s panicked as Death smiles unseen, waiting her turn to bestow a kiss. But the keepers don’t attack him—don’t sever his ties to life as they had come to do—instead, turning back down the corridor between the cells; snarls quick and bitten, anger as sharp as a whip, and suddenly they’re out of sight, yelling and growling in chorus to the other creatures still caged in eternal darkness.
All Wilbur can see is the open door.
Like a beckoning wind, the pull of freedom calls to him but the humans had near-broken him despite his fear, and Wilbur can’t find the strength to force himself up, out of the corner of the cell. His wings flutter, puffing slightly; misaligned feathers pricking him but he can hardly feel the discomfort when he is choking on the anger that grows beyond his sight; clashing against another’s like swords that meet on the battlefield.
The stone bricks do nothing to absorb the anger; only amplifying it and the voices that spew dragon fire in challenge to one another echo louder than the heavy boots that thud against the ceiling. It is as if a war has descended from above and it doesn’t help as the animals and creatures that are held in the darkness revolt to the sounds of fighting; throwing themselves at their cell doors or howling and roaring at the cacophony. Wilbur just curls up tighter like the darkness will protect him, pulling his wings tight around him, forehead pressed against the damp of the outer wall. He wants to cry but he’s long-since run out. He wants to deafen himself to the noise, but clamping his hands over his ears and ducking his head down barely helps as he tries to block out the sounds of the thunder.
“Get off of me you fucking beast—”
“Keep fighting, I beg you. Keep fighting so that I can run you through with my sword, I fucking dare you,” comes a voice, whip-sharp, edged with an electric anger that sparks fear and confusion both in Wilbur’s mind.
It is unfamiliar—a voice he’s never heard before—but the anger that resonates in ever soft-pitched words is just as terrifying as all those that have come before.
Wilbur clamps a hand over his mouth to stifle his breathing, arm curling tighter around himself as he forcefully presses himself into the stone, like it will consume him. He doesn’t get why they’re fighting, doesn’t understand why the men are turning on one another, but if they’re willing to kill their own Wilbur doesn’t want to consider what they will do to him.
“Tommy, stop. He’s defeated,” says another voice, softer in comparison, but Wilbur can still hear his rage like the rumbling of distant thunder on the horizon.
“He’s still fucking breathing. Not defeated enough for me,” comes the first and by the lighter pitch, he can tell the other is younger. And furious.
“Calm down or you can head back upstairs to Sam. You too Techno. Sheath your sword before you use it. We need them alive to be able to speak.”
“We don’t need both,” comes a third voice and it’s deep and grating like bone grating bone; bloodied fingers scrambling at stone; as deep as the Ironback’s snarling hiss as the animals and creatures in their separate cells begin to quieten now that the fighting has stopped.
There are three strangers in the cellar. Enemies to the keepers if their fear and the threat against them is clue enough.
Once, Wilbur may have entertained the thought those that are enemy to his may be friend, but so long in the dark had taken his ability to trust.
“They are so many,” the deep-voice one says, and now that the fighting is finished, Wilbur can hear his distress; prevalent in his voice in a keening whine as he moves about the cellar; the sound of gentle footsteps and the gliding of material the only clues Wilbur has to their movements when he holds his breath and listens. Some of the animals stir, giving warning hisses and growls, but none of them throw themselves against the doors like normal, and if Wilbur listens close enough he can hear a deep, soft rumbling sound, like brontide, like cascading rocks in the far distance. It’s not familiar, but Wilbur is terrified to pull himself away from his temporary shelter to understand further.
“This is disgusting,” the youngest says, his own pain and anger in symphony to the other. “Phil, this is—Phil look. She has cubs.”
He’s talking about the capriclaw; a species of cat creatures that are as powerful as they are majestic who was recently caught. She was pregnant, which had excited the keepers because it meant they could sell the cubs or raise and slaughter them when they were big enough. Because that’s all the creatures are to these people. Profit in fur cloaks.
“They’re safe now Tommy. We’ll take them back to the sanctuary and get them all checked out. They’re safe,” the gentle one—Phil, Wilbur thinks—says, his words meaningful.
The first—Techno—after threatening the keepers into silence, begins to make his own muttered observations of the cellar and the dozens of cages that line both walls. Light begins to warm the old stone as he moves from one lantern to another, sharing a flame to bring light into the otherwise oppressive darkness.
There are words, instructions to a fourth that appears at the top of the stairs—Niki or something, Wil isn’t really too sure over the muffled sounds of his own hyperventilating who he tells to take the keepers upstairs, his words clipped and short in ode to his anger; something sharp and grating echoing alongside his footsteps as he skirts the corridor in a countdown to Wilbur being discovered.
He holds his breath and wills himself to vanish into the stark shadows of his cell and the still-open door that can’t protect him.
For so long, Wilbur had prayed that the lock would rust and break, but now he wishes it would close, bar, refuse to open and protect him from the anger that stalks the quiet darkness just out of sight. They might be disgusted at the keepers treatment of the creatures, but Wilbur is an amalgamation of beast and man.
An abomination.
Wilbur is avian; winged and taloned and feathered, and for so long those reasons alone had been enough to shackle him with chains and toss him into darkness; to collar him in the middle of a room and whip him until he sang, either songs or a cry of pain for the entertainment of others. When he was to be killed, they’d take his feathers, his bones, his claws. He’d be ingredients, a trophy or a coin passed in hand.
But at least then, he would be dead.
Free.
The footsteps draw closer.
Wilbur presses himself into the stone, begging, praying silently. He wears rust like tears, imagined himself breathing death and rotting bones, hoping to disappear beneath the rancour of the cells. But the steps still echo and Wilbur has nowhere to run, unless he wants to rush into their waiting arms.
He turns, buries his face in his shoulder, pulls his wings around him.
And waits.
Wilbur knows the moment he is seen.
He can hear it in the chorus of sharp inhales, but the boy refuses to look up when he is trying to abandon his mind and abandon the anchors to his body, hoping that he won’t even feel it when the knife comes. But there is no escape, he’s known that for all the years and months that he’s been buried alive in this hell of humans’ creation and a whimper familiar enough to his own song—but isn’t his—breaks through his terrified panic and he turns without thinking, face raised to the lantern light that is soft enough it doesn’t blind him, and beneath it; the three strangers swathed in clothes and bearing weapons, all of them stood beyond the open door of his cell.
They aren’t human.
They’re… like him.
Two avians, and a piglin.
The piglin is the first to move.
His hair is long enough to be pulled back into a braid; pink like his fur, threaded with gold and capped at the ends. He watches Wilbur with battle-sharp intensity in his eyes that is reflected int the tension in his body, the way his hand curls viper-strong around his sword, but it all seems to melt away from him as his shoulders droop. He pulls his arms in, bending his knees to bring him lower down, as if he’s trying to make himself look smaller. Less threatening.
But he is a piglin; forearms thicker than Wilbur’s legs, and his tusks might be short but they’re still sharp and he is far stronger that Wilbur could ever be even without the thick leather armour covering his hide. He could kill Wil before he could ever scream.
Beside him, the two avians watch on in communal shock. They are similar to one another—a father and son Wilbur wonders—where their hair is both golden and soft spun but their wings set them apart; the older with wings as dark as midnight that the shadows seem lighter in their presence, while the younger’s are stark different where they stand as pure as snow, as large as his father’s and peaked in gold as if he has the strength to carry mountains.
But under Wilbur’s gaze he… isn’t.
He is still firm and a mountain of strength that has the boy holding his head high, but there is something in the way he stands, a firm grip on the arm of the piglin no matter that he could kill him with barely half his strength, as if he was holding onto an anchor to stop himself from falling apart. He looks like he’s in pain, his face all twisted and hurt, and there’s fear in the layers of it like he’s not holding a sword dripping with blood that shows he is strong enough to fight whatever dared to threaten him.
He is as much the mountain as he is the tremoring earth that shakes its roots and threatens to topple stacked boulders into dust.
The three stare, as if they are human children seeing an avian for the first time. Wilbur hardly dares move. He hardly dares to breathe, eyes flicking to each of them, back and forth, to their swords dripping with blood, to tightly curled fists, to the thinly disguised anger trembling through the sharp lines of the piglin’s stature and the same much reflected in the eldest.
Distantly, he is aware that he shouldn’t be as afraid of them as he is; the those that stand before him aren’t humans, but Wilbur has so long been surrounded by prejudice and hatred and scorn that he is terrified to trust for even a breath of a second; his fear an ember that burns long after the fire has died; a knife that bleeds more than blood and Wilbur is afraid.
“Gods,” he breathes, almost as if he’s just as afraid as Wil is, but that singular word betrays him to his hidden revulsion. There is control in his movements—curiosity, something dark and sharp and painful—that holds Wilbur in his gaze like a specimen to be analysed before being discarded without another thought, and it is this coldness that drives fear through Wilbur’s body, like an arrow through painted wood.
Wisdom lights the man’s eyes in a pale, stormy blue, reflecting thoughts that he does not voice; emotions that flick so quickly across his expression that Wilbur hasn’t a chance to name them before they are replaced by something monochrome and near-indistinguishable.
He is the sharp of a surgeon’s knife; precise and surgical in his movements, no act wasted when he reaches with a hand to press his fingers to his son’s arm and another directed towards the piglin without needing to tear his gaze away from where Wilbur is desperately begging for the stone to part and let him fall between them; let the earth take him in its embrace and bury him in dirt and soil; let his once oaken wings muddy with his grave; let the earth take his bones and keep them safe and keep him from pain.
It is the eldest that takes the first step, breaking away from the other two as he crosses the threshold of the cell. And even though Wil had thought himself prepared for death; had hoped for peace and accepted he had done all he could, he is still terrified.
He knows that once he’s dead all the pain is gone; once he’s freed from his mortal body there is nothing to tie him to the earth save for a single swing of the sword, but he’s still mortal and mortals are bound to their instincts to survive and Wilbur can’t fight the way he draws his limbs closer to him. In stark contrast, his wings fluff, feathers ruffling like a sudden breeze has shaken them, making himself look bigger than the perceived threat even though it means nothing because Wilbur has rags and blunted talons and the older avian is faster, stronger, armed and armour and—
Stopped.
At the threshold of the cell.
His face is drawn in pain, sadness thick enough it almost drowns out the weight of Wilbur’s fear. He shares it with the others, but it is the youngest, gold-blond and on the edge of maturity who feels it the most intensely.
His pain is not just worn on his face, but felt in his heart, as if he can look into Wilbur’s eyes and see every hardship he has faced; heard every scream, watched every tear trace lines down his cheeks when the humans stole the sky from him; when they threw him to the stone and clasped his ankles with chains, when they broke his wings and plucked his feathers when he lashed out in reminder to what could happen if he disobeyed.
His face is a mirage of heartbreak and shattered sunrises; an emotion familiar and yet altogether mystifying that Wilbur breathes it in like oxygen. He surrounds its likeness around himself – pulls the monochrome of sympathy into his own heart and feels the fluttering like the breath of new hope in smoke-ridden lungs.
Slowly, slowly, the piglin sinks to a knee where he’s still in the doorway.
He doesn’t spare a thought for his armour—for the soft-spun cotton of his trousers that would be dirtied by the muck of the cellar floor—and speaks instead as quiet as the wind.
“My name is Technoblade, or Techno if you prefer. This is Phil and Tommy,” he says, gesturing to each in turn. They nod their heads to their names, none of them breaking their gaze as Wilbur’s passes between the three of them. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t need their names for them to kill him, and Wilbur doesn’t understand. They shouldn’t need his for them to kill him, or maybe they do, or maybe it’s a trick, his mind hurries to think, tripping and tumbling over itself. What if it’s just a trick and they want Wilbur to speak and then they can punish him for breaking the rules and it’s not that they want to kill him but hurt him just like the humans did, because Wilbur isn’t strong like they are and—
The piglin—Technoblade, is watching him.
His eyes are as sharp as sunlight, but they are soft in regard and Wilbur threads his fingers through a few feathers to find a blooded one, bending it just for the brief pain to ground him, because he does not understand. Anger, hate, he knows. He knows how much a blade will hurt him; familiar to the cold the comes when too much blood is spilt. He knows the weight of a fist and that the bruises that remain, while painful, do not last.
But this gentleness is a monster that hides its teeth and Wilbur is afraid.
“What’s your name?”
Wilbur blinked away the last of his tears, shock-confusion-fear-terror all cloying against him with such strength that when he opens his mouth to answer Techno’s question, Wilbur cannot even push out air. But that is a mistake too, he thinks, and reason enough for the others to hurt him, and Wilbur has always fought against the keepers before but there is something terrifying and confusing to rebel against his own kind, be them on his side or not.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Technoblade says, his voice immeasurably soft.
He detached himself from the youngest—Tommy—and with one knee on the cold stone, he edges a little more into the cell, hands raised in effort to calm the tremors that race through Wilbur’s body; none of which is at fault from the cold stone pressed into his skin or the exhaustion the wraps tight around his head.
Techno continues to speak softly, his assurance echoed in the slow gentle approach of his movements and a lift of the corner of his mouth in the attempt of a smile that is as awkward as it is gentle.
He’s a piglin, and he can hurt him, his mind reminds him in warning.
But the more that Wilbur watches, the more he finds a void between what he had come to expect and what he is given from those that face him.
Techno is cautious, but for Wilbur’s sake instead of his own. His movements are slow, silk-like and fluid to spin the colours of a story without words. Beside him, Phil holds his ground, obviously wanting to move closer, but trusting the piglin for now while he gives support to Tommy, sharing touches; grounding the youngest who looks part torn, part already destroyed.
They have all done well to hide their earlier anger, and while Wilbur won’t so easily forget, he can’t help but wonder if he had misunderstood their reasonings. He is so ready to hope that they will not be like the keepers, but Wilbur has been shown kindness in the darkness before and it was turned against him quicker than a knife; that the last time he had someone similar to him to share his cell, they’d been ripped from his arms and they’d never returned.
“There’s no need for you to be frightened anymore,” Techno says, still moving closer. He is almost close enough to touch, and Wilbur can’t help but wonder if this peace is nothing but a dream, that he will wake to the darkness any minute now, still in the clutches of the keepers and this whole mess of confusion and jilted hope is simply his mind searching for some sort of solace in the dark. He was a dreamer, before the darkness.
It seems some part of his mind hasn’t completely forgotten who he was before.
“You are safe now,” Technoblade says, moving closer still. “We are the King’s Paladin’s. No harm will come to you anymore.”
Paladin.
Varras.
They were just like Varras.
Fear struck Wilbur with the ferocity of lightning. His entire body seized as he shoved himself back, away from Technoblade’s approach, his frozen façade shattered as he shakes his head, shedding tears like hot wax. He can’t breathe, air caught in his throat, fingers no longer drawing blood from his own skin as they dig into the stone like he can find a hand hold, like he can hold on with the last of his strength before they decide to drop their masks and show him their brutality because they’re Paladins, and Technoblade is a piglin, he is so much stronger—
“Sssh, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Phil lies, reaching out with his hands, showing that they’re open and empty, but there still can be pain. Wilbur isn’t free. Even if he isn’t killed here; even if they take him from the darkness, it will be just another cage, just another shackle no matter that he is avian and so are Phil and his son; doesn’t matter that they’re all Beastmen there was no safety in the company of the King’s Paladins.
Not when it was the King’s Paladin’s that stole him in the first place.
Wilbur can’t escape. He knows he can’t; knows his nails cannot turn the bricks. So many times before has he scraped skin to bone in his effort to dig past its mettle and crush it into dust; to open up the darkness into soil that can be dug with desperate hands and Wilbur would finally claw his way out of this tomb—
“No, no!” the boy sobs, reaching with his soul for something more than darkness and another prison, terrified and confused by the false sympathy the others share, confused further when Phil folds a hand around Technoblade’s wrist and pulls gently, but strong enough that he eases him backwards, encouraging Tommy to move too. To give Wilbur space.
Everything is confusing. Nothing makes sense.
Paladins have only hurt Wilbur, but these three claim to be the King’s Paladins—a jarring thought in and of itself because they are Beastmen and they are seen lesser than humans, so for the king to have appointed—for these three to have been willing… but they’re here, and they were angry, they fought the keepers….
Still angry, Wilbur realises, when the barest clench of a fist draws his eyes and he stares at the youngest.
Tommy’s hands are shaking, drawn into fists so tight his nails are close to drawing blood, as much as his teeth where he clenches his jaw. His eyes burn bright in a rage as deep as his heartbreak, his breath coming quick and sharp; staccato and far from the rhythm of his heaving lungs that it looks like he is suffocating.
Phil reaches out to his son, hand at first on his wrist, and then, cupping his cheek, but Tommy’s eyes don’t break away from Wilbur’s. “Tommy, why don’t you head back upstairs to Sam. Techno and I can handle this,” he says but the gentle approach doesn’t seem to shake Tommy from wherever his mind has sunk.
Instead, his hand curls tighter around the handle of his blade, and—Wilbur knows that pain, knows that promise and he shakes in his skin. He has long-since grown used to the cold that traps him within stone, and he thought he’d be prepared for it, when the time came for him to pass on, but he can’t help but be afraid—
“Tommy. Upstairs. Now.”
There is a command in Phil’s voice and power as strong as the stone walls that bury Wilbur here, yet they still remain to be sun-warmed and smooth to the touch because Tommy is his son and he trusts him, despite the pain and confusion of the cellar, that Tommy will obey. And he does, almost violently wrenching himself from his father’s grounding touch vanishing from sight, footsteps like drums of war beating on the wooden staircase as he all but runs from the cellar; the lightning clap of the door kicked wide, swinging heavy on its hinges, banging against the outer wall to invite a steady hum of voices from the world above.
Wilbur stares.
He doesn’t understand.
He had seen Tommy’s growing anger. He could see it, feel it like the ghost of a hand around his throat, and when Wilbur reaches up to his skin he can almost feel the colour of bruises beneath his skin. But… he wasn’t angry at Wilbur… but… for him?
The other avian sees the movement and turns back to him, “hey, it’s okay. You’re safe,” he says, focused on Wil instead of his kid; calling to him, his voice as gentle as it had been when he spoke to his companion and it’s all just so confusing, because Tommy was angry and he’s almost sure that they’re not going to kill him—would’ve already done so if they were—
There’s noise. Voices, atop the stairs.
Technoblade is quick to move back, up on his feet, moving out of the cell to hush the sounds of the newcomers, quietening them before their clamouring can become too loud, but his movements are fast and sudden. Wilbur reacts to it, shoving himself backwards in surprise, head knocking against unmoveable stone.
“It’s okay,” Phil says, and there’s something in his voice that is desperate and painful. “It’s okay, it’s only more Paladins,” he says, the last word slow and almost whispered, aware how Technoblade’s claim to the title had triggered Wilbur’s panic before, but desperate to show him that the fear is unfound and that Wil is safe now.
“They won’t come near you,” he continues, putting heart into his words. “No one will touch you, if you don’t want us to. I swear on my life, and that of my sons’.”
With that, the avian draws back, knowing to keep his movements slow, still watching Wilbur, but there is a touch of relief shared between them when Wil can take a breath and it doesn’t feel like there is a mountain sitting on his chest.
Beyond the cell, the voices, unfamiliar, talk hurried and quiet. Wilbur can hear Techno estimating numbers, and even from here he can hear the piglin’s pain in the way he speaks as they start talking logistics of relocating the animals, hoping that they will all be able to be released or relocated to sanctuaries, and hopefully that no damage is permanent enough for a merciful death.
Wilbur shifts at his words, half-desperate to believe he’s not included in that calculation, but for so long he has been less than, treated no better than the creatures that he shares the cellar with, but there’s still too much of his mind that is trapped by fear and the cell door is open and the keepers are not friends to these Paladins even if Varras himself is a Paladin and—
Wilbur is standing before he’s truly realised he’s moved.
He ignores the way the stone scrapes his skin, ignores the feeling of dried blood on the backs of his knuckles and beneath his fingernails, ignores the flea bites that itch from the dirty straw as he forces himself up onto unsteady feet, ignoring the way that Phil rises with him but his movements are slow and restricted, holding himself back from closing the distance between them and offering Wilbur an arm, voice gently, telling that “it’s okay, take it slow, you’re hurt, you’re bleeding, just take it—”
Phil stands in his path; eyes wide, words poorly disguised from their ice-white pain and Wilbur might feel fear if he wasn’t already terrified, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knows it’s dangerous to get closer to the avian, who isn’t only just stronger because he hasn’t been trapped and caged for years, but the talons on his feet and how comparably Wilbur’s are short and kept blunt by his keepers so that he can’t hurt them—
Phil does not stop him. Neither does Techno; the pair of them retreating back, into the far corner of the corridor, giving Wilbur room. He hadn’t taken Phil’s hand when it was offered. He had flinched when Techno offered the same after stumbling on numb feet, but at the sight of Wilbur’s determination and a sudden surge of strength he thought himself incapable of, they don’t press the issue and give him more space, moving further back.
The pair of them exchange glances, but their emotions flicker too fast upon their faces for Wilbur to name; uncaring of it anyway as he pushing his focus into walking instead. It feels like it is the first time he’s stood of his own volition in a very long time, not hauled carelessly to his feet, wrists shackled, neck collared, led forward like a dog on a chain while the keepers laugh and kick at his ankles so that they end up dragging him out anyway.
But despite his weakness, Wil is determined, and no matter how much he trembles, no matter how much his legs shake, there is something rising
inside him as he takes one step after another, one hand on the cellar wall to steady himself, one wrapped around his chest and his wings pulled in tight as not to jostle them. He pointedly ignores the avian and the piglin murmuring to one another—their collective shock-anger-pain-fear when they can see the way Wilbur’s wings are mangled—and keeps pushing himself forward.
Techno tells the others to move back; all of them wrapped in armour and cloaks, some human, some Beastmen, but Wilbur’s eyes are focused on the floor, the wall, the corridor. In the back of his mind, he is still waiting for everyone to turn on him. It doesn’t matter that their swords are sheathed; they outnumber him ten to one. But Phil and Techno have not moved, even though Wilbur’s stare doesn’t hold them at bay, and with every step forward, Tommy is pushing his guild brothers back, biting their names in command, holding on as he had with Phil, like he’s holding himself back from rushing forward to pull Wilbur’s arm over his shoulder and take the weight off of weakened limbs.
He stumbles, once, hand on the wall, ankle rolled beneath him, and he feels more than sees Technoblade dart forward to catch him—piglin, brute-strong, violent in anger, unprejudiced in rage—and Wilbur’s terror sings in a yelp loud and echoing against cold stone. The humans reel back, the Beastmen alongside them, the path clear in front of him; the rectangle of light atop the wooden stairs calling to him like the sea calls the rivers home; like the wind that had once called him into the sky and—it’s been so long, he thinks, since he had seen the open sky that wasn’t bared from him by metal cuffs or broken wings or a hand around his throat and weights on his legs, a net over his body and shouting-yelling-screaming—
Wilbur runs.
Pain sears through his bones, his legs, his back. His lungs feel like they are filled with volcanic ash, fear choking him when shouts sound up from around him, echoing off the tomb walls, but all the avian can hear is his heart in his ears and the drums of war drowning out everything as his feet kick the wooden stairs that lead him upwards into awaiting sunshine.
Beyond the cellar door is a maze of corridors, branching rooms, but Wilbur knows the way out—it’s the only door he’s never been allowed towards—and with the last of his strength and a whole lot of hope, he barged the door with his shoulder, not daring to slow down for a moment with the others nipping at his heels.
The door gave way to large, tall-walled room that was high enough to make Wilbur’s head spin and it takes him a moment to realise he is above the stage floor; not hauled up through the gates that the creatures, animals and Beastmen that are brought through when showcased to be sold—Wilbur never having suffered the same because Varras found better profit in chaining him to the stage and forcing him to sing—but now he’s on the second floor, where the crowd can gather and drink without worry of the creatures.
The room is far more packed than Wilbur considered—didn’t even consider at all, his mind focused only on escape—but his interruption silences the room as he bursts through, feet unsteady beneath him, spinning where he stands, searching for the outside. He could feel the piglin’s anger like fire burning his back, feel the cold of Phil’s disgust and thinly-veiled anger and it spurred his bleeding feet to run, run run run—
The grass is cold beneath his feet. The dew of the grass stings the open wounds but Wilbur doesn’t care as he stumbles, face cast up to the blinding heat of the sun. It shine’s, the sky blue as ocean jewels, deep and endless and although Wilbur’s wings are broken, his body weak, himself unable to fly there is something freeing to be able to stand underneath the sky and simply… breathe.
He doesn’t care for his tears. He doesn’t care for his fading strength. He doesn’t even care when his legs give out, but instead of collapsing into the ground, there are arms under his, a chest beside him and flash of golden hair.
Wilbur smiles, teary but endlessly happy as Phil sinks down with him, holding him, careful of his wings. “I can see the sky,” Wilbur tells him, not quite understanding why Phil looks so sad himself. But there is something healing about touching another and Wilbur not flinching away, turning his eyes up to the endless blue and golden shine of the sun.
Free, Wilbur thinks, shedding fresh tears as his mind is taken by the relief and exhaustion. He can’t fight the blackness that draws in.
He doesn’t have the strength to.
He doesn’t even try.