Things That Need To Pass (passerine!Technoblade x OC) {COMPLETED}

Rescue And Revenge (4)

(3rd person POV)

It had been written in an ancient script, in a book that looked exactly like all the others in the forgotten library: heavy-bound and dust-covered. Philza had flipped gingerly through it, afraid that one wrong move could turn the fragile paper into ash, and had found the words on the last pages.

You seek power, reader, it had said, but all things come with a price. Power for power. Divinity for divinity.

If you wish to be a god among gods, one must be the vessel, the other the sacrifice.

Philza had promised it would be their last resort. Only until push came to shove, Techno had said.

And the Green God had definitely shoved.

And so Philza had pulled Techno back, and the two of them had talked: one god to another, for the last time. They had both known it was time, just as they had known, that first day on that battlefield of ice and snow, arrows flying overhead and both of them lit from within by divine fire, that their roads had crossed, and there was no going back.

Technoblade, blood god and emperor, had offered his scarred hand to Philza, Angel of Death and god of freedom, and they had clasped each other's fingers like old friends did after a long separation.

For a moment, there was only the two of them in that forest of dreams, and when Philza whispered the ancient words, it almost sounded like a solemn prayer. A prayer to the god Techno used to be, and to the god Philza was becoming.

Towards the end, Techno's hand had betrayed his pain. It shook, just a bit, as his veins burned gold, turning him into gilded patchwork—half-mortal, half-god—his very soul caught in the crossfire between mortality and divinity.

His breaths came quick and labored, and still Philza murmured, slipping silent apologies between the primordial spell. When the final word was said, Techno had fallen to his knees before Philza, a wicked reversal of fortunes, but he did not let go.

Technoblade forsook his godhood without protest. There was barely a struggle, barely a scream of agony. It had been his sacrifice to make, and he would be damned if he'd let himself regret it. He had wrestled with martyrdom, and won.

When Techno stood again, he was human—simple and breakable, with numbered years and numb hands. Inside him, there was a hollow pit where his godhood used to rest. He was going to make a landfill out of it.

And Philza was awake.

Now, he stood in a belltower overlooking a ruined city. Fires raged until the horizon, burning away homes and streets that once teemed with easy life. Families and friends gathered in bunches like sweet-smelling bouquets.

But like flowers unaware of the gardener's plucking hands, they had existed in the shadow of a being too large to comprehend, their lives already decided for them—all their tragedies and loves, their hopes and their secrets, laid into predetermined places on the Green God's mosaic.

But that would end today.

Because Philza was his antithesis, and he was going to set everybody free.

The bell tolled as he and Dream continued their deadly danced around the tower, swords meeting and then unmeeting.

Dream must have sensed the change. He must have seen it in the way Philza moved, taking each step with utmost confidence that the ground would meet him and not the other way around. He must have felt it in the renewed strength behind Philza's blows.

He must have known Philza was still holding back.

For the first time since their encounter, the Green God had the wits to finally be unnerved.