Chapter Text
Phil hears it first when he’s at the side of a road, in the middle of a cold forest, a few kind strangers sitting around him, all of them choosing to stay together for the night. Mindless, bloodthirsty monsters are rare in these lands, but they all have enough experience to be wary of the dark.
They’re talking around a small fire, Phil drinking warm tea from a cup that warms his palms as the others chat about their lives, their experiences, and their sights. He’s seen plenty, maybe more than most, really, but it’s always nice to hear of other’s tales.
He would speak of his own adventures, he would, only he’s not in the mood for the strange look in people’s eyes when they glance to his wings, gaze dragging over the necklace around his neck that has a faint red glow. People always ask the same questions, and after a while, Phil just gets tired of it.
At the very least, he’s not the only one who’s otherworldly, for there’s a woman sitting across him with the horns of a ram growing out of her head, and her ears are nowhere like a human’s.
She’s not as quiet as Phil, and she seemed to have gotten past the usual curiosity of others rather quickly, chatting happily with the others around her, her ears flicking as she laughs along with the other’s stories.
Phil sips at his drink with a bored face, his attention going to a couple sitting beside him, their hushed voices getting more sharp as one of them seems to bring something up. He listens in, looking off into the fire as they argue.
“You can’t be serious. Surely not?” The man sitting beside Phil asks, leaning in close to his partner, eyes wide. “That’s got to be bullshit!”
“It’s not! We can check at the next village we come across, I swear, the priest will say the same thing-”
“You tell me this now !?”
Phil raises his eyebrows as the two men bicker, getting so fired up to the point that the group around them tries to get them to calm. One of the men waves around a paper frantically, and Phil can’t quite see what’s on it, only red scribblings from what he can catch.
It gets to the point of shouting and pushing, and at that point, Phil takes it upon himself to stand up, his wings shifting out a bit as he puts his cup to the side on the ground.
“Woah, woah, mate, calm down.” Phil says, and everyone goes hushed when he gets to his feet. It’s not unusual, Phil’s always had that vibe. It could be the wings, he thinks, people seeing them and associating Phil with being powerful in some sort of way. It could be the way he’s not human, too, where sometimes his nails are just a little too sharp, and his eyes are a bit too bright, and it gets to a point where other travelers can’t hold eye contact with him, because he simply doesn’t pass for a ‘safe’ monster anymore.
Sometimes it’s annoying. Sometimes it works in his favor.
Either way, the couple looks away when Phil walks over to them, standing over them as they sit back down onto the ground. One of them still has that paper in his hands, crumpled in his grip. Phil feels curiosity burn in his chest, and he knows he’s going to get something out of this, one way or another.
“What are you both yelling over? Surely you can work it out?” Phil grins, trying to keep a friendly voice, to lower the tension running in the air. The two strangers glance at each other, then to Phil, who gives a worried look to them both.
He barely knows them at all, only knowing that they’ve agreed to stay the night with this small, makeshift group, but he knows they’re close to each other, from the way they’ve held on to each other throughout the entire night. Something that would make them go into an argument, Phil feels like it’s important.
“Nick, he...he’s been hearing tales from the villages we’ve been visiting.” One of them says, looking away from his partner with a sigh. “And he’s only decided to tell me about the possible end of the world now .”
Nick, who holds the paper in his hands with a hesitant face, shifts in his seat, leaning in towards his partner. “Well, it’s just recent, we don’t know-”
“What do you mean you don’t know, you just said that it would result in ‘total and utter despair and destruction’! Don’t sugarcoat it!” His partner snaps, waving his hands around as Phil holds back a snicker from the way he yells it.
“I’m trying to be optimistic!” Nick yells back, his voice squeaking for a moment, and he pauses to clear his throat, turning to Phil, who gives a questioning face. “Okay, okay, you mind listening to me ramble for a minute or two?”
“Go ahead mate, if it’ll help with your relationship problems.” Phil grins, crossing his arms. Someone snickers behind him.
Nick huffs, face a tad red as he smooths out the paper in his hands. “Bump in the road, I have a habit of delaying important details-”
“-end of the world shit, yes, that’s definitely something you should just keep from me for a whole two fucking weeks-” His partner mutters under his breath, Nick sighing loudly before continuing.
“ Okay , so, me and Lucas,” Nick nods a head to his partner, who stares off into the distance with a grumpy face. “We’ve traveled past more than a few towns in our, er, adventures. And each town, I tend to visit the churches, mostly because the priests there are usually kind, and I like a bit of luck and magic before we set off.” Nick shrugs, Phil humming and wrapping a hand around his necklace.
“Lately, though, I’ve gotten a few stories that have been, well, overlapping, between the priests and the more magical people of the town, and it’s painting a story I’m not sure I want to hear.”
Phil leans back on his heels, and he feels the warmth of the fire reach his wings, the people sitting around staring with a tense type of listening. There’s only been a handful of true tales and destinies written down in stone, and Phil’s heard them all before, they’re all a part of life.
The dragon that resides in the End, the rare summoning of Withers across the lands,the mindless, dangerous, nocturnal creatures that seek to only hurt, and the somewhat common sight of people like Phil, human-like, but not entirely.
It’s the way of life, in their world, and Phil knows it fairly well, a little too well, and he knows that the suggestion of something that important being brought up isn’t something to look over.
“What, is there a new type of world out there, or, or, an undiscovered creature?” Someone asks, eagerness flowing from their words as Phil shakes himself out of his thoughts.
“Not yet? I think.” Nick frowns, looking at the paper in his hands, sighing.
Lucas next to him reaches a hand out for the paper, and Nick gives it over, Lucas skimming over the words and finally giving the story everyone is waiting for.
“He’s been collecting tales from people across the towns we’ve been traveling in. So far, what he's gotten is that something big is coming, an apocalypse type of threat.”
“What, so, creatures like the withers?” The woman with horns asks, Phil stepping to the side as everyone leans in.
“More.” Lucas says, face going dark. “Monsters specifically born to destroy and hurt. But not mindless, like the night ones. More like…” He trails off, eyes flicking to Phil.
The woman with horns swears loudly, and the group around Phil raises up in voices, yelling over each other with concerns and questions, Nick trying to answer the best he can.
Phil takes a few steps back, and no one sees him leave, and no one notices when he raises his wings out and goes into the sky, flying over the trees and out into the night. He’s tired, and he knows he shouldn’t push it too much, because it’s going to end with a terrible mood in the morning, but his curiosity burns, and he can only wonder with a slight concern in his heart over the thought of something that big.
Half-monsters born only to create destruction in their path? It sounds like a cruel existence, and Phil knows more than anyone that every half-monster he’s ever come across wants only peace and equality.
He’s one of the lucky ones, one of the nicer looking ones. He’s seen people with unnatural shaped mouths and unsettling apparences. He’s seen people like him with hissing voices and jagged scars across their face, only for those same people to be the sweetest, kindest people he knows.
Sometimes, people like him have to face stupid people, people who are scared and act accordingly. Sometimes, the reputation of half-monsters gets hurt, from one stray tale of a desperate monster lashing out against cruel people.
Phil can’t help them all, even if he’s one of the lucky ones, even if he’s one of the more ‘approachable’ ones, with features that makes most travelers admire him rather than be scared.
But if this tale is true.
If this story is true?
He needs to do something .
So he flies, over the trees and into the night, set on getting to the nearest village. And once he does, he will ask, he will find details, he will find more and more words and stories passed around, and he will keep looking.
Because while such a story like that, the first thing that a usual traveler might focus on is the threat, Phil can only think about the pain of someone to become such a threat.
So he flies.
---
He gets to the village as the sun comes up, the air cold around him as he lands in the grass far off, choosing to walk the rest of the way through the field to the scattered buildings.
The grass is slightly wet underneath his shoes, and his back aches from flying the whole night, but he only yawns and tells himself that rest can wait, once he’s sure of this.
There’s only a few people walking along the street when Phil gets to the village, and a few give him the usual glances onto his wings, and he can’t help the relief he feels when their eyes are full of awe rather than fear.
His wings have that effect. He’s glad they do.
He makes a beeline straight to the church building, the bells ringing out across the small town as Phil stalks down the stone path, eyes set ahead with a sense of determination in his walk. People seem to move out of his way when he gets close, and usually he would lighten up his tone, and not be so fierce, but he needs to know.
He knocks against the wooden doors of the church three times, sighing as he feels fatigue creep up on him. He rolls his shoulders back and raises his chin, satisfied when he hears a click of the door being unlocked, and the creak of the wood moving.
The church is quiet, dim, and warm, and the priest is kind and soft-spoken, not even giving a glance to Phil’s wings, his necklace. On another day, Phil would be grateful. Instead, he gives his questions as soon as they’re both inside.
He gets an answer.
Somehow, it’s not the answer he wanted.
---
Sleep becomes scarce, in those weeks, as Phil flies from town to town, checking in people with all sorts of magic, visions and feelings. He carries around a journal, and writes down the details of it all, crafting together a proper telling.
As he figures it out, he’s not the only one, because the stories spread, and travelers, common folk, kings and conquerors, the stories go across the lands as Phil lays it out for himself.
Within a few weeks, Phil has met over a dozen different people from each village, and they all tell the same.
Three children, three monster children are to be born in the years to come. They’re supposed to be born with unimaginable abilities, powers that could destroy so much so easily. If they’re left to grow, the world as everyone knows it, it’ll fall into nothing but chaos.
As fear runs across the lands, so does a certain rushed panic, because from what the stories and visions and tellings say, the first one has already been born.
And so everyone rushes to find it, so that the start of something terrible can be put to an end before it makes a mark.
People are desperate, in the way that one fights against a Wither so it’ll stop ravaging against their home, in the way that one rebels and defends with nothing much to lose except life itself.
Phil is even more desperate and even more determined, and when he finds a lead on the first child, a small kid said to have bright pink hair, blood red eyes, Phil holds a knife to someone’s throat that night, and whispers threats, because he’s desperate to stop the sort of destruction everyone is terrified of.
But he will not end it through killing a child.
He can only hope that he can find said child before anyone else does.
(And he will.)