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He's scared. I can tell. My hand obstructs half his face but I don't need to see his face to tell. His eyes are wide, his feet dangling frantically, kicking me. His hands desperately clasp my arms trying to pull them away.
I can feel his mouth move under my palm, he must be screaming. But I can't hear it. I can't hear any of it. I can't hear the people downstairs, I can't hear the dogs outside. The only thing I hear is the silence.
He kicks me again, in the side, he's still trying not to hurt me. I drop him and he slides down the wall. He lands and his face contorts into something painful, his eyes scrunched up, his teeth visible, I'm sure there's a sharp intake of breath I just can't hear. It fades just as quickly as it appeared and he looks back up to me, determined.
He speaks but I still cannot hear. I'm just here to do what I'm told to do.
So, I bow down to his level, raise a hand, and grab him by the neck. I can feel my eyes go wide as I raise him up again. My hand tightly gripped around his throat. His hands cling to my arms again, his mouth desperately forming words I still cannot hear. He squirms in place, pushes himself further into the wall to get away from me, but I just follow. My nails dig into his skin and slowly but surely he stops struggling. I see the blood trail down my hand and I know it should be warm but I feel nothing. I pull my hand back, still gripping tightly around his throat and it gives. Blood flows from his neck as my hand gives one last pull.
Then, I finally let go. Not because I'm scared, but because I'm done. His body falls limp to the floor, head lulled down. His hat falls next to me, green colouring indiscernible from the white through the purple haze. The jangles on it make a loud clanging noise that penetrates my skull.
I can hear it.
Ranboo wakes up with a headache. He knows he dreamt about something, but he doesn't remember what. He doesn't remember what he was doing yesterday, he doesn't remember when he went to bed. He sits up and rests his head in his hand as the headache gets worse.
The memory book lays on his nightstand, where he leaves it every night. It holds his determination, his worry for Tubbo and Michael, but nothing about yesterday. The book lays heavy in his hands as he closes it. The smell of the leather, the rustling of the paper, they bring back memories of yesterday. His feet take him out of bed and down the stairs. In the basement he sees the enchanting table.
Right, he remembers, he was enchanting yesterday. To protect, to help. Next to the stacks upon stacks of books, is a chest. In it, shovels, axes, and lapis lazuli. These must be the tools he didn’t get to finish yesterday. He reaches in, and continues yesterday’s labour; etching the runes into the tool, enchanting them with the lapis. The rustle of the book’s lapis-stained pages is calming in a way. The act of enchanting brings him peace.
When the enchantments no longer come out like he’d like them to, and the lapis has been used up he gathers the newly enchanted tools, two shovels and an axe, and moves to his vault. It’s tricky to get the redstone to work without the full use of his hands, but it works out in the end. The stairs down are difficult, and Ranboo keeps his eyes on his feet to make sure he doesn’t tumble, which has the added benefit of keeping his head low, so he doesn’t hit it on the ceiling.
When he takes the last step of the stairs he bumps into something. The iridescent glow, the black surface, the solid and warm feeling of it. He knows almost instantly it’s someone wearing netherite. He doesn’t know who they are or how they got into his vault, and, on instinct, Ranboo drops the shovels and clasps the axe in his hands. He aims and hits right between the helmet and the chest plate, a solid slash.
The hit is stopped halfway through and the axe is stuck in wood. Ranboo has to do a double take, and slowly calms down when he sees it’s only an armour stand. The helmet sways and with the hit to the neck-support, the top part of the stand falls to the floor. As it bounces, the helmet makes a loud clanging noise.
Ranboo’s headache gets worse and worse, the clanging echoing in his head. Metal falling to the floor, dampened by cloth. He’s heard it before, he just can’t remember where.
For some time Ranboo just stands in his vault, axe loosely gripped in his hands, staring at the helmet that is now on the floor, trying to remember why this is familiar.
To him, it is almost like no time passed when he picks the shovels back up and leaves them behind in a chest.
The blue of the lapis lazuli stains his hands and he makes his way up to wash it off in the cold snow outside. He greets Enderpearl when he passes by, and kneels next to a patch of snow to run his hands through, sure it’s cold, but he can’t be leaving blue handprints everywhere. The snow doesn’t hurt him, only shocks him further awake. He almost loses his balance when Techno yells his name from inside the house.
“Ranboo! Get over here!”
First Ranboo worries he’s in trouble, but Techno sounds panicked, not scolding. He runs over, climbs up the stairs and stands in the doorway. The door is open and through it he can see Techno and Phil. Techno cradling Phil with his arms, laying his upper body against his chest. Where Phil’s throat should be there is a bloody hole, and Techno’s white shirt is coated in blood. Phil’s hat lays on the floor next to him, the white splattered with blood, contrasting the green dye and the golden chains all limply resting against the floor. Ranboo can still hear Techno yelling at him in the background. ‘Do you know what happened?’, ‘Who would do this?’, ‘I’m going to find who did this and kill them.’
But Ranboo is too enchanted by the hat. Then, he hears the clanging of the helmet, the clanging of the hat, and it all starts flooding back. The indescribable silence, broken by that loud, screeching noise. The blood trickling down his arm. The way Phil struggled as he held him.
He looks back to Phil, resting next to Techno. His face calmer now, no longer crumpled up in pain as it is in his memory. Phil, the person who gave him a place to stay when L’manburg disappeared, who introduced him to so many people, who had been there at the very beginning when he needed help, dead by his hand.
Techno brings him back to reality. “Ranboo, did you see anyone?” Ranboo frantically shakes his head. He doesn’t want to lie to Techno. But he also doesn’t want to go to jail, if Techno doesn't kill him on the spot. Ranboo speaks up softly, his voice loud in comparison to the silence. “Techno?”
Techno immediately raises his head to look at him again. “I-” he starts, and meets Techno’s eyes, he’s desperate, but not accusing. There’s not a single part of him that suspects Ranboo. “I have totems of undying.” Ranboo finishes his thought. Techno’s brow furrows. “So do I smartass, those are only useful if you carry them on death! They’re useless if he’s already-” He stops, the message is clear.
Ranboo takes a single step into the house. And, with more certainty, and desperation, in his voice he restates; “I have a lot of totems of undying.”
Phil wakes up in darkness, and there, at the edge, she stands.
“Death!” he calls to her. He runs towards her full speed and she turns. She looks exactly like he remembers.
“My angel! It’s so good to see you again!” She says, taking him into her arms.
This was normal. This was comforting. She sits down, taking him in her lap, pressing him near her. “Tell me, what happened this time?” She asks, as usual.
She sees these lives as little games he plays, little stories he can tell her when he comes back. At the beginning he’d tried to explain to her how important they were, how much more his lives were than just fun stories, but she never understood. In the end, he’d given up, and spoke as if he was returning home from work. He’d tell her the highlights of his day, the low points, and, as she is Death, she always wants to know how it ended. So Phil recounts, he tells her about Wilbur, about Techno, about L’manburg, about Tommy, and more recently, about Ranboo. Right up to modern day. She is delighted, an interesting story unlike any she’d heard before, jittering with excitement she asks; “So, how does it end?”
For the second time during the story his face falls, and she quickly follows suit, her excitement fading and making way for caution.
“Ranboo has…sleepwalking problems. He told us after we took him in. It seems something convinced him to…” He doesn’t need to finish his sentence, Death knows what comes after. She cradles his head closer and softly moves a hand through his hair. “That’s terrible.” Philza feels calmed by her presence, but he is worried. Worried about Techno and Ranboo, they’d been getting along so well and his death would undoubtedly put a rift between them. And he is worried about the others, about the future of them all, and he feels sad he wouldn’t be there to see it.
While he is wallowing in what could have been, Death suddenly springs up. “I’m being called.” She answers his question before it is even asked. “I’m being called by so many people at once.” She walks off into the darkness, and motions for Philza to follow. They arrive in a room with a glass floor. Death starts flicking switches that are posted on the wall, while working she tells him: “You see Phil, everytime a totem of undying is used, I personally return the person to the world. But, as you might expect, it doesn’t happen often.” She walks over to Phil and takes his hand. “Totems of undying are rare and precious after all.”
The glass floor fogs over, then clears and Phil could see clearly what it showed. There is the main room in Techno’s house. Techno to one side, holding Phil’s hand, his shirt stained with dried blood. Ranboo sat on the other side, seemingly wanting to reach out, but stopping himself. Phil feels a spark of fondness, of course Ranboo feels guilty, even if it wasn’t fully his fault.
Death seems to notice the way he focuses on the two men in the room and not what is between them. She taps him on his shoulder, and points to the space in between where Phil lies, almost unrecognizable through the mountain of totems piled around and on top of him. Phil feels the desperation shine through, he feels the guilt, the sadness, the hope. And before he knows it, he’s crying. Death turns to face him, still holding his hand, and moves her other hand to his cheek. She wipes away some of his tears and asks, as usual; “Phil, sweetheart, do you want to go back?” And Phil knows it’s different from usual, but he answers, as he always does “Yes,” and adds; “with all my heart.”
Death nods, and pulls him in closer. “I see. I’ll miss you.” Phil puts his arms around her and pulls her closer as well. “I’ll miss you too.” They move to a corner, and for a few minutes everything is as normal and they fall asleep in each other's embrace.
When he opens his eyes he’s no longer in a dark void, he is no longer with her, but he is back in Techno’s house. Surrounded by those he loves, and almost fifty totems of undying whose eyes no longer sparkle their bright green. Ranboo and Techno look at him, baffled as he sits up, and he pulls both of them in for a hug. “I’ve missed you both.”
He can hear Techno softly sniffle, trying his best to keep a straight face, and while Ranboo doesn’t make any noise, he can feel the tears stain his clothes. They both answer. “Same here.” “Me too.”
Techno puts an arm around Phil and hugs back, but Phil can tell Ranboo is reluctant. So, he holds him close and whispers to him: “Don’t worry. We’ll deal with it.” And he feels Ranboo clasp his clothes tighter and push his face in harder, the wet spot growing wetter as he nods. Phil holds Ranboo’s head closer and softly moves a hand through his hair.
Death looks down on the group from her world. And seeing this small bit of Phil’s life, she understands why he always wants to go back.