Chapter Text
Kristen stepped out of the shadows next to a large house, feathered cloak carefully wrapped around the bundle in her arms. The court had declared it weak , and she had no other choice- an exchange must be made. If she had been human, she might have mourned. But she wasn’t human. So she was here.
From elsewhere in the night, no one would have seen her exit the shadows anyways. She blended perfectly into the trees, wreathed in mist and evergreen bough so she wouldn’t be spotted.
Kristen walked up to the back door, but paused upon seeing the handle, which gleamed unnaturally in the moonlight. Iron. Well, that was no good. She stepped back and cast her vision over the house, looking for a weak spot or possible entrance. There were iron charms strung over the front door and the side door, but to one side of the house there was a breeze, a place where air mingled with breath and there was the smell of mortal blood. An open window.
Kristen twisted into the darkness again, and entered the house.
Bare, dirt-smeared feet light on the ground, she looked around, seeing absolutely everything. The paint on the walls was peeling, hard to see between the rows of cribs and-
Cradles. This was perfect.
Kristen began to walk, scanning the row. In each cradle, sleeping in a nest of blankets and wood-spoke walls, was a child. Young- very young. Too young to remember this, to walk or speak or take care of itself at all, really. And human. Brightly, powerfully human. Kristen breathed in, and the children’s spirits batted at her senses. Most were weak. This wasn’t the place for them. One, stronger than the rest, so she followed the energy and stopped at the corresponding cradle.
She unwrapped the bundle in her arms, and set it down in the cradle, next to the human baby. Eyes blinked open, and arms reached up. Kristen frowned, and pushed them back down.
“Hush,” she whispered. “Everything will be alright.”
From the pouch at her waist, she took out a pair of scissors. Gold, but sharp enough to cut a lock of hair from the human baby’s head. It stirred and woke, beginning to fuss. Kristen’s time was running out. She took the hair and stuffed it into her child’s mouth, where he protested at first but absorbed the essence easily enough, shifting and changing until he was an exact copy of the human baby, which had begun to wail.
Kristen hurriedly scooped it up with a word to make it hush, quickly pinching the replacement enough to make him scream before she flew out the window.
A light blinked on.
Perched on the roof, gritty tiles digging into her skin, Kristen could hear footsteps, and the creak of wood as the false baby was presumably picked up.
“Aw, it’s alright. Shh, shh, it’s okay.” There was a pause. “What’s this?”
Kristen held her breath. Had she dropped a feather from her cloak by accident?
“Pine needles?” Kristen was relieved. “Oh, brr, the window’s open. Who- oh, nevermind. I’m not paid enough for this.”
The window slammed shut, and Kristen looked down at her new child. It blinked up at her, blue eyes wide. No name. Not that she’d give it her son’s name - no, that was entirely out of the question. But something else.
“Yes,” She said softly. “You’ll be a fine addition to the court.”
And with that, she took her prize away, leaving only pine needles and a single black feather.
In Tommy’s opinion, being filthy was an art form. It took a lot of effort to turn his arms and legs black from mud, and it took a lot of skill to do so and avoid crumbling all of it off as he moved. The trick? Keep the mud light on the joints. Dried, it crumbled easily when muscles flexed and joints bent, so Tommy couldn’t exactly slather it on enough to grow radishes if he really wanted to. On the elbows and knees, at least.
Tommy picked up another handful of mud, humming as he squished the rest of the puddle between his toes, and slathered the wet dirt onto his forearm, adding another layer that would dry in a few minutes, what with the warm summer sun overhead.
“Tommy, what are you doing?”
“What does it look like, bitch?” Tommy didn’t look up, slapping more mud onto his legs. He needed to keep the layers fairly thin - that way they wouldn’t just slide off. “I’m one with the ground.”
Phil sat down next to him, letting out a soft huff and a wince.
“Oh no,” Tommy said, picking up a clump of moss and setting it to the side so it wouldn’t get crushed. “His old man joints are paining him. He needs his arthritis medication.”
“I got jabbed with a rock, you little shit. And I sure hope you’re planning on hosing yourself off before you come back inside, because I’m not mopping up all that mud.”
“Your back would break if you tried, I see-” Tommy laughed as his head was pushed to the side. “Backup! I need backup!”
The mud around his feet bubbled, and a white skull poked out, empty eye sockets filled with a red light.
“Fight him yourself, runt, I’m not helpin’.”
“Tech, I told you to stay in the house,” Phil scolded the skull. “The spell will fall apart if you get too far away.”
“I was bored,” The demon said flatly, pulling himself fully from the dirt. Tommy wrinkled his nose when dirt splattered his face, pulling away enough that Techno’s mud-drenched cape wouldn’t get him all grimy. He liked mud, but only where he wanted it to be. And mud on his face was not fun. “Plus, I heard you getting roasted by a child and wanted a better seat.”
Techno plopped himself down on the other side of the mud puddle, limbs folded up underneath him and a haze of red magic around his skull, visibly being pulled towards somewhere in the house. As always, he seemed primarily formed out of whatever substance he’d emerged from - this one being mud and moss - with way too many bones underneath, pearly white sticking out of the dirt of his limbs in odd locations. Tommy didn’t want to know whatever nonsense was going on underneath the cape, so he scooped up a handful of wet dirt and stood - mud not falling off his legs, ha - to squish it into the demon’s eye socket.
“Oh, hell, why-” Techno pulled away, but it was too late, there was mud all over him now. “Phil, Phil, control your child.”
“Them’s the breaks.” Phil, always ready to start shit, handed more mud to Tommy, who grinned and stepped over the puddle to stuff it in Techno’s other eye socket.
“Manducare lutum et mori, old man.” Techno couldn’t escape, so he merely submitted to the mud facial. And eyeballs. And anywhere else mud would stick, really, which was a lot of places since skulls had a lot of holes.
Phil grinned.
“Thank you, thank you very much. Now, do you want to go inside, or do you want to stay out here and watch Tommy while I get things done?”
“I don’t need watching!” Tommy protested.
“Kid’s right, bye Phil.” Techno quickly melted back down into the mud.
“Bloop,” Tommy said, “He’s gone.”
“Bloop,” Phil agreed. “It’s almost lunchtime. You hungry?”
Tommy realized that, yeah, he’d been hungry for a while, he’d just been distracted by the mud. He nodded, absently kicking at a bone that Techno had been left behind. Sometimes that happened - it was the reason the demon ate animals, after all. He needed to replace the bones.
“If you want to be a swamp goblin for a while longer, I can bring it outside,” Phil said, “Otherwise you can get hosed off and come inside to eat.”
Tommy hummed thoughtfully, picking at some of the mud on his arms. Now it felt like he was being weighed down, turned into some kind of statue.
“I feel crusty,” he said finally, and got up to turn the hose on. With Phil’s help, all the mud got washed away, and once Tommy was wrapped in a towel for this exact purpose he got to come inside, ignoring the spinning and humming of the spell over the coffee table as he pulled out a chair and sat cross-legged on said chair. He absently swayed back and forth, head tipping as Techno sat down across from him at the table, delicately setting a platter on the table.
“Where’s Wil?” Tommy asked, staring in morbid fascination at the dead animal on the demon’s plate. It was skinned, probably so Tommy wouldn’t freak out. He’d done that before. “Also, what’s that?”
“Cat off the side of the road,” Techno said, tearing one of the limbs off and stuffing it into his mouth. “And Wil’s in the attic. I think he’s trying to find something.” As he had a skull for a head, and his lower jaw was only bone, Tommy didn’t know what, exactly, happened to the limb as it vanished. He leaned down, trying to see into Techno’s mouth, but the demon tucked his ‘chin’ further into the fur collar of his cape so all was hidden. His limbs looked different now, shiny and warped with paint as if sealed wood and the walls had swirled together around his bones. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to see down your throat,” Tommy said. “Open up, bitch.”
Techno sighed, a low gravelly sound, but let his lower jaw hang loose. Tommy could see the fur of the cape, and the wood-paint swirling of demon flesh as it gave solidity to vertebrae.
“You know I don’t have a throat, right?” Techno asked, since he didn’t need a functioning anything to talk. “Believe me, Phil was worried about that the first few times you fed me rocks.”
Tommy had wondered if the demon would use rocks as bones. Techno still left behind pebbles on occasion, though he said they felt more like scabs and interfered with moving his bones around.
“What do you do with the muscles and stuff, though?” Tommy asked, really wanting to poke the back of Techno’s mouth but knowing he’d probably lose a finger. Despite living with Phil for the past - what was it now? Ten years? - he still knew next-to-nothing about the residential demonic entity that powered the spells for the house, the garden, the car, and whatever else Phil whipped up when he got bored. Sorcerers were like that. Anyway, demons. Techno was notoriously cagey about being asked questions, since in the past six years he’d answered about five of Tommy’s demon inquiries.
Now, apparently, was Tommy’s lucky day, since Techno merely sighed again.
“Break ‘em down. There’s a reason carnivores exist - animal flesh produces a lot of energy, so it lets me pretend I have a host and hang around longer.”
“Tommy, I know you just got wet, but you still have to wash your hands.” Phil was rattling around in the kitchen, messing with stovetops and such.
“Techno doesn’t have to wash his hands,” Tommy complained.
“Techno eats roadkill. If bacteria could affect him, I’m sure they would have already.”
Tommy groaned but heaved himself upright, throwing down the towel - literally - as he walked to the bathroom.
“If you absorb that,” he said to Techno, pointing at said towel, “Then I’m exorcising you.”
“If I get the urge to eat fabric, I’ll let you know,” The demon said, tearing the cat’s head off with a quick twist of his skull.
When Tommy got back from the bathroom, hands appropriately soapy, there was a bowl of soup and a sandwich on the table where Tommy had been sitting. He perked up, and crawled back onto the chair, knee knocking against Phil’s leg where he’d sat down too.
Tommy picked up his spoon with an authoritative tap against Phil’s bowl, and slowly sifted through the soup - tomato, the good brand and only brand, in Tommy’s opinion - with the air of someone panning for gold. This wasn’t a recent development, but soup-eating was an infrequent occurrence so it was basically new.
“Mate, what’re you doing?”
“Checking for bugs,” Tommy replied. “I found a grasshopper in my soup once.”
“A gras-” Phil sounded like he was trying to hide a laugh. “Mate, how would a grasshopper get in your soup?”
Tommy spared Techno a dark glance.
“People have their ways.”
Phil picked up one of his sandwich halves, dunking it into his soup.
“Tech, did you put a grasshopper in Tommy’s soup?”
“Mm. Not this time. And, runt, I’ll have you know it was a cricket. People eat crickets all the time.”
“On purpose,” Tommy said. “They don’t find mysterious insects in innocent bowls of soup.”
“I could put mealworms into the banana bread next time Phil makes some,” Techno suggested. “That way it’s not in soup.”
“Ew,” Tommy said.
“Insects are high in protein,” Techno retorted. “And there’s lots of edible kinds.”
“Oh?” Phil asked after finishing his bite of sandwich. “Like what?”
“Ants, crickets, mealworms, bees, cicadas, some beetles, termites-”
“I found termites in the foundation once,” a new voice said dreamily.
“Yes, Wil, I remember.” Phil dunked his sandwich again, and after clearing his soup as insect-free, Tommy echoed him. “That’s why I got Techno.”
“Summoned me,” Techno said. “I’m not a pet.”
Wilbur, standing in the door, nodded slowly.
“Oh, sure, sure, you eat pets instead.”
“What happened with that cow-”
“Wil, you’re making my head hurt,” Phil said. “Come in here.”
Wilbur pulled himself free of the wood of the door he’d been standing in. In, quite literally, since as a ghost he could go through solid objects (with a few minor exceptions) and a door was only a slight inconvenience to someone who could both walk through walls and float if he felt like it.
“Techno tries feeding me bugs,” Tommy told his brother with the air of someone going through a great ordeal. “I have to check my soup so I don’t accidentally eat any.”
“Are there bugs in there?” Wilbur noticed the sandwiches and perked up. “Ooh! Grilled cheese!” He tried to grab a slice, then frowned as his grey and partially-translucent hand went through it instead.
“Ha ha, noncorporeal bitch can’t eat food.” Tommy scooped up the sandwich half Wilbur had failed to pick up. “And no. Not this time.”
“You can eat most things,” Techno said, idly poking at his forearm so the cat’s rib sticking out would flatten. “If it doesn’t actually kill you, then you can get away with eating almost everything organic.”
Tommy scowled at the demon.
“Doesn’t mean I want to eat a bug.”
“Picky,” Techno said, swallowing the last of the cat. “Variation is good for you.”
“Mate, if you’re going to parent Tommy, I’m going to take a nap.” Phil watched as Techno frantically shook his head, grinning and picking up a spoon. “No? Alright then. What did you find up there, Wil?”
“Four mirrors,” Wilbur said, “fourteen dead mice, one living squirrel, and six boxes I couldn’t see inside because there was iron.”
“Mm. I thought there were more mirrors up there.”
“I only counted the unbroken ones.”
“That explains it.”
Wilbur wandered through the table - Tommy pulled his soup closer so it wouldn’t be tainted with ghost bitchiness - and sat down at the last chair, idly kicking his feet. According to Phil, despite not actually needing to eat, the ghost still liked being included in things. That also explained why Techno had been eating roadkill at the table.
“Tommy, you’re all damp,” Wilbur noticed.
“It rained during the night.” Tommy crunched down on a tomato-soaked sandwich half. Good. Except then there’d be crumbs in his soup, which wasn’t good. Oh well. He glanced up, and saw that Wilbur’s expression was baffled.
“It’s noon?”
“Tommy decided to get acquainted with a mud puddle in the backyard,” Phil said, the spoilsport. “For the sake of the floors, he needed to be hosed off before eating.”
“Like a dog,” Techno said unhelpfully, then the glow of his eye sockets - now clean and completely free of mud - brightened. “Hey, maybe Tommy’s the pet.”
“No,” Tommy said. “Objectively untrue. Go to hell.”
“I’ve been, it’s boring.” Techno picked his plate up, and with a twist of scarlet magic, made it appear with a clatter in the sink.
“Cheater,” Wilbur said, perched on the back of a chair as if he could actually interact with it. He was doing his best.
“Get good.” Techno pointed to Tommy with one thick, vicious-looking talon. “He put mud in me.”
“Try not having so many holes,” Tommy retorted. “Mud goes in holes. You have holes, ergo, you need mud.”
Techno merely huffed in amusement and stood, evidently deigning to walk to the living room.
“The mud wouldn’t stay, though,” Wilbur pointed out without whatever he had that passed as fingers. Ectoplasm? Energy? Whatever it was. Tommy didn’t know a whole lot about ghosts. “It’s not like he has a brain to keep the mud from falling down his throat. And down his nasal cavity. Tech, how many holes do you have?”
“I dunno. And I do have a brain. Kinda. I think.” Techno actually sank into the couch, leaving only his skull propped on the cushion. This was a habit he’d picked up pretty early on, since Tommy had unfortunately liked sitting right on top of him and it was annoying, in the demon’s opinion, to have a body again but have also a small child getting in the way and melding with everything else. “Now leave me alone. I need to arrange my bones.”
“Bones bones bones,” Tommy said. “Have you considered not having so many?”
Techno, in reply, shot a bone at Tommy. Tommy managed to catch it before being brained, and perked up when he saw that it was the cat’s skull, picked clean of fleshy bits and not even vaguely wet, as Techno’s bones sometimes were.
“I’m keeping this,” Tommy said, setting the skull down next to his bowl. “Mine now.”
“Tommy-” Phil sighed, and seemed to think better of getting into another debate. “Oh, nevermind. Try to not leave it somewhere else before you go to your room.”
Tommy gave him a thumbs-up and went back to his sandwich. Unfortunately, his hands smelled of dead animal and demon now, which meant that if he wanted to eat, he’d have to wash them again. Grilled cheese sandwiches were not meant to smell like demon.
“I’m washing my hands,” Tommy said and got up.
“So,” Phil said, turning to Wilbur, “how many of those mirrors were enchanted, do you think?”
“Five of the broken ones,” Wilbur replied, inspecting Tommy’s new skull. “And one of the unbroken ones.”
“Oh boy.” Phil sighed. “Can you interact with any of them?”
“Not safely. One of the broken ones was a ghost mirror, remember? I’d get stuck in the shards, and they’re all over the place so I’m not sure which is which.”
“Oh boy,” Phil said again. “Well, I’m not letting Tommy up there with glass all over the place, and I’m still in the middle of that spell… the mirrors’ll have to wait, then.”
“Excuse me, I’d be so safe around glass.” Tommy sat down again, having been able to hear this entire exchange from the bathroom and adjoining hallway. “I’m so safe, my middle name is Careful.”
“Your middle name is Danger, mate. It’s even on your birth certificate.”
Tommy blinked, turning that over in his mind, then he kicked Phil under the table
“You don’t even have my birth certificate, bitch! How’d you know?”
Phil laughed, setting his spoon down before Tommy made him spill soup on the floor.
“I’m joking, mate, just joking! I’m not letting you in the attic, though.”
Tommy groaned dramatically and went back to eating. Yep, having hands that didn’t smell made the experience much more enjoyable. Tommy practically inhaled the rest of his food, then hopped up to clear his dishes.
“Washer’s empty,” Phil said absently, still eating because he was a slow old man.
“Techno didn’t load his plate.”
“I’ll make him do it when he wakes up.” Phil’s spoon scraped against the bowl and the metal-on-glass sound made Tommy cringe. “Play outside for now, okay? I’ll be working on the spell in here and I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“Ooh, more mud.”
“Preferably not. It’ll be getting colder, and the hose doesn’t improve when it’s getting dark. The garden’s free game, though.”
“Alright.” Tommy got a last drink of water and ditched his towel completely to run back outside.
The garden was big enough that Tommy could spend all afternoon in there and not get bored. At last count there was about twenty beds of earth, all overgrown with plants of every kind and occasionally interspersed with fruit trees given their own mounds. Tommy ducked under a low-hanging branch, feeling the rustle-rustle of leaves and stems all around him as he walked. It was… comforting. The air was heavy, both from the summer sun and the sense of growing all around, the fruits ripening and leaves sprouting, roots tangling underground and worms dancing between them. Tommy picked a scarlet cherry tomato on a whim, feeling the flesh break between his teeth and the juices and seeds squirting out. He wouldn’t eat too many, though, they made his tongue hurt if he did that.
Tommy kept walking, taking his pick of the garden’s bounty. He felt a little like some kind of scavenger, a mouse or raccoon sneaking enough to not be missed and eat his fill when safe in a burrow.
As he’d been walking in a straight line between the beds, occasionally around trees, it was several minutes later when he emerged on the other side. Here, now, the air was colder, wilder. Tommy could smell rocks and moss, the dampness of the earth. He was standing at the edge of the forest.
Phil didn’t want Tommy to go into the forest. It was dangerous, he’d said. There were wild animals, unpredictable elements, and the fae.
Tommy, on the other hand, didn’t care. Everywhere was dangerous, so to speak, and it wasn’t like he was an idiot. He knew how to be polite to animals, to watch his step and make sure he knew the way home, and the fae… they wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t bother them. Like a wild animal, if much smarter. And magical. And not resembling animals so much as weird amalgamations of organic life.
Like, for example, the Seelie that had been watching Tommy for the past few minutes. It looked human enough, with two arms, two legs, and a head, if humans had faces and curling horns more ungulate than ape, skin and hair partly made of moss and eyes clear, too clear and blue. Holes to the sky, that’s what they were.
“Hi Tubbo,” Tommy said.
“Hi Tommy,” Tubbo replied, and stepped out of the shadows where he’d been lurking. He was good at lurking, but Tommy was good at seeing where he was trying to hide.
Tommy flopped to the ground cross-legged, letting the first move go to his friend. Tubbo took the move, and sat down too. His cloak, an odd mixture of the moss and something more like pinecone scales, pooled around him. “Are you bored or something?”
“Or something,” Tommy agreed. He didn't answer the question head-on, obviously. That would’ve been stupid. He shouldn’t offer more than what Tubbo asked. “But you’re here too. Are you bored or something?”
“Touché.” Tubbo idly picked at some of the moss on the back of his hand. His fingers were shorter than a human’s, thicker and more like hooves than anything else. “I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“My mother.”
Tommy frowned.
“Are you gonna fae-nap me?”
“No.” Tubbo crossed his legs too, but oh, oh boy. Tommy didn’t like that. The fae’s legs were almost like a goat’s, but with too many joints. And with more moss than fur. And feet that looked like, again, hoof-ish hands. Could he hold things with his feet? Like a chimp?
Tommy blinked, pushing those thoughts away, and looked up.
“Do I have to give you something so you’ll actually answer my question?”
Tubbo grinned. He had very sharp teeth. They looked more like jutting shards of bone than enamel.
“You’ve got it, bossman.”
Tommy uncurled his fingers, holding out a handful of raspberries. Bigger than wild raspberries, with smaller seeds and sweeter flesh. Tubbo took the handful, and individually began to eat each berry. Red juice squirted down his chin, turning pale skin red and seeds sticking to the leaflets of moss.
“She’s in a meeting with the court,” Tubbo explained. “I’m not considered a part of the court yet, so she has to leave me behind when they meet.”
“Why aren’t you considered a part of the court?”
Tubbo paused, then considered his handful of berries and began to eat again.
“I’m not very old for a fae. Not old enough to be in the court.”
“Oh, okay.” Tommy wrapped his arms around his knees and watched the fae devour each berry, one by one. The magic misting off such a creature made his hair stand up, a little like the aftermath of a satisfying shiver. It felt like mist, actually, tiny droplets brushing against his skin and making him cold. It wasn’t really mist, obviously, but that was the closest explanation Tommy could come up with. He closed his eyes and felt the magic wash around him, dripping down his spine and prickling on his fingertips. What would it be like to be fae? To be a little of this, a little of that, and one whole being altogether. Something more like a plant than an animal, and more wild than human. A quilt of nature’s love, stitched together and able to wander her skin to experience what she could not.
Maybe Tommy would be better off if he wasn’t human. He didn’t feel very much like one, anyway, and it was hard to see things the same way that other humans did. Even kind-of-humans, like Phil or Wilbur.
———
Phil absently cracked his knuckles, first on one hand, then on the other.
“Alright,” he said, “here we go.”
“Is that really necessary?” Techno asked of Phil’s pumping-up ritual, now lounging on the couch. “It’s not like it’s gonna explode.”
“It might,” Phil said, inspecting the spell twisting and throwing off energy above the coffee table. “Spells that deal with raw magic are tetchy, you know that.”
“If it means I’ll be stuck in this blasted house less, I’ll take tetchy.”
Phil tried hard to flatten a smile.
“You say that as someone who won’t be hurt if the spell does explode.”
The demon shrugged.
“Oh, I’ll hurt. This skull wasn’t an easy find, Phil, and I’d like to keep it as long as I can.”
Phil rolled his eyes and stuck one hand into the spell, slowing the rotation and unraveling the weave of demonic and arcane magic. Pure magic weaves were kind of like crochet, if crochet was done with yarn that wasn’t exactly real, per se. Most people stuck to physical magic constructs, for that reason. Weaves were tricky. Unfortunately, Phil got bored easily, and he’d take tricky if it gave him something to do for a few days.
This particular weave was the magical equivalent of a funnel, redirecting all the ambient magic that made this place so good for spellwork into an easily-used collection. The only problem was, there were four whole people (used in the loosest of terms) in the house also generating magic, so the weave needed to only gather the ambient magic to avoid, say, killing anyone. Tommy excluded, as he wasn’t exactly made of magic like the rest of them. Well. Maybe. He was an interesting case.
Point was, Phil couldn’t activate the weave until he was sure it wouldn’t kill anyone. He tugged on a string of loose demonic magic, adding it to the weave. Patterns. It was all about patterns.
“Ow,” Techno said, poking at the spot where magic flowed from him into Phil’s hands.
“Hush, you big baby. It doesn’t actually hurt, you know.”
“Still, Phil. Ow. It’s an expression of discomfort, and I’m discomforted.” The demon wasn’t really bothered. He’d been lending Phil his magic for… a long time. He’d said before that it didn’t actually hurt, just pulled a little. Techno just liked being an asshole about it, since he was still a little pissy about being bound to Phil.
“Boo hoo,” Phil said. “What’s the look on Tommy?”
“Humph.” Techno tipped his skull to the side, eye sockets flaring brighter. “He’s at the edge of the garden, talking to a- huh.”
“Talking to a what?” Phil prodded an unruly knot into its proper position.
“Hmmm,” was all the demon said.
“Tech.” Phil carefully extracted his hands from the weave, going straight to his hips. “What’s going on?”
The house and surrounding property was warded, and heavily. Phil had spent close to four years setting up the barriers and wards so nothing nasty or even vaguely malevolent could get inside. If Tommy was near the edge, though, close to the forest…
Techno merely hummed, a sound that rippled through the floor and made the weave still floating above the coffee table warp.
“Technoblade.” Phil flicked out a tendril of his own magic, which snapped against the demon’s skull and made him flinch.
“Heh? What?”
“I asked you a question.”
“Oh. Yeah. Mhm. ‘S a fae, talking to Tommy.”
Phil felt his expression tighten.
“Ah,” he said. “Not… her?”
“Oh, no, just a little one. Not too powerful.” Techno huffed, as if amused. “You should be a little less worried about what you’re keeping out, old man, and more about what you’re keeping in.”
Tommy was in the forest.
“Great,” Phil hissed, and pointed at the demon. “Don’t go anywhere. The weave’ll collapse and take the house with it.”
“Consider me warned,” Techno said dryly, and didn’t move as Phil left, letting his glamour fall just enough for the wind to catch at his spread wings as he flew to the gardens.