Chapter Text
This was bullshit. Bull . Shit. Last he'd checked the Antarctic emperor didn't worship any god, or at least that's what he’d thought. And yet, here he was; outside of his dingy ass cell for the first time in who the fuck knew how long, and chained to a rock on a cold as balls cliff at the-sun-isn’t-fucking-up-yet-o’clock in the morning.
For whatever fucking reason, the emperor decided it would be a wonderful idea to suddenly become religious, and of course the next step is human fucking sacrifices. He wanted to be free, but not like this Prime damn it!
He’d been in that cell for as long as he could remember, and the dozens of new colors and objects on top of the bitchass headache he’d had since he woke up was not helping him think. Why the fuck did Philza choose him specifically?
Any memories he had from before the dungeon were blurry, but he still remembered remnants of a woman with kind eyes telling him again and again to avoid his father. Avoid the emperor. He’d failed to do that and it got him a cell.
Everything he knew was learned through bars from other prisoners or Wilbur.
Fortunately, this meant that even if he hadn’t the slightest fucking idea what a cow looked like beyond description, he did know a decent amount about politics.
Wilbur was adopted, if the sputtered curses of new inmates had any weight, so if he was also a prince surely it would cause problems. Even if he was younger, a prince related by blood would be before Wilbur in the line of succession.
Fuck, politics were confusing. He had mulled it over again and again, smushing any new bits of information he could get into his theories over the years, but he couldn’t figure out why the fuck Phil couldn’t just name Wilbur heir anyways, even if the council didn’t like it. He remembered that his mother was a maid, but his bastardness couldn’t be it if Wilbur was fucking adopted .
On top of that, why didn’t Philza just execute him? He had to be a heartless bitch if he would throw a kid into a cell in the first place, so there was literally no good reason to wait years and then execute him through divine sacrifice.
His headache flared up again in his frustration. Fuck kings, fuck politics, fuck all of this, he was becoming an official King Hater if this bullshit kept up. More of a king hater than he already was anyway. What would they do? Throw him in jail? Been there done that bitch.
It didn’t matter either way really, there were no gods here. He had always been able to sense magic, Wilbur’s faint guitar music and fog like a forgotten memory, and Philza’s ice, ash, and feathers. There was even a memorable pair of guards that had been friendly to him, the younger one with purple eyes feeling like something more , something far beyond humanity and its land. Even with his very limited sample pool, none of them were so strong they struck him as godlike. Philza came close, but none of them ever felt as encompassing as he would imagine a god could.
The magic of the land was absent somehow in the castle, but here it was steeped into the very fibers of his surroundings. It was everything , the magic laid on top of it was more of a claim. The thing that would kill him felt like draping fabric and red wine, regal and smooth.
It was relieving in a way, knowing he wouldn’t rot forgotten beneath the cobbles of the Empire's castle, alone and uncared for. But really he didn’t want to die at all. He was only eleven (he was pretty sure anyway), he didn’t want to be here. If it meant he could live he’d go back to his filthy, tiny, cold cell. Probably. If whatever it was made it quick he might take death over going back. He wasn’t naive enough to assume they would though.
He took another look at the shackles digging into his ankles and wrists. They bled sluggishly as he moved, blood dripping down his awkwardly bent arms as the chafed skin reopened. Yeah, escaping hadn’t gone well.
Tears dripped salty and hot down his face, tracing the bridge of his nose and falling from his bowed head to the earth. Fuck. He’d managed to avoid crying this entire time, but holding in the sobs was only making his head hurt worse. What the fuck, there was nobody around anyway.
He let himself cry until his head felt like it was splitting in half, and by then the pain had him in a half coherent haze. It didn’t take long for him to go under after that.
Technoblade was hungry. Eret had been so kind as to let him hunt in their territory while his was… unavailable . He really shouldn’t have pissed off that forest spirit. Alas, what was done was done, so he was a day away from home as the dragon flies looking for a snack. Or he was until a faint sound caught his attention. It was an ugly one, like a human crying, but he was in the middle of the woods so it couldn’t be. A particularly loud sob rang out, distinctly human-like. Nope. Not his problem.
Another sob.
Damn, the human would have to be young to hit that note. No, it wasn’t a human. Humans didn’t live by themselves in the middle of the woods, and if they did it wasn’t his job to deal with it. There weren’t even roads this far into the wilderness.
The next cry was more of a choked whine…Notch damn it.
He wheeled towards the sound, and it got louder with every beat of his wings. The closer he got the clearer the sound was, and he was honestly starting to think there was a human in the forest. As he cleared another ridge a cliff came into view, and low and behold a human was chained to a tall stone, barely touching the ground.
When he touched down the human appeared almost in a daze. The sun was rising behind it, and along with the dripping blood it was a nearly poetic scene. They didn’t respond even as he morphed into human form and came closer; concussed? The next thing he noticed as he closed in made him nauseous. That was a child, a young child.
They couldn’t be older than nine, and even that was a stretch. They were small, malnourished, and grimy. Technoblade could count each and every bruised rib through their clothes. The term clothes was generous really. It was more like somebody had cut holes into a burlap sack, rolled it in dust and called it a day.
Their skin was mottled with blue, yellow, and concerningly a few black bruises. Long, matted hair –that was brown now, whatever color it was supposed to be– hung over their face, hiding it from view. From what he could tell they were unhealthily pale, but he wouldn’t know for sure until they were cleaned up. Wait. No. He wasn’t bringing the kid back with him. It wouldn’t hurt to see if they were alive though right?
He walked up to the hanging child and crouched, tilting their chin up with a finger to look at their face. The second he touched them they jerked weakly, grey eyes he could tell were once blue snapping open to stare fearfully.
“Who the fuck are you?” They hissed, every word sounding painful until, unsurprisingly, they were cut off by a dry fit of coughs. Technoblade waited until they were done, huffing when the movement reopened their wrists for what looked like the billionth time. They must have tried to escape. A foolish endeavor for a human, those manacles were tight .
“Technoblade.” He waited for the recognition, but the kid just glared and bared their teeth. Ah, Technoblade hadn’t spoken to anyone from the Empire in a long, long time. He still knew the language of course, but it didn’t look like the kid knew his. It only took a small bit of magic, and with a wave of his hand the human was charmed to have other languages filter into his own. They flinched when his hand came up, but Technoblade ignored it and repeated his reply.
“What do you want, an award? The fuck did you do to me?”
Technoblade snorted. Sarcasm didn’t hide the stench of fear, confusion and pain.
“It was a charm so you can understand what I'm sayin', and you’re supposed to recognize it whelp. It’s not like my name strikes fear in every corner of the map or somethin’.”
It was the kid’s turn to snort, wincing immediately after. Yep, concussed. Still managed to scowl at his confession of magic though.
“You look like a little bitch, nobody would be scared of you Blade .” They snarled, hair ruining the already laughable effect by falling over their eyes.
He reached over to brush it away and the kid snapped painful looking teeth at his fingers. Painful to have, not to be bitten by. Honestly they looked like they would’ve fallen out if the kid had succeeded. They winced again.
“Child.” Technoblade grumbled.
“Bitch.” Said child snapped.
“Y’know, you’re really not in any position to be insultin’ people. How’d you even end up here?”
“I don’t fucking know, some bitch hit me with something through the bars and I woke up here. I think the emperor is having a religion arc.”
“Bars?”
“My fucking cell. This is a shitty first time outside.”
Technoblade's eyes widened.
“Heeh!? You’ve been in a cell your whole life? You’re a toddler.” Honestly, it made a concerning amount of sense. This kid’s level of dishevelment was exclusive to slaves and long-time prisoners.
“I’m not a toddler and I don’t want your fucking pity!” He ignored them.
“Who imprisons a toddler?”
"I'm eleven!" They glared through the hair that was still blocking their face.
"Eleven?" He filed away that concerning piece of information away for later, the kid was too small.
“YES! I’m a big man! Big men don’t need pity.” Technoblade rolled his eyes.
“I’m not pityin’ you. If I get you out of this do you have somewhere to go?” The boy froze.
“Yes….” The man snorted.
“You’re a bad liar.”
“I have somewhere to go!” The boy protested.
“Yeah? Where?”
The boy paused awkwardly.
“Alright then, you’re comin’ with me.” In what was one of his more impressively impulsive decisions, he snapped the chains like they were made of dry spaghetti and scooped the frighteningly light kid over one shoulder.
“Are you fucking kidnapping me?” The boy squawked.
“You aren't stayin’ here, so you're goin’ to come stay with me, and I won't be eatin’ you. Not enough meat there to make it worth it anyway.” He bet Dream didn't have a human, well, he did if you counted George. He didn't have a tiny human.
“The fuck do you mean eat?” Technoblade responded to that by morphing back into his dragon form. The kid fainted. Well, easy transportation he supposed.
He took to the sky, holding the hatchling close to his chest. He flew through the day, leaving the Empire’s border behind, and by nightfall his craggy mountain had come into view. Minutes later he touched down outside his cave. Landing was awkward, he had to slow down significantly more than he would normally and drop on three feet, but he managed.
The first thing he did was check the little human in his grip, who was desperately curled into his talons for warmth. Ah, humans got cold, right. The inside of the cave would be warmer.
The dragon brought the boy (whose name he realized he never got) through the winding maze of tunnels down to the lower caverns where the hot springs were. Once they were there he shifted into his human form, only to notice the boy was fast asleep. Wasn’t that bad for a concussion? Eh, who knew.
He huffed, settling to remove the bugs from his hair and cleanse the beginnings of an infection from his bloody wrists with a burst of magic before walking them back up the stairs to his nest. He settled the boy into a pile of blankets a little ways off from himself and quickly fell asleep.
He woke up warm and with a pounding headache. The last bit wasn’t particularly uncommon but warmth should have been the first sign that something was wrong. It didn't feel like fever warmth though, so he relished in it for a few more minutes before he fully registered that observation and shot upright, making his vision swim
A massive stone ceiling stretched high above him, torches casting a dim glow on the walls that still made him wince. A popping sound bubbled from somewhere, was that lava? No wonder he felt so warm.
The basalt ground was worn, smooth in that soft sort of way all the way up until it met carefully carved pillars that surrounded the circular chamber. Hundreds of alcoves lined the walls, all of them full of chests he could only assume held valuables.
A loud huff came from behind him, sending a gust of wind past his head. He froze. He was in a nest. There was a dip in the ground filled with impossibly soft blankets and hides, lambskins and bear pelts piled high into a bed-like mound.
He turned, and a massive, glowing red eye blinked slowly in return.
“Welcome back to the land of the livin’.” The dragon rumbled with a voice like a snowstorm personified. Blood red scales bigger than tower shields covered its body, with an armor plated stomach colored vibrant ruby. Each scale on its stomach was edged in gold and shimmered in the lava light, like a gilded rose. Ivory spikes lined its spine, trailing down to the tip of its tail and up to form a crown-like circle of horns on the top of its head.
“Where the fuck am I!?“ He yelped, scrambling backward and immediately regretting the action when it made his headache worse.
“You’re abandoned, so I took you with me. We’re at my place, near the edge of SMP.” It spoke around long, boarish tusks that took the place of lower fangs.
He paused as it all came back to him before his aching brain caught on one detail, the edge of SMP? A disbelieving laugh burst from his lips as he covered his mouth with his hands, that was two kingdoms away from the Empire.
The dragon seemed to be panicking a bit, probably thinking he was insane. He removed his hands to reveal a grin and sprinted into its- his? Her head, ignoring the throb of his skull and hugging as much of the bony snout as he could.
“I'm free!“ He laughed into the scaly face.
“Holy fuck I'm free! Thank you thank you thank you, Prime I never thought I could be free!“ He quieted down a bit.
“Thank you.“ He whispered. “I thought I’d never get to leave that fuckin’ nether pit.“
Oh no. No. He was going to end up attached wasn’t he. He gave another glance at the boy effectively limpeted onto his face. Ugh, he was.
“Kids don’t go in prison.“ The dragon hummed.
“That's right, they go in the square hole.” He mumbled to himself. He didn’t actually know what the joke meant, but the dragon seemed to think it was just as funny as the arsonist he’d learned it from. It snorted, and he was nearly flung off by the puff of air. He let go, and the dragon levered itself up, somehow managing to look even larger.
“C’mon, food then a bath,” He wrinkled his nose. “You need one.”
“Oi!”
It led him out of the colosseum room and through a series of tunnels until they reached a large but human sized kitchen. He didn’t know what he was expecting to happen but it was still surprising to watch the massive beast shrink into a human. Oop, it was a guy. Probably.
He was tall–around eight feet without shoes– and muscular with broad shoulders and straight pink hair that fell down to his ankles. Small tusks poked out from between thin lips in a mimicry of his draconic form, and a multitude of gold earrings swayed from where they dangled on long, elf-like ears.
He wore a white poet’s shirt and a cloak the color of fresh blood, brown leather pants and gold buckled heel boots topped with a jeweled gold crown completing the outfit fit for royalty, or, well, a dragon.
“Are you comin’?“ He asked, the howling voice toned down to a gravelly rumble as he shuffled awkwardly. Oh, he’d been staring.
“Yeah. Yeah sorry.“ He followed the dragon into the kitchen and sat at one of the chairs pushed up to an opulent spruce table, embarrassingly out of breath from the short walk. He watched as the dragon began rifling through a chest, both trying to ignore the awkward silence laying thickly in the room.
“You’re a lot more chill when you aren’t stuck to a rock.” The man said.
“Fuck you.”
“Technoblade.”
“What??”
“My name, its Technoblade. I told you that already but you’re concussed so you probably forgot. Do you have a name?”
He thought about that one for a minute. He did, but it was given to him by a woman he didn’t remember, and everything he connected it to was something that hurt. He had a name, but he didn’t want it. So in a mix of spite and minor brain damage, he replied.
“No.“
“You’re Andromeda then.“
“What?“
“You need a name, so I’m goin’ to name you Andromeda.“
“Andromeda.“ He tested the name in his mouth. “Why Andromeda? It’s so stuffy, and you can’t even shorten that unless you think ‘Drommy’ is a good nickname. It’s fuckin’ not by the way.” He paused for a second.
“Tommy! That's close enough innit?” The dragon just snorted.
“You somehow managed to take a terrifyin’ name and make it blander than unsalted potatoes.”
“ExCuSE yOu Tommy is an incredibly manly, awesome epic name! Better than fuckin’ TeChnOBlaDe. S’a fuckin’ mouthful.” The Technoblade in question scoffed.
“I can't believe I’m arguin’ with an actual child.”
“I’m not a child!”
“You act like one, you’re a gremlin child. Y’know what? That's your new name, Gremlin Child.”
“Fuck you! If you call me that I get to call you The Blade.”
“Heeh!? Fine, I call you Tommy, you call me Technoblade.”
“Techno.”
The man huffed.
“You call me Techno, I call you Tommy, but it's short for Andromeda.”
“Deal.”