Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Techno doesn’t know what’s happening.

His mum is digging another new den. They’ve had a lot of dens, and this one is really really far away from their sounder.

He snuffles a question, pulling on her tail. “Not now,” she says harshly. “Not now. It’s not safe.”

Oh. Well, okay, then.

He plops down on the squishy crimson ground, playing with little bits of nylium while his mum keeps digging the new den. He hears a ghast, but it’s not loud-loud-loud, just kind of far away, so he ignores it.

His mum squeals, angry-alarm-come, and Techno looks up. There’s a lot of piglins standing all around them. He scrambles back to his mum, squealing in terror.

He doesn’t like the sounder. He knows he should, cause they’re his and his mum’s sounder, but they’re mean.

He wants them to go away, he wants to go home.

“You’re not taking him,” his mother snarls. “I won’t let you take him.”

The elder has a knife, a big one. One of the other elders grabs his mum, and Techno tries to run, but one of them grabs him too. He squeals, high and scared, stop-let-go! but they don’t.

The eldest elder takes the knife, and he- and he-

There’s so much blood.

Techno squeals and calls for his mum while the elders carry him away. There’s blood all over her. She doesn’t move. She isn’t moving even just a little bit.

And when people stop moving like that, they never move again.

There are scary people in the Bastion. People who look like- like he does, when he’s not a piglin.

The elders give Techno to them. They put cold-cold-cold chains on his arms and a thick heavy collar around his neck and they take him out of the Bastion in a little cage.

They take him through a purple door, into a strange place that’s cold, and too big, and- and- and scary.

They beat him, worse than the sounder ever did, when he starts crying and calling for his mum. They put something in his leg that makes him hurt, that makes him a little bit piglin and a little bit the other thing and all hurting.

~~~

Life becomes predictable, if never less horrible.

Technoblade- he whispers his name to himself in the darkest hours of the night, when no one can hear, because he has to remember- never starts hating it any less. But the routine, it’s… it makes things easier, in some ways.

He knows that when they near a town, he’s going to be put into the bigger cage and displayed for people to point and gawk at, expected to sit very still and be very quiet and not do anything, no matter what they do to him.

He knows that in the times between towns, when the cages fill with other hybrids, he has to keep still and quiet. He has to behave, because sometimes, they don’t hurt him as badly if he’s good.

Sometimes he wonders if they would sell him, if he was bad enough. But then they beat him, or whip him until blood runs down his back, and he remembers what he has to do.

He has to be silent. He has to sit still in his cage and never be hungry or thirsty, never make even a tiny little sound.

But tonight, something is… different.

“So, this one.” A new man, big and coarse, with a thick black beard and a shiny bald head, stops in front of his cage. “How long have you had it?”

“Goin’ on twelve years,” the master says.

Techno knows a little bit more about counting now- he has to sit and listen to them count the coins he earns them, all the time- and he remembers he was four when they took him out of the Nether, so he must be… he must be sixteen, he thinks.

“Twelve, eh?” The new man nudges the cage with his boot. “Usually don’t see people keepin’ a slave for that long.”

“Ah, well, he used to bring in good coin. Little abomination.”

“But not anymore?”

“Nah, folk are scared of ‘im. Too big.”

The new man squats in front of the cage, tilting his head side to side and looking at Techno. “I’ll give you fifty gold for it.”

“Fifty? Worth a hundred at least, ‘e’s got piglin blood.”

“Yeah, but it’s scrawny. Weak little thing. You’ve had it for twelve years, how small was it when you got it?”

The master doesn’t say anything.

“Yeah, that’s what I fuckin’ thought.” The new man stands up. “Sixty-five, and I’ll still be operatin’ at a loss for how much training it’s gonna need.”

Techno swallows, keeping back the tiny whine his throat wants to make. He has to be quiet, so they won’t hurt him, but-

He- is he going to be sold? He thought-

He doesn’t know if he wants to be sold. Maybe- maybe it would be better, someplace else, but he doesn’t like the new man. He’s scary. He- he doesn’t want to be sold to the new man, even staying here with the beatings and the whippings and people looking at him and laughing at him would be better than whatever the new man might do. At least here he knows what to expect.

Later, when it’s almost completely dark, Techno watches the man give a heavy bag to the master. He watches the master pour out the gold coins on the money-counting box, and he knows.

Techno curls up, hiding his head under his arms, and wishes his mum were here to hold him and purr to make everything better.

His mum died a long, long time ago. He’s on his own now.

Chapter Text

The hot, bright light hurts Techno’s eyes.

The old server was never this bright. Or loud. Hypixel- that’s what the new master called it, he thinks- is so loud Techno’s ears hurt. All of him hurts, that’s normal, but now his head hurts because it’s so bright and loud and- and-

“Keep movin’,” the new master growls, shoving him.

Techno stumbles, but keeps walking. The sand is getting in his hooves. It’s itchy.

They take him through the loud loud loud streets, past crowds of people, to a gigantic building, bigger than anything he’s ever seen before. They take him down stairs, endless stairs, down so deep into the dark and the cold that he feels like he’ll die from it.

The new master laughs at him when he stumbles again and falls. The new master locks icy shackles around his wrists and pulls the chains far far apart, forcing Techno down on his knees and pulling his arms out to his sides as far as they’ll go.

Then, the new master brings over a collar.

Techno knows he should be good. He knows he is supposed to be still and behave, but he hates the collar and even more he hates the muzzle that’s attached to it and he doesn’t want it-

He leans away, and the new master laughs again. Harsh and angry and ugly.

“Stupid pig. Old owner was too soft on you, eh?”

Techno can’t move very much- not nearly enough to get away. Even though he leans back a little more, the new master puts the heavy collar on his neck and locks it shut. He puts the muzzle on, too, tightening the straps till they hurt.

“Well, no matter. From now on, you want to live, you do what I say and no fightin’ back. The arena’s a vicious place. You either fight, or you die, an’ I better get my money’s worth from ya or I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”

And as he brings over something red with heat, as he pulls down the cloth around Techno’s waist and lines up the piece of metal with the old mark on his back, Techno thinks he already does.

~~~

Blood God.

That is what they call him now. It’s better than being called the pig or abomination or monster or nothing at all.

He is Technoblade. He is the Blood God. He is the champion of the Pit, their best gladiator. He fights, because they will hurt him if he doesn’t. He kills, because his only other option is to be killed.

He is still a monster. He is still in chains.

Today’s opponent is a creature he can’t completely identify, something he’s never encountered before. It looks like a zombie, parts of its flesh eaten away to expose bone. What skin it has left is tinged greenish, but might once have been pink. It wields a gleaming golden axe, there is gold on its belt, one of the last scraps of clothing it wears.

And then Techno glimpses its face, and only his training and the knowledge of what could happen keep him from freezing in shock and horror.

It- it looks like him.

Not fully- Techno’s twisted mixed-up form has a lot of similarities to humans- but the creature has a piglike snout, a little like his, and tusks like his, and one floppy ear like his.

Piglin, his mind supplies as he rolls under the axe, dodging the blow. Piglin brute, his instincts hum, that long-quiet part of his mind suddenly screaming that he must submit, that the piglin before him is of a higher rank in the sounder.

Technoblade hasn’t had a sounder since he was a very small child; even then, they did not want him. This Brute is not his sounder, this Brute is zombified- a deeper, more instinctual kind of terror struck into him.

He has no weapon. He is the Blood God. He needs no weapon.

His claws tear easily through rotting, decayed flesh. It’s easier than he would expect- given what this creature was before it became a zombie- to plunge his hand into its chest and rip out its heart.

The zombified Brute falls, and Technoblade rises, waiting. This was the first opponent. He’s not stupid enough to think it was the only one.

Across the arena, chains clank, two gates rise. They’ve released two more zombified piglins- just regular piglins this time, without the height or the gold to mark them as Brutes- and three hybrid gladiators. All armed, the piglins with golden swords and the hybrids with iron ones.

Technoblade bares his tusks, a snarl building in his chest and rippling outwards. The crowd cheers.

Blood for the Blood God, they cry. Blood for the Blood God.

They want blood, and he will give it to them, because he has no choice. Because if he does not fight, he will die.

He dispatches the piglins first, their already half-dead bodies yielding easily. The hybrids will be harder to kill. It takes force and strength to reach something vital, and he has to dodge their strikes all the while.

Trained gladiators, these. He wonders briefly why they were sent to fight him- he never loses, and he is only ever the last living thing in the arena when it’s over. Maybe they’re too old, or they did something to anger the masters, or maybe they just made a mistake in one of their fights.

One is clearly injured, favoring their left knee, and it’s that one he attacks first, using their weakness to his advantage. Another is small and fast, nearly landing a blow on Techno, but he ducks to avoid it and disembowls them with ease. The third, bigger and far bulkier than he, Technoblade wrestles to the ground and rips their throat open with his tusks.

Crimson paints his skin, staining his clothing and spreading in a pool around his hooves in the sand. Technoblade stands, and blood- not his- runs down his raised arm, and the crowd roars.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, they chant. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD.

He stands under the praise for the requisite sixty seconds, turning a slow circle so all the gathered crowd can see him. Can see his face, the blood staining his mouth, the proof they want of his victory.

Then, as he is trained, he turns and walks back to the gate. Back into the darkness.

Back to his chains.

Cassius is waiting, the handler’s face set in an ugly grin. Technoblade lowers his head, hair falling across his face. Offers his wrists.

Cassius chains his arms together, not quite as rough as usual. He gestures to one of the other handlers. “Take it to be cleaned,” he says. “Then put it back in its cage.”

This part of the routine requires nothing from him except to be still and let them pour water over his head till it runs clean off of him, till the blood is washed away. And then, to put on the clean clothes, little more than a coarse linen tunic, stained with old blood and dirt.

Cassius is there when he’s brought back to his cage. Cassius likes this, he thinks, likes to watch his greatest gladiator reduced to the crawling creature Cassius thinks he is.

Most days, this would be when Technoblade goes to the ground, crawls awkwardly on hands and knees into his cage. When he is left to kneel there, hands between his knees, body bowed, head down. To kneel in his chains, alone, until he is needed again.

Today, though. Today he is running high on the adrenaline from the fight, today he has watched carefully, observing the two assigned to escort him back. Observing their weaknesses, needing no more than a few seconds to know how best to kill each of them.

He knows every one of Cassius’ weaknesses, too. Nearly four years the man has trained him. Technoblade knows every old injury, every blind spot, knows what the man will expect him to do. How he will expect him to fight, once he realizes Technoblade is going to fight.

The thing Cassius won’t expect, he knows, is for Technoblade to lunge for his face, tusks bared and claws tearing, easily rending flesh from bone. Cassius doesn’t have time even to scream.

The other two handlers are reaching for their weapons, but Technoblade is quicker. Trained by years in the Pit to be ruthless, to react in instants, to dodge every blow.

After all, Technoblade never dies.

In minutes, there are bodies on the ground and a knife in his hand and blood painting his tusks and claws. He takes the keys from Cassius’ body, wasting a few precious seconds to shed his shackles, and then he runs.

He runs, and he runs, and he does not look back.

And when he passes through the inter-realm portal into a new server, the device they put in his leg so so long ago fizzles and dies. His body shifts to a human form, pain he didn’t remember he was feeling falling away from his body in an instant.

Technoblade stares at his hands, stained with blood, soft and small and human. They’re trembling.

He lifts his head, looking around the open, empty plains. The slightest effort allows him to shift into fully piglin form, taller and bulkier with tough hide and thick fur. It doesn’t hurt.

For the first time since he can remember, simply existing in his body does not hurt. There are no shackles on his wrists, no chains or collar or muzzle, no masters and no handlers and no orders.

For the first time in his life, Technoblade is free.

Chapter Text

The part of all this that kills him is, he could have stopped them.

Techno despises the Pit, the things that place and those people (barely people, they were far more inhuman than he is) did to him, but their lessons are struck deep into the core of him. He knows- he knows far too well, he thinks- how to fight, especially against multiple opponents; how to fight, and win. He could easily have taken on the Butcher Army, he could have killed all of them with hardly a second thought.

But something inside him locks up at the thought of unleashing all that blood, all that violence, on this server. A place of war, yes; but also, a place where the name Blood God is but a whispered ghost story, told in the darkest watches of the night to frighten and boost adrenaline.

Besides that, there is Ranboo. Ranboo, who surely isn’t here by his own will; an innocent kid who is in way, way over his head.

So Techno fights, and because Quackity is a snake and a manipulative piece of crap, Techno loses.

He kneels, disgust and shame settling deep in his stomach at the gesture. He stays down, he stays still and silent (well-trained, perfectly behaved, a voice hisses in the back of his head) while Ranboo holds a sword to Carl’s neck, while Fundy and Tubbo disarm him.

He stays still, despite the horror and terror and all-too-familiar despair filling his body, curdling his blood, freezing his bones, as Quackity binds his arms behind him with icy metal. As a collar locks around his throat, the weight of it damning and harsh.

As Quackity brings out a familiar object, a twisted contraption of leather straps and metal.

By sheer instinct, Techno keeps utterly still while Quackity fits the muzzle over his snout. It’s slightly too small, digging into his hide painfully.

It does its job.

Locking away his teeth and tusks, ever so dangerous, behind a metal cage. His arms are cuffed and chained, preventing him from using his claws. The collar around his throat threatening to choke him if he makes one wrong move.

All of it combining to make him still and docile (good little monster), keeping him from fighting back.

Techno fights against the haze of instincts threatening to overwhelm him. The twisted-up part of himself that whimpers you must be still, you must be quiet, you must be good. He is better than the thing the Pit made him into. He is beyond that, he does not need to be that creature anymore.

But gods is it hard.

Those instincts kept him safe, kept him alive in the Pit. They came hard-earned, it was painful and it nearly killed him, but he learned and he survived.

He’s- he’s making a strategic decision, that’s what he’s doing. He’s staying (outwardly) calm and (unwillingly) quiet, biding his time till they make a mistake.

That’s all.

They drag him to a dark, cold room under Tubbo’s presidential building.

They chain him in a familiar position- kneeling, arms stretched out to his sides, chains attached to his collar holding his head pulled forward so he’s nearly facing the ground.

Techno swallows, throat aching. He knows- he knows what they’re going to do. He knows what’s coming. He can only wait and hope he doesn’t break.

Quackity sends the others away. Techno doesn’t think they know what he’s planning. Maybe it’s better that way- Tubbo and Fundy and Ranboo are all still young, they’re not quite kids anymore after all the things they’ve been through but they shouldn’t have to see this. They shouldn’t have to know the depths of cruelty one person can inflict on another.

Quackity, though. Techno knows him well enough to know that Quackity is fully capable of it.

A knife rips through his loose shirt. Cold air hits his hide, but he’s used to the cold, and doesn’t let himself shiver.

The first whip lash makes him jolt, caught off guard. A hot line of pain sears across his back.

He braces himself then, jaw clenched and eyes closed and hands curled into fists.

He’s weak, Techno’s brain observes- inanely, pointlessly. The lashes hurt, each one makes his body jerk with pain and the memory of past beatings, but Quackity doesn’t have nearly the strength his handlers did.

Quackity doesn’t have the strength, or the experience, to do serious damage. He can cause Techno pain, he can make him bleed, but he doesn’t handle the whip with Cassius’ expert brutality.

Cassius never whipped Techno that badly- he didn’t need to, Techno was already well-trained and obedient when Cassius bought him for the Pit- but Techno saw plenty of other gladiators ‘made examples of’. He’s seen Cassius rend flesh from bone with a few well-placed lashes. He’s seen hybrids die under that treatment- not many, because most of them learned better quickly, and even quicker after the whippings.

None of this changes the fact that there is blood running down Techno’s back, a hauntingly familiar pain consuming him.

When it’s over, he has completely lost count of how many lashes he’s endured. He hangs there, limp in the chains, breath shuddering in and out of his lungs. His mind is barely able to register where he is- where he’s not- but he is fully piglin, he’s not stuck in his painful half-shift. He’s not on Hypixel anymore.

A cork pops. Techno registers the fizz and sting of magic before the sensation of cool liquid pouring down his back, the pain of a foreign substance in raw wounds and the tingle of healing.

Too soon, he thinks, numbly. Should’ve waited.

Healing too soon means less pain, means less chance of infection, less scarring. Less suffering.

All this time, and Quackity hasn’t said a word. At least, nothing Techno has been able to understand.

Quackity leaves him there, chained in place, for several more hours. Techno thinks so, anyways, it’s… it’s hard to tell. Alone down here in the dark and the chill and the damp, he isn’t aware of much of anything except the pain.

When Quackity comes back, he still doesn’t say anything. He chains Techno’s arms behind him again- with no consideration for the stiffness and pain in his shoulders- and releases the chains attached to the collar.

Techno stays kneeling, stays still and silent, while Quackity manhandles him into a shirt- almost the same as his own, anyone else probably wouldn’t notice the difference. While Quackity shackles his arms in front of him.

He stays silent even when Quackity removes the muzzle. He doesn’t fully understand why, until Quackity drags him upstairs. Until Quackity and Fundy drag him outside, into the bright sunlight that makes his eyes burn.

It’s eerily quiet. Techno blinks, taking in the city. There’s a wooden platform, raised above the rest of the landscape, surrounded by ‘wanted’ posters bearing a crude sketch of his face.

On the platform is a cage. A pulley system, an anvil suspended high above the cage.

Techno swallows harshly.

This is not just revenge for ‘crimes against L’manberg’.

This is an execution.

Still, he doesn’t fight. He thinks that maybe he can’t anymore, that he’s gone too deep into those old instincts.

Instincts that get even stronger when he is pushed into the cage, on his knees.

He fights the urge to fall into the proper position- hunched over on himself, head down, hands placed properly between his knees. He keeps his back straight. Head up, gaze fixed resolutely on the horizon. He does rest his hands on his thighs, but he keeps his claws curled in, concealing the Totem of Undying he managed to slip into his pocket (apparently even Quackity isn’t enough of a creep to take a man’s pants).

His gaze only strays once during Tubbo’s long, tiresome speech- when he hears a door creak open and thud shut, when he hears a soft gasp.

He glances up. Phil is standing on the balcony of his house, plain avian wings bristling behind him, hands gripping the railing white-knuckled.

Techno meets his gaze for an instant. There’s desperation in his eyes, in the way he half reaches out for Techno before his hand returns to the railing.

Techno is exhausted, he’s in pain, he’s chained and collared and in a cage again, but he smiles. Small and slight, trying to reassure Phil.

Even though he doesn’t feel at all confident in his ability to get out of this situation.

Technoblade never dies, he reminds himself. He can survive this. He will.

This will not be how he dies.