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Chapter 42: Metronome

The ticking was soft yet sharp, the metronome beat echoing off of black marble, like a click of glass heels of a figure in the night. It felt like a broken record, like somebody forgot to lay a disk on the spinning table, forgot that you couldn't let the needle just spin and scratch the plastic without anything to read. It felt like glass pawns and chess pieces, crystal clear on a marble chess table, all lined up on either side of the board, anticipatory energy vibrating the very molecules of the pieces, like they would implode at any moment.

Tik tik.

Technoblade stared out at the troops, the troops that he had managed to convince Eret to supply, the troops dressed in white armor with emblems of muted rainbow colored sunburst across their chest.

They had arrived around noon, all of the Pogtopians had watched in awe as the soldiers marched in. They were trained, definitely not as strong as the entire Dreamlands military, but it was more than enough to take the small amount of soldiers that were camped in Manburg at that moment. Eret's soldiers weren't the best, but they were seasoned and experienced. Not to mention very religious. Eret had explained to him that he could only call upon the ones who devoutly followed the goddess of light for they were to only ones that could leave without Dream being notified about moving troops. Religion and government were separate in Eret's kingdom of Faven, Eret's hometown that he had won back for betraying his other home that had taken him in. But Techno didn't care about that. Techno didn't even pay much mind that he was getting help from royalty at the moment. 

Technoblade couldn't respect governments. Couldn't condone authority.

But he could acknowledge when it was okay to take advantage of resources, and having bodies to spare was something that his allies desperately needed.

He knew there was a time to play chess and a time to burn the chess table. 

And Techno was trying to make sure that when the blood was spilled it would be none of his kin. 

He was almost done getting ready, everything in place except the armor that rested far away in the bunker that he planned on presenting to his brothers.

The voices screamed in joy when he slipped on his crown and pulled his sword, his shoulders taught and his stance strong.

Today was the day.

Tik tik.

The railway. The path. The old cart system that had been long since decaying would lead as the guide of Ariadne's string into the beast's cave.

Wilbur stood on the old tracks, his worn out boots balancing on the steel rails. The breeze was picking up as the sun was slowly setting directly over the path. He lifted his hand, resting it in front of the sun, playing with the light beams that shone through his fingers.

In his head, he could see it. A skull, freshly cut with horns attached to the sides, bloody and flayed in his hands, and a nation at his feet, surrounded in rubble, black smoke rising and blotting out the sun.

End it all.

That's what he was planning on doing.

"Would you be proud of me, Phil?" The words were whispered, like a ghost's howl.

His hands smelled of gunpowder.

The hands that used to smell of campfire and used to smell of the strums of the metallic chords of his instrument he so loved. 

Wilbur wanted to close his hand around the sun, to snuff out it's light, to hold it in his hand and crush it until golden blood poured from his grasp and leaked to the ground. He wanted the sun to cry when he could not.