A Rift Through Worlds (A Dream SMP x Hermitcraft AU)

Fatherly advice and bonding card games

It had been weeks; weeks of pouring rain, cloudy skies and a gloomy atmosphere. It had been weeks since the tundra and the surrounding forest had been plunged into the ghost's bereavement of a lost friend. For weeks, all the two anarchists knew was stress, anxiety, loss and rain and snow mixing with the natural, merciless cold.

The crops had wilted; anything growing above the frosted ground didn't make it through a particularly harsh snowstorm. The potatoes and beets were fine, thankfully, and Phil had made a mental note to thank Techno for thinking ahead and planting them. The cows and sheep in the small barn huddled together for warmth, and yet they were still shivering. They had not expected a harsh storm like that so soon -the tundra was more or less mild compared to the snowy spruce forest that would be hit by snow two to four times a week.

And through that time period, the two of them had been trying to search for Tommy and simultaneously comfort Ghostbur. They knew Tommy was no longer on the server, especially since he had disappeared on the night of the server glitch, but they did not know where it would take him.

Phil had been alive for many, many years; perhaps a couple decades, maybe a few centuries -he had stopped counting after a hundred birthdays. And he had lived long enough to learn of the rifts and the barriers of a server, of the strings an admin had to sew to close a hole. He had lived to see the beautiful aurora of both the North and the South; had traveled long and far through servers and worlds to witness the two wonders.

And somewhere along the way, Techno had come along, and Phil had passed him all the special little details that he could remember over midnight talks in a cave, out in the middle of a forest, or over dinner in the old Antarctic palace and its strong walls.

Then, in the cold of the Antarctic Wilbur came, then Tommy... And Phil had decided with his beloved, Kristin, to keep the two in blissful ignorance of the glitches and whatnot. Rifts were supposed to be rare anyways, it wasn't like one would open right in the middle of their backyard! Phil would catch the two going through Techno's books sometimes and, usually, around the fireplace, Techno would comment on some pictures and give a hint or two to what something really was.

And then Phil would put the books on the highest shelf of the library that only he and Kristin could reach with their wings, until Wilbur and his unusually tall stature would come along and snatch them back.

It had been a repeated cycle, one that span for years, even after Kristin's passing and secret ascension into Godhood as the Goddess of Death; even after Phil became Her harbinger in the fields of blood and war and unjust judgement. Sometimes, he would read to Tommy and Wilbur in her place, when the two would ask for it or when he thought that they needed a good bedtime story. Aesop's fables had been their favorites.

Phil wondered who would be reading bedtime stories to Tommy now.

It had been weeks, and still they had found nothing. No response had come from the outside regarding the rift or the missing member, there had been no sighting of Dream in near three days -not even to cash in his favor from Techno to find Tommy- , and Ghostbur had left on a journey to search the whole server for he boy, even after Phil had explained that Tommy had glitched out of the barrier.

They had nothing to go off of, and on top of it all, they could not leave. Phil was worried sick, to the point of crying from stress randomly or snapping at poor Technoblade and Ranboo -their new neighbor- out of the blue.

Phil had to watch over Ghostbur as well; he felt that obligation as a failed father, and he felt that it was the only way to redeem his late negligence; to pay for his sins, whatever it's called. He could not leave him alone with Dream, because he knew for a fact that the admin could -and would if he wished to- easily manipulate the poor soul into doing something horrible and morally disgusting. He would not let that happen under any circumstance, he had sworn it the moment he had first laid eyes on the ghost of his son.