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God is too powerful of a title.
At least, for Dream. The people—the eyes, the audience—have crowned him with the deference that comes with such a name, but the title does not fit Dream. It is a role too large for him to fill, a role too large for him to want to fulfill.
No, he is no God. He deals in the smaller things, in the subtle machinations and quiet nudges he can take to feed his God.
A God who claimed him from birth and left him unclaimed, who turned his features too much for human memory, who took his innocent smile and replaced it with impish delight.
But of course: his God does not play main characters, either. When Dream claims his land, when the land gets renamed, when the land changes hands—Dream never leaves his God's fingerprints across these events. He endorses sharp wit and cold chaos instead, pushes cruelty trapped to gilded apples to the centre stage.
And Dream admires Jschlatt, his drawing of chaos from where it resides just under the skin, the razing of dynasties with a single sentence. Chaos, unbound, leaves nothing behind: it sears away all that was and sets its own rules in place. But this is too obvious, his God smiles at him.
Dream—who does not separate from his God, who knows his God has seeped into his flesh and his instincts—agrees. Mischief does not destroy, it molds and changes. A gentle suggestion that grows harsher with every push, an insistent river running over smooth stone until a crevice forms.
When he meets the man claimed by blood, he feels the laughter boiling in his body start spilling. Dream knows blood is dangerous, knows how it starts and it grows and it blooms, it never dies once the seed takes root. But this man, carved as he is out of blood, refuses himself.
Dream knows, the way he smells too much like wisdom and too much like chaos, he piques everything that Technoblade has sold himself to.
When Techno doesn't do anything, Dream wants to laugh again. His God, too, takes pleasure in this irony: an acolyte of blood, abstaining from fights? And because Dream is halfway between wisdom and chaos, halfway between doing the virtuous and the succumbing, he invites the blood to come a little closer, to do a little dance.
Dream is not disappointed by what he finds. Techno, as long as he's spent with his God, as long as he's spent denying his God, has still been claimed. He needs somebody like this, somebody who hears chaos but sings blood, knows pain without complete destruction.
Of course—Schlatt has begun dragging the chaos out of Wilbur already. All Techno needs to do is to listen to the sound.
Techno joins. One, two, three. Dominoes in a row.
Come see me on the mountain, he tells Techno. One needs to keep one's allies close. He hands over things to get Techno started—not that the man needed it, but it was always nice to have that sitting on the back burner. Never freely given; never freely taken.
And this is something he has learned from his God: nothing to him nor his God is freely given, nothing is freely taken. And Techno senses, on some level, that this is a dangerous exchange—he tries to crack a joke. "Are you giving me clout?", because that means nothing to mischief, nothing to blood. There is no exchange value.
But who says no to free items?
So every time he gives a smile and offers a hand, he takes something in return. He gives the crossbow in exchange for loyalty, he fights for Tommy's fish in return for trust, he supplies TNT in exchange for chaos. One, two, three. Dominoes in a row.
Dream wasn't always this conniving, he knows. He used to use his sharp grins for his friends, teasing nudges and quick retorts. But he grows, and his friends grow, and -
His being, imbued with his God, learns to dodge lethal iron and swift battle in mock hunts, learns to turn the environment into a theatre of traps. An amusing game to train each other to be better, joking that maybe one day they'd need to protect each other.
In these false hunts, he learns to speak crazed and to cover thoughts. He seals it with a mask—not the first time he'd worn it, but he wears it more often than usual.
He realizes its true importance.
"I was never on your side," and his voice is rising amusedly. This little boy, this golden-haired babe—nothing is freely given, and as it dawns on his face, truth etching across scars from previous wars, Dream's mellow chuckles start undercutting it. The fish, the land—none of it mattered.
And his God, who delights in helplessness and sudden reality checks sings through him. Dream leaves Tommy betrayed—pranked, some immature part of him replaces—and moves onto the next. Power too—neither freely given nor freely taken, is it?
Eret should have paid their price, paid it in her betrayal. "What do you think gives you power?" He pauses, letting the false king think about their answer. "Is it your crown," voice dipping condescendingly on the word, lips form a mocking pout, he tilts his head to the side. But then he got greedy, wanted to take more without paying. They wanted to play sides, to affect the situation.
"If respect is all that keeps a knife from your back - " He grins, sharp and long, teeth bared for the king to see, delights in the sharp cut of thoughts that slices through the silence, "then respect is nothing. You do not keep your crown because you're respected—no, that pretty little crown stays on your head because of me. And the others who fight for you, who help you maintain your kingship."
His God, who loves the juvenile and loves the cruel, keens. Dream thinks it's enough, so he presses off. "That's all I wanted to say, really. Just remember what gives you power." His smile softens out, and he sounds like he's talking about the weather.
Nothing is freely taken.
As L'manberg—Manberg—land falsely taken—blows to smithereens, Dream cackles, harsh laughter against dismayed screams, he can only feel the euphoria of having had one over on them.
And he will laugh at it, at the cosmic injustice, at the happy ending so cruelly stolen by hands who already freely took, who took too much and wanted too much. Because he has been claimed by Mischief, and because Mischief laughs at downfall, and because the eyes, the audience -
the eyes of the lord are everywhere, and the show ends not the way they wished.