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“Hello,” Dream said. “Grian.”
Grian tilted his head. Black, soulless eyes stared with what could be curiosity, if Dream hinged a guess.
But his expression was as devoid of emotion as Dream’s own mask. For some reason, a chill crawled down his back at the realization.
“Good morning, Dream,” Grian said. “Ready for some Build Mart practice today?”
“Very,” Dream said, and he allowed some sarcasm to drip through his tone. “I do love myself some Build Mart. Crafting acacia fences, mmh.”
“There’s a build with a weird iron door configuration Noxcrew just added,” Grian said breezily. “We should memorize that one, probably. Preparation is key, and I know how much you love winning.”
So they were playing this game.
Grian had no idea what was in store for him.
“Of course,” Dream smiled thinly. “We want that crown, after all.”
He hadn’t been quite sure what Scott was thinking, placing them on the same team. Grian - or rather, the Hermits, were famously close-knit, yet with a reputation of being welcoming and kind to other teammates to the point of redundancy. Dream should be the opposite of that entire ideal.
Eyeing the spiraling darkness of Grian’s eyes, the too wide grin of his face, the choice was starting to make more sense now. Dream could now hear Scott laughing hysterically in some corner of his head, and wondered how hard he would be laughing with an axe in his throat and TNT littered beneath his precious server.
“So,” Grian stepped to the side and swept a wave dramatically across the entrance marked with a giant BUILD MART sign. “Shall we get going?”
Dream adjusted the tools fitted along his belt, and arched up. He leaned forward slowly, with the position of a lurking predator.
To his annoyance, Grian didn’t move. Instead, he simply stared back indifferently.
Well, no matter. Dream would make do.
“Of course,” he almost purred. “Of course.”
Two can play at that game. And Dream had spent his life perfecting it.
---
“That’s light blue concrete,” Grian informed him. “Not cyan.”
Dream kicked the chest next to him open and swiped the new color out. In a flash, the offending block was replaced.
A show of coins fell and disappeared around them as the build was quickly replaced with emptiness.
“Why did the gods ever decide adding more colorful blocks was necessary?” he muttered.
“Since people like me asked for it,” Grian said. “The smooth texture is much more versatile than wool.”
“Good to know they service some of us better,” Dream said.
Grian tilted his head again in that strange, unnerving way. His eyes blinked slowly.
“Well,” he said. “Some of us ask for better materials to build with, and that’s easily serviceable enough. But some ask for better tools of torture and wonder why they’re denied.”
Dream suppressed a bristle.
“We simply wish to have more tools for our goals too,” he said. “You build, I fight. We’re suited to different things.”
“You don’t fight, not in the sense you’re claiming,” Grian said. “Technically, we’re all fighting. To stay alive, to reach our goals. But you don’t fight for the sake of the thrill, and neither do most of your opponents. I know what goes on in that world of yours, Dream.”
His eyes bore in.
Dream wanted to lunge forth and throttle Grian in the neck, because no one is supposed to know. Under the penalty of him hunting down all their remaining lives - what happened in Dream SMP stays in Dream SMP.
There was the likely chance that Grian was bluffing. Rumors abounded, after all, especially after Wilbur showed up one day to MCC in pale gray and blissful ignorance.
But Dream didn’t like that grin one bit. It was wide, and confident, and belonged to someone with the threat of having just as many strings as him.
It was unacceptable.
“Really,” Dream gritted, and he was glad for his mask once again.
Grian laughed, a loud, cackling noise, and it reminded him-
Tommy, writing signs around the camarvan, waving around blaze rods.
“We of Hermitcraft see many things, Dream,” Grian said. “No, you don’t fight for the sake of it, not like we create art for its sake. You fight for control.”
“That’s why everyone fights,” Dream scoffed. “What makes me different?”
“You think Technoblade fights for the sake of control the same way you do?” Grian laughed.
“Techno has no vision,” Dream hissed. “No direction. He cares only that he is free. For all his talks and prowess and reputation he’s accomplished nothing-”
“On the contrary,” Grian said. “He’s either accomplished what he wants to, or let go of what he knows he can’t instead of foolishly pursuing the path into madness. Which is far, far more than you can say.”
“Really?” Dream asked, and he unstrapped the dull diamond axe at his side ( not netherite, not his, he hates it). Even if PVP was disabled by Noxcrew on this server, it would do good to place some proper fear into Grian, to show him exactly what messing with Dream would entail.
He began filing the conversation. If Hermitcraft knew, and Grian was confronting… then there would be serious problems and he had to begin planning as soon as possible. Pieces began to slide around his mind.
“Well, Technoblade isn’t spending his time gaslighting a teenager,” Grian said.
“I’m not tormenting Tommy, and I’m not gaslighting him,” Dream snarled, lunging forward. Grian closed his eyes, and Dream phased through him.
“PVP disabled, remember?” Grian asked. “And it’s gaslighting. Abuse. Emotional manipulation-”
“Tommy needs to learn that everything will be better when he just goes along and stops breaking my rules,” Dream hissed. “I’m not gaslighting him. I’m teaching him a lesson he’ll need to know before he does something that’ll take his last life.”
“You took his past 2 lives,” Grian said.
“I did not,” Dream growled, and why did no one every understand him? George had shrugged, Sapnap pulled back with an uneasy glance he though Dream couldn’t see, Bad frowned in some annoyingly undecipherable way-
“I did not,” he repeated. “Tommy broke my rules, and when I gave him fair warning, he kept breaking them, and what the fuck was I supposed to do? Allow the meaning of order to fade? Let anything be allowed? I’m doing him good. He’ll learn, and then he can come back from exile and live with his friends, and all of us are happier for it.”
“That’s your version of events,” Grian said. “Everyone else has a very different one.”
“They’re all deluded,” Dream snapped. “I’m trying to help them. I don’t want to kill or torture, and it’s not gaslighting because everything I say is fucking true. All any of them need to do is just follow the damn rules. It’s not that hard.”
It wasn’t really wasn’t, and no one seemed to understand all the effort he put into keeping order on the server, all the sleepless nights he’s gone through to make sure everything is completely safe. No justification in the universe seemed enough, especially for Tommy-
“Who says you have the right to decide what all the rules are?” Grian asked, and he seemed mildly amused. Dream wanted to stab an arrow through that smirk.
But he wasn’t Techno, with uncontrollable impulses. Dream knew how to bide his time, and he could bide it well.
“I’m the admin, and I’m the owner of the world,” he said. “That’s what.”
“You’ve made yourself the sole judge, jury, and executioner,” Grian said. He reached into the chest beside them and pulled out a blood red poppy. “History has only shown madmen and dictators to name themselves all three. And let’s face it - everyone else thinks you’re both.”
“Including you,” Dream said.
“Including me,” Grian agreed. “And Hermitcraft.”
“So Hermitcraft thinks I’m a bad person.”
He wasn’t, of course, he was only doing what he had to and no one every fucking understood, not that Dream needed them to because they didn’t have his power and wouldn’t understand anyway, even if some part of him twinged in pain deep down at the thought.
But that didn’t matter. It didn’t.
“Well, bad is such an undescriptive word,” Grian said. “If we liked murderous dictators, then we would say you were good, for example. And no doubt you consider yourself good, and you would be right, because good and bad are what the user wants to define them as.”
“So what does Hermitcraft think I am?” Dream asked. He knew what everyone on the SMP thought of him, all cowards and full of spite (though perhaps they just couldn't understand, as they would never, ever reach the level of sheer power he held and it was much, much better that it stayed that way).
Grian was powerful, he knew, an entity with the ability to level worlds and erase existences with a thought. Hermitcraft was full of such individuals, supposedly, though they kept their secrets locked up even tighter than Dream’s server did.
“Well, where to begin?” Grian said. “You’re a dictatorial, murderous, powerful-hungry, abusive, controlling, deranged asshole that thinks you deserve complete control of the server you named after yourself, as well as everyone who lives in it, and is completely paranoid at even the idea of anyone coming even a single inch closer to your level.”
Dream opened his mouth to respond, but no sound came out.
Grain blinked, and a new light took hold in those dark eyes, glinting, teasing, mocking, and how dare he-
“And?” Dream asked, daring him to go on. To challenge, to demand, to try and force some change.
“Well, that’s about how I’d sum you up,” Grian said, and he shrugged with a casual fearlessness that made something twist uncomfortably within Dream. “Not that we particularly care, if you were wondering.”
Dream felt something cold drop in his stomach, like a stone from that freezing arctic tundra Techno insisted on living in.
He didn’t know why. He hated it.
He had to regain more ground. Right now.
It was unacceptable.
“I thought the Hermits are kind?” Dream edged, trying to keep his tone even.
His mask pressed against his skin, suddenly icy cold and frosting over and welding into his being.
“The Hermits are loyal,” Grian corrected, like he was responding to a presumptuous student, and Dream had never felt like killing someone more, diplomacy and rules be damned, he’s not subjected to them anyway. “To each other, and to Hermitcraft. But we do not concern ourselves needlessly with the affairs of other servers.”
Dream thought he sounded far too sure of himself.
Not that he cares about what some other entity thinks of his morality.
“It’s not a fight you should concern yourself with, agreed,” Dream said.
“You sound almost desperate,” Grian noted. “But mostly relieved.”
Dream narrowed his eyes.
A flash of diamond sliced down the center of Grian’s body. It sailed through like a projection, and-
Dream watched, eyes wide, as Grian twisted and flickered and glitched horribly, body splitting and jarring around as stray strings of code, 1s and 0s, began pouring out of the cracks and a scratching, wheezing scream filled the air.
It snaked a rusty wire through his ear bones, and Dream resisted the overwhelming urge to slam his hands down against them and shut it up.
Squares of black and white further poured out of Grian’s body and his eyes were gone, somewhere with that monsterous mess, and it looked like Grian was splicing through that strange space between life and death, respawn and void, a place the gods did not intend for anything but forgetton glitches and the most mangled of failed attemps to be cast to, and Dream thought faintly what the fuck is going on-
And then it was over, just as quickly as it began, and there was a whole, completely normal Grian standing in front of him, except he had no face except for those two eyes.
It was like someone had taken a sword and sliced his face away to a level plane, and his skin simply healed over it, smooth and clear and blank as void.
“What the actual fuck,” Dream said.
“That axe was a surprise,” Grian said, somehow, because his voice was coming from him even without a mouth. “Whoops. Premature sorry to Noxcrew.”
Dream continued staring. His fingers twitched and his instincts screamed at him to do fucking something, you’re in danger, don’t let it get out fo control.
“What was that,” he said.
“Despite the whole PVP being banned in this area thing, the code doesn’t actually affect me,” Grian shrugged again. “So my body just needed a moment to reset there. Not that you care too much, presumably.”
Dream briefly considered “killing” him again, but decided against it. It wouldn’t gain him anything other than a tiny silver more of curiosity satisfied, and it wasn’t worth whatever Grian would probably report back to Hermitcraft and Noxcrew.
That chilling, sinking feeling was back again.
Dream knew what it was now.
And he needed to plan. Away from the prying eyes and judging faces and the words of challenge that still seemed to haunt him at every turn, despite how hard he worked and how much he proved and how fiercely he cut it down to teach them-
Suddenly, he didn’t feel like talking about his server anymore.
“Let’s just finish what we came to do,” Dream said.
“Of course,” Grian said, and suddenly his face was back, and so was that irritating smile. “I want that crown and coin, after all, and no doubt you would relish the title of champion again greatly. Hang it over all your server members’ heads like you do everything else.”
Dream gritted his teeth, and ignored him.