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He’s silent right up until they get to the main entrance. Then, he lets out a small, disbelieving little laugh.
“Come on now… don’t be ridiculous. You’re not going to put me in there. Neither of you.”
“Dream…”
There’s warning in Sapnap’s voice as he holds his Netherite Sword to his former best friend’s back, nudging him forward as he’s been doing since they separated from the rest of the SMP and made their way here. Awesamdude meanwhile, doesn’t say a word, he merely moves forward and uses his Master Keycard to activate the Nether Portal. Only then does he speak.
“Let’s go.”
With Sapnap pushing him forward, Dream is forced into the Nether Portal. On the other side, Awesamdude once again uses the Master Keycard and they go back in, this time coming out in the Prison Lobby itself. This is the beginning of Pandora’s Vault, the titanic, tyrannical prison that Dream had Sam build for him over these last several months.
Turning around, the Prison Warden makes eye contact with Sapnap.
“You won’t be able to come with us from this moment on.”
Sapnap hesitates at that, frowning slightly. Dream, thinking he senses weakness, pounces.
“You can’t let him do this to me, Sapnap. Aren’t we friends? You can’t just let him lock me away. You can’t just leave me here.”
“… Shut up, Dream. Just… shut up. You had Beckerson up on a wall like some sick trophy man. You had a spot for Mars too. Fuck, you even had a spot for Skeppy. What would that have done to Bad?”
Dream lets out a laugh, but as hard as he tries to sound carefree, there’s strain to it that tells both Sapnap and Sam how false it is.
“Oh c’mon man… that… back there? It was all a joke! An act! I was just playing around silly, just messing with Tommy! Like we always do!”
Sapnap’s frowns is deep at this point, and he spares a glance Sam’s way as his empty hand clenches and unclenches. Eventually, he shakes his head.
“You’re sick, Dream. You have been for a long time. You need help, but I can’t be the one to give it to you. Maybe… maybe some time away from everyone else will do you some good. I hope so, at least.”
And with that, he turns and walks away, exiting through the portal. Sam moves to the levers and buttons as Sapnap goes and flicks them so that the other man can get back out again. Dream doesn’t move while he does this, standing there in the middle of the front lobby staring after the armored back of his former friend. Eventually, with everything dealt with, Sam speaks up.
“It’s time.”
Whirling around, Dream cocks his head to the side, likely putting on a smile behind his ever-present mask.
“Sam… c’mon man. You and I both know this is ridiculous. It’s just us now, so you can end the charade.”
When Sam just stares at him, silent, Dream continues on, voice growing a bit more manic with every sentence.
“Mighty smart of you, to bring up the prison idea! Great way to get everyone off of my back, in fact! Now obviously… obviously I’m not going to be staying here, of course. We’ll have to uh, change things around so I can pretend to be here in case Tommy or anyone else visits. In the meantime, I think we both know it’s time for me to leave so if you could just-!”
“Dream. Do you have any possessions left on you?”
The owner of the SMP pauses mid-sentence and one can positively feel the scowl radiating off of him as he hunches in just a little.
“You know I don’t, Sam. Tommy has it all. And that’s fine, really it is, I don’t-!”
“Good. Move down the hallway, please.”
Now, Dream’s voice gets a little hysterical, even as Sam’s sword guides him down the very first hallway that leads deeper into the prison.
“Sam you’re being ridiculous! You can’t expect me to just go along with this! Locked up in the very prison I commissioned?! Really?!”
“Click on the bed and then stand on the light blue tiles, please.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Sam? Really, we never tested this out on someone with only one life! What if it doesn’t work?! What if it just kills me outright, huh?!”
Even as Dream rants, he does as he’s told, hitting the bed almost mulishly and then stepping onto the blue platform. Through the black stained glass in front of him, he meets Sam’s gaze as the Creepy Hybrid reaches out to a lever.
“I suppose we’ll find out. Best to test it now if Tommy is going to be visiting tomorrow.”
And then he pulls it and the blocks around Dream raise up one, even as potions hit Dream from above. It’s not a pleasant or fun experience, the transfer of a ‘light’ death. Death is very… malleable on the Dream SMP. It always has been. Someone involved has to WANT it. Neither Dream nor Sam want it, so in the end, Dream ‘wakes up’ on the other side of the bed, in a corridor. At the end waits Sam.
“G-Guess it works then. That wasn’t fun Sam, I’ll tell you that much. Maybe-!”
“From this moment on, I will be referring to you as Prisoner. In turn, I expect you to address me as Warden.”
Dream chokes on his own spit at that, before letting out a particularly shrill laugh, even as Sam guides him down the hallway, once again at the end of a Netherite Sword.
“’Warden’, is it? Seriously, Sam? Don’t be ridiculous!”
When Sam doesn’t respond as they wait for the hallway floor to finish lifting itself up out of the river of lava below, it becomes obvious he’s not going to. Dream falls silent in turn, making it equally obvious he’s not going to comply with Sam’s demands. Together, they make their way deeper into the prison they built. They’ve done so before, just the two of them… but never like this. Never with Dream defenseless, and Sam ready to play the part of his jailer.
They come to the main door, a massive iron thing that cycles open when Sam uses the Master Keycard in combination with a button press and a lever flipped. On the other side, the floor once again drops out and they have to wait for it to rise out of the lava river. It’s into this waiting silence that Dream pipes up again, sounding entirely conversational and casual as he muses half to himself, half to Sam.
“I wonder what made Punz turn, in the end. I wonder what he meant by ‘You should have paid me more’. Do you have any idea?”
When Sam remains stubbornly silent, Dream lets out a put-upon sigh and corrects himself.
“Do you have any idea, Warden?”
“Not a clue, Prisoner. He came to all of us after Tommy and Tubbo left to find you. Told us some of your plans, told us about your hidden vault. He said he wanted to stop you. The rest of the server agreed.”
Dream scoffs at that.
“Ridiculous. Punz was always so loyal. Why the hell would be betray me now?”
The floor of the general cell block finishes rising, and Sam leads Dream forward once more, the both of them moving deeper into the vault as the Creeper Hybrid answers his former employer.
“Perhaps he received a better offer. Hit the bed and step onto the blue tiles again, Prisoner.”
“Really? Again? Sam, this really isn’t-!”
Dream lets out a choked noise as Sam drives the Netherite Sword right through his midsection, twisting it once to finish the job. It’s precise and mechanical, without emotion in all honesty, and the Creeper Hybrid clearly takes no satisfaction in doing it. Once again, it’s a light death and Dream finds himself waking up in the bed on the other side of the small room a moment later.
“This way, Prisoner.”
“I’m aware, Sam. I DID help you make this place, if you recall.”
Rather than answer him, Sam rather roughly shoves Dream into the small little corridor where the potions poison him and apply water breathing. Then he shoves Dream equally as hard into the one block water corridor, forcing the Server Owner down it and into the next room.
“Keep going, Prisoner. Stand on the center of the honey block.”
Dream does so reluctantly, getting doused in Fire Resistance in the process. He looks back over his shoulder at Sam then, a strange sort of tension in his shoulders, a strange lilt to his voice.
“This really isn’t the best idea, Sam. You can’t honestly think that Pandora’s Vault can hold me, can you?”
“Pandora’s Vault can hold anyone and anything. It’s what it was made for.”
And then he flicks the lever, sending Dream through the lava on the small little honey block flying machine. When they meet up again on the other side, Dream lets out a huff of laughter.
“I know this place inside and out, Sam. I helped you design it, I helped you build it. I paid you to build it. Do you REALLY think that I won’t eventually get out of here?”
It’s clear that challenging the security of the prison itself is actually getting to it’s warden a little bit. Despite Dream dropping the title, Sam seems unable to help reacting, even as they ascend the stairs to the final lava wall between them and the main prison cell.
“If you do, it will be because they decided you were ready to be released. You certainly won’t be escaping. Stand on the stone, please.”
Dream does as he’s told, and Sam moves to pull the final lever, the one that will slowly wipe away the curtain of lava currently in front of him. Craning his head around again, his smiling facemask hides his true expression, but his tone is nevertheless quite jovial.
“Yeah? Think they’ll let me out soon then? Ooh, can I get out early on good behavior, do you think?”
Heaving a put upon sigh, Sam presses his Netherite Blade into Dream’s back.
“Face forward please, Prisoner. And I don’t know. It’s not my place to say. I’m the Warden of Pandora’s Vault. Not judge, jury, or executioner.”
Ignoring Sam’s order, Dream stares back over his shoulder at him, likely glaring if the hissing, spitting tone he has next is any indication.
“Pandora’s Vault is supposed to be MY Prison. You’re supposed to be MY Warden!”
For the first time, the smallest hint of a sardonic smirk shows up on the Creeper Hybrid’s face, and Dream is quick to backpedal when he realizes what he said.
“Not like THAT! Not like THIS! You can’t possibly think there won’t be retribution for this, Sam!”
“The SMP doesn’t belong to you, Dream. It never truly has. Even when it was just the eight of us, before all the others… it wasn’t YOURS then either. It was everyone’s. That was the whole point behind the Community House in the first place.”
For the first time, there’s a hint of anger in Awesamdude’s voice. One might imagine they’ve stumbled upon his major grievance with Dream at this point. In response, the Server Owner can only stare mutely at his Warden, at his Jailer.
“… You don’t understand, the Community House was a sacrifice I had to make to-!”
“The platform you’re on will begin moving now, Prisoner. Unless you want to fall into the lava below, move with it.”
And then Sam flips the lever just in time for Dream to turn back and realize that the lava wall has finally dissipated. The new flying machine he’s on begins moving out towards the Main Prison Cell, a box of black stone hanging in the middle of a veritable ocean of lava. As he reaches the other side, he steps off and Sam calls the flying machine back while speaking over a comm in the prison cell.
“This will be your new home for the foreseeable future, Dream. Your spawn has been set to that pool of water there. The clock on the wall will tell you the time of day. I’ve stocked that chest with books and quills, but use them sparingly, I can’t promise when they’ll be restocked. Pandora’s Vault is a Maximum Security Facility, but we are not inhumane. You will be fed and given water three times a day by either myself or the guards.”
Dream scoffs at that.
“Guards I paid for! Can you really trust them, Sam? Can you trust ANYONE, at this point?”
“… Goodbye, Prisoner.”
Dream turns and watches as Sam hits the lever again, causing not just a wall of lava, but an outright flood of it to descend from the ceiling above once more. The Server Owner stares into the eyes of his emotionless Jailer as the Creeper Hybrid looks right back. The two continue to regard each other, until finally the lava blocks their vision of one another, leaving only their names visible through it.
And then Sam’s name is gone as he ascends back up the stairs, going back the way he came, no doubt locking up behind him as he went. After all, Dream had hired Awesamdude for a reason. They went back quite far, and he’d known he could rely on the Creeper Hybrid to not only be absolutely professional, but completely focused on his work.
It was never meant to be used against him though. Moving to the back of his new cell, Dream slowly slides down the wall until he’s sat on the floor with his back against it. Things… certainly hadn’t gone to plan for him today. His armor, his weapons, his potions and gapples… it was all gone. Everything he’d worked so hard to attain was gone. Worse, all of the connections, all of the attachments he’d collected so far were out in the wind. Tommy was out in the wind.
It was about as bad as it got. So then… why was he beginning to smile? Why was his mouth stretching upwards from ear to ear until it was almost painful?
Was it because he knew they still needed him if they wanted to resurrect anyone? He had the secrets in his head. He had Jschlatt’s book tucked away somewhere no one would ever find it.
They’d need him if they wanted to bring Wilbur back. But more than that, he suspected they would all realize they needed him quite badly for other things as well. After all, Dream was not unaware of what was happening on his own server. The Eggpire would soon test the limits of the scattered remnants of L’Manberg and the Greater Dream SMP. The Artic Syndicate would come into conflict with Snowchester and their supposed nuclear weaponry.
Ah, if only he’d managed to kill Tubbo today and put an end to that. But no, Sapnap had stopped him. And that was okay. Dream would forgive Sapnap, when they finally came begging for his help. He would even forgive Awesamdude. Hell, he’d forgive them all once they let him out… after an appropriate lengthy punishment for each and every one of the rebellious brats first.
A low chuckle sounds out from beneath Dream’s mask as he leans his head back against the black stone behind him. It builds into a manic sort of laugh.
Soon enough, they would all see. Soon enough, they would all realize they were LOST without him.
Soon…