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The smoke in the air painted the inside of their lungs with ash. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling but it was one that Dream was getting used to nonetheless. It was something after the countless wars that split his lands apart that he knew far too well. The screams that rang in his ears. The ache in his lungs as they heaved around the smog. The burn through his muscles after hours of fighting against people who were meant to be in his family. The feeling of his organs shredding themselves apart as the world screamed through his body at the destruction.
He was on horseback now. Riding through the overworld to get to the nether with Phil and Technoblade by his side so they could escape the damage that they’d done. The crater that was left in the wake of what had been the nation of L’Manburg.
It got what it deserved. It had been corrupt from its first day. A nation that was designed to mask a drug empire and still Dream somehow found himself being called the villain for fighting against it. He’d never wanted nations in his world. He’d seen what they did to servers and he knew it would repeat here. His server was meant to be a home for his family. A nation would spawn others and it would split people apart. Nations were not communities, they were dividers. But no one had listened to him and it had torn his family apart.
Wilbur Soot, the founder of L’Manberg who forged an election and watched it fall to become Manburg. Manburg that imploded on itself and watched the power turn hands until its first creator decided that it would be better in the ground of rubble. Something Dream had agreed with at least partially. Dismantling the nation. He didn’t forget the way he’d collapsed that night and heaved around the blood clotting his throat while his server cried in pain. He watched the people refuse the lesson. He watched them rebuild and call it L’Manburg. He watched them take pieces of both of them and he watched them split and divide even more. Power over power, greed to greed. None of them heeding what they should have learned the first time they suffered for the land.
They rebuilt it and didn’t give their first leader a grave. They gave their tyrant one. They gave Wilbur a mark of where the button had stood but he never saw anyone pay grace to his tomb. None except his father who had dealt the killing blow.
And if Dream had paid respect there more nights than one that was his own business. Wilbur had been good at the end. He’d have made clear sense if he wasn’t so wrapped in putting the nation still standing. He’d seen what it had done and he’d tried in his own way to remedy it. Wilbur could have been good again. Dream would have welcomed him back. He’d always respected him as a leader even if they had been at odds with each other for quite some time. So he’d knelt to the place of his once friend’s death and he promised him a return. A repayment for the man who had pleaded to be his vassal.
That needed to come later. After the death of the nation and after they’d escaped the wrath of the world around them.
Dream’s world.
Dream’s server.
He barely realized it when they traveled through the portal and into the sweltering heat of the nether. He barely noticed it when they were entering into the death of their own living hells and running through.
The horse under him was slowing down. Dream willed it to go faster. Pushing it more than needed to make sure the others knew he was alright.
He felt like he was dying.
Techno was glancing to him again and again. Searching him through the run but Dream’s cloak hid him well. The armor and the green that was shrouding him. He couldn’t be seen. He had to trust that Techno didn’t see him shaking. That his friend and rival wouldn’t notice the weakness that was pouring through him. That he wouldn’t know the failure that he’d become. The weakness that was infecting him.
The server was screaming so loud in his head it felt like a ghast was directly in his ear. He felt like his body was melting under the weight of a warden’s scream. Under the pressure of the agony it was dealing with. A hole blown through one of its hearts. A gaping and bleeding wound of code and sorrow. Too highly charged in the land to be something that was alright. More than a bruise against his body and something leaving him suffering and hurting.
“Dream?”
He had to keep his ruse. He couldn’t let them know that he was hurt.
“Yeah?”
If he was turning breathless they didn’t need to know.
His hands felt cold. He was getting dizzy. Holding onto the reins more than what might be needed in order to simply keep himself upright in the saddle. He felt like he was going to be sick. He thought he might begin to pass out.
Phil glanced behind to him. He kept leading them through the path.
“When we get back I think you should lay low with us for a bit.”
Not a bad plan. But it increased his chances of being caught weak.
“If they’re trying to track us down they know where I live and we have better chances together.”
He couldn’t be caught.
“It also means if they catch us all that we can’t have an escape route.”
He still remembered last time. Seeing Techno stuck on the stage and watching the anvil fall onto his head. Knowing that he’d helped him to get the totem of undying so that he would be alright. Watching to make sure they didn’t have a second trap in place for him. Being at the ready to get in and defend him if he had to.
Punz did enough of that for them.
Punz was safe from the explosion tonight.
The server was getting too loud. He saw the world tilting around him. He closed his eyes and held onto the horn of the saddle. Pressing until his knuckles were turning white. Swallowing back the bile that was washing up his throat. Trying his hardest to ignore the pain that was pinching at his sides and making it hard to breathe.
“If they see the three of us together they’re not going to be able to win.”
He huffed out the laugh.
He bit back the groan that tried to follow.
“It’ll be fine, mate. Besides, it lets us plan for our next move.”
It would.
The three of them had gotten close with each other through the course of their planning. They’d bonded and laughed. He’d had Phil’s cooking more nights than not and crashed with them in the arctic more than a few times through the planning for it. It was something that he appreciated. Something he’d enjoyed.
It wasn’t something he wanted to impose on them again. It wasn’t something he wanted to force them through if they were doing it out of duty to him.
“If you say so.”
The ride only got worse. More and more he felt like the world was spinning around him and the air was too thin. He felt like he was swaying in the saddle but he knew that he wasn’t. The grip he had on his horse was keeping him upright. His horse was trying their best to keep him going. Watching over him and making sure that he was going to be sitting up and staying on their back.
He barely registered that they were back in the arctic. The snow and cold digging and biting into his skin meant nothing. He barely felt it.
The only thing he could feel was the dull thudding of his heart in his chest. The only thing he could hear well was the rush of his blood in his ears.
He couldn't focus around him.
He couldn’t open his eyes without feeling dizzy or like the world was caving in around him. He was openly trembling now.
Flashes of the crater they’d left shooting through his mind along with the searing pain. His organs felt like they were punctured and oozing inside of him. Like his blood was turning to sludge the longer he thought about it and the more he tried to the more Dream felt like he might be dying.
He was the Admin of the world. He was the one who was meant to be looking out for it and trying to protect it. He wasn’t meant to be the cause of its destruction and he wasn’t meant to be the one at the helm of its conflicts. He was meant to be the peacekeeper and the kindness for the server. He was meant to be their mercy and their justice.
But his justice was not mercy.
His justice was to punish the ones who would not accept the willingness to learn.
His justice was giving a fight when the only thing possible was a war.
Dream didn’t hear the way Techno and Phil were talking in front of him. He didn’t hear the muffled sounds of their voices or register that they were sounding farther and farther away.
He didn’t feel the grip on the horse going loose.
He didn’t feel his hands turning numb or the loss of connection to his body.
He only felt the server. He felt the searing agony that was lining through it and telling him to stop something that had already happened. He felt the errors that were ripping through it and demanding to him that he’d killed them all.
The horrors that he’d commit and the sorrow that was inflicted. Turning around to him and making him suffer for it tenfold.
It was his punishment.
This was his suffering.
Dream watched the world spin between black and white. He felt the air around him sparking out of his lungs. He tasted the blood in the back of his throat. He felt the clog of clots that he thought might just be parts of his organs trying to come up if they’d actually been shredded.
Dream felt like he was dying.
As the world sparked to black he thought he was.
As his heart thud weaker and weaker and his blood pulsed slower and slower he thought that he would.
He never even felt his body hit the ground.
Techno had been riding between Dream and Phil. Guiding along the way and taking them to where they were meant to be. Riding with his pride and knowing that the nation they’d been working so hard to destroy was now finally gone.
He was proud of them.
Dream had been more silent than he thought he would be the entire way back. He’d noticed that his rival wasn’t cheering or talking like he thought he would but he counted it to being the adrenaline of the fight wearing off. He thought that was the logic behind the grip he held on his saddle.
He hadn’t looked back after they’d put their foot down that he could crash in the safety of the arctic.
For as much as the Teletubby said he had a house it wasn’t something that Techno was really willing to believe. Right now they were going to be hunted by the rest of the server and he wasn’t about to just go let Dream be killed because he decided to be a stubborn idiot and not accept help when he needed it.
He hadn’t looked back at him.
Not until the cabins were in view and he let himself stretch on the back of his own horse. Feeling his back crack under the armor and taking in a deep breath at the job well done. He was going to clean up and rest and maybe they would have food that was easy to make and could enjoy it by the fire while they waited to see if there were any citizens that were brave enough to fight the heralds of the end of their country.
They’d warned the nation.
The ones who stayed were at fault for their own deaths.
“Look Dream, your ‘house’.”
He’d been laughing about it before he even finished it. Chuckling at his own joke. He expected Dream to give a retort or a fight. At least give him something.
But he didn’t.
His rival stayed completely silent to the point that it made him turn around to look. Phil even casting a glance back and sending him a questioning look to ask if he was alright.
He hadn’t seen Dream take any hits during the fight. He’d looked fine from where he’d been up on the obsidian grid. He’d seemed more than fine.
But he was slumped now in the saddle. His arm dropping and hanging limp off the side and his body starting to tip with it.
He wasn’t fine. He wasn’t alright.
Before Dream even hit the ground, Techno was with him.
Lunging out of his own saddle and rushing to him to help stabilize him. Phil was stopping not long after and doubling back to them while Techno checked for his pulse. Almost immediately he could tell there was something more than wrong with him.
He felt the clamminess of his skin. He felt the way his pulse seemed to be almost shaking.
He felt that there was something wrong and broken in him.
That Dream was hurt more than he’d been letting on.
One look was all it took to Phil before his friend was coming down to help him. Checking him over and cursing lightly under his breath.
“We need to get him inside. I think he’s in shock.”
A stiff nod was the only answer he could force himself to give at the moment. Gathering his rival into his arms and with Phil’s help getting him onto horseback again this time with Techno holding onto him and keeping him up. They made it the rest of the way into the commune.
Techno carried him up and into the house. Laying him down on the floor in front of the fire place so he could get warm. So he could lay flat while Phil worked on him and so that he could be protected.
He felt helpless as he watched. Useless as Phil stripped Dream out of his armor and his clothes and began checking him for his wounds. Scanning him over and checking him to make sure that he was really as alright as he’d looked before.
It wasn’t until Phil was opening the Admin access panels he had for his own servers to check the status of their friend that he saw it.
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
Phil was jumping to check Dream’s pulse again. Putting a hand over his heart and trying to rub a bit to keep it beating. Asking him for a strength potion or whatever the strongest he had.
“He’s the fucking Admin here.”
Techno knew immediately what that meant. The way an Admin felt the world. The way they talked to each other.
Dream had destroyed it. Largely and wholly, he’d harmed the server.
He’d harmed himself.
“He went into shock from the server overload.”
Techno felt the voices scream for blood.
“Isn’t that lethal?”
“If the damage is bad enough, yes.”
Doomsday.
Their war they’d planned and plotted. The complete and utter destruction the whole way to the bedrock. Deep enough that the land could never be recovered and the nation would be a whole in the ground to serve as the lesson the people refused to learn.
“Was this enough?”
He looked at Dream. Looked at the ragged way his chest was moving. The pallor of his skin. The way his fingers were twitching at random. He saw Phil watching him too. He watched the way Dream looked like he was dying.
“We have to hope that it wasn’t.”
And so hope it was.
Hope for their Doomsday.