"Tommy."
Everyone was frozen, except for one person.
"Do you think you're a hero, Tommy? Is that what this is?"
Technoblade.
"I just wanted.... I just wanted L'Manburg," Tommy said softly.
"You just wanted power."
"It's all I've ever wanted..."
"Tommy, we both know that's not what this was. You just did a coup. You performed a hostile government takeover and then instilled yourself as the president. If you just wanted L'Manburg, then why are we here?
"But let me tell you something, Tommy. Good things... They don't happen to heroes. Let me tell you a story of a man named Theseus. His country was in danger, and he sent himself forth, behind enemy lines. He slayed the minotaur, Tommy. He saved his city. And do you know what they did to him?"
Silence, complete this time. No noise to distract them, not the shuffling of feet or the clanking and grinding of armor plates sliding over one another.
"They exiled him, Tommy," Technoblade continued. "Exiled, cast away from his family, from his home. He died out in the wilderness, far from everyone and everything he had ever loved, or even known. That's what happens to heroes, Tommy. The Greeks knew the score."
Tommy didn't say anything. He couldn't. He turned his head to look at everyone else around him. Tommy stood alone in the center of the crater, on a bridge a single block thick. And all he saw, all Dream saw, around him? A dark, impassive wall of netherite. No one else moved. No one even looked up, aside from Nightmare.
"But if you want to be a hero..."
Technoblade turned around, and stepped up onto a block of soul sand on the ground in front of two T-shaped structures he had built out of the same material.
"If you want to be a hero, that's fine," Techno said, pulling out a black, round object.
"Technoblade, don't do this!" Tommy cried out. At his voice, some others joined in, calling his name and telling him to stop. They tried, they did. But none of them had realized just how ruthless Techno was. They called him the Blade. The most powerful weapon in L'Manburg's arsenal hadn't been a sword. It was Technoblade.
But this blade was double-edged.
"We're so close! I'm not the hero!" Tommy tried, bracing himself unconsciously. "No one's the hero, we've got L'Manburg, that's all we ever wanted!"
This was bad. Tommy wouldn't run. But after all, where would he run to?
"You want to be a hero, Tommy? Then die like one!"
Technoblade laughed as the boss bars loaded up.
He had done it. Technoblade had spawned not one, but two withers.
Right in the center of L'Manburg.
And then the true battle began.
Dream couldn't watch. He hunkered down next to the building he was watching, trying to keep the memories back.
He used to want to remember his past life. Until he realized what he had done.
Dream's conscience was oozing red, and he couldn't fix it. Death after death after death built up in his mind, and he couldn't handle it. They pounded in his head, a million voices clambering at his brain, begging or crying or yelling or screaming...
It was too much. Far too much.
Dream cried again.
He ached to apologize, to alleviate any burden he could from these lost souls. But how could he bear their pain if his own overwhelmed him?
A single, trembling hand reached up.
Something hit the ground. It cracked against the stone.
Dream's eyes were too blurry to see what it was. Was it a stray arrow? He didn't know, and didn't care.
He didn't care about anything.
There was nothing but pain.
Nothing...
Emptiness...