The End of the Dream

Chapter 18

The next few seconds were a blur.

You slammed into the sloped side of the pit, teeth rattling in your head, and began to roll. Something black and shadowy and tendril-like wrapped around your waist. You jerked to a halt, inches away from the thrashing water.

Wilford vaulted over his podium, making an inhumanly lengthy leap across the chiranha pit and rolling back up to his feet on Bim's side of the studio set. Dark took a more leisurely route, simply sidestepping through the shadows and appearing behind Bim.

A sharp tug dragged you back to safe ground.

You stumbled, struggling to regain your sense of balance after being so unceremoniously yanked around.

Dark reached out to steady you. You flinched and recoiled.

"Cheaters!" Bim accused. "This is my show and you play by my rules."

The robotic studio assistants whirred into life. After securing you at your podiums, they had retreated to the wings and powered down. You had forgotten about them. That was a mistake.

They surrounded you now, near a dozen, the red lights of their eyes narrowed into angry lines. With a hiss, arms detached from their sides and raised, pointing directly at you, Dark, and Wilford.

Those were guns. They were almost certainly guns.

"We've played along with your game long enough. We will be taking our leave now," Dark stated. Polite. Formal. An unspoken threat that would make anyone with sense quiver.

"You think you can just do whatever you want. You think you can kick me off Markiplier TV, you think you can talk about me behind my back until no one will work with me, and now you think you get to leave? Haha! I think not."

Dark met Bim's accusations with an icy, dead stare. Even Bim, in the height of his conviction, withered slightly.

His words flowed with the crushing weight of a glacier, and all the warmth of one. "Did it ever occur to you that it was your own behaviour that drove people away?"

Bim's chest puffed out. "Liar," he hissed defensively. "Who wouldn't want to work with the greatest presenter and show host in existence? I'm Bim Trimmer."

Even Wilford's patience for Bim was growing thin, despite seeming otherwise unperturbed by being held at robotic gunpoint. "Oh, hush. You're painfully self-absorbed and blame everyone but yourself for your troubles."

Bim laughed outright. "That is rich coming from Mr. I Never Killed Anyone."

"Enough." The studio darkened, seeming to warp at the edges. A shrieking ringing and creaking echoed through the room, loud enough to silence everyone, as though Dark's command were not already sufficient. "We. Are. Leaving."

Dark turned his back to Bim and stepped away.

The robotic assistants were not sophisticated enough to have received the message; as soon as Dark moved out of line, the one closest to him fired.

Matching their futuristic appearance, they were armed with laser guns rather than bullets. Weaponised energy. The laser reached Dark's auras, which were as dense and violent as you had ever seen. Its energy dissipated, dissolving into fragments while red and cyan wavered and devoured it.

The remaining bots took that as their cue to join in a synchronised onslaught.

Dark may have been able to dissolve the energy of a laser bolt, but the same could not be said of yourself and Wilford. You didn't have time to think about it. You flung up a shield, just like the one you'd defended yourself with during the battle at the frozen lake. A dome of blue energy, covering the three of you.