Watching and Listening - An Empires SMP AU

Sad alternate ending

           "Tridential regicide," Three will die. False slid the noose over the hermit's neck. "I won't hesitate to kill my Heart and Mind." False slid the noose over her own neck. What are you doing?! Her other personality panicked. She tried to take control but False wouldn't even let her speak aloud.

           "I will abdicate these deviants sat inside." She slipped her hand over the lever that controlled the trapdoors under their chairs. "I'll take you down in tandem when this rope is tied." We'll all see you soon, Jimena. And she pulled the lever.

           False opened her eyes in a simple field. In the distance were some houses that looked vaguely familiar. Like the ones from Cogsmeade but also like the ones from her old world. The one where she'd originally come from. "Where are we?" False turned around to see that the other Falses were there too, and they all had their own bodies that were whole and didn't look very hanged. 

           "The afterlife." False knew that voice. They all turned to see Jimena standing there, with no stab wound in her chest. False wordlessly moved to embrace her and Jimena hugged her back. "Qiron built this place for us." She murmured, and False noticed that the blue Watcher was standing right behind her. 

           Sooner or later they settled down in this world of their afterlife. At first the three Falses didn't get along with each other after what had happened at the trial, but as time went on they learned to have peace. All three of them were already dead, after all. Grudges seemed to be merely a thing of the living world. 

           Qiron, who was apparently Jimena's father, came everyday to visit his daughter. False learned to appreciate his presence. It was his doing that they had this world to share, after all. And so they lived there for the rest of time. 

---

           Martyn and Jimmy managed to sneak past the iron golems as they went to look for False. She'd mysteriously vanished along with Jimena and sooner or later they'd realized that hermit False was missing too. Jimmy didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that they were at Cogsmeade. 

           It took them a while to search but then Martyn remembered the secret bunker that False had in the mountain and he and Jimmy went inside. What a shock it was to them when they found the three missing people dead. No, four, because there were three Falses.

           Jimmy fell to his knees and howled. He'd just lost three friends. Maybe more. Grian with a stab wound in his chest, Jimena staring blankly in that chair, False hanged... He was too late to save his friends. He was always too late.

           Martyn and Jimmy carried the bodies out. The iron golems didn't bother them anymore when they saw that their masters, whom they were supposed to protect, had died. They just stood there with wilting poppies in their hands as if to pay respects. But the golems weren't alive. Just like Grian, False, Jimena, Lizzie, and other people weren't alive.

           Jimena and False were buried together in Cogsmeade. It was a small funeral service. Only Jimmy and Martyn attended. Grian would've come too, if he was alive. But the amnesiac girls really didn't have that many friends. Sausage wanted to come as well but he was on a quest with Joel and Oli to try and find Santa Perla to see if she could bring back Lizzie. He'd mentioned that he didn't know how long they'd be gone. 

           Mumbo told Grumbot that Grian was dead and he had him reopen the rift so the remaining hermits could go home. They needed to tell their friends on the other side what had happened. Who they'd lost. The dead hermits were buried on the other side of the rift too. 

           Cogsmeade lies abandoned. No one approaches it ever, even though it was in the middle of all the other empires. The hermits trade iron from Hermitopia instead. They were originally going to have that export anyway, before they went all over the top and made every single farm for every single export possible. 

           Jimmy and Martyn don't ever go back to Cogsmeade either, not even to visit Jimena and False's grave. The place had too many memories. Instead they both go back to being sheriffs of Tumble Town and rule together in a relationship not unlike Jimena and False's. 

           Cogsmeade is a ghost town now. Every so often some wandering traders will pass by and make pit stops in the small empire. But even though the iron golems don't chase them away they usually succumbed to the many traps that the dead ruler had set up. The town seemed to bring nothing but death and misery to whoever lived in it.

           As the False's old clocks merrily tick away in their chaotic, disjointed way, the wandering traders that survived the trip through Cogsmeade will say that if you listen closely, you can just make out the sound of a gramophone playing a strange electric choir on loop throughout the whole night.