Gem was in deep trouble. The hermits had come through the rift; the same hermits that she knew from her life in another world. Which meant that they would recognize the Dawn princess as the pvp-trained elf that they were friends with. Which meant that her secret might be kept a secret much longer; especially with Grian there.
The thing was, Gem was a celestial being of immense power, and she used that power mostly to teleport between different dimensions and roleplay different characters or personas while she was there. In the hermits' world, she was an elf who happened to be one of the best pvpers. In this one, she was the pacifist princess of Dawn. And she didn't want anyone to know that she pretended to be other people in other dimensions, especially Grian.
Gem was putting all of the acting skills she'd developed over the years to fool the hermits into thinking that she was a completely different version of the Gem they knew from their world. She couldn't risk then finding out her secret.
If they realized that she was the same Gem that they'd befriended, then it wouldn't take them too long to add two and two together and figure out the rest of the stuff that she'd hid from everyone. At first, it hurt her to lie so much to her friends, especially to Impulse and Grian and Pearl, but the lies became easier with time. All in all, Gem had fun teaching the hermits the ways of this world.
But now that they were getting used to this new world, she had to start converting them to her sun religion. The princess of Dawn loved the sun so much that she worshipped it, and a religion could never have too many followers. So she started bringing the hermits to her church whenever they were nearby and introducing them to the religion. It was surpringly easy to convince a couple of them to get converted, especially after she started bribing them with sunglasses.
"So basically, all we have to do is go to sleep as soon as possible because we hate phantoms, wake up and say thanks to the sun, and you get these cool sunglasses so you can stare at the sun as much as you want." Gem explained to the people gathered in the church of the sun. B-Dubs, Sausage, Pix, Oli, and Scott nodded. "Wait, so if we decide to join your sun religion, we get cool sunglasses?!" Sausage gasped, realizing what she'd just said. "Yes, that's what Gem just said," Scott snorted.
"Okay, sign me up!" Sausage reached for the boxful of shades that Gem was holding. She moved it out of his reach. Gem couldn't blame Sausage for wanting them; Sausage was Sausage, after all, and they were pretty good and fancy sunglasses; made of intricately whittled dark oak wood that was so dark-colored it was black and stygian-tinted glass.
"Sausage, you've already got a religion," Gem said sternly. "You worship Saint Pearl." "Wait, Pearl's what?!" Bdubs yelped. "In this world, she's Sausage's sunflower goddess," Gem informed him. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Scott looking at her. "'in this world'?" He asked thoughtfully. Gem froze, then remembered what he said about giving her the benefit of the doubt and relaxed.
"Can I be the god of the sun religion?!" Bdugs asked eagerly. "If Pearl gets to be a goddess, I get to be a god!" Gem considered for a second. "Well, he does have a proven track record," Impulse said. "He's always the first one to sleep in our world." "Okay, you can be the god of the sun religion," Gem relented.
"Gem, you're not supposed to become a god just by saying it!" Scott burst out laughing. "Well, I can be a saint. Those are human, aren't they?" Bdubs said. "Great, now I want to be a god of my own religion too," Impulse complained. "That's not a bad idea!" Oli said thoughtfully. "Where are my sunglasses?!" Sausage yelped, trying to get into the box of shades that Gem was still keeping out of his reach.
"Sausage, if you want to get into my religion and earn these sunglasses, you have to renounce all prior religions that you've worshiped before," Gem told him firmly. Sausage sighed. "Fine, I'll come back later with proof that I've renounced Santa Perla!" He paused. "Wait, do I have to renounce Joel too?" "Why?" Gem asked. "Because I've technically had a kid with Joel. You've met Hermes, haven't you?"
"Yeah, I met Hermes," Gem replied, thinking of the time Sausage had become a zombie and had decided to use his son as a distraction so he could sneak up on her and scare her. "Wait, are you saying you had a child with Joel?! How?!" Impulse sputtered.
"Did I hear my name being called?" As if summoned, Joel opened the door of the church and came in. He didn't look happy. "Oh yeah, Gem was just telling me of how I was supposed to renounce all previous religions that I've been in if I wanted to join her sun religion and get these cool sunglasses," Sausage said. Joel looked even less happy.
"Gem!" He roared, and Oli and Impulse backed off. "I'm supposed to be the god around here! Why do we need another religion?!" "Because the sun is good and Bdubs wanted to be a god," Gem said calmly. Joel turned to look at Bdubs, who looked even shorter than usual compared to the eleven-foot-tall god.
"Seriously?!" "What? Can't I have any fun?" Bdubs pouted. "Okay, it's night, guys, everyone out of the church so we can sleep," Gem ordered. She passed sunglasses around to everyone who signed up and they went to wherever they were staying to go and sleep. Joel stormed away in a huff and Sausage flew to Sanctuary with Bdubs, who was helping him renounce Saint Pearl.
Gem was happy that Joel was mad. With any luck, this would turn into a religious war, which was half the reason why Gem made a sun religion in the first place. Joel ironically did a similar thing in X Life with Jeremyism, although while his reason for doing so was to get everyone to lose their lives faster than he did, Gem's reason was for pure entertainment.
Luckily, with Sausage renouncing his old gods, that might just make Joel angrier and more prone to starting a war. And maybe even Saint Pearl would do something similar. Or Sausage's rabbit parents would get mad at him. That would be funny to watch. Still, Gem felt a tiny sliver of guilt for playing on her friends' emotions and toying with them like that. It's nothing to worry about, Gem told herself. You've been doing this for forever. It was about time you changed your tastes. You need this for satiety. The pep talk didn't make her feel much better.
---
False flew to Sanctuary. Sitting around and worrying in Cogsmeade wasn't helping her with anything. Her curiosity burned within her like a flame and she wanted answers. Quick answers. Speaking of flames, False hadn't tried staring into fire again. It was a decision that she herself found very controversial.
One side of her didn't want to see what kind of awful person she was in the past, after realizing that she'd been a desensitized arsonist and possible murderer. On the other hand, she was also obsessed with finding answers to her confusing questions, and regaining her lost memories would surely help with that.
Eventually False had just decided to talk to Sausage again. He'd promised to keep her posted about the hermits and other worlds, but it had been a week since the rift had gone dark and she'd heard nothing from him. Tired of waiting any longer, False stopped waiting for Sausage to come to her and went to him instead. The mechanic found him in a strange building.
A bell tower of red and purplish bricks stretched up to the sky, attached to a circular house that was even more colorful. The house's roof was a dome of copper, reminding False of her builds in Cogsmeade. Shrubs and vines crawled their way up the walls. A set of twelve steps made of spruce wood lead up to a magenta-painted doorway with a dark oak door. And standing in the doorway was Sausage, the man she'd been looking for.
"False!" Sausage greeted, running down the stairs two at a time to go greet her. "How've you been?" "Waiting for you to keep your promise to tell me about what you've learned," False replied scathingly. Then she paused. That sounded a lot harsher than she'd intended. She shook her head. Maybe her lack of sleep was finally catching up to her.
Sausage's smile dimmed, ever so slightly. "Oh, yeah, about that, I kind of haven't been doing that much research," He mumbled. "Mostly I've been trying to meet the other hermits and chronicling what they're like." That got False's attention. "Can I read what you've written?" She asked. Too much knowledge never hurt anyone; this is a very safe way to learn about those hermits.
"Oh yeah, follow me." Sausage walked back into the building and False stepped in. She came into a large round room rimmed with shelves and tables and storage cases of all sorts, stacked by the walls and surrounding a round platform in the middle of the room that had a statue of Sausage holding what looked like a purple-tinted glass replica of the rift. False blinked.
"Sausage, what is this place?" Sausage came back from another room to answer her. "This is the Logistics and Observation of the Rift Enigma building! Or L.O.R.E. building for short. Basically we research the rift. So far I've just got samples to test later and my notes on the hermits."
Sausage showed her a room that had been converted into a rather squashed library; the shelves left little space for actual people to stand much in it. It was full of different books that Sausage had obviously written himself; his messy handwriting was on all of them.
One lone book sat prominently on a lectern in the center of the room and that was the book that Sausage took. He flipped through it and read a page, and then his eyes widened and he glanced back at False for a second. What he'd just read had obviously reminded him of something important.
"Uh, you're from Cogsmeade, right?" Sausage asked. "Yes..." False responded, confused. Sausage started to hastily debate with himself under his breath. False didn't interrupt; she wasn't entirely sure if he realized that she could hear him.
"Should I tell her? No, that might cause something bad to happen with the awareness of multiple dimensions. Or it could break the multiverse. Okay, not telling her." He tore a page out of the notebook and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he passed the book to False and switched back to a normal voice with a normal volume. "Okay, you can read now!" "Why did you tear out a page?" False asked as she started to read.
"Nothing, nothing!" Sausage said far too loudly. "I messed up writing that one, need to rewrite. False narrowed her eyes and went back to reading. Sausage didn't actually write down a lot of important information in his notebook about the hermits.
It was mostly weird stuff that they could do and what he saw when they interacted with him. According to the book, this guy named Keralis had weird eyesight and there was this other hermit named Cleo who might be a zombie pirate. Overall it was a mix of confusing and only slightly helpful notes.
But one page caught False's attention. It was talking about this hermit named Grian. At first it was just like the rest of Sausage's weird notes, talking about pesky birds for some reason, and saying that Grian had a very nice red sweater, but then he'd proceeded to note that Grian was blamed for the rift and didn't clarify or elaborate on it at all.
Frustrated, False shoved the book back at Sausage who put it back on the lectern. "Find anything helpful?" He asked. "Not really," False muttered, leaving. To her, Sausage honestly acted like he was hiding something important. The page he'd torn out, the practically useless notes... If False wanted to find out anything substantial, maybe she needed to do it herself.
Or maybe not by myself, False thought as she flew back to Cogsmeade. She pictured Jimena's keen and curious eyes, their vivid purple color reminding her of the rift. She could get Jimena's help on this. Maybe Sausage was only hiding something from her. If she sent Jimena to the L.O.R.E. building, maybe Sausage would open up to her. Armed with her plan, False flew back to her empire, thinking that maybe her mounting stack of questions would get answers soon.
---
False saw her other self fly away from Cogsmeade from her perch on the clocktower roof again. Good, she's leaving. That means I can build my secret base here while she's gone and without her noticing. False glided down from the roof and selected a spot by a long, giant bridge situated at the edge of Cogsmeade to build a tower upon. Her thought was that it was a good enough distance away from the other False's house but close enough that it would be easy to keep tabs on her.
So the hermit brought out her shulker box of supplies and started to build up a watchtower, keeping her other self's distinctive color and build palette in mind. False spent quite a while there, working on the bridge, almost zoning out in the act of doing something she really liked to do.
She was so engrossed in her task that she didn't notice the black-haired girl approaching her until she called her name. "False?" The girl asked. Startled, False looked up to see the girl who'd befriended the other her standing there, looking curious. Oh no. I've been found out.