False settled in her seat. The trial was nearing to a close and all she had to do now was decide who was innocent and who was guilty. She popped the music disc out of the gramophone and replaced it with the last in the set, The Soul Eclectic. Her other personality was the heart, hermit False was the mind, and she was the soul.
"Call me The Soul or call me my name, oh, label me whatever you would like. Call me your host or call me insane if that will help you stay in line." The song sang, suddenly sounding a bit more upbeat than it's previous two versions. It made sense, though, the soul was the one most alive out of the three.
"He's a damn madman."
"He's a depressed fool."
"Is that the one you truly want to be?"
"Abandon him and we could live so free." The song sang with two voices at once; heart and mind pointing out to the soul how they were each better than the other, but soul had an opinion of his own. "Warring all night, abhorrent and trite, you seem to forget, you answer to me." Yes, False, the empress, the grand architect or Cogsmeade, ruled.
"Fathers of fathers, I know that I'm vile, let's see how long it takes to murder me." Soul said with a grin. "False, you're not evil." Hermit False cried out, wrestling with her bonds. "You're right." False acknowledged. "I am evil and not evil, just as you are both and neither as well." The song agreed. "Neither is wrong, yet neither is right; condemn him to the infirmary."
"Have you reached a verict yet?" Hermit False asked after a while. False hummed. "Not quite yet. You must wait, defendant False Symmetry. We are waiting for the end of the song. The Soul Eclectic is longer than the other two that came before it. Please be patient while I make my decision."
"This is a rigged trial." The other False said as she once again tried and failed to slip free of the ropes that tied her to her chair. "You already know how the song ends. You already know how this trial ends. You already know who's innocent and who's guilty." "Incorrect." False said. "This trial is not rigged at all. The song just fits our situation quite perfectly, don't you agree, Jimena?"
She glanced at the girl sitting quietly in her chair. She'd been listening and behaving well throughout the whole trial. "Yes, you do agree. And you were the one who picked this music out, didn't you? Yes you did." False said with a smile. Then the other False took control and shook their head. "She's gone, False. She's dead." But just as she spoke Jimena blinked.
---
Jimena blinked, wondering where she was. It certainly wasn't the purple room. But all the same, it still looked familiar... oh, she remembered now. It looked like the void that she had dreamed about a lot. The void that the Watchers lived in.
Jimena suddenly froze as she remembered what had just happened. She'd betrayed the Watcher and then False... False had killed her. "She didn't do it on purpose." Came a very familiar voice. Jimena slowly turned around to see Qiron floating there, looking remorseful. "Qiron." Jimena said. Then she corrected herself. "Father."
Qiron sucked in his breath sharply. "You... you remember?" He breathed. Jimena nodded. 2 flew closer to her. "I'm sorry that you died." He said, wrapping his great blue wings around her. "It wasn't your fault." Jimena said. Qiron paused. "...It actually was. To elicit the results we wanted, we increased False's bloodlust. It was what caused her to... kill you."
Jimena stared up at him. "You are even more manipulative then I thought." She said with a hard tone in her voice. Qiron just looked sad. "It's the way of the Watcher." He said. "No, it's just your way." Jimena said. "Gem made the Watchers emissaries of peace until you made them destructive and hurtful. I don't like this version of you, father."
Qiron just looked at her. Jimena felt herself getting frustrated at him all over again. "Just revive me or something already. I need to tell False that I'm fine." She said. "But you're not fine." Qiron said softly. "You're dead." "So? You can bring me back. You control respawn." Jimena said. 2 hesitated. "...Remember when I told you that it was not your time to die yet?" He asked.
Jimena was caught a bit off-guard. It wasn't what she'd expected him to say. "Yeah. What about it?" She asked. "It is your time now." Qiron said. "What? Why?" Jimena asked, breaking apart and staring at him in disbelief.
"Your death..." 2 said slowly, "Was more or less planned. We didn't expect it to be in the way that you died but you were still going to. Your death was meant to push the clone False off of the deep end and create chaos for us to feed on. It was our contingency plan."
Jimena just couldn't take it anymore. "You really are an evil manipulative person!" She shouted. "How could you just use me like that for your own gain? Don't you even love me?!" Qiron backed away, looking rather shocked at her outburst. "How could you say that? I love you. I do."
"Then bring me back!" Jimena shouted. "Let me be with my friends! If this is the way you treat me, father, I'd rather be with them!" Qiron looked hurt but then he slowly nodded. He waved his hand at her and then Jimena got a funny feeling in her body. She was returning to her body in the living world. "Thank you." She said to her father before she faded back to being alive.
Jimena blinked. She seemed to be in the bunker at Cogsmeade. Sitting at what appeared to be a meeting table with the three Falses. "Jimena?" False asked, looking slightly dazed but snapping to her senses quickly. "False!" Jimena said, standing up. Her body felt a little weird but she was slowly feeling back to normal.
She moved over to the tinkerer as she suddenly hugged her and started squeezing tightly. "I killed you. I just killed you." The other False was crying. Jimena softly hugged her back. "Well, I'm back from the dead, aren't I?" She asked. She glanced around and then suddenly noticed how weird her environment was.
"Uh... why are there nooses here? And why's hermit False tied to a chair...? What happened while I was dead?" Jimena asked blankly. "A lot of stuff." The inventor said, still looking at her like she was a ghost, and fair enough she sort of was. Awkwardly she touched the spot right above her heart, where False's sword had pierced her. She didn't feel a hole, which made her feel much better.
Slowly she made over to hermit False's chair and untied her from it. "The Watchers are gone now, aren't they?" She asked. The hermit nodded and False looked a little surprised. She apparently hadn't gotten the news. "Who... died?" Jimena asked quietly. She shuddered as she remembered the large pile of bodies by Hermitopia. Some bodies she recognized.
"A bunch of people but that doesn't matter." Hermit False said. "Lizzie for some reason knows nekomancy which is cat necromancy or something and she can ressurect people." Jimena and False looked extreny relieved. Jimena caught herself wondering how many people False had killed while under the control of the bloodlust.
"What about Martyn?" She asked. "Is he okay?" Before anyone could answer they heard a shout. A shout that sounded just like Martyn. They all looked at each other and then simultaneously rushed outside. Once out it wasnt hard to find the source of the shout and the trouble. Every single iron golem that False had crafted was heading straight for this particular spot in Cogsmeade.
Jimena hurried over and gasped when she saw who else was there. Martyn, Grian, Jimmy... They and some hermits were all being attacked by tge iron golems. And by the looks of it they were being beaten to a pulp. "Stop this instant!" False shouted and at once the iron golems stopped, obeying their creator and the grand architect of the empire they belonged to.
Grian looked around in confusion and then his gaze settled on Jimena. His eyes widened in shock. "Jimena?" He rushed over to hug her and not too long afterward Jimmy was there too. "But I saw you die... and Lizzie isn't here! Wait, is she?" Grian suddenly glanced around furtively as if he expected the cat mayor to come waltzing out of the nearby woods at any time.
"Qiron brought me back." Jimena informed him. Everyone's expressions clouded at the mention of the Watcher. "Why?" Martyn asked suspiciously. "What's Herodias doing in your head?" "Oh... um... Herodias isn't exactly alive anymore..." Jimena twiddled her fingers as she tried to explain.
Everyone just looked at her weirdly. "Uh, nevermind." Jimena sighed. No one said anything for a second and then Grian tapped her shoulder. "Jimena, can you come to spawn with us?" He asked. "There's something we need your help with there." Jimena paused for a second, considering, then she looked at False.
"Can False come?" She asked. A few of the hermits looked at each other. "It's okay." Hermit False said, stepping forward. "I'm vouching for her." The hermits stared at her incredulously. "Okay, who are you and what have you done to False?" Jevin joked halfheartedly. False rolled her eyes. "Hey, I can change my mind, you know."
So they all went back to spawn where Jimena met up with Gem, Scott, and Grian. "Since the other Watchers are currently too busy fighting with the Listeners right now," Scott said, "And the Listeners are winning, by the way, but anyway, with the other Watchers busy we might have a shot of locking them out of this world."
"And the hermit world too." Gem and Grian said at once. Scott nodded. "The rift might help with that." The four of them approached the blackened, deadened rift in the cliffside. Scott put his hand in the black hole-esque rift and a few seconds later the others did too, despite how scary it seemed. "Concentrate on shielding both worlds." Gem instructed. "Block the Watchers out."
After a few tries there was a soft ripple of cyan, green, red, and purple energy through the rift before it settled back into blank blackness. "Did it work?" Jimena asked quietly, stepping away. "Yes." Gem said after closing her eyes and doing something with her powers. "It worked. Now the Watchers can't bother us ever again."