Grian fought as hard as he could, making sure that the Watchers would be slowly but surely pushed to the top of Hermitopia where Grumbot would suck out their power and they wouldn't be a threat anymore. It was an easy plan so it was easy to enact. Too easy.
With a snarl the yellow Watcher lashed out with her great power, shooting deadly yellow beams of pure energy out all around her in a last ditch attempt to stop them from attacking. There was a scream as someone on the ground was impaled with that very power and fell over, dead.
Distracted, Grian looked down and his heart skipped a beat. And then another. Lizzie. Lizzie, lying dead on the ground with a hole in her chest. She was gone. And not just her. Everyone else who had died couldn't be resurrected without her.
"Lizzie!" Joel screamed. He knelt right next to her, shaking her gently. "Lizzie, please tell me this is a joke! Lizzie!" But she didn't respond. With an unhinged scream Joel let loose a burst of lightning just like the energy beams that the yellow Watcher had shot not so long ago and knocked the Watchers toward Grumbot where their power was sucked out. But it didn't matter anymore. Because Lizzie was dead.
---
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. "I do love you." He said slowly. "And I know what's best for you. Which is why you're staying here with me."
Jimena screamed something intelligibly at him but 2 just sighed. "You always complained how I was never around. Now we can stay together. I can give you anything you want. Don't you want this? Don't you want to be with me?!" "I do!" Jimena shouted back. "But not like this! I want to see my friends again!"
Qiron slowly opened up what appeared to be a glowing blue portal and held it in front of her. "Then you can see your friends from here." He said simply. Jimena looked through and gasped. She could see False. And hermit False. And what looked like her dead body. What is going on over there?
---
"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."
False just ignored her and regained control. "You must be so arrogant to think that either of you can control The Soul so wholly," The song rang out and False agreed. Yes, I am the one in control. Not hermit False, not the other me, but me. I am in control. "Scattering sparks of thought energy, deliver me and carry me away. Here in my kingdom I am your lord, I order you to cower and pray."
False thought very carefully about her decision as judge in this court as the instrumental break began to play. This story that revolved around the three Falses had many sides and it was hard to consider which side to take. But the song helped. It was oddly fitting in this situation. Very fitting.
She could feel the hermit's judgmental looks from beside her but she didn't mind. The defendant was most likely worried about the outcome. What the verdict would be. Well, of course she's questioning it. So am I, and I'm the judge.
"Spiraling down, spiraling down, biting down, lighting rounds, hear the sound... I am me!" The song cried out, all three of them proclaiming the last three words. It was enough to get False thinking. If all of us are separate... how do we get along? How does this trial end? Three Falses that will continue to fight and continue to be both right and wrong. What is the verdict?
Oblivious to her slight confusion on which path to take, the song continued playing. False still had a lot of time left; the soul's song was longer than its predecessors, but the clocks were still ticking. Ticking down until when she had to proclaim her verdict by the end of the song. "See how the serfs work the ground, see how they fall. And they give it all they've got. And they give it all they've got. And they give it all they've got 'til they're down."
False laughed along as the song dissolved slightly into a mess of unhinged laughter. "See how the brain plays around and it splits what once was whole down into three. And you fall inside a hole, inside a— someone help me understand what's going on behind my eyes. Doctor, I can't tell if I'm not me." The song went on, and False began to grasp what choice she would take.
"It's all your fault." She said to the hermit. "You've split us into three. There used to only be one False: you. And then you created me. And you created her. And now we're all stuck in this perpetual cycle of violence because of you." Then False paused to let the music continue playing. Heart and mind began to try and talk over each other, continuously arguing and showing off the other's faults.
"See how he laughs at you,"
"Seethe as he snarls at you,"
"He will never understand,"
"Watch him struggle just to stand,"
"A cold and bitter stance,"
"The weaker half of man,"
"What a calculated, degradated hand."
"Watch him beg and bargain time and time again."
A perpetual cycle of violence... False thought. Well, she was going to end the cycle with her trial. "See how they fight all day... The other half won't hear what's had to say. It's just the game they play here in this labyrinth maze." The song sang, slowly dying out. False knew that it was only the outro left. And she was beginning to think of her verdict, the song pulling her along.
"Screams with no sense for why," Jimena was truly gone, wasn't she? "One more day and more night," The cycle of violence going on forever. "One more black and one more white," Neither is wrong, yet neither is right. "One more chance is all you've left to turn the tides." The use of the word 'you' made False feel like the song was speaking to her directly. Pleading for her to act. And she did.
"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.