Chapter 44: A Trial Completed

The other Trish simply scoffed at the revelation, tilting her head back to expose her throat. She was clearly waiting for the final blow, waiting for her other self to finish her off.

"Then just kill me. There’s no use keeping me alive."

"Not yet. Reyn, could you do me a favor?"

Trish stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper near my ear.

"Show her your magic. I want her to see the real you before she dies; no need to overdo it."

That was probably the closest thing to mercy I’d ever hear from her. So I agreed, clearing my throat and making a deliberate show of it.

Since this Trish was fake anyway, there was no need to be overly elaborate.

FLASH!

FLASH!

FLASH!

A cascade of blinding light erupted across the sky above us, huge radiant spears dwarfing the dark swords Trish had fielded. The other Trish’s eyes widened, her mind racing as she tried to process what she was seeing.

Two things were wrong with this picture.

First, Reyn himself was casting magic, and her other self was willingly serving him. Second, this Reyn had somehow mastered his magic to such a degree that he had already surpassed even this version of herself.

"H-How...?"

"Like I said, different timelines. I don’t know what kind of person your Reyn is, but understand this: whoever we, Trish Fillaunete, choose to serve, we serve a worthy master."

The other Trish stared at the radiant spears, her expression shifting from defiance to something more complicated. The light reflected off her dark eyes, and for a moment, she looked almost human. Almost.

"Worthy master..."

She repeated the words like they tasted foreign on her tongue.

"Your Reyn... he’s nothing like mine, then."

Her voice had gone quiet, the venom from earlier replaced by a hollow resignation. She didn’t look at Trish anymore.

She looked at me, checking if this version of Reyn Brimstone was actually worthy or had some stupid mind control magic.

"If you’re telling the truth, if this version of him actually changed..."

She laughed, a dry, broken sound that echoed strangely in the grey expanse.

"Then I’m jealous of you."

Trish’s expression didn’t soften. She’d won, and she knew it. But even she wasn’t cruel enough to mock a dying version of herself.

But I could still sense there was something she was unsatisfied with.

"Good."

She raised one hand, and a single blade moved from the ones pinning the other Trish, hovering above the other Trish’s chest.

"I’m satisfied; now shall I?"

The other Trish closed her eyes and tilted her head back further, exposing the full length of her throat.

"Do it."

Trish didn’t hesitate.

SHLICK!

The blade plunged downward, and the other Trish dissolved into wisps of black smoke, along with my own counterpart’s dead body. Leaving just a faint sigh, like wind passing through dead leaves, and then nothing at all.

The grey expanse shivered, and the air itself seemed to exhale.

"You okay?"

Trish’s arms were still raised, but the tension had drained from her shoulders. She let her hands fall slowly, and the remaining swords dissolved back into her shadow.

"I’m fine."

She said, though her voice was quieter than before, threaded with something between disappointment and irritation.

"I wish I could have made her serve you in her final moments, but I realized that plan was... kind of dumb."

"Serve me?"

"I mean, it sounded cool in my head. Having even different versions of me acknowledge you as their savior and master."

She paused, letting out a small, almost self-conscious sigh.

"But then I realized there’s probably no point if she dies anyway. So I lowered my standards to just having her acknowledge you a little."

Trish exhaled slowly, rolling her shoulders as if shaking off the last traces of the fight. The grey expanse around us had begun to soften at the edges, the stark emptiness bleeding into something warmer, starting to return us to the real world.

"Still, I have many other ways to prove my devotion anyway..."

The way she said it sent a shiver down my spine.

Now that was something I couldn’t wait for.

DING!

DING!

DING!

The sound of what seemed like church bells began to echo ahead of us, and the grey expanse rippled like waves across an ocean, all of it emanating from a door that had appeared where the two counterparts had died.

"It’s time we get going."

I said, finding the pistol somehow still in my hand. I’d picked it up on a whim, hoping it might be useful just in case I had to intervene for Trish.

But I definitely didn’t expect it to survive the trial’s collapse.

I now had a shadowy pistol in my arsenal. How the ammunition worked, however, I had no idea.

✧ ✦ ✧

The moment we stepped through the door, we found ourselves back in the chairs we’d left. The two of us sat side by side while Zephra was still at her desk, seemingly having fallen asleep from the wait.

And when I looked at my hand, there it was, the gun.

The shadowy silhouette that had covered it was gone, leaving a small engraving on its barrel that read: Ghost of the Eastern Front.

"Excuse me."

I tapped Zephra’s head, and she stirred awake, stretching her arms above her head.

"You two finally done...?"

She yawned, summoning a golden thread in her hands and beginning to weave it in patterns I couldn’t even begin to describe.

"Let me see how well you two did."

Zephra’s golden thread pulsed as she worked, her sleepy expression sharpening into focused appraisal. The thread twisted and coiled in her palms like a living thing, shimmering with the same light that had marked the trial’s path.

"Two challengers. One trial. A special artifact..."

She muttered, as if reading from a ledger only she could see. The thread coiled tighter and tighter, glowing brighter with every twist, until it split cleanly into two luminous strands.

"Done!"

Zephra compressed the strands into two small, pill-sized spheres of light, each one pulsing softly in her palm like a tiny heartbeat.

"Now, just swallow these and enjoy your rewards from the test. Preferably take it with water; it’s kind of a choking hazard."