A few minutes later, when they got to the top, they found themselves in a large ballroom, decorated with gold fixtures and beige wallpaper. At the base of the walls of the room, spaced at regular intervals, were white marble podiums holding an assortment of objects encased behind glass, appearing like museum exhibits. The floor appeared like rose quartz, its tiles polished and smooth, but what caught the attention of them was the human-sized figure standing in the centre of the ballroom. Lucy and Scytale approached it slowly but with a normal walking pace. The figure turned towards them, and they saw its face.
Lucy still had to call it an ‘it’ because they had an androgynous beauty that made it difficult to guess their gender. Their cream-coloured hair was tinged with pink by the time it reached past their waist and near their ankles. The figure wore white and pink mage robes but had no hat or staff that would indicate they were ready for offence or to cast spells. Lucy couldn’t place a visual age for the figure, as they had a timeless face that seemed like they could be anywhere from their teens to their late twenties. Their eyes were also pink, and they clasped their hands together with a gentle smile on their face as they spoke.
“Welcome. It’s been quite a few years since anyone has managed to perfectly solve the puzzle in the first room. Come have a seat here,” they said, gesturing to the three new brown leather armchairs that had appeared behind them when they said that. He had a slightly more masculine voice, but Lucy knew that with these creatures, they were technically still genderless until they reached a certain level of strength. Considering he had a humanoid form, he had reached that level.
“I haven’t seen a spirit guardian in a while,” she said as she took a seat. Scytale got his own armchair for his metre-long body. The spirit tilted his head curiously.
“You know what I am? And you said you’ve seen one before… hmm,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. He shook his head however and continued. “Well, as you have said, I am the spirit guardian of this Faction. I was left here by the Founder to test those who wish to receive his inheritance. I go by Ashale’viaf.”
Lucy nodded. Spirits, like their metaphysically opposed kindred the demons, had true names, and so would only use part of their very long actual name when revealing their identity.
“I’m Lucille, and this is Scytale,” she responded in kind. He nodded in acknowledgement and swept a hand around him to show the room.
“If you came into this trial without a desire to challenge it for the inheritance, you may take one item from this room, sealed behind the glass, to bring out with you as a reward. If you wish to challenge the inheritance,” he said, turning back to them, “Then we shall play a game of questions. For every question answered, the other may ask one back in return. I can detect lies, so please remain truthful. If there is no need for a vague answer, then please don’t say ‘maybe’ or other such words. If you cannot answer the question, I will ask another, and the reverse will happen if I do not answer yours. I suggest you place limitations on your questions, otherwise, my answer may be too vague. If you want to do the challenge, we can begin any moment.”
She narrowed her eyes. As the spirit never said who would start, if she asked a question, such as asking for more defined rules, it would begin, and if she shook her head or asked to select a reward, she would not continue the challenge. The spirit purposely left out details, so they had little to work with. She nodded her head and remained silent. The spirit’s smile widened but he nodded in acceptance of her ‘answer’.
“Then I will take that as permission to begin. First, a question from me: Why do you want to challenge the trial?”
She smirked. “To own the Faction. I assume it’s now my turn, so I’ll go: Is this the final stage of this trial?”
The spirit tilted his head back to laugh. “I suppose that was my fault. For your question, the answer is: it's dependent on how well you answer my questions.” She tilted her head at that, but the spirit continued, “My question now is: What need, or desire would owning this Faction fulfil?”
She thought for a second before answering. “My need for resources.” The spirit raised an eyebrow, so she decided to be more specific. The spirit needed certain answers from her to certain questions, and if she tested him too much, she wouldn’t obtain her goal. “I need magical items, access to information and human resources most of all.”
The spirit sat back a little, seemingly content with her answer. He nodded at her to continue.
“Did you decide to test the Users who enter the second room of the trial like this?”
Ashale’viaf narrowed his eyes at her but responded calmly, “No. Will the fulfilment of your goal be beneficial to the Tower?”
She responded instantly, nodding her head, “Definitely. How many Users managed to get past this point in your questioning?”
The spirit raised his eyebrows but smiled, amused at her question. “Several hundred.” Lucy nodded. The trial had at least several thousand entrees in its time. The spirit continued with its question.
“Will the fulfilment of your goal be beneficial to the Faction?”
Lucille looked straight into his eyes. “I cannot answer that question. It needs to be more specific or have context.” That was the good thing about that rule, it allowed the questioner to rephrase it, although normally it wouldn’t be used like this.
The spirit leaned back and hummed in thought, before asking her again, “Will the members of the Faction be accepting of the decisions you want to make?”
She laughed. “I hope they will be.” The spirit raised an eyebrow again, so she clarified her answer, “I aim to show them by example that the benefits they can gain from following my decisions are greater than what hesitancy they have for them.”
Ashale’viaf let out a ‘huh’ and leaned back, nodding in thought, his eyes looking at something in the distance. He gestured for her to continue. Lucy tapped a finger on her chin, her eyes narrowed as she watched him, before abruptly asking her question.
“Is there currently a present third party who has an interest in our discussion?”
Lucy noticed the spirit briefly froze for a few milliseconds before responding to her question. If she wasn’t experienced in reading body language, she wouldn’t have noticed it.
“No,” he told her stiffly. Then he turned to Scytale. “And for what is your main reason for following your bond?”
Lucy made eye contact with Scytale, an eyebrow raised at first, but then just shrugged at him and leaned back in her seat, her legs crossed and hands behind her head. It was the non-verbal equivalent of ‘do it yourself’. He bared his fangs at her but responded to the spirit.
“There’s a practical benefit in following her, but most importantly, she’s interesting. She never stops surprising me. When are you going to go back to ignoring me?” he asked, annoyance present in his tone. The winged snake did not like tests. The spirit chuckled in amusement but responded casually.
“After one more question. Will you want split authority over the Faction if you complete the challenge?”
Scytale stretched out his wings and reared up with outrage. “Hell no. Don’t ever make me think more than I need to. Leave the scheming to Lucy, I just fight stuff. And please stop asking me questions now.”
The spirit sent him a wide smile that just made the snake even more irate. “As you wish. Then,” he said, turning back to the girl in front of him, “Lucy, what benefits will you owning this Faction bring them?”
She smiled. It finally sounded like this conversation was going somewhere. “Logistical and structural improvements. The Faction needs to change if they wish to support the ambition to have an even larger size. However, I can also bring them technological improvements.”
The spirit quirked an eyebrow again, but this time she didn’t add more detail. She continued. “How many questions did the Founder tell you to ask?”
The spirit halted for a second, stunned by the question, but he then gave her a slightly sheepish smile. “He told me to ask ten. My question now is: What do you think is your talent?”
She smirked at his reaction but answered his question easily. “My greatest talent is my knowledge. How many questions set by the Founder have you asked as of now?”
He counted on his fingers before holding them up for her to see. “A total of five. Now, why is knowledge your greatest talent?”
“Because it allows me to make accurate plans, helping me to gain an advantage over competitors. Are you bored in here?”
Some would think Lucille was running out of questions to ask. They would be right. She was getting bored herself.
The spirit shook his head. “I’m not bored. If knowledge is so important to you, why have you not asked me other questions, such as the answers to the ten questions, or how well other Users have done compared to you?”
She smiled slightly. “There are two answers for this, the long and short answer. I’ll say them both. The short answer is I already know the answers. The long answer is I can calculate, based on the characteristics of the first five questions you asked, and the number of Users who got past the first four questions, the standard decrease in successful participants per question asked,” she explained. “This number changed as the difficulty increases, or other ‘factors’ get involved, but I can guess that roughly twenty have progressed to this point during your time as the spirit guardian here.”
She pretended not to notice how the spirit’s eyes widened when she stated that and continued, “I could’ve asked more questions to demonstrate my ‘personality trait’ of emphasizing knowledge, but I ‘know’ that is not currently what you need. My turn to ask a question I guess, so… if you’re not bored, then are you scared?”
Ashale’viaf had been listening intently to her answer until that point, where he froze, expressionless, and stared at her. She just raised an eyebrow and started tapping her finger on the edge of the armchair when a few minutes later, he didn’t say anything. Eventually, he sighed, putting his hands to his temples to massage them.
“I cannot answer that,” he finally answered, sounding tired. Lucy looked at him, her expression unreadable, but nodded.
“Then how many Users reached the point of your last question?”
He looked up at her with his mouth hanging open, flabbergasted at her chosen question after her original one. She shrugged. “I like to know when I’m correct.”
“….19.” he slowly said, as if unaware of what to make of her now. He leaned back and looked at her for a few seconds, rubbing his chin in thought, before continuing.
“What are your hobbies?”
For this question, it was Lucy’s turn to flabbergasted, and her eyebrows almost disappeared into her hair. It was not a question most people thought to ask her, and not something she had an answer for on the spot. “I don’t see how this is related to the Faction.” The spirit gave her a cheery grin, his earlier show of emotion practically gone.
“Does this mean you can’t answer the question?”
She held up her hand in opposition, running her fingers through her black fringe in thought. “No, I’ll answer it. It is just slightly unexpected, that’s all. There is… not anything I believe fits the concept of a normal person’s ‘hobby’ as such…” she began, crossing her arms and frowning at the floor.
“However, there are activities I regularly take part in to some extent. Mostly out of necessity. I often have times when I do extensive research into concepts I lack knowledge of. It is why I have a rather broad knowledge base, as my magical specialties are hard to find good, recorded information on. I somewhat enjoy research, but I’ve never done it as a hobby. Was that one of the Founder’s questions?” she finished, looking up.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Ashale’viaf smiled widely. “It was. Was research not your core profession before this?”
She shook her head, looking off slightly into the distance. “I never was, and I doubt I’ll ever be a full-time researcher. That is because of the…. hazardous nature of my areas of knowledge. One does not like people knowing too much about it, another has many, many negative ethical connotations when considering ‘researching’ it, another only has me to pioneer it and…. I would prefer that nobody needs to study the last one. What’s the next question?”
The spirit looked immensely interested in asking more, but refrained from doing so, and asked his next question. “Hmm. Okay then, my next question is this: you must escape from an enemy and three options are presented before you do so. The sword, to defeat the enemy, the pen, to write to the enemy kingdom, which will let you live if you surrender and offer you protection, and the power of a dragon, which will help you achieve your goal, but who is likely to ask an impossible task of you afterwards. Which do you choose?”
Lucille just stared at the man. “You know this is a really badly written scenario, right?”
The grimace on the spirit’s face told her he was not the one to write it. She sighed and put a hand on her forehead. “Ignoring the obvious lack of limitations and the numerous loopholes, I will assume that all my answers must be within the logic and reason of this scenario.”
The spirit nodded in agreeance, so she continued, “So, I will also assume an angry much stronger dragon that could decimate an enemy kingdom is not chasing after me, and that all three solutions could potentially work if I chose them with enough thought behind them. Therefore, my answer is to choose them all. Was this the only scenario you could choose?”
The spirit grimaced again. “Believe it or not, this was the best one. Why choose them all?”
She sighed but nodded in acknowledgment of his question. “As a Faction Head, and personally, I should plan for all factors. Picking up the sword, while it's unlikely I, Lucille, could defeat the enemy with it if they are after my head, could potentially make them more hesitant to fight me, allowing me to stall for time to make another plan. Writing a letter to the enemy kingdom grants me an escape route, and if I eventually decided not to go to them, then it wouldn’t matter anyway, as they wouldn’t trust just my letter in the first place." She continued, “I’ll request the aid of the dragon as a last resort, but any promises not bound by high-quality magic contracts do not hold enough strength to keep me if the dragon’s task is too difficult, so I’d just run away then.”
Ashale’viaf nodded and sighed, likely just as happy as she was to get past that irritating personality-testing question. “What’s your question?”
“Are you planning for me to go to another stage after this?” Lucy asked him.
He leaned back and looked at her expressionlessly for a bit, before answering, “I am. What is your class?”
She tilted her head and looked at him with narrowed eyes and a wide smile. “I don’t know why you need to ask that, but I’ll answer anyway. I have no class. What number of the Founder’s questions are we up to now?”
He nodded along to her answer, automatically assuming she had said she was a mage, considering the ‘talent’ she mentioned, until he registered what she had said and did a double take. “That’s impossible,” he stated flatly. She leaned back with a smile.
“Use your fancy lie-detection magic on me. I’ll even say it again: I have no class.”
He stared at her for a second, before leaning back and frowning, tapping a finger on his armchair in thought. Eventually, he shook his head and looked up. “Sorry. What number, you asked? We’re up to nine now. My question is this: What is your attitude toward the four Supreme Institutions of the Mystical realm? Independently and overall.”
She smiled. “Well then. The Empire of Eternity: Acknowledge as the governing legal body, but do not let its title be overwhelming, as it is as divided as it is large. All-Aeon Athenaeum: Supporting their members can be beneficial, but don’t trust their claims too much when it comes to time. Glory Pantheon: Praise their exploits, avoid manipulating them, but never provoke them. Citadel of Fate: If they want money, chuck it at them, hope they lose interest, and don’t trust them as far as I can throw them.” She spread her arms wide.
“Overall, don’t consider the Supreme Institutions as entire Factions. They are composed of hundreds of minor groups, all with their ambitions and goals. If I don’t ruin the Institutions’ prospects and the political stability of the realm, I’ll survive.”
The spirit had smiled at a few of her descriptions and nodded when she finished. He sat there, thinking for a while, and they both stayed quiet, waiting for him. Eventually, he stood up, brushing the non-existent dust from his long white and pink robes, before looking at them both. He nodded solemnly.
“I believe we are done here. Please rise as well.”
They both stood up, stretching, and the armchairs behind them disappeared. The man with long, rose-tinted hair waved a hand to his right, and what looked like a wooden doorframe appeared in the centre of the ballroom. Within, there was a small room with an empty podium, like the ones around the edges of the ballroom they were in, but nothing else of detail could be identified at their distance away from it. Ashale’viaf waved a hand to the doorway-shaped portal.
“Here is the final room. Let us go in.”
Following the spirit, Lucy and Scytale stepped through and found themselves in a dark stone room, lit by those same yellow candles from the staircase. The podium had five small wooden boxes on top, the kind that stored individual pieces of jewellery, and they were open, revealing 4 rings, each inlaid with a different coloured gemstone that the marbles had been made of, besides the purple gem. The spirit turned to them with a 5th box in his palm, this one containing a gold ring with a yellow gem.
“For this task, I need you to pick an answer out of 5 possibilities. These rings correspond to the individual beliefs that each one of the noble clans and the Founder had about what was important for business: Endurance, Creativity, Information, Relationships and Power. Do you need me to ask which colour represents which belief?”
She shook her head. Scytale was around her neck again, looking at the rings curiously. Endurance was for red, Creativity was for blue, Information was for black, and Relationships was for silver. Anyone who knew the history and background of the Faction could identify these. The Founder was known as a strong warrior, and so Power was assumed to be representing him.
She held her chin for a few moments before turning to the spirit. “I’ve chosen.”
He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “That was quick. Are you sure you don’t need more time?” She shook her head, so he nodded. “Let’s hear it then.”
“The Founder would’ve selected power. All the noble clans represented here have unique beliefs, but they can all be considered a type of ‘power’ or ‘talent’ of a person, and what someone needs to run the Faction can be a ‘power’ not defined by what is represented by the noble clans.”
The spirit nodded in understanding of her explanation but looked at her with a complex expression. “So, are you choosing the gold ring?”
“Nope,” she replied with a grin. The spirit blinked.
“Sorry?”
“I’m not selecting that ring.”
The spirit stayed there for a moment, his mouth hanging open, and then began rubbing his forehead in frustration.
“Then which ring are you choosing?”
She pointed at him. “Ignoring the fact that you never said I needed to choose a ring, nor mentioned whether I could pass or not by selecting any of the rings, I’m pretty certain this is another dumb personality test set by your Founder,” she said, scowling. “Nonetheless, I would choose Creativity.”
The spirit raised an eyebrow.
She shrugged. “In my experience, if you can be creative enough, then you don’t need the other types of solutions. Although, I could use that excuse for any of the beliefs. So, what were you trying to do here?”
Ashale’viaf stared at her for a bit longer now, before groaning and chuckling in self-derision.
“You’re right. It was a personality test. And in truth, this is the only part of the trial that is important. The questions beforehand weren’t needed at all, it wasn’t even part of the true trial.”
She nodded. “I know.”
He tilted his head curiously. “How?”
She gestured to the portal behind them. “Because, at the very start, you never said you weren’t going to lie. It’s probably a fail-safe measure for you, in case something went wrong in the testing, but it meant I could tell that the ‘Founder’s ten questions’ weren’t a thing.”
“But I tried to make it obvious that I hadn’t selected the questions,” he stated, confused.
“That was due to a mistake on your part, actually,” she told him. “One of my questions was ‘How many questions did the Founder tell you to ask?’. You said ten. My next question was ‘How many questions set by the Founder have you asked as of now?’. You answered five. The answer should’ve been eight, the total number of questions you had asked up till that moment. I wasn’t asking for the number of mandatory questions the Founder had specified for you to say, word for word, that had already been asked.”
The spirit hummed, tapping a foot on the floor. “But that could’ve been me misunderstanding the question, not me revealing that they weren’t a thing.”
She tilted her head. “Spirits aren’t human. They mimic human reactions to interact with them, but they don’t need to when showing emotion, as they can directly display it with spiritual energy. A normal human reaction would’ve been confusion and asking someone to rephrase the question, while possibly seeming slightly apprehensive of the answer by the twitching of fingers or other involuntary action.”
She grinned. “When a human lies, they need to make sure the other person hasn’t caught on. You had an action already planned to showcase your ‘accidental reveal of information’, and because you’re not human, you needed to concentrate more on how to display the emotion and make it seem natural, preventing you from picking up on how you were about to jump to conclusions.”
The spirit rubbed his head as he processed what she said for a while, before raising a finger as he realised a ‘mistake’ in her answer. “But I’m a spirit guardian. I was human originally before becoming a spirit after I converted my race, so I should still use human behaviours.”
She smirked. “You’re not. You’re a spirit beast in human form. Likely a spirit beast king by my reckoning.”
Ashale’viaf had a flabbergasted expression. She continued to answer his unspoken question. “I said you were a spirit guardian because using that term designated me as ‘somewhat knowledgeable but overconfident’ due to the fact I was close, but not quite correct. As a spirit, you have a very long lifespan and have had plenty of time to get used to human reactions. By making you subconsciously underestimate me, you lowered the complexity of your apparent emotions, ‘manipulating’ the conversation to make it seem to me like I had the upper hand from my perspective. You quickly gave that up when other… factors got involved, but it set the theme of the conversation.”
The spirit grimaced when she stressed the word ‘factors’ but nodded in acknowledgment. He frowned again though, crossing his arms. “This doesn’t make sense though. I shouldn’t have been manipulated this easily. There’s something else you did, but I can’t tell what.”
She nodded. “My first question on ‘how many Users had gotten to this point in your questioning’ wasn’t to help me calculate their later reduced numbers, although when you asked the question why I had never asked more about the other Users, I did briefly calculate it then to create a misleading answer. The first question was actually to see if this second room challenge of yours was normal, and how many times you had used this ‘question’ test format.” She grinned. “I could find out how reliant you were on your lie-detection magic.”
The spirit paused the tapping of his foot and rubbing of his chin to look up at her in shock. But then his expression changed to wariness, then confusion, and then suspicion.
“But when did you lie?”
She shook her head, feeling very amused by the spirit’s changing expressions. “I didn’t. But someone else did.” He frowned at her before his eyes rested on Scytale in realisation.
“So, you do want split authority?”
The silver snake reared up and hissed loudly. “Never in a million years.”
The spirit raised an eyebrow.
“Then… you lied about the main reason you were following her?”
He nodded. “Sure, she’s interesting, but we both have no problems separating from each other for long periods. We’d never hold the other back from doing what they needed if it was beneficial for them, and circumstances can take us our separate ways. No, even with how close we are, it’s not pure sentiment that keeps me here.” His pupils thinned. “Lucille’s research is very deeply involved with certain groups or individuals that I have unresolved questions about, and if there is even the slightest chance, I have been unknowingly screwed over by them, she is my surest bet to find them and shred them to pieces. That is what will keep me here with her through hell or high water.”
By the end of his statement, Scytale’s eyes had gained a red-tinged rim around the irises, and Lucy noticed the edge of Ashale’viaf’s form shuddering and warping slightly when the snake spoke, so she patted him on the head to calm his emotions, realising the winged-snake was probably letting out copious amounts of killing intent and disrupting the spirit’s spiritual energy.
As a magical beast, they already had strong killing intent, and considering he used to be known as the ‘Truth-Seizing World-Ender’ when killing intent grew stronger the more beings killed, the spirit beast king was probably feeling like a floating leaf amongst white-water rapids. The snake blinked his eyes and the red rim disappeared. He looked to the wide-eyed spirit.
“Apologies. I shouldn’t have let my emotions run away like that.”
The spirit, looking more tired than upset, just ran a hand through his long hair and sighed. A low “I’m having second thoughts about this” was heard by the two of them, but they said nothing. The spirit looked at something in the distance and shook his head.
“I can’t be bothered to ask you why you thought you should lie about that. Anyway, as Lucy likely knows by now, none of these rings are correct, because anyone who enters this trial has some connection to it,” Ashale’viaf explained. “This means that the only people who have reached this point in the past were young noble members of the Faction. They’d either pick the colour of the noble clan they were subordinated under to show their loyalty or the gold ring because they assumed that the colour representing the Founder was the superior one. It didn’t matter, because all authority to make the decisions rested in my hands anyway,” said the spirit, shrugging.
He reached behind himself with one hand, and when it returned, clasped inside of it was a circular purple object, about the size of his palm. The object’s fabric was velvety in texture, and the gold clasp and chain dangling from it indicated it was a pocket watch. He pressed the gold clasp to fold it out, showing the inside. The top half had a normal clock made of ivory and detailed with faint black patterns, although it had several smaller clocks embedded in its face that indicated the days, months and even the phases of the moons for the Mystical Realm. It was a watch normally used by Astrologists, and sometimes normal arcanists, such as elemental mages or wizards.
The bottom half however had five gem-encrusted hands pointing to five matching circular gemstones around the rim of the bottom clock. These spherical gemstones were made of either black onyx, white diamond, blue sapphire, red ruby, or yellow topaz, all the same type of stone that composed the marbles from the first room. The five hands decorated each with red, white, yellow, blue, or black gemstones were all anchored to the central metal pin, which below happened to have a dark, dull stone of some kind with unidentifiable colouration, besides nearing grey. He pointed at the middle stone.
“Could you please drop some blood on this part here?”
Lucy raised an eyebrow but smiled. Taking her bronze knife out of her inventory, she slashed her palm leaving a several-inch-long gash, and the crimson liquid ran down, dripping onto the centre of the strange clockface. The spirit looked at her in abject exasperation.
“I don’t need that much, girl!”
She shrugged as she inspected the stone in the pocket watch.
“I heal quickly.”
And indeed, the wound had already turned into silvery scar tissue. She flexed her hand for the spirit to see, and he tilted his head to look, but eventually let it go. Then, he placed a flat palm above the bottom face of the watch and closed his eyes. With her spiritual senses sealed, she couldn’t see anything abnormal, but by sending mana through to her right eye, she saw through the mask to watch coiling white seals of magical runes rotating around the watch be pulled away, entering Ashale’viaf’s palm, and becoming hidden from view. Halting the flow of her mana to the eye after she saw what he was doing, her vision returned to normal, even if her right eye twinged a bit.
He held out the pocket watch for them to look at, and they saw that the dull dark stone in the centre was now semi-translucent and the same deep violet as the outside of the watch, a high-grade amethyst. Lucy could see the five hands of the watch slightly vibrating in place. The spirit closed the pocket watch, holding it out for Lucy to grab, which she did. She held the watch up, turning it curiously. The spirit pointed a finger at it.
“The top face of the watch is an Astrologer’s clock. It’s one of the better types available for mages and magic usage in general. The bottom face’s five hands do different things, but it essentially works as a localised compass.” She looked up at that, and he continued.
“As the colours of the gemstones represent the four noble families and the Founder of the Faction, the matching arrows will always indicate the position of the closest member of that family to your current position. The gemstones themselves have magic that grants you unfettered access to all the noble’s facilities. The topaz however is different, as the Founder isn’t part of the Faction anymore.” He pointed to the gem. “That gemstone, you can ‘input’ your own objective for the arrow to point towards. The amount of mana required to find it is the only barrier to gaining what you want. The violet gemstone in the centre is responsible for all the tracking magic.”
She saw a smile appear on the spirit’s face.
“As of now and hereon after, you are now the owner of the Faction represented by this trial. That is the ultimate reward of this Inheritance Trial, and so, now that it has been received by someone, all treasures currently still within this trial shall automatically be placed into your dimensional bag when you exit the Event. This Trial shall close and remain closed until you or your successor decide to leave a new Inheritance Trial for this Faction.” He paused. “However, I have one last question for you before you may leave.”
Scytale and Lucy looked at him curiously.
“Why did you ask if I was scared?” he said after a moment. Lucy’s eyes narrowed and she smiled.
“Because I wanted to see if you knew that the Inheritance Trials would be removed in a few years.”
The spirit stood there, visibly astonished and tempted to ask for more, but he shook his head and laughed.
“I said I wouldn’t ask more, so I won’t.”
Then he took a step back and dipped his head in a bow. “Then this is goodbye. If it is destined and the stars align, I may meet you again in another form. I could be a bird, or a great beast, or some other being, but if fate wills it, I hope I may see you again. I, Ashale’viaf, wish good blessings upon you for your journeys and ask that you raise your new Faction to even greater heights in the coming times. May you see future horizons,” he finished, waving a hand to the new portal he had made, showing the endless corridor of doors from before.
Lucy and Scytale traded a look before she just gazed flatly at the spirit, and Scytale let out a scoff. The spirit frowned slightly in confusion at their reaction, not expecting them to stay any longer. Lucy rolled her eyes and stepped through the portal, but not before waving at him and saying something more.
“I have a suggestion. How about you don’t act dramatic for the person who knows you work as their new Faction’s gardener?”
“Wai-”
With that, Lucille and Scytale headed off with a newly obtained palm-sized pocket watch engraved with the insignia of three coins featured on its front.