Chapter 570: An Ending You Can Accept
For several minutes, Ollie hung suspended in darkness, tormented by the lingering pain of his horrific wounds and the sight of Lord Owain standing over him with a mocking smile on his lips as his blade pierced Ollie’s chest.
Slowly, at a pace that felt much, much slower than any of his previous recoveries, the blackness faded away, leaving Ollie’s body restored, though his clothing had been replaced by the simple tunic and breeches that he’d worn in the real world when he first began his vigil.
"Well, Ollie," Ashlynn’s voice called out while the aspiring knight and witch shook and trembled on the ground of the blood-soaked battlefield. "Do you accept your results as the best outcome you could achieve?"
"This? This is the best I could do?" Ollie said bitterly through clenched teeth. "Dying on Owain’s blade, along with Milo and Harrod, is the best that I can hope for?" Ollie said, turning bloodshot and tear-filled eyes on the vision of Ashlynn kneeling next to him. "And Owain walks away from this without a scratch on his body?"
"How can I accept this?" Ollie asked, gesturing at the bodies strewn across the battlefield. The sight of Harrod alone was enough to pierce his heart, but when he glanced at the slumped figure of Milo, who had all but adopted Ollie as a member of his own family, he felt like a claw made of ice was squeezing his chest. "How could anyone accept this?"
"Many brave knights would accept this," the vision of Ashlynn said, holding out a hand and waiting for Ollie to take it. "Ollie, come with me and take a look at what you’ve achieved with your death."
Slowly, Ollie clambered to his feet without the help of Ashlynn’s hand. Part of him wanted to snap at her, to let him try again, to get on with things so he could figure out where he had gone wrong in his latest attempt to pass the trial, but he forced himself to hold his tongue.
Closing his eyes, he took several deep breaths as he reminded himself again and again that this was both a lesson and a trial. If Lady Ashlynn wanted to talk to him about this moment, and if the trial had failed to bring him back to the beginning again, then there had to be a lesson in all of this mess somewhere that he was meant to learn. Thus far, many of the lessons he’d learned had been the most heart-wrenching, painful moments he’d ever experienced, but he couldn’t deny that he had grown from each and every one of them.
"All right," he said, opening his eyes and looking at the vision of Ashlynn before him. "Let’s take a look."