Prophecy Approved Companion

Walking up the grand staircase was both easier and more difficult than Qube would have anticipated. She’d walked up heaps of stairs before, so she was well practised in it, but her mind kept trying to come up with a hundred different things she should go and do before reaching the top.

They hadn’t fought any of the guards! There were lots of different corridors to go down in the castle! They’d never gone to Lake Fear and seen what the shops there were like! Diversion after diversion tugged at her, trying to slow her walk down to a crawl.

But that wasn’t the only thing tugging at her. That sensation in her chest, that feeling of her inner self pulling her ever closer to the throne room not only persisted, but grew ever stronger the closer she got. By now it almost felt like a physical rope being continuously reeled in.

At last the party reached the top of the grand staircase. There was an ornate landing, covered in beautiful mosaics, with two flagstones in particular standing out. One with a brilliant golden sun on it, and the other with a delicate silvery crescent moon.

“Ah, this must be what the Royals were talking about,” the Chosen One said. His bout with Squiggles have invigorated him somewhat, but the effects of fatigue were still evident in the sagging of his shoulders, and the slight glaze to his eyes.

“Time to open ‘em up and see what they’ve got in store for us!” he continued cheerfully enough.

“First the Save Point,” Qube insisted. Having given in to the demands of her Healer side, she wasn’t about to let the Hero avoid resting by distracting the party with his favourite thing: loot.

Although nowadays, loot didn’t seem to be the key to his behaviour. The closer they got to the final confrontation, the less interested in unique things he seemed to be. It was very odd.

Or maybe he’d just found something he cared about more.

“Yes ma’am,” the Hero replied with a lopsided smile. Sure enough, right next to the large, imposing doorway that Qube’s dream told her led to the throne room, there floated a beautiful blue ball of light. The only connection to the Devs’ realm.

For a mad moment, Qube wondered what would happen if they tried to destroy the Save Point. Would the Chosen One’s connection to the Devs’ realm be permanently severed? Would that force him to stay in this world forever? Then nothing would have to change. They could continue adventuring here, exploring the Temples and, when they grew tired of that, find out if there truly were other lands, or fly high enough to touch the stars.

She shook her head, throwing off the intrusive thought.

Where had that come from? That thought didn’t even make any sense! They’d have to destroy every single Save Point before the Devs caught on, and she was pretty sure the Chosen One would notice them running around throwing fireballs or shooting his pathway to the Devs. Unless someone distracted him while they did it — that would be easy enough, the Chosen One was frequently distracted from things directly in front of him, never mind someone slipping off to destroy —

She was doing it again.

For some reason she was scared to enter the throne room of the man who had killed her, with no solid plan for how they were going to defeat him without the gems, after which she would be whisked away to a whole new world populated by people who might not have her best interests at heart.

She couldn’t imagine why.

The Chosen One, not being privy to the chaos in her head, waved a hand through the Save Point.

An eternity passed in a moment.

The colour returned to his cheeks, he stood up straighter, and his eyes had become bright and clear.

“How much time passed?” Qube couldn’t stop herself from asking.

“A while,” the Hero admitted. He looked around at the rest of the party. “So, what were we doing?”

His eye caught the intricate mosaic pattern underfoot, and he lit up. “So, moon and star, time to get the ultimate weapons!” he said cheerfully. “Then we face baddy daddy, and save the day!”

He frowned slightly. “Wait, what was the plan to deal with the whole gems situation?” he asked. “I don’t remember.”

“That makes sense; you were very tired at the time,” Qube said, her heart squeezing in fear. As out of it as he’d been, the fact that they were missing the core ingredients to save the world should have been foremost in his mind. Exactly how much time had passed in the Devs’ realm, that he could forget the fact that they had no plan?

He looked at the rest of the group, who stared back at him.

“So… what was the plan?” he asked again.

“We don’t have a plan yet,” Qube confessed. “That’s something we were working on.”

“Oh, okay,” the Chosen One said casually, as if it wasn’t a massive problem that they had no idea what they were doing and they were literally only a single door away from the thing they needed the gems for. “Oh! Also, the team lost their collective minds at the news that Squiggles could talk!”

He’d gotten distracted from the whole saving-the-world thing by Squiggles talk. They absolutely would have been able to distract the Chosen One enough to destroy all the Save Points.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Qube said, her reflexive compassion kicking in as she processed what the Hero had actually said. “Did they suffer? Have they seen a Healer?”

“What are you talking about?” the Chosen One asked, staring at her in complete bewilderment.

“Their insanity. Or lost minds. Were they able to recover them through the usage of a skilled Healer?”

Qube had never personally dealt with someone whose mind had been lost, but she imagined that a solid [Heal] or two would do the trick.

“No, it’s an expression,” the Chosen One said patiently. He closed his eyes for a second, a small smile twitching on his lips. “It means they went insane. Wait. I mean, it means they were very excited and confused by it.”

“As they should be,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar pointed out. The group collectively nodded their heads at the Hunter’s statement. Anyone who found out that someone as adorable and innocent as their Water Temple turned mascot was now capable of the cutest speaking ever would naturally be delighted.

“And also, we — I mean the Devs’ realm — don’t really have Healers like here,” the Chosen One added.

“Oh,” Qube blinked.

“Like, there are people who heal, and stuff like that, but not in the way you guys do here. There’s no healing spells or anything.”

“Yes, you explained that,” Qube replied. “They use tech instead.” Given their tech was capable of doing things spells weren’t, like building an entire world, they probably healed even faster in the Devs’ realm. Her healing would probably look ridiculously slow and inefficient to them.

“I mean, yeah, they use tech to help heal people but, well, basically, none of your Healer knowledge is really gonna be useful. Or work. At all. So you’re not really gonna be able to Heal people in the Devs’ realm.” The Chosen One finished his last sentence in a rush, not looking at anyone in particular.

So not only was she not a guiding light, she wasn’t even going to be a Healer after they defeated the Evil Emperor? What would she be if she wasn’t a Healer?

Not content with dismantling her position as Childhood Companion, it seemed as if the universe, via its ineloquent mouthpiece that was the Chosen One, was also attacking her role as Healer as well. At this rate, there wasn’t going to be anything left of her!

Or, at the very least, nothing that had been assigned to her.

If they stripped away all the labels she’d grown up under, everything that she had been trained for her entire life, then all that would be left would be… her.

The her that had been growing underneath the labels the entire time, slowly forming into a new being, so complex that she’d even developed an inner self.

The thought was frightening. But also, somehow, intoxicating. It was the same feeling she’d had when she’d realised she could lie to the entire party and pretend like she’d been the Mayor of the village. Once they defeated the Evil Emperor, she could become anyone she wanted to. She could do anything she wanted.

And she was finally starting to figure out what it was she wanted.

“Well, if I can’t be a Healer, I’ll just have to find out what sort of thing I would like to do while visiting the Devs’ realm,” she said calmly to the Hero. She glanced at the others in the party. “I’m sure we’ll all have things to do and try out when we get there. In between answering questions for the Devs, of course.”

“Of course,” the Chosen One said, slightly subdued.

“What about you, Chosen One? What will you want to do when we ascend to the Devs’ realm?”

Would they still go on adventures together?

“Uh, I dunno,” the Chosen One replied, ever so helpfully. “That’ll depend on what you guys decide when you get there.” He paused for a moment, clearly hesitating. “And if you guys want me involved,” he added, sounding even more subdued.

“Of course we’d want you involved!” Qube said, astonished. “Just because you won’t be the Saviour when we ascend, is no reason we won’t still want to go on adventures with you!”

Even Sencha Bard, who naturally gravitated towards whoever in the room was most powerful, wouldn’t abandon the Chosen One just because he wasn’t actively the Chosen One anymore. Why, the Hero would still be important to all of them, even if he was ridiculously weaker than the Devs, and Dev Royals.

It would take some getting used to, the fact that the Chosen One wasn’t one of the most powerful people in the world, but she just knew that everyone in the Devs’ realm would be respectful of the great things he’d done for their kingdom, and how he’d successfully completed this “simulation” quest for the military. Even if he had been given several heavy helping hands in the form of the greater narrative.

Why, it wouldn’t surprise her if they had a party for him, like the Forbidden Forest folks did when their curse was broken.

Oh! Did this mean as soon as they ascended, they would get to have a giant party? The thought was both exciting, and terrifying.

The Hero licked his lips.

“Things are gonna be different when you ascend,” he said. “It’s not gonna be quite what you expect.”

She hadn’t expected the Forbidden Forest party. Or Sexy Screamy Spider Briar. Or Squiggles. Or much of anything, really.

“Nothing has been like what I expected,” Qube countered. “But it’s still been fun.” She smiled at him, trying to soothe the worry she saw etched on his brow. “And I’m glad I got to experience all these new things.”

The Hero smiled. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah! It’s been heaps of fun. Honestly, I can’t wait to unleash you guys on the world. It’s gonna be amazing. You’re gonna change everything, and it’s gonna be glorious.”

“I, for one, am intrigued by the learning opportunities it presents,” Definitely Bad Guy chimed in.

The Chosen One gave a small laugh. “Yeah, there’ll be a lot to learn,” he said. He looked down and, with a light cough, pointed at the flagstones marked with a sun and a moon. Each of them had a space that would perfectly fit the necklaces given to him by the Exiled Prince and Exiled Princess, with the sun flagstone having a large circle depression in it, and the crescent moon one having a semi-circle pressed into the stone. Just in case someone was liable to miss it, the indentations were surrounded by gold and silver tiles to draw the eye towards them.

Honestly, it was amazing that no one had realised that the two large flagstones directly outside the Royal throne room with space for items to be shoved into them might not have secret loot. Not to mention how dirt would accumulate in the small depressions. But then, it was easy to ignore how odd something was, if it was how things had always been.

“Anyway,” he said, firmly turning the subject, “let’s check out these bad boys, shall we? Kingy and Queeny — uh, sorry, their Royalnesses — left us some presents, so we should be polite and open them up, shouldn’t we?”