Prophecy Approved Companion

The very destiny-focused Qube followed Sex Screamy Spider Briar into the now-empty guardian room and watched as her charge was unceremoniously dumped onto the ground. She’d seen the arachnid lower the Chosen One down much more gently before, so she could only assume this was the Hunter venting her feelings about the revelations the Hero had uttered before passing out.

Not that Qube blamed her, for all that her Healer side winced at the potential damage getting roughly deposited from a giant spider would cause to the already suffering Fighter. At most it would only be a few scrapes — after all, she hadn’t dropped him from a great height, just not been particularly gentle putting him down.

“We need to get him to interact with the Save Point,” she said. She waited to see if any of her companions would jump in with suggestions. After all, the last time one of them had been touching the Chosen One when he’d interacted with a Save Point it had nearly ended… poorly.

“Perhaps I could use a wall of flame to push him into the Save Point,” Definitely Bad Guy suggested.

“I could try tossing him,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar practically purred.

“He is a staunch believer in throwing people off and into things,” Sencha Bard pointed out. “It seems the most fitting option.”

Qube wanted to protest. Throwing a man in full plate armour bodily through a glowing ball of light in the hopes of it somehow reviving him from his dead faint seemed dangerous. What if he needed to be conscious for the Save Point to work? He’d only ever put his hand through the connection to the Devs’ realm — would completely immersing him in it, even for a moment, cause his mind to be invaded, like Qube’s had once been?

On the other hand, desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Let’s save that for if we can’t get just his hand through,” Qube said, her eyes narrowing as she regarded the passed out body of her best friend. “First, though, I think we should try something a little different…”

She took a deep breath.

“We’re going to have to raid his backpack.”

Which is how the party tasked with saving the entire world ended up building a truly magnificent piece of machinery.

It turned out the kleptomaniac Hero had stolen not just one or two brooms, but rather was walking around with half a dozen of them. They used several coils of rope he’d had stashed in his bag to tie his hands to two of those brooms, using the remaining four to prop him up and stop him from falling over. Squiggles stood on Sexy Screamy Spider Briar’s back, and used four of her tentacles to hold the Chosen One’s arm-brooms as high as she could.

It wasn’t elegant, or dignified, but the sight of the Chosen One, still passed out, dangling in the air, filled Qube with pride.

“Position one!” she called. Sexy Screamy Spider Briar carefully shuffled forward. Squiggles gently swayed to counter-balance her momentum, stopping the Chosen One from swinging too hard. They came to a stop directly next to the Save Point.

The glowing ball of blue light innocuously floated above the floor. Even knowing how deadly the Save Point was, Qube couldn’t help but admire its beauty.

“Pillows in place?” she asked.

“Pillows placed!” Sencha Bard called back. Before the brooms had been secured to the Hero, he and Definitely Bad Guy had used said brooms to carefully push a pile of pillows into position.

She wasn’t sure where all the pillows in the Chosen One’s backpack had come from. Some of them she recognised from the inn, others from that very relaxed fellow in the Wizard’s Academy. One of them bore a suspicious resemblance to one of the lava slime’s cushions. Regardless of their origin, they were now all carefully piled up next to the Save Point, ready to receive their precious package.

“Extend the arm!” she ordered. Squiggles pushed out the tentacle wrapped around the Chosen One’s right broom hand. Fully extending her tentacle, his hand limply dangled over the top of the Save Point.

“When I say three, drop him!” Qube declared. She felt a thrill run through her at the idea of a countdown, something she’d so often heard the Chosen One do.

“One… two… three! Release the Hero!” Qube cried out.

Squiggles released him.

The timing was perfect. His hand, elevated above the rest of him, passed through the Save Point. The bulk of his body, suspended by the broomsticks, was also released, severing any connection between party members and Saviour. The bracing broomsticks stopped him from falling onto the hard floor, and instead directed his fall enough that he landed, face first, into the pile of soft pillows.

His hand, having made its solo journey through the ball of light, came through the bottom and slapped onto the floor, leaving the Hero free from any contact with the dangerous Dev portal.

“We did it!” Qube nearly crowed, only just stopping herself from dancing in glee. “We did it! We did it!” They’d solved the puzzle of the Hero and the Save Point all by themselves!

She ran over to the Chosen One, taking care to avoid touching him. If he suddenly surged upwards, he might accidentally hit the Save Point.

“Chosen One, are you awake?” she asked.

A grumbling noise came from the pillows.

“He’s awake!” Qube shot to her feet, and hugged the closest person. She was so overjoyed that she didn’t even mind when Sexy Screamy Spider Briar’s body enveloped her arms.

She did, however, make sure to keep her head clear. She didn’t want to peek at the Hunter’s inner pockets without permission, after all.

Or even with permission. It was unsettling to see inside her friend.

“I was having a lovely dream,” came a sleepy voice from the ground. “I got to eat all the marshmallows I wanted.”

The Chosen One started to move, only to find himself constrained by his brooms.

“Hey!” he protested as he started flailing about. “Why am I tied up? What? What’s going on?”

“Oh, please stay still!” Qube said, kneeling beside him again. “If you stay very still, we can safely pull you free.”

“Sure… there’d better be a good reason for this though,” the Chosen One said as Qube grabbed one of his brooms and dragged him clear of the Save Point. As he slid out of his pillow fort, he looked up at the giant arachnid looming over him.

“I want you to know that I blame you for this,” he informed his former lover, gesturing with his tied up hands.

“Why darling, I didn’t realise that was something you were into,” the Hunter cooed, peeking at him flirtatiously through her eyelashes.

“It was a group effort!” Qube protested. “We needed to get you to interact with the Save Point but I didn’t want to throw you through it so we came up with the idea of tying you to brooms and Sexy Screamy Spider Briar and Squiggles dropped your hand through it! And Sencha Bard and Definitely Bad Guy had the idea about the pillows!” Qube said, swelling with pride at the whole party’s ingenuity.

“That… was really smart,” the Chosen One admitted, as he was untied from his brooms by a still flirtatious Hunter.

“Did the Save Point wake you?” Definitely Bad Guy asked, his face alight with inquisitiveness. “We were uncertain if exposing more of your body than just your hand would prove fatal.”

“Oh, I didn’t actually save,” the Chosen One confessed. “But the system kinda forces you out of your body for a bit when you save, which was enough to wake me up. I guess I was just really tired.”

“You said you had a nosebleed in the Devs’ realm,” Qube said, worried. She’d never seen a nosebleed before, but that didn’t feel like something that happened only because of exhaustion.

“Did I?” The Chosen One looked at her, his eyes still bleary. “Huh.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Yeah, gimme a second,” he said. Finally free from all brooms, hemanaged to drag himself upright. Swaying slightly on his feet, he staggered the one step over to the Save Point and waved his hand through it. Instantly his back straightened, and he rolled his neck.

“How much time has passed in the Devs’ realm?” Sencha Bard asked. “Were you constrained for another week?” His mouth pulled downwards. “How much time have we lost?”

The Chosen One waved away the other man’s worry, covering a yawn. “Nah, I just cleaned up and came right back. Fortunately, everyone’s asleep so we don’t have to worry about them keeping me out.” He glanced away from the group as he continued: “I get nosebleeds sometimes when I’m super tired; it’s nothing to worry about.”

He was lying. Badly. Qube’s desire to pepper him with questions warred with her Healer instinct. She burned to demand answers, but …

“If what was happening to you was happening to me, what would you advise me to do?” she asked him gently. The Hero still didn’t look at her.

“Well, it’s just, there’s the deadline, so if I take a break and sleep they might wake up and have another fit—” he started, his head turned away from the group.

“If I was in the exact same situation, deadlines and all, what would you want me to do?”

He stopped talking. After a little bit, he looked at her. She regarded him steadily, her eyes bright and clear. He couldn’t quite meet her gaze, and his eyes were still the smallest bit unfocused. She saw the exact moment his bravado crumbled, and he was forced to look away again.

“There’s probably a Save Point outside the throne room. Let’s get to there, and then I’ll have a proper break, okay?” he offered. His expression was surprisingly grim.

She held his gaze a second longer, then nodded.

“If that’s what you’d ask of me, then I’ll ask it of you,” she said, brushing nonexistent dust from her robes. She didn’t want to accept what he’d said, but the connection between them right now was too fragile for her to outright call him a liar. He’d saved her from certain death, but been lying to her nearly the entire time she’d known him.

It was a complicated feeling.

“You’re really getting tough, y’know?” he said with gentle affection as the rest of the party packed away all the pillows and brooms. “At the start, you never would have stood up to me like that.”

“Well, someone has to stop you from killing yourself,” she pointed out.

“It’s a sign that you’re growing into a strong, independent woman,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said, hooking one of her arms around Qube and giving her a squeeze. “More than you ever could have been, back in that village.”

Qube came crashing back to earth at the reminder of how much she’d changed since she ‘died’. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Yes. That.”

“You said some rather shocking things before you fainted, my once-love,” the Hunter continued, not so subtly prodding at Qube. “Perhaps you’d care to explain, rather than forcing the poor girl to pull the answers out of you?”

“By all means, let us walk and talk,” Sencha Bard said, suiting the words to action by walking towards the guardian room’s exit. The others followed suit.

“Did you not wish to discuss reforms with the guardians one on one before we confront the Evil Emperor?” Definitely Bad Guy asked Sexy Screamy Spider Briar as they walked away from the doors leading to the guardians. “As you mentioned, the balance of power would be in our favour before we restore the throne, and make the guardians more receptive to submission.” She hesitated, before ruefully shaking her head.

“As much as I would love to get them to submit to me, unfortunately, I’m not the kind of girl who can ignore the needs of my friends.” The Hunter gave a heavy sigh. “We’ll just have to be extra persuasive afterwards. Really turn up the charm, until we’ve tied them into knots.”

The former Mage Advisor (while he’d technically never been fired, his boss trying to kill him probably counted as invalidating his job offer) steepled his fingers as he thought.

“Ingenious. While I have never personally attempted to tie someone into a knot, I can imagine it would make them substantially more amenable to any suggestions. The only issue would be making sure they remained committed to their promises once restored to working form.”

Even her screaming children’s faces closed their eyes as Sexy Screamy Spider Briar gave another, even heavier sigh.

“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” she informed the Mage. “It’s the only reason you get away with some of the truly horrifying things you say.”

As Definitely Bad Guy frowned in puzzlement, the Hunter reached out with one long arm, and hooked a claw around the Chosen One.

“As for you, my sweet little snack,” she said, dragging the Hero so that he was forced to walk alongside Qube and her. “You rather have some explaining to do, don’t you think?”