Prophecy Approved Companion

Qube, even in her shock at seeing her friend suddenly turn so ruthless, reached out to Sexy Screamy Spider Briar and placed a comforting hand on one of her arms.

“He’s not the Devs,” she whispered to her friend. “Give him some time.” But the Hunter didn’t reply, only shifted away from her, breaking contact with the Healer.

“You can’t do that!” the Constructor practically spluttered. “This is my town, full of my creations, and I will not be held hostage by some forest folk!”

“I think you’ll find I can do exactly that,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said with a purr. “Funny thing about the Wizards’ Academy. They have all kinds of interesting texts. Including a few legal books I just so happened to flick through in some spare time. And what did I notice but that it seems like the laws of this land frown on the mistreatment of subjects. In fact, a legally recognised authority can choose to do a little thing called liberate the oppressed. Now, isn’t that fun?”

“My children aren’t oppressed! They’re choosing to fight each other!”

“Not anymore. And, what do you know, I have a feeling that if you try to stop them from getting along due to whatever Dev-complex you have going on, you’re going to find yourself liberated pretty quickly.”

“You could offer to send an ambassador,” the Chosen One added helpfully. “To help keep an eye on things and stop him from doing anything sneaky.”

“Why thank you, my former lover,” the Hunter replied with a happy trill. “What a good idea!”

“I would also propose a life-detection spell of some kind, to prevent your envoy from meeting an unfortunate end,” Definitely Bad Guy added. “I know the first thing the Evil Emperor would do would be to assassinate any such interloper.”

“My, oh my,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said, slightly less enthusiastically. “That’s also a very… pertinent plan.”

“I would never assassinate anyone!” the Constructor said, sounding genuinely offended. “The whole reason I asked this Traveller to intervene was that I am not a man of violence, and could not possibly hope to stand against either side of my children’s conflict.”

“So you’re perfectly happy to outsource anything you find distasteful,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said. “But don’t worry. We’ll make sure you’re all nice and cosy, with nothing to do but seek to improve your children’s lives.”

Qube, who’d been watching this exchange with extremely mixed feelings, unsure how much of her friends’ reaction was situationally appropriate, and how much was just them lashing out at the Devs, was distracted from watching the birth of a new form of governance by a hand on her shoulder.

“Wisest Healer,” Sencha Bard whispered. “I have doubts about this plan.”

Qube didn’t stop to question why Sencha Bard wasn’t raising these doubts to the group. After all, she was keeping quiet about her own reservations. Instead she gave way to the gentle pressure of his hand, and stepped back, distancing the pair from the rest of the group.

“What do you mean?” she asked quietly.

“I didn’t want that Constructor to overhear us,” Sencha Bard said, answering a question she hadn’t asked. “But, while the fair and just Lady Briar’s plans are wise indeed, she doesn’t take into account the depths of humanity’s depravity. Unlike us, she doesn’t understand the vulnerability of those who are used to being ignored.”

Qube didn’t think Sencha Bard was used

to being ignored. In fact, he’d very obviously struggled when he wasn’t being given as much attention as he felt he deserved. Although, if he’d grown up a street urchin, which his memory at the Time Temple seemed to suggest, perhaps he’d been ignored by the uncaring folk of Cobbletown. It would have been easy for an orphan to slip through the cracks in such a big city, full of dozens of people.

Her heart swelling with pity for the hypothetical childhood of the man in front of her, Qube reached out and grasped Sencha Bard’s hands.

“It must have been hard for you,” she said, her voice full of emotion.

The Bard gave a deeply satisfied sigh.

“And that response proves I was right to pull you aside,” he said, smiling at her in relief. “You and I well know that force alone isn’t enough. As I said earlier, we have to control the narrative. If we impose sanctions on this man, a man capable of approaching something only Devs can accomplish, but do nothing to change his underlying beliefs in the inferiority of the constructs, then he’ll simply seek to circumvent the restrictions. And we already know him to be cleverer than us.”

Qube swallowed as the truth of what the Bard was saying hit her.

“Then we’ll just have to make sure that he gets plenty of opportunity to see that the constructs are people,” she said. “He doesn’t seem like an Evil man, just misguided and ignorant. If he lives amongst them, and gets to talking to them, then he’ll realise—”

“That’s not how stories work,” Sencha Bard said sharply. He took a breath, controlling himself, before giving her an easy smile. One that Qube, being well trained herself, recognised as fake. “My apologies, gentle Healer. While your soft heart makes you ideal in your role, it also makes you more vulnerable to being taken advantage of. You playing second fiddle to a fool being a good example.”

Qube frowned, but before she could seek clarification the Bard pulled his hands free from hers.

“That isn’t what I wanted to discuss with you in what little time we have to ourselves,” he said earnestly. “This Constructor won’t easily realise the error of his ways and happily give full rights to his creations. That’s not how the narrative works. People like him don’t give up, they just become even more cunning. No. We have to cut the threat off at the source.”

He reached out and grasped her shoulders, looking her directly in the eyes.

“We have to make him believe the narrative we want him to. We have to change the very way he thinks. Only then will the constructs be safe.”

Qube tried to step away from the Bard. His fingers gripped her shoulders tighter for a second, before he reluctantly released her.

“My apologies,” he said, shaking himself and giving her a deep bow. “In the passion of the moment, I forgot myself.”

“We can’t change what he’s thinking,” Qube said, ignoring his apology.

“You can,” he replied, his eyes burning as he looked up from his bow.

“No. No, I can’t. I don’t know what, exactly, my [Heal] does, but I can’t control how someone reacts to it. All it does is make them see… more. It seems like, at the most, I can free them from being stuck in certain ways of thinking. But [The Bard’s Ballad] does that just as well as my [Heal].”

“Once again you sell yourself short,” Sencha Bard said as he finished bowing to her. He took a small step closer. “What you did to the pharaoh wasn’t your [Heal] spell. You took all the hatred, the torture, everything that set him on the pathway to Evil, and you freed him of its shadow. You changed the narrative in his head, and allowed him the chance to live a normal life.”

“I don’t know what I did to the pharaoh,” Qube said uneasily. “But it required me to use a Temple item, and also—“ she lowered her voice, glancing at the others. They were all still debating various ways to stop the Constructor from murdering or oppressing his creations. The inventor was getting increasingly offended and agitated, and at this point was starting to look rather ill at some of the more… creative… suggestions as to what he might do.

“But if he were to order a construct to wear the skin of said envoy as a disguise—“ Definitely Bad Guy was saying, in full academia mode.

“—also I had to stab him in the heart,” Qube whispered, just in case the group loudly discussing skinning people alive overheard her, and remembered that she’d done such a terrible thing. Everyone had been surprisingly nice about the fact she’d stabbed an unarmed man in the heart, probably because he’d been bent on taking over the world and she’d brought him directly back to life, but still. She didn’t want them dwelling on that. She didn’t want to dwell on that.

He had also been dead when she’d stabbed him. Maybe. There certainly hadn’t been any blood. She also hadn’t bled, however, so sometimes bodies were just odd like that.

“I’m telling you, I cannot condone such violence!” the Constructor was saying, swaying slightly from nausea. Qube noted his condition with a detached professional disinterest, only to be dragged back into her conversation with Sencha Bard when he pulled her even further away from the group.

“I know how much that must have distressed someone of your gentle nature,” he said earnestly. “But don’t you see? Sometimes we must do terrible things, things against our very nature, in order to bring order to the world. To make sure that those with power are Good, and remain so. Even your Mage Advisor has committed crimes against decency, but you do not shun him.”

“He’s not my Mage Advisor,” Qube said, flustered. “That was just a misunderstanding.”

“Then he has my pity,” Sencha Bard said. “But my point remains. We cannot allow powerful beings like this Constructor to flourish. We cannot trust them to do right by those under their power. There’s too much at stake.”

“That’s why they’re coming up with safeguards,” Qube pointed out. “If you’re worried they’re not good enough to protect the constructs, then you should help them think up more.”

“The man is sick,” Sencha Bard said, pivoting the conversation. “He cannot see what any normal, healthy person can: that these beings, while different from him, deserve all the same freedoms as him. The story in his head is wrong. Please, Healer, help him. Fix him, so that we may be assured of safety. It’s what you, and you alone can do. It’s why the Devs fear you.”

The Healer pulled away from the Bard, fighting hard to keep the look of disgust from her face.

“Sencha Bard, you’re not thinking properly,” she said. “You want me to—to unanchor his mind, like I did with the pharaoh? To shape his thoughts, so he thinks what we want? So you can be sure he’ll be Good?”

He looked at her, a suddenly arrested expression on his face.

“Then how would it be any different from the Golden Prophecy?” she asked. “How would we be any different from the Devs, and how they controlled us? We can’t even be sure that what we’d do would guarantee him to be Good. You talk about wanting to give people choices, to give them the freedom to be themselves, but this isn’t equality. This is just us deciding that only the people we agree with get to stay intact.”

The Bard had gone very white around the mouth. Harsh lines had appeared, making him look suddenly much older.

“We’re not like them,” he practically hissed. “We’re fighting against those in power who seek to control the vulnerable. To take away their thoughts.”

“But we would then become the ones in power, taking away people’s thoughts,” Qube pointed out.

“We have to, don’t you see?” Sencha Bard almost pleaded. “We’re not safe. They’re not safe. They don’t know what the world is like. They don’t know how they’ve been controlled, shaped. How are we—they— supposed to exist freely with such a disadvantage?”

For the second time that day, Qube reached out and took Sencha Bard’s hands.

“They’re not alone,” she said. “We’re not alone. Just as the constructs here have allies in us, we have people like the Chosen One. And just like we need to ask the people of Construct Crossroads what they want from the Constructor, and the future people like the Chosen One and the Devs have been asking us what we want. And sure, there might be those with some… odd… ideas, like Definitely Bad Guy, and not all of the Devs are nice, and we will be vulnerable, but the solution to fear isn’t absolute control. It’s about putting safeguards in place, and contingencies, and all of us working together to make sure that everyone is given space to exist in, to be people.”

Sencha Bard’s grip on her hands was so tight it almost hurt.

“More than that,” she said, smiling through the pain, “would you really want to take away the constructs’ choices like that? Would you like it if someone went and brainwashed all the Devs, just on the off chance they mistreated anyone who ascended, without even asking us? What kind of narrative is that?” she asked, a hint of teasing in her voice.

“A pretty poor one, I must admit,” Sencha Bard said a little shakily. After a moment, he added: “I don’t know if I have it in me to trust them.”

“Then don’t,” Qube replied. “Trust in your friends. In us. No matter what happens, we’ll overcome it, just like we have everything else. After all,” she added, smiling brilliantly, “we’re the heroes.”