Prophecy Approved Companion

“Okay,” the Chosen One said, holstering his sword and shield and stretching out. “Spell time!”

Qube, still a little stunned by how easy it’d been to defeat the final Boss of the final Temple, looked at the three Bestowal pedestals, then at the other party members.

“So, who wants to get more power?” the Hero asked the group. “Free power, ripe for the taking.” He seemed to have recovered from his clock-based displeasure.

“Squiggles, can you use spells?” Qube asked the sharktopus, curious. The super-fast speed the mascot had displayed when in Otto’s grotto had been beyond anything she’d ever seen before. She’d assumed, after Squiggles hadn’t seemed to utilise whatever she’d gotten from the Water Temple Bestowal, that the sharktopus had just been incapable of utilising spells, but that thinking was clearly flawed. Maybe she’d just gotten a spell she couldn’t use? Or the spell had been too subtle for them to tell when it was active?

Squiggles started dancing. As a way of communicating it was, admittedly, somewhat flawed, but it was extremely adorable.

“She can definitely do something magical,” the Hero said, watching the hypnotic writhing of tentacles. “I think her eating the Golden Slime or those mysterious herbs you let me give her gave her powers.”

“That I let you—” Qube caught herself before she got drawn in too far to a pointless argument. “I agree, I think she can do spells, so we should let her have a Bestowal.”

The Chosen One pouted slightly at her unwillingness to rise to his bait, but nodded his agreement. “Sounds good,” he said, then glanced at the others. “Who wants the other one?”

“I believe both Lady Briar and myself would benefit from a Bestowal,” Sencha Bard said. The Hero blinked at him.

“Huh, yeah, you’re right!” he said, surprised. “There’s no reason I have to be the one to activate it. Man, how did that not occur to me? Nice work, Sing-Song!” he clapped the smaller man on the back, staggering him slightly.

“Thank you,” the Bard said once he’d recovered. Qube, who’d been studying the pedestals in the hopes of gleaning some sliver of knowledge from them, stepped aside as the trio approached. Squiggles went to the carrot, Sencha Bard to the potion vial, and Sexy Screamy Spider Briar to the sword.

“Ready?” the Chosen One asked. “You know the drill! Three-two-one GO!”

Now that she wasn’t busy having a spell forcibly injected into her, Qube could see that Squiggles did, in fact, gain a slight glow as she processed the Bestowal. A faint brownish-grey colour surrounded her, the sharktopus shuddering as the magic took effect. Earth-brown mana flared around Sexy Screamy Spider Briar, while Sencha Bard’s was his normal green.

“So, what did everyone get?” the Chosen One asked as soon as both the pedestals and visible mana disappeared.

“I acquired [Mana Regen],” Sencha Bard said, bravely taking the invasive question in stride. He flicked a glance at Qube. “It should be able to help our mana pools refill faster.”

Qube felt a flood of relief so intense she almost missed Sexy Screamy Spider Briar declaring that she’d gotten a spell called [Pinshot], that used her bolts to pin enemies in place. Something about the way she talked about pinning them down seemed odd, but the Healer was far too busy thinking about how she could use the Bard’s spell to help overcome her increasingly worrisome mana pool size.

“Anyway, yes, what about you?” the Chosen One cut off the Hunter and looked at the team’s monster mascot.

Squiggles paused for a second, tilting her head from side to side.

Then she started dancing again.

The Chosen One facepalmed.

“Good talk,” he said to the sharktopus, who just danced harder. She drooled in happiness.

“Well, she seems to like it, anyway,” Qube said, pleased at her pet’s joy.

“True, that is the main thing,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said, reaching out and adjusting Squiggles’s ribbon and flags. Most of the rope and attached flags had been destroyed, but a few still remained stubbornly in place, giving the sharktopus an even more colourful air of festivity than her bright green ribbon alone could manage.

“Time for a contrived moral dilemma?” the Chosen One asked the group, gesturing grandly to the sparkling portal at the end of the mausoleum.

“Always!” Qube replied cheerfully.

---

It turned out Qube had not been ready for this particular moral dilemma. They’d been teleported into what she had, at first, thought was the same mausoleum they’d just left. But this time there were no names on the walls’ drawers, and there were two coffins with a thin table between them.

The artwork on the two receptacles had also changed. The generic human outlined on it had been replaced with a pair of hands and one coffin was now streaked with red and purple marble, while the second coffin had changed to a silver and blue colouration. Both had a small glass globe filled with sand. On closer inspection it seemed as if it had been embedded into the marble itself. A thin glass tube extended upwards from the globe, for all the world like someone had chopped an hourglass in half and removed the top chamber.

The red and purple coffin’s left hand was covered in a purple, twisted mana similar to the one time Qube had seen Definitely Bad Guy cast a curse spell, while the right hand was surrounded by flames. The globe embedded into it was filled with black sand. The word “returned” was scratched into the glass.

The second coffin’s left hand was surrounded by a vaguely silver glow, while the right hand was engulfed in water. The globe on top of this coffin contained only white sand, with the word “reborn” dug into it.

On the small table between the two coffins was a single, empty glass globe with a small tube sticking upright. The words “second chance” were etched into its side.

“What kind of dilemma is this?” Qube asked, confused.

“This is the reason I’m still friends with the Devs,” the Hero replied. He looked between the two coffins and scrunched up his face. “Not quite how I thought they’d done it based on how they described it to me, but it’s why they didn’t think Sparky getting done in by Baddy Daddy was something to warn me about.”

“We agreed you wouldn’t call him that,” Qube countered immediately.

“Fine, why they didn’t think Definitely Bad Guy getting done in by Baddy Daddy was something to warn me about,” the Chosen One said.

Qube resisted the urge to kick the Saviour of All, a resolve that was strenuously tested when he grinned at her obvious restraint.

“Check it out,” the Hero took mercy on her and pointed at the words carved on the three globes. “Got any theories about what’s going on?” he asked Qube and, by extension, the rest of the group.

“Is this some kind of safeguard, to return Definitely Bad Guy if the Dark Prophecy was correct?” Qube asked.

“It looks like we’ll have to make a choice,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said, examining the three globes. “We join this empty vessel with one of these full ones, let it fill to completion, then one of the coffins should activate.”

“My instincts tell me that we should choose ‘reborn’ rather than ‘returned,’” Sencha Bard said, frowning a little. “Simply because the word ‘reborn,’ in conjunction with the healing imagery, seems … no, even such symbolism doesn’t explain why the reborn side speaks to me so powerfully. I suspect some kind of external influence on my feelings at work here.” The Bard frowned harder. “Either that or a bias due to my knowledge of how sagas play out. It’s difficult to tell.”

“What do you think, Sparky?” the Chosen One asked Definitely Bad Guy, his tone surprisingly gentle.

The Mage didn’t reply for a long time. His eyes, blood-red and ringed with blue from whatever spell he used to analyse curses, swept over the scene, examining every last detail.

“Fascinating,” he said at last. He looked at the Chosen One, his eyes returning to normal. “It appears to be the contrived moral dilemma you predicted,” he said, not a hint of unease in his voice.

“What do you want to do?” the Chosen One asked him directly. The former advisor raised an eyebrow.

“Naturally, I would defer to your well-documented expertise in resolving the matter to everyone’s satisfaction,” he said. “I am sure the results will be illuminating.”

The Chosen One pressed a hand to his forehead. “I don’t know if you’re messing with me, or you really don’t know,” he muttered. “Well, only one way to proceed!” he continued, and clapped his hands together, his mood abruptly lifting. He wandered over to the table and closely studied it. In an instant, Qube was by his side, also looking at the severed hourglass globes.

“Allright,” the Hero said to her. “What do you reckon would happen if we put the white sand and black sand sides together to make a mega-hourglass? They’re both full, so I dunno if they’ll mingle at all.”

“Definitely Bad Guy didn’t die, so I’m not sure. I’m assuming the sand in these has some kind of [Revive] spell built into them. Possibly the reborn one would forcibly change his magical abilities to be healing and water based, but why would it want to do that?”

“Eh, it’s probably for if he turned against Baddy Da—” Qube gave him a withering look, “—Evil Emperor and joined our side. Given the whole ‘curses and fire tend to be associated with the dark side’, it would probably bring him back as a new, pure person. Or maybe they figured that if he was on our side, then he would have chosen to sacrifice his magical powers in the Wizards’ Academy and so already be primed for water, given the whole blue motif he’s got going on.”

“That’s so small-minded,” Qube said, shaking her head. “Curses and healing are just two sides of the same coin. Fire and water must be the same. There’s no reason he can’t do both. They’re trying to force him into being just half of himself.”

“Huh, is that why you’re always wanting to learn how to curse people? You feel like it’s the other side of healing? That makes more sense,” the Chosen One said.

“More sense that what?”

“Oh, I dunno, than you just wanting to go around cursing people into their skin peeling off or whatever. That was kind of a worry I had about you wanting to learn how to curse, and why I warned you off it.”

“Because then the Devs might be more inclined to restrain me when I ascended so I couldn’t turn Evil,” Qube said, a piece of the puzzle clicking into place.

The Chosen One clicked his fingers. “Bingo,” he said. Qube figured that meant she was right.

“But I don’t understand what’ll happen if we cast [Revive] on Definitely Bad Guy when he’s perfectly healthy,” Qube said, moving on to the problem at hand. “Especially this reborn aspect. Would it forcibly change him into a Healer? Try and make him more like the White Mage? I don’t think we want that at all! And it’s not just because he’d have a bigger mana pool than me and probably more powerful spells, thus being a better Healer than I am,” she hurried to reassure the Hero, “I just don’t like the idea of them forcibly changing him like that!”

The Chosen One looked at her.

“You’d be totally jealous of him as a Healer!” he said, astonished.

“No, I wouldn't!” Qube protested. “I just don’t think it’s ethical!”

She would be a tiny bit jealous. But he didn’t need to know that.

“Sure,” the Chosen One said, but it sounded like he didn’t believe her lies. “Well, you should know that, even with your tiny mana pool, you’re still an important member of the party.”

“After all, it’s not the size of your mana pool that matters,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar started.

The Bard nodded. “It’s how you use it,” he said sagely. Easy enough for someone who’d just gotten a [Mana Regen] spell to say.

“I’m not jealous of anyone’s mana pool size!” Qube snapped.

“When we have finished with this quest, I would be more than happy to personally instruct you on the—”

“We should focus on solving this puzzle,” Qube said, cutting off a red-eared Definitely Bad Guy. Relenting slightly, she added, “This is you the spell would be affecting, after all.”

“What if you took the empty one, duped it, filled half with black sand and half with white?” The Hero took mercy on her at last. “Then he’d be both sides of the coin! Or, something would break! Either way, it’d be new.”

Qube looked at Definitely Bad Guy, expecting him to protest, or express any kind of worry about being the subject of an unknown magical experiment. But instead the Mage simply observed, his fingers pressed together just under his chin.

“Interesting,” said the man who had once filled a Wizard’s Tower with experiments. “This should prove most enlightening. Begin.”