Prophecy Approved Companion

The king was in a magnificent purple cloak with ermine lining. Even though he was in a cell, he was still wearing his full regalia, including a breathtakingly sparkly crown, fitted with seven different coloured gems. His hair gently curled midway down his neck, and his unlined face radiated calm authority.

In contrast, the queen had a sheer white cloak, lined with purple fur. Long hair tumbled down her back in elaborate braids, and her dress shimmered silver as she moved. Her expression was one of gentle wisdom.

“The noble king and beautiful queen!” Qube squeaked out. She flung herself to her knees, ignoring the four angry Royal Guards approaching the party.

The other two cells held the Exiled Prince and Exiled Princess, whose presence Qube had once trembled to behold. And she was still very awe-struck by them; she just had bigger things to tremble at. Like their parents.

“So, uh, guards,” she heard the Chosen One say, as if from a great distance.

The room was too small for her to risk [Heal]ing them. They might flail about and, horrors against horrors, hurt one of the Royals. For one, insane moment, Qube felt her anger surge at these traitors for standing right by the Royal family and not freeing them. Even if they’d been under a mind compulsion, or a morality swapping spell, surely the presence alone of the Royals would have been enough for them to realise the error of their ways?

“Cover your ears!” she heard Sencha Bard call, and so overwhelmed was she that she only just managed to heed his warning in time.

She watched, hands pressed against her ears, as the spell rippled over the Royal Guards, and sank into them. Then, to her horror, it continued, and she watched as the Royal family went still.

She watched as the spell she’d help make, cast by one of her closest friends, hit the Royal family square in the face.

Fortunately, unlike direct usage of the [Heal] spell, no one started wildly flailing, or digging gouges into each other, or their surroundings. However, it was a different kind of horrifying to watch as the king and queen’s faces went slack, and they stared blankly ahead, swaying slightly to the blocked music.

“Stop! Stop!” Qube shouted, hoping Sencha Bard could hear her over the music. She wrenched herself around, difficult to do while kneeling on a dungeon floor, and saw him hesitate. “You’re affecting them!”

He frowned at her in confusion, but his fingers stilled. The instant he stopped moving, she pulled her hands away.

“We don’t know what the spell will do to their ability to rule!” she managed to gasp out around the fear sitting on her chest. “What if it opens their minds to outside influences? What if they become special and want to ascend? What if it stops them from being Royal? The kingdom will be ruined.”

How could this not have occurred to her until just now? How were they supposed to stop the Royals from being infected, even after they left the dungeon?

She saw the Chosen One’s face, stricken with the same horror she felt. But, rather than observing the Royals, he was looking directly at her. He shook himself, before straightening himself.

“No way am I allowing that!” he declared boldly. “Time to restore your relics of a by-gone government rooted in inbreeding! [Save Scum Attack]!” He flicked his hands through the air, and reality collapsed.

---

They were back in the guardian room. The rest of the party looked around in confusion.

“Did anyone else feel something odd?” Sencha Bard asked.

“I feel a little… discombobulated,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said thoughtfully.

“We may have been affected by the Chosen One’s state,” Definitely Bad Guy said.

“Ah,” the Chosen One said, pulling a face. “We may have gone a bit further back than I thought.”

Qube blinked.

“We were just in the dungeon,” she said uncertainly.

“This is scarcely a dungeon, my sweet,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar corrected her gently. “You were magnificent just now, by the way. You handled those guardians perfectly.”

“Are you feeling better, now they’re gone?” Sencha Bard asked the Hero.

“But we were just there,” Qube protested. “It doesn’t feel fuzzy, or like a dream, or anything. It genuinely feels like I was just there.”

“Huh, that is weird,” the Chosen One said, ignoring the others as he looked at her.

“What has occurred?” Definitely Bad Guy asked, bristling. “Is there some spell that has affected us, but not you?”

“Ah, I used a spell to jump back to the last time I interacted with a Save Point,” the Chosen One said, unblushingly describing his spell. “We’d gone into the dungeon to rescue the king and queen, but someone went and used his brainwashing spell on them.”

“What?” Sencha Bard exclaimed.

“The someone was you,” the Chosen One helpfully explained.

“Why would I do something so blatant?” the Bard asked, still aghast.

…So blatantly wrong, right? Qube nodded her agreement at the Bard’s shock.

“We were trying to stop the Royal Guards in the room with them,” she explained, attempting to soothe the self-recrimination the Bard must be suffering from.

“Aw man, this means we’ll never find out what Sexy Screamy Spider Briar’s great plan for taking out the Evil Emperor was,” the Chosen One lamented.

“My plan?” the Hunter asked, arching all her eyebrows in a very deliberate manner.

“Yeah, you came up with some secret plan that meant you were gonna take down the Evil Emperor one on one! But you wouldn’t tell us what it was, so now we’ll never know.”

The giant arachnid’s eyebrows slowly lowered. She glanced between the Save Point and the Chosen One.

“So you can return to any point in time where you touched that ball?” she asked.

“Well, kinda, but only the last time I touched it. It overwrites the last time.”

“And none of us remember what happened? Except, of course, for our lovely Healer.”

“Yeah, dunno why though.”

Sexy Screamy Spider Briar tapped her fangs with two of her claws. She leant forward, her fangs dripping slightly.

“Touch the ball,” she whispered seductively.

“Oh I really don’t like it when you say it like that,” the Hero cringed away from her, but obeyed. As soon as he was clear of the blue ball of light, Sexy Screamy Spider Briar drew herself up.

“Can you do your spell again so soon, or do you need to regain your stamina?” she asked breathily.

“I can do it anytime, anywhere— oh no, that sounded so wrong, hate that.” The Chosen One was pulling a face like he’d just bitten into a lemon.

“I plan on seducing the Evil Emperor by telling him that I’ve decided to join the side of Evil,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar declared boldly. “I’ll tell him I’ve fallen madly in love with him, and wish to join my kingdom with his through marriage. Then, when I’m close enough to him, I’ll steal whatever he’s mounted the gems onto. You must not betray my false betrayal by not appearing upset enough, though. I expect you to act like you’ve never acted before. The fate of the kingdom depends on it!”

“Huh. Well, sure, that might work —” the Hero started to say, before the Hunter cut him off.

“Now quickly! Use your spell, and keep my secret a secret!”

The Chosen One rubbed his eyes, before forcing himself back into the same dramatic pose as the last time he’d reset reality.

“Well, once more with feeling! [Save Scum Attack]!”

---

At some point Qube should get used to reality warping around her. What with all the teleportations, and dreams, and travelling back through Save Points, it seemed like every other day she was tearing the fabric of space and time in some way. She’d gone from never existing in an alternative reality, to trying to figure out which reality she was in.

“Hello,” she said to the party as they looked around in confusion.

“Did anyone else feel something odd?” Sencha Bard asked.

“I feel a little… discombobulated,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said thoughtfully.

“We may have been affected by the Chosen One’s state,” Definitely Bad Guy said.

“Do you ever get used to this?” Qube asked the Chosen One, gesturing at her friends repeating themselves. She instantly regretted the question. It wasn’t their fault they couldn’t time-travel like the Chosen One and her. And which answer would be worse: the fact that you could get used to your friends' minds being wiped, or the fact that it never got any less unsettling?

“Kinda,” the Hero shrugged, preventing her from finding out which was worse, but, as was his habit, giving her a third response. He looked at the rest of the party. “I used [Save Scum Attack],” he said, cutting off any further questioning. “So now I know a bit of what’s up ahead. We’re heading to the dungeon.”

Qube approved of him skipping over the question of Sexy Screamy Spider Briar’s grand idea. Qube had barely had time to process the Hunter’s plan before the world had been reset, but now she had a moment to think she knew there was absolutely no way she was going to allow her friend to put herself in danger like that. Not only would it mean she was placed in close proximity to an Evil man, but it was also pointless. No one who’d spent even the briefest amount of time observing Sexy Screamy Spider Briar would buy the idea that she would betray her friends, or former lover.

“There’s guards in the dungeon with the royal family, and it’ll mess them up if we use any brain breaking spells too close to them. Any alternative ideas?”

---

Which is how they ended up luring the Royal Guards to the portal at the top of the stairs and shoving them through it.

The Chosen One took the lead on it. Definitely Bad Guy got rid of the barrier, and then the Mage, Hero, and Healer ran back up the stairs, the Royal Guards in hot pursuit. The Chosen One took the rear, with Qube casting [Lesser Shield] on him as needed, but the Royal Guards never seemed to get more than a hit or two in before having to concentrate on chasing them up the stairs.

Once they reached the top, the Chosen One spun around, grabbed the nearest guard in a massive hug, and dove backwards through the portal.

The instant the first guard was through the portal, the Chosen One and Qube touched the door, reactivating the portal into the dungeon. For some reason, rather than chasing them through the portal, the three remaining Royal Guards were milling about, muttering about how they swore they heard something.

Then the Hero reappeared, grabbed another guard, and disappeared.

From the guards’ perspective it was probably quite horrifying, given they didn’t seem able to understand teleportation. Quite how they’d managed to get into the dungeon without using the portal was a mystery, but not one Qube was destined to solve. For, as soon as all four guards were in the hallways on the other side of the iron dungeon door, Sencha Bard demanded the party cover their ears, and then unleashed [The Bard’s Ballad] for the second time that day, but first time this reality.

These Royal Guards took it rather well, all things considered. Perhaps it was because in another timeline they’d already been blasted with the spell, but it was only a few minutes after Sencha Bard stopped playing, and everyone had calmed down a bit after the excitement of their mission, that the Royal Guards were acting like they were just visitors to the castle.

“We’re here to free the Royal family!” Qube had told them, as soon as they confirmed they could see/hear her. And, hopefully, find some way to stop the Royal family’s perfect ability to rule being disrupted by the infectious nature of [The Bard’s Ballad].

“Fair enough,” the guard closest to her said. He scratched at his tall, fuzzy hat. “Yeah, I can’t quite remember why the boss didn’t want us to let anyone in. I suppose he didn’t want them disturbed. The Royal family are the rulers, right?”

Boss! Of course! The Evil Emperor was a Boss! Just like in the Temples! Qube didn’t have a clue what this meant, as she had far bigger things to focus on, but it made total sense, considering how much he’d tried to make the castle like a final Temple.

For now, however, she impatiently waited for the Chosen One to finish telling the four guards to go to the guardian room and wait for them, before practically dancing in front of the dungeon door.

It was time for her to meet the Royal family!