Prophecy Approved Companion

The Chosen One had doomed them. As Qube looked around the room they’d just entered, she allowed herself a moment to despair. If the vast banquet-style room they found themselves in had been empty, she would have said it was beautiful, if severe. Dark, brooding architecture held sway, with black columns rising up and turning into very sharp-looking arches. Grotesque faces were carved into the ceiling, and black chandeliers with black candles dripped black wax. The flames, however, broke the trend of blackness, and were a bright blue.

Several imposing doorways lined the blackstone walls, three on either side of the rectangular room with one more at the opposite end from them, each with a relief of a Temple’s gemstone etched above the apex of the oddly-pointy doorway. It had the air of a place designed to be imposing, and knew it.

The room, however, wasn’t empty. Its carefully crafted atmosphere was utterly shattered by the nonsense happening inside it.

Every single Temple guardian they’d ever met was inside the room. And they were all very excited, and all talking at once. The sheer cacophony of noise hit Qube like a block to the face, nearly staggering her as she tried to take in the colourful array of madness contrasted with the gothic nature of the decor.

The Dryad Queen and the Beast were in front of the Forbidden Forest Temple doorway, the wooden queen gently stroking the fearsome creature’s ears. The fact that the duo weren’t attacking each other was astonishing enough, considering the Beast had ripped out the Queen’s heart, but then, they had seemed close during the end of the Thorny Trials.

The Giant Lava Slime and Salamander King were bickering outside the Fire Temple door. Technically it was the Doom Death Volcano Temple or something silly like that but Qube refused to think of it as anything other than the Fire Temple. She could accept Forbidden Forest, but Volcano Doom or Death Volcano was just too much. Fortunately the two guardians were managing to stay in the same dimension, rather than taking turns flickering in and out of existence like they had last time the party went to visit.

Qube noted that the Giant Lava Slime was still wearing its tiny crown, and was loudly complaining about how its cushion had disappeared. It seemed the plan of sharing leadership had yet to manifest in the domain of the Lava Slime.

The Deep One and the Mermaid Princess weren’t exactly talking. The Mermaid Princess was singing softly to herself, while the Deep One was waving its rainbow fishing light around, every now and then gently touching the mermaid with it. The mermaid didn’t seem to mind this, adding new melodies to her song each time the Deep One made contact.

Across from those three doors were the Air Temple, Shadow Temple, and Light Temple doors. Both the Flitter Folk and griffin leaders were in front of the Air Temple, the Flitter Folk leader, Charmed, was plying both the Akela and what could only be the former pharaoh with questions. At first, Qube didn’t recognise the former pharaoh. Gone was the golden helmet and ornate outfit. Instead he had revealed surprisingly delicate features, and short, razor-straight black hair. Both figures were answering the Air Temple guardian’s questions in a touching display of inter-Temple cooperation.

There was no one in front of the Shadow Temple. Just a single shuttered lantern placed on the ground. The shutters didn’t fit perfectly, though, and something was moving about inside the lantern, causing strange, half-formed shadows to leak out the sides.

At the very end of the room, past all the other entrances, directly opposite them was the Time Temple door.

There was nobody in front of it. Just the etching of its gem, glittering as the chandeliers swayed.

Quite why the chandeliers were swaying was a question in and of itself. Given the lack of breeze, it had to be purely for dramatic effect, but really it would probably just make anyone who looked at them for too long feel slightly ill.

In the instant it took Qube to scan the room and gather all the information, the Chosen One entered and staggered, jerking himself to the side and grabbing a wall to support his weight as he closed his eyes.

“Chosen One! What’s wrong?” Qube asked, reaching out to heal him. Had he looked directly at the swaying chandeliers and instantly become overcome by motion sickness? The Hero shuddered as her [Lesser Heal] took effect.

“That was weird,” he said, by way of explanation. “Didn’t feel good. Like I desynced for a second or something.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, no longer afraid to reveal her ignorance. The Hero squinted at her, as if looking at her from a great distance, before refocusing.

“Uh, it has to do with how I travel from the Devs’ realm to here,” he replied, with all the natural awkwardness that always came up when he discussed the nitty gritty of puppeting her friend’s corpse. “Basically, while I get all the information from this world, like sight, smell, and taste, my body’s still in the Devs’ realm. That’s how I inhabit this one, right?”

Qube was very proud of herself. She felt only a manageable amount of pain while dancing around the topic of Felix nowadays. Time really did heal all wounds! Not as well as actual healing, but still. It was something to note.

“Hey, focus,” the Chosen One, in a surprising display of perceptiveness, noticed her attention wandering.

“Sorry, Chosen One!”

“It’s hard to focus with what’s happening before us,” Sencha Bard admitted. “But please, finish your explanation.”

The Chosen One turned his head slightly and looked at the mess of Temple guardians. He winced, and looked away again.

“Ah, it’s dropping serious frames,” he muttered. He shook his head. “Anyway, basically, it’s sort of like possession, I guess, but sometimes the information gets kinda… interrupted? Like if you blinked a whole bunch while spinning in a circle. So it can be jumbled up. Or sound will come in before sight, so I’ll hear someone talking before I physically see their mouth move. It’s not normally an issue here, but I think the game—uh, realm, being so very, very busted is having an effect.”

“Does that mean the mana that runs the world is running low?” Qube asked, instantly on high alert. What did he mean by ‘game’?

“I dunno.” The Hero of the world was, as ever, not very helpful on matters involving the survival of the world. “They did get more—uh— mana pools, so it shouldn’t be an issue. I think it’s just so many Temple guardians being together at once that’s causing trouble.”

Qube nodded. “The Temple guardians are extremely powerful,” she explained to the Hero, even though she knew he knew this. “They wield tremendous amounts of mana, and many of them have influence over entire kingdoms. It makes sense that their collective auras would work to disrupt whatever spell binds you to your… form.”

Which was the most tactful way she could think of to refer to the whole matter.

“Exactly!” the Chosen One said, pleased at her quick understanding. “Or, well, not exactly, but really close!”

Qube beamed in pride at his praise, and turned to look at the rest of the group, to see if they had followed along with their conversation, and were also impressed. Not that she needed them to be impressed by her. It just felt nice to be impressive.

But aside from Sencha Bard they all seemed much more interested in the room full of Temple guardians, rather than why a room full of Temple guardians had made the Chosen One feel temporarily woozy.

Come to think of it, she was rather surprised that Sencha Bard had stuck around to listen and contribute to their conversation. Not that she didn’t think he was highly intelligent and curious about why things were the way they were! After all, Definitely Bad Guy was a genius and he was currently attempting to talk to the Beast from the Forbidden Forest Temple. But the Bard loved lore, and talking to important people, and he was missing out on a whole room full of important people just to make sure he understood why the Chosen One had felt sick.

Qube smiled at the Bard, touched by his obvious concern for the Hero. For all they had little tiffs, at the end of the day they were clearly good friends.

Sencha Bard immediately returned her smile with his own, dazzling one, before sweeping his gaze over the chaos heaving before them.

“Will you be able to make it through here?” he asked the Chosen One as he continued to look at the guardians. After a beat, he added very casually: “Just so we know what to do, what would happen if their mana was to completely interrupt your connection to our realm? And would the same fate affect any Devs attempting to exist here?”

The Hero, breaking away from Qube’s gentle hand on his arm, carefully stepped over to a Save Point and waved a hand through it. Unlike Sencha Bard, the Chosen One wasn’t looking out into the room at all. In fact, he was making a concentrated effort to keep his back to the guardians.

“Then my [Save Scum Attack] should automatically kick in, and we’d be returned to this point in time,” the Hero said, risking a sideways glance at Sencha Bard. “What I’m probably gonna have to do is close my eyes, so the lag doesn’t give me another migraine like last time.”

“You had a migraine last time?” Qube asked, aghast. “When was last time?”

“Eh, back when everything was crazy and then we had to talk to that Ian guy,” the Chosen One waved away her question. “It messed me up for like… nearly a week. Then Alex wouldn’t let me log back on until I got checked out.”

“The disruption to your connection caused you to have a migraine for nearly a week?” Qube was furious. She’d never had a migraine before, but she’d heard of them, and she had enough experience with the headaches the Golden Prophecy (and sometimes her fellow party members) gave her to be horrified at this information, and angry that the Chosen One had suffered so badly without telling her.

“Now you sound like Bee…” the Chosen One muttered. “No, it only knocked me about for a day or two but the aftereffects meant I was tired for a week. Look. Why am I explaining this to you? The point is, it’s not fun, so I’m gonna close my eyes and you guys are gonna have to guide me through the room. Which means I’m trusting you,” he said pointedly to his second oldest companion.

Sencha Bard struggled with himself for a moment, before turning back to face the Hero and sweeping him a deep bow.

“You honour me with your trust,” he said. Still bowing, he continued: “Your dedication to your promise to help us… if nothing else, you are a loyal friend. As such, I would have to forfeit all personal honour forever, were I to betray the trust of a man so loyal that he returns to help us at such great personal cost to himself.”

“I more meant don’t make me run into people or trip over chairs,” the Chosen One said, looking uncomfortable at the Bard’s sudden sincerity. Before anyone (Qube) could point out that there wasn’t any furniture in the room, he coughed. “But, y’know, that stuff you said was nice too. I told you I’d help, and I like you guys, so …” he shrugged, his lack of eloquence starkly contrasting the other man’s. “Anyway, you’ll have to narrate all the stuff you see to me, okay? All the weirdness must be shared!”

Without waiting for a reply, the Hero closed his eyes and swung around to face the room, holding his arms out in front of him like Squiggles asking to be picked up.

“Give me the tour!” he ordered. But he’d only managed one (unguided, because he hadn’t been bothered to wait for his companions to get into position) step, when the Dryad Queen spoke out.

“My chosen Wood Warrior. You’ve arrived. It is time for war.”