Prophecy Approved Companion

The Chosen One, Saviour of all Human and Human-Adjacent Beings, displayed all the dignity of his many titles as he flopped backwards out of Sexy Screamy Spider Briar’s grip and flailed about.

"No!" he shouted once his face was free. He wiped his forehead and pointed at the giant arachnid furiously. "Bad companion! No kissing!"

"Of course, my darling," the Hunter said, sounding genuinely embarrassed. "I let myself get carried away. I shouldn't play with your feelings like that. After all, I'm the one who broke up with you."

"That’s not the— sure, yup, kissing just confuses my brain. So. No doing that." The Hero huffied as he dusted himself off, despite the fact that there was no dust on him. “Anyway, I got the hint about the fan. I guess this is where they want us to start using the items from the Temples,” he said.

Qube had to swallow the bubble of excitement that threatened to pop her. This was it! They were finally going to unleash the terrible and awesome power of the Temple items! These were artefacts so powerful that they were protected by the same guardians that held the gems needed to overthrow the Evil Emperor. These had entire Temples dedicated to testing those who would seek them, and had been shielded by magic so powerful that Qube couldn't even begin to understand how strong the Grand Workings necessary to make them had been.

The Chosen One took the two Air Temple fans out of his backpack. The one given to them by the griffin was made of fur and feathers, while the one from the bird-like Flitter Folk was sharp quills and downy feathers.

Qube tried to remember the exact wording of the griffin and Flitter Folk when they'd handed over their fans. Hadn't they said something about it sweeping away fogs? Or clearing mists?

There was no fog here, though.

"Chosen One, where should we go to find the fog to clear?" she asked.

“Yeah, I would have thought this was more of that ‘remove all illusion’ necklace thing myself,” the Hero admitted, looking at the two fans he was holding. "If I'm being honest I kinda didn't think they would have us busting these out until we were in the actual castle. Makes me wonder how much content they've got in there."

Content? Oh! How many things they had inside the castle.

“The castle has been in the Royal families for centuries, so they've probably accumulated a lot of objects,” Qube told the Chosen One. “But I don't know if maybe the Evil Emperor has gotten rid of everything from their reign to try and legitimise himself as the rightful ruler.” She looked over at the former Mage Advisor as she spoke, seeking confirmation.

“The castle has remarkably little contents,” the emperor's right hand man said solemnly.

For some reason this made the Hero sigh. Probably due to disappointment at the lack of loot that he would be able to ethically take.

Not that she would have let him take anything from the castle that might have belonged to the Royal family! That would have practically been treason!

“Okay, so should I use the griffin or the bird fan?” he asked the party.

“Presumably whichever one we don't use now we shall have to use later,” Sencha Bard said.

“Wanna bet?” the Hero asked, amused.

“There wouldn't have been any other reason to give us two,” the Bard replied somewhat stiffly. He looked mildly offended at the Chosen One questioning him.

“What makes you think that?” The Hero, rather than brushing off the Bard’s offence or explaining his comment, instead fixed the other man with an interested look.

“Well, why would they both give us something unless we were intended to use both items?” The Bard now sounded almost angry. But, surprisingly, he didn't immediately hide his rage under a facade of diplomacy.

He was letting the Chosen One see that he was irritated. Qube, while naturally not pleased that party members were irritating each other, felt a swell of joy at the fact that Sencha Bard trusted the Chosen One enough to let him see his actual emotions.

“Maybe they wanted us to have a backup in case we lost one?” the Hero said mildly.

“No. Then they would have given us the same item twice. These items are distinct enough that we can, at a glance, tell who gave us which item.”

“Good logic,” the Hero said.

“Then why are you questioning it?” the Bard asked. He sounded torn between genuine offence and an almost playful anger, as if he couldn't decide how to take the Hero’s comments.

“Because you're wrong,” the Hero replied plainly.

“Well then, Noble Patron, could you please correct this humble Bard as to where my reasoning went wrong?”

Ah. He'd decided on offended.

“You're assuming everything’s part of one story,” the Hero said. “Which means it has to make sense.”

“Is it not?” the Bard asked, still sharp.

The Hero gave his second-longest companion a sleepy smile.

“Tell me,” he said, “exactly how long do you think any coherent narrative would survive contact with us?”

This made the Bard pause like nothing else the Hero had said. “You mean how long it would survive contact with you,” he said at last.

“Do I?” the Hero asked.

There was a moment of silence as the Bard digested that. It was interesting, watching the variety of expressions flit across his face. He wasn’t hiding everything behind his mask, but actually allowing it to play out in public.

“I can’t see how you can have changed the story so that they gave us different items when they only needed to give us one,” he said. “It would make more sense if you prevented them from giving us the item they were supposed to, via offending them.”

The Chosen One laughed. “That’s fair,” he said, holding up a hand. “That’s very fair. How about this—” he flipped both fans in his hands and offered them to the Bard, handle-first. “You pick and use one now, and if there’s a chance to use the second one, I’ll use it.”

Without a word, Sencha Bard reached out and took the griffin’s fan.

They nodded at each other.

Qube didn’t think that solution addressed the Bard’s points at all, but for some reason both men seemed very pleased with it, standing there nodding at each other.

Sometimes, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t fully understand those two.

With a grand flourish, Sencha Bard waved the fan in front of him, directly at the misting white roses.

“Let the fog that clouds our minds be cleared, so that we may continue on our quest!” he said ceremoniously.

Qube didn’t ask for many things. The world was sometimes confusing, and people would do things that she didn’t understand, and words could be ambiguous. All this she accepted with the good grace she’d been taught to have.

One thing she did ask was that, when they were explicitly given an item to remove fog, there be fog that needed removing for it to work. And no, the small mist being released from flowers, of all things, didn’t count. She didn’t know where fog came from, but she knew that it probably didn’t come from hedge-roses.

But, in defiance of her excellent botanical knowledge, the fan’s wind hit the mist and split it. The roses parted, revealing a small alcove, separate from the rest of the maze.

If Qube hadn’t been so angry at the illogical nature of what had just happened, she would have thought the area an oasis of peace and beauty. A small bench was placed next to a picturesque pond, with several golden fish happily splashing about. The music, which had risen to a triumphant crescendo mere moments ago, now dropped away, leaving only a quiet, gentle melody playing in her head.

But instead she was mad.

“How are we supposed to be able to know which items to use if all the clues are so obscure?” she asked nobody in particular. She glanced up at the sky, which is where the Chosen One liked to yell at the Devs every now and then, but couldn’t bring herself to directly shout at the beings who made her entire world.

She would, however, frown as heavily as she could as she stomped into the alcove.

“I think that’s why they had Sexy Screamy Spider Briar help us out,” the Chosen One suggested.

“But then why not just have a better hint?” Qube retorted. “Although…” she trailed off as she thought about it. “I suppose they couldn’t tell us to fan the flowers, since there’s so many in this maze, and we’ve only encountered any kind of fog or mist in completely different areas. And if they went around saying ‘the white roses in the hedge maze that mist a lot’ then there’d be too high a chance of the Evil Emperor intercepting the message, or learning of it from a spy.”

Everyone except for the Hero discreetly avoided looking at Definitely Bad Guy at the mention of spies. The Chosen One just grinned at the former traitor. Current traitor? Was betraying the Evil Emperor in favour of the rightful rulers really betrayal, or was it just righting a wrong?

Either way, the Mage Advisor appeared suitably uncomfortable with the reminder that he had almost been a party to the failure of the Golden Prophecy.

Dragging herself back to the moment, Qube quickly spotted the trapdoor hiding under the bench. Hiding was, perhaps, a strong word for it, but an attempt had been made to make sure that a casual fog-lifter wouldn’t immediately spot the wooden hatch. Only the very corner of it stuck out amongst the grass.

“So, who wants to open it?” their fair and equitable leader asked. “Also, Squiggles, I just had a thought. Do you reckon you could rip the trapdoor off its hinges? That’d be pretty funny.”

Their fair and equitable leader who was starting to act just the tiniest bit more loopy than normal.

“Chosen One, when was the last time you rested?” Qube asked discreetly. The Hero waved her off.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said.

“It’s my job to worry about things like that,” she replied.

“I got some sleep the other day,” he said with a touch of impatience. Qube was about to scold him when she realised that it had been weeks since she’d last slept. Still, while she and the other party members had the power of the quest to strengthen them, the Chosen One was sometimes surprisingly weak. It was probably because of how time travelled differently between the realms.

Squiggles, not deterred by any concern as to the mental wellbeing of the person who’d just asked her to do exactly what she wanted to do anyway, shoved the bench aside and violently ripped the trap door off its hinges, before shoving it into her mouth.

Qube pressed her face into her hands as her pet gleefully chomped through the secret entrance to the castle. That was fine. They would replace it after they rescued the king and queen. They would probably have to redecorate after they un-coup-ed from the Evil Emperor anyway.

What was slightly less fine was when Squiggles immediately launched herself into the black hole that had once been a trapdoor.

“Squiggles!” This time Qube did manage to protest, running up to the edge and looking into the impenetrable darkness below. She spun around and grabbed the Chosen One’s arm.

Several sentences tripped over themselves trying to exit her mouth at the same time. They had to rescue her! Squiggles was just a baby Deep One! She was an innocent little pet! Qube was going to kill her for this! But, instead of any of those perfectly reasonable statements, all that came out of the Healer’s mouth was:

“Baby! Now!”

Then she leapt into the unknown, dragging the very confused, but greatly amused, Hero with her.