Prophecy Approved Companion

“Who’s talking?” the Chosen One loudly asked Sencha Bard and Qube. Qube closed her eyes for a brief moment. Not to try and join the Chosen One in blindness, but rather because there was a lot going on right now and she was struggling to cope. After a few deep breaths, she opened her eyes.

“That’s the Dryad Queen,” she whispered to the Chosen One.

“Oh, that’s the chick who threatened you once, yeah?” the Chosen One loudly replied.

“Chosen One, you’re blind, not deaf,” Qube nearly hissed her reply.

“Well, it’s kinda noisy,” the Hero said apologetically. “And it’s all melding together a bit.” Qube bit her bottom lip. Of course! If the sheer concentration of power was interfering with the Chosen One’s connection to this realm, then it would make perfect sense that he was struggling to hear properly. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

She was having trouble thinking at all, if she was to be entirely honest with herself. The aura and mana of so many guardians was nearly overwhelming, and that tugging sensation, as if her soul was being pulled, had only been growing stronger the deeper into the castle she got. She needed to make everyone speak one at a time, to stop both the Chosen One and herself from becoming confused.

“Excuse me,” she said, so quietly it was nearly a whisper.

“Something foul is afoot,” the Dryad Queen continued talking over the cacophony of chatter echoing around the room. Not just conversation, either — Squiggles was making a huge racket with her new accessories, recently acquired from the chests that had been hiding in the illusions of her fellow village companions.

The Chosen One, naturally, had suggested that Qube inspect the treasure chests and, with only the briefest hesitation while she desperately told herself that this wasn’t the inner coin purses (or rather treasure chests) of two men she’d grown up with but rather the result of illusions, she’d popped the simple wooden chests open.

Inside both chests were identical golden crowns, each adorned only with eight empty sockets. Qube instantly recognised the shapes of the sockets: each corresponded with one of the Temple gems that the Evil Emperor had taken from them. She’d plucked a crown out, birthing a twin, and held the plain headware aloft.

Squiggles had instantly fallen in love with it. After a few rude attempts to snatch and eat it, she was finally patient enough to let Qube carefully place one on her head, so it rested against the bow of her pretty green ribbon. The mascot had looked so adorable that Qube, unable to help herself, had birthed a few more crowns, and attempted to fit them on the sharktopus’s various limbs.

Then, with strong encouragement from Sencha Bard and Sexy Screamy Spider Briar, she’d gotten a bit carried away.

The end result had been fabulous in the way only an overexcited sharktopus wearing a dozen crowns as bracelets could be. They barely even clashed with the tattered remains of the rope and flags she’d acquired from Cobbletown, and her ribbon was doing an excellent job of keeping her head crown in place.

It did, however, mean that as she slorped around the slightly echoey room, her normal sucker-squishy noise was replaced with slorp-jangle-jangle-jangle-slorp. Which, needless to say, didn’t help with the volume control.

“Squiggles, everyone, could you please settle down?” she asked, struggling to muster the courage to tell some of the most powerful people in the realm to be quiet. “The Chosen One is having…”

No one was listening. Of course, who even knew which amongst the assembled guardians could even hear her. She was probably invisible to half of them, even though she’d been instrumental to completing their respective Temples. She would probably have to get one of the others to ask them to be silent.

“I don’t know what game the Evil Emperor is playing, but he’s summoned us into his domain,” the Dryad Queen, who absolutely could hear her, interrupted. Qube felt a flare of anger flicker to life within her.

“He’s not playing a game!” she snapped, suddenly much louder. Her voice cut through the noise and, to her utter shock, everyone stopped talking and looked at her. Even the guardians that she was absolutely positive couldn’t see her, like the Akela. She fought the urge to shrink behind the Chosen One.

“You dare?” the Dryad Queen said with a gasp.

“None of this is a game,” Qube retorted, finally figuring out what about the Chosen One’s comment earlier was bugging her. “And it’s wrong to call it such. We’re fighting for more than just victory over the Evil Emperor. We’re fighting for our futures. There are powers at play here which I don’t think any of you know about — unless you know about the Devs?” She suddenly lost steam, realising that the guardians might very well be familiar with those powerful beings.

The Chosen One gingerly opened his eyes.

“Nobody move, or talk,” he commanded the room of rulers and guardians. He looked directly at Qube. She looked steadily back at him. “Did I call it a game?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“You did,” she replied. “Earlier.”

“I’m sorry,” he said simply. “This room is messing with my head.”

And, as easily as that, she forgave him.

“Mine too,” she confessed.

“It’s certainly been some time since you’ve treated this quest like just a game,” Sencha Bard said from the Chosen One’s side.

“I’m not ignoring you Sing-Song, but I’m afraid turning too fast will make me throw up,” the Chosen One said as he very slowly shifted his head so he could try and make eye contact with the Bard. “There. I’m being polite. This is a conversation.”

“He requested no talking,” Definitely Bad Guy said pedantically from where he’d drifted to, over near the mermaid.

“I hope you’re not chastising our sweet Healer,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said dangerously from where she was kneeling before the Dryad Queen. “She was simply answering a direct question.”

“No, not at all!” Definitely Bad Guy was visibly flustered. “I merely meant the Bard—”

“Okay, I’m gonna close my eyes again,” the Chosen One announced. “The rest of you lot can talk, just one at a time please. Or else, and I cannot emphasise this enough, I will vomit on someone. And it’ll probably be me.”

As far as threats went, only Qube was properly horrified by it. Everyone else seemed a bit confused.

“Then I shall speak,” the Dryad Queen said after a beat.

“Sure. What are you guys doing in this room? Did you all just appear or something?” the Chosen One asked, his eyes now firmly closed.

The Dryad Queen looked surprisingly sheepish.

“Not exactly,” she said.

“We were teleported into these rooms,” the Akela cut in. The Dryad Queen glared at the SandBright leader, but was ignored. “After some time, our subject and ourselves became restless, and decided to investigate what lay outside our room.”

“Okay, so, I dunno if that was something you were supposed to do or not,” the Chosen One said, eyes still squeezed shut.

“The Akela looked at me when I spoke,” Qube quietly informed the Hero. His eyebrows shot up.

“That’s new,” he muttered. “Hey, Akey and pal, can you see the chick standing next to me?”

Qube was many things, but she was not, nor had she even been, a chick. If anything, she would be a chicken, since she was a mature adult now. Well. Mature late-ish teenager, which was practically the same as being an adult. Were there teenage chickens?

Speaking of chickens, she really hoped the ones they’d sent to follow the Evil Emperor to the gems locations were safe. She’d almost feel bad for the tyrant if he managed to offend them. While the part of her that still held the Golden Prophecy in regard (if not as much as before, now she knew how potentially flawed it was) was almost certain that a flock of enraged chickens wouldn’t be able to peck the Evil Emperor to death, the rest of her wasn’t completely convinced that they wouldn’t at the very least severely wound the man.

So busy was she attempting to visualise what a chicken-ravaged Evil Emperor would look like that she didn’t even register that the Chosen One had called the leader of the SandBright people Akey.

“We can see a half-elf Healer standing by your side,” the Akela replied grandly.

“Okay, yup, that’s one hundred percent new,” the Chosen One said firmly.

“We have been able to see her since she entered the room,” the Akela corrected the Hero. “Her presence is not new. We have always seen her, as we see all within our domain.”

“This is not your domain,” the Dryad Queen corrected the Akela. The Beast next to her let out a small growl.

“Evil castle. Not fun. Don’t like.” Charmed, leader of the Flitter Folk, was jumping from side to side, looking very distressed. “Can’t fly. No escape.”

“We ask you, how did the Evil Emperor bring us here?” the Mermaid Princess asked the Chosen One.

“Okay, everyone stop talking again,” the Chosen One said, sitting down on the ground.

“[Lesser Heal],” Qube cast, hoping to take the edge off the Hero’s distress.

“Thanks,” he said absentmindedly. “Okay, Akey, did you happen to meet a giant scorpion after we left your place? Or, like, any animals doing a dance?”

“Our animals have always danced to the tune we commanded them to,” the Akela said in a reply that Qube suspected was deliberately obtuse.

“Several of our scouts did find a flock of sand ostriches singing on one of our trips,” the person next to Akela, who could only be the former pharaoh with his gold helmet and outfit removed, confessed. His voice was surprisingly feminine sounding. And he was surprisingly feminine looking. Honestly, if Qube didn’t know any better, she would have thought the person in gold was the pharaoh, and the tough woman-looking person who didn’t sound at all like the pharaoh they’d met back in the pyramid was the Akela. “We wanted to secure the area, make sure nothing had come in during the conflict. They brought reports of it back.”

Qube was pleased that the former pharaoh had found a new occupation for himself coordinating scouts. She hadn’t been sure what unanchoring him from his destiny, and wiping away huge chunks of what had set him on his path of revenge and domination would do, but it all seemed to have worked out. He didn’t even appear to hold a grudge against her for stabbing him that one time.

“The forest has also become home to new wildlife, with enchanting songs,” the Dryad Queen said. The Beast nodded.

“We tell you, the people from the fishing villages that line our lake came to us with tales of the mangroves. We clarify, new animals danced along the edges, and shared their songs. We confess, one of the songs was hauntingly familiar.” The Mermaid Princess looked at the Deep One, who swung its rainbow lure and pressed it against her forehead. “We relay, the new fishing folk priests also spoke to the Deep Ones of this song, and the fish dance to it.”

“Sssome birdsss entered our volcano, sssomething they had not dared do before,” the King Salamander was once again hissing. They all knew he did it on purpose, since he’d stopped when the Chosen One had complained about it. Qube didn’t know if he thought it made him more dragon-like or not, but it was mildly irritating to add hissing into the mix when some people were already struggling with hearing.

“Us Lava Slime welcomed all newcomers with open mouths and wagging tails!” the Giant Lava Slime proudly declared. “Many of them have expressed great interest in our range of magma-proof cushions, and agree that our methods of leading are the way of the future!”

Even though the Chosen One was sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, he still covered his eyes as he groaned.

“Are you feeling sick, still? [Minor Cleanse].” Qube didn’t know what to do to help the Hero feel better. She knelt down next to him, and put a comforting hand on his back.

“No wonder they had to upgrade the, uh, mana pool,” the Chosen One said. “The entire world’s been infected with [The Bard Ballad]. I thought everyone just had the potential to be ‘special.’ But thanks to Sparky and Sing-Song, everyone in the world’s already [fiddling] ‘special.’”