Prophecy Approved Companion

“Right, first things first,” the Chosen One said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s test the limits on this baby.”

“There’s no babies here,” Qube helpfully pointed out.

“Every time,” the Hero said with a sigh. “Anyway, point is, I want to see how much we can break this maze.”

“I thought you didn’t want to break things anymore?” Qube asked, now completely lost. Was the Chosen One going to break a baby?

“Well, we gotta go through the maze anyway, and I’ll probably end up doing it properly. Or, close enough, anyway. So it’s not a major sequence break like if we broke the gate,” the Chosen One explained obscurely. “I just wanna see how it works a little.”

He started leading them back into the maze, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

“So how did you wake the others up during fast travel?” he asked as he crept along. He looked down and, seemingly for the first time, noticed the scratches Qube had been leaving to mark the way.

“Well, I don’t know how I woke up, since I was never asleep,” Qube confessed. “But I woke up the others by interacting with them during your meditative states. I don’t know why they all entered meditative states with you, but once I interrupted them, none of them re-entered them.”

“It just felt natural,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said with a shrug. “Travelling back to somewhere I’d been before, there wasn’t really much to engage me, mentally, so I’d just kind of… slip away into my own thoughts.”

Sencha Bard and Definitely Bad Guy nodded in agreement.

“Interesting,” the Chosen One said, rubbing his chin. “Right, well, when this guy makes me go meditative again, can you try stopping me? I wanna see if you can block me. All of you, in fact, can just try and block me.”

“Actually, Chosen One, I think that the Royal Guard was absolutely in the wrong to cast a spell on you like that,” Qube started. As she spoke, however, the same whistling from before began. “After all,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the honestly piercing sound, “we’re members of the public, and there was no one at the entrance saying that we couldn’t—”

“Sure, sure, but make sure you wake me!” the Chosen One cut her off as the guard turned the corner.

“Oi!” The Royal Guard seemed exactly as surprised as the last time he’d spotted the Chosen One. “You’re not supposed to be here!” he shouted. Once again he raised his black baton. “Get out of here, before I beat you black and blue!”

Not only did the guard repeat his deplorable threat of unreasonable force upon an (as far as he knew) innocent member of the public, but he didn’t even seem to recognise the party of adventurers he’d chased out of the maze only a short while ago! How many people did he chase out of the maze every day that he couldn’t even remember a group as distinct as theirs? Or was he so bad at his job that he wasn’t even paying attention? They had a giant spider with screaming children’s faces stitched into her sides, for crying out loud! And how many sharktopuses did he run into on a day-to-day basis?

When she’d been little, Qube had admired the Royal Guards. Their taciturn nature, fancy outsides, and dedication to the Royal family were everything a Prophecy-ordained Childhood Companion could desire in an official.

But now she was thoroughly disillusioned with them! Not only had they held the Exiled Princess prisoner (presumably on the orders of the Evil Emperor, who was decidedly not Royal in the slightest), but now they were bullying innocent adventurers! Worse than that, he was inadvertently preventing the Chosen One from saving the entire kingdom, which had to be against their guidelines. They were supposed to help save the kingdom, not help keep the Royals out!

Not to mention casting a spell on someone who wasn’t causing any trouble at all!

Qube was so indignant about the various violations of the Royal Guards (and this guard in particular) that she almost missed the Chosen One’s face going slack, him turning around, and beginning his jog back to the entrance.

“Chosen One!” she said, reaching out and grabbing his arm. But he kept powering through, similar to the last time she’d tried to interact with him while he’d been in this state. “Help me stop him!” she cried to the others, but to her shock they continued jogging along.

“I’m afraid I can’t stop my body from moving, fair woman,” Sencha Bard said, panic rising in his voice. “I can’t get in front of him.”

“I can only stay behind,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar called out indignantly.

“I, too, am locked in place,” Definitely Bad Guy said, sounding more intrigued than afraid.

This was a disaster! She’d completely failed to do the very simple thing requested of her! She had to find some way of stopping the Hero, before he returned to the entrance and realised her failure!

So she decided, in her panic, that the right thing to do was kick the Hero in the back of the knee. It didn’t stop him, not for a second, but it did hurt her foot a lot, and made her feel very guilty about assaulting her friend, even if he had asked for it.

“Squiggles!” she shouted, hopping on one foot. “Grab the Chosen One!”

But Squiggles was just merrily slorping her way out of the maze, unaffected by Qube’s desperate cries for assistance.

The Chosen One was almost at the entrance when Qube launched herself at the Fighter, wrapped her arms around his feet and attempted to trip him.

“What are you doing?” the Chosen One asked, as he came to himself by the entrance to the maze.

“I was trying — oh Chosen One, I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to stop you from meditating!” Qube practically wailed. “I wasn’t able to break you out of it at all!”

“Eh, that’s okay,” the Hero said as he reached down and unwrapped her from his legs. “The fact that it didn’t work is also pretty interesting. Anyway, let’s move on to plan b.”

Sometimes Qube was almost overwhelmed by the generosity of her friend. He’d entrusted her with a mission and, when she had completely failed it, had reacted with grace and kindness. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve to have the body of her childhood friend possessed by such a chivalrous person, but she was extremely grateful for it!

The mental strain of the past week or so was, perhaps, starting to catch up with her.

“So, this time, I want you to go up to the Royal Guard and try pushing him backwards,” the man whose praises she’d just mentally been singing continued. “If you can, try and jam him into a nook or whatever.”

“Why would there be a nook in a hedge maze?” Qube asked.

“I dunno, there’s generally something like that,” the Hero shrugged. “A sort of space where you can hide as the guards pass you by. It might be a deadend they don't look down, or some kind of bench — things like that — the point is to see if you can wedge him in so he can’t get out and we can pass him.”

“While secret passages and hidden cavities are well-known,” Sencha Bard said, now recovered from his panic at his loss of physical agency, “I cannot understand why they would be present in a space designed to be a secret entrance. Surely whoever made this labyrinth would wish to be able to protect it from interlopers, such as ourselves?”

“Nah,” the Hero said easily. “Cuz if everything was going well, then they wouldn’t need a secret entrance to get into their own castle, right? And naturally whoever took over after them is gonna have everything guarded, even if they don’t know it’s a secret entrance. So it only makes sense to make it easier for someone to be able to hide as they sneak in.”

“Astonishingly, you’re right,” Definitely Bad Guy said.

“Wait, why is that astonishing?”

“However, one would expect any competent ruler to account for that and, for all his dark deeds, the Evil Emperor is a competent man.”

“I’m right about lots of things; there’s nothing really astonishing about me being right about something.”

“Therefore, we can expect him to have instructed any guards to inspect such areas carefully during their patrols.”

“Sometimes, man, I think you don’t even listen to me. That’s probably why you think it’s astonishing.”

“Surely it would take too long to inspect every nook and cranny,” Sexy Scream Spider Briar said. “Far more likely that they just glance at them, especially since it’s been years and, as far as they know, this maze doesn’t lead anywhere.”

“Yeah, what she said,” the Chosen One agreed, recovering from his mini-tantrum so quickly that Qube was sure he’d never actually been mad in the first place. Sometimes she suspected that he got genuine enjoyment out of upsetting people, and pretending to be upset.

“I can try and stop the guards,” Qube said dubiously, attempting to get the conversation on a more productive track. “But I don’t know if my physical strength will be enough to fully halt them, nevermind push them into a different direction. I wasn't able to stop you, after all.”

“Ey, they’ll probably just try and slide around you,” the Chosen One said. “Still, you got a point. We can only try it and see.”

“Also, what if the effect of Sencha Bard’s spell has spread far enough that they can see me? Won’t I then get stuck in a meditation?”

“Given how he repeated himself, I’d say not,” the Chosen One said. “But even if he did spot you, I can’t imagine him being able to actually do anything to you. You’re special, after all.”

The small smile with which the Hero made that statement didn’t make it any more comforting. Her specialness, which had once been a source of much anxiety, was… still a source of much anxiety. That, combined with her newfound understanding that she was little more than a broken construct, was really starting to give her a whole new understanding of what the word “angst” meant.

“Yes,” she replied lightly, “I am special.”

And so, being blessed with specialness, she set off to face the Royal Guard alone.

---

Even knowing the Royal Guard probably couldn’t see her, she still found herself creeping down the maze. As soon as she turned the first corner and lost sight of the party, her heart started accelerating. The hedges, so beautiful in both sight and smell, were suddenly oppressively tall, and overpowerfully scented. The red roses which had delighted her with their bright colours now looked like splotches of blood, with razor-sharp thorns lurking beneath their menacing petals.

She didn’t even have Squiggles by her side as an emergency combatant. Not that she was entirely sure how the mascot would fare against the famed Royal Guard. Apparently part of their training involved standing in a freezing cold stream until they no longer felt pain, and their bearskin hats could only be made from bears that they’d defeated in hand-to-hand combat.

Meanwhile, all she had was a staff that she wasn’t trained in using, spells designed to help people (some of which accidentally broke their minds) and an Understanding Smile.

The Qube at the beginning of their quest would have had unshakeable belief in the power of the Golden Prophecy, and the knowledge that, no matter what, her side would prevail, because they were Good.

This Qube didn’t have such childish comforts. Instead, she knew that, come what may, she would do her best and, if that didn’t work, she’d just scream until her friends came running and broke everything in existence.

Really, the Royal Guard she was stalking should be pitied. The poor fool had no idea what was coming.