Prophecy Approved Companion

Book Three Chapter Sixty: CT_Maze

In the end, they decided to leave the two Mages with their students. It didn’t feel right to tear them away from where they were having so much fun. That, and Squiggles wouldn’t stop hissing at them, and Sencha Bard was getting increasingly agitated that the duo weren’t dissipating.

“Right, well, I’m off to go do something else,” the Chosen One told the two Mages as they left. “Have fun doing your thing, you two weirdos. Come on, Squiggles! Leave them to their creepiness!”

“Perhaps it is because of the ballad that they haven’t disappeared,” Sencha Bard was saying in an undertone to Definitely Bad Guy as the unhappy sharktopus was towed away. The Mage, while naturally intrigued by the situation, lacked the urgency that seemed to have infected the Bard.

“Time will tell,” he said, instead. “While you are new to the world of rigorous scientific thought, I have learned that patience is necessary to procure the best data. The fact that there are now multiple observers to those two shall be useful if anything should happen in our absence. We must strictly question them when the time comes for us to investigate further.”

“Right, first things first, we’re gonna head to the front gate of the castle,” the Chosen One said, ignoring the talk of experimentation amongst his party members.

“Why are we going to the front gate?” Qube asked. She’d thought they weren’t going to have the guards or the thieves attack said gate.

“Two reasons,” the Hero said happily. “One, I want to make sure that neither of those two groups have decided to … think for themselves? Or stick to their original scripting? I’m not sure which it would be, at this point, to be honest. Do the thing I don’t want them to do, and get themselves killed.”

“You seem very sure that they would die,” Qube said.

“I know how these things go,” the Hero shrugged. “The second is—”

“But couldn’t we attack the castle gate with them, and protect them?” Qube asked, interrupting the Hero in her passion. “Especially if we got the people from the Royal Infirmary to help us shield and heal them, then they would stand a much greater chance of surviving the initial assault. I’m sure the White Mage would be more than capable of using [Revive].”

The Chosen One stopped dead in the street.

“Oh,” he said, slightly sheepishly. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Not that I’m questioning your plan!” Qube hurried to reassure him. “You set a brilliant boundary! I was just wondering, you know, if your primary concern was their safety (a very noble worry!) there might not be ways around it?”

The last thing Qube wanted to do was discourage the Hero from thinking more about the safety and wellbeing of others. Sure, she’d been a little surprised that he cared that deeply about making sure that total strangers didn’t get hurt, given his track record of doing what he wanted, whenever he wanted, but it was extremely heroic of him, and thus something that she was absolutely honour bound to support.

Even if, from the dismayed look on his face, his entire heroic boundary-setting had been based on him not thinking things through.

“You’re right,” he said, shamefaced. “Oh man, we could have had the entire city helping out. That would have been awesome! We could have armed everyone with all of the weapons we sto— uh, acquired from various shops. Oh! Do you think we could have gotten Mr. Igma to join the fray?” He slowly started walking again, staring off into the distance at a sight only he could see.

“No,” Qube replied, her very soul shivering at the image of the dour shopkeeper forced to not only leave his beloved countertop, but to also cooperate with a bunch of strangers. For free. Outside.

Especially if they were using weapons that the Chosen One had tricked Qube into stealing from him.

“It would certainly be an epic saga,” Sencha Bard said, wistfully. “One I would dearly love to witness. The oppressed townsfolk, taking back their land for their rightful ruler.”

“The fighting capabilities of the Thieves Guild and the city guard would also be of interest to note,” Definitely Bad Guy said. “For future reference, if nothing else.”

“While you are, of course, within your rights to not be a part of anything that makes you uncomfortable, my love, given there’s a chance this can be done safely, don’t you think it should be left up to the individuals to decide what they wish to do with their own lives?” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar asked the Hero delicately.

If Qube had been surprised by the Hero’s original proclamation that unique loot wasn’t worth sending a dozen people to their deaths, then she was outright shocked when the Chosen One, after carefully considering her suggestion of involving actual professionals in the dangerous enterprise, sorrowfully shook his head.

“I dunno,” he confessed. “If it’s scripted, then no matter what kind of firepower we bring, they'll still die… ah [snacks], there's no good answer, is there? Unless I save scum…"

Ah! The [Save Scum Attack] was a powerful spell the Chosen One used to look forward in time. Or travel back in time; Qube wasn't really clear on that. Either way, it allowed him to determine how things would play out.

"Tell you what," the Hero continued. "If, against my expressed wishes, those idiots are at the gate, then we can go get them help so that they don't die stupid, pointless deaths. If, however, they've actually used their brains and listened, then I don't want to undo all their hard work in paying attention. Sound like a plan?"

"That seems a reasonable compromise," Sencha Bard said. "Though I feel a valiant battle fought by the salt of the earth and aided by the kingdom's noble underdogs would better fit the dignity of our story."

"What dignity?" The Chosen One looked baffled. "Is that us? Are you calling us dignified? Or noble underdogs? Sing-Song, are you all right? The second reason to go to the castle was to break it so we wouldn’t have to do any work. Is that underdog behaviour?"

"He means metaphorical underdogs," Qube hurried to inform the Hero. “He’s not actually calling us dogs, over or under.”

"Darling, I'm top dog or nothing," Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said with a small growl.

"On second thoughts, never mind," the Bard corrected himself. “This is more befitting.”

By the time they’d reached that conclusion, they’d arrived at the front gate of the castle. The castle itself, hidden behind its protections, was even more beautiful up close than from the top of the Wizard’s Tower. As she looked up at it, with its brightly-coloured flags and black-clad troops guarding the ramparts, a pit of dread opened up in Qube’s stomach.

She wasn’t supposed to be here.josei

She squashed that feeling down, hard. She’d been to lots of places that she wasn’t, technically, supposed to be. She wasn’t about to let an almost overwhelming sense of dread stop her now.

She wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved, or disappointed, that there was no sign of either guard nor thief. While it was certainly the safest option for the townsfolk, the image of the entire populace storming the castle to bring down the castle guards had taken a firm hold of her imagination.

She never used to use her imagination much, back in the village, but, like dreaming, she’d found it strangely addictive.

“The gate’s shut,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar pouted at the large wooden door blocking their way. It wasn’t the only obstacle to entering the castle. Behind the gate there was a drawn drawbridge, hanging over a thin moat filled with clear, blue water. The moat dropped so steeply from the street that Qube had never actually noticed it before, even when directly looking at the castle.

On the other side of the drawbridge there was a second, larger gate embedded in the castle walls themselves, promising direct access to all the Evil that lurked within. Quite why that second gate was larger than the first was something that Qube couldn’t figure out. Whatever objects travelling through the Cobbletown-side of the drawbridge would have to fit through its smaller entrance, so why make the castle-side gate bigger? It wasn’t as if they could store any larger objects from the castle on the drawbridge, so whatever was so big it needed the larger gate of the castle-side wouldn’t fit through the Cobbletown-side gate.

It just didn’t seem very well thought out.

“Well, they gotta have something for the enemies to pour out of,” the Chosen One pointed out. “It’d probably trigger when they sense either group showing up.” He squinted up at the top of the gate. “Could probably use that ladder trick to get us in there. Dunno if the inside is rendered yet, though.”

Qube felt a frisson of excitement run through her as she saw that familiar expression settle onto the Chosen One’s face. The fear, and sense of wrongness that had struck her once she’d approached the castle started to fall away.

“We could sequence-break the whole thing…” he muttered to himself. He scanned the gate and then paused as he caught sight of Qube and the others, patiently waiting for him to tell them what to do. A series of complicated expressions flitted across his face, too fast for her to decipher.

“No,” he said, even though no one had said anything. “No, I promised you guys, didn’t I? We’ll do this right, give you time. I can do it. I just gotta push through.”

“What promise?” Qube asked, tilting her head to the side.

“We’re going to the maze,” the Hero said, rather than answering her question.

“Wait, aren’t you going to break things?” Qube was growing increasingly confused.

“Nah, I’m gonna do things normally,” the Chosen One said.

Qube was now incredibly worried. Not only had the Chosen One decided that some things were more important than loot, he was now actively choosing not to break things but (horror amongst horrors) do them normally.

His faithful companion was now convinced that the Hero was either incredibly ill, or had secretly been possessed. Or, well, repossessed. Over-possessed.

The point was, something was very wrong!

She swung around to look at her fellow party members, and was relieved to see that they were all looking as worried as she felt. The loot thing had been odd. Cleverly thinking around a social situation had been almost unheard of for the socially disadvantaged Fighter. But to choose the normal way of doing things?

Even Squiggles was looking concerned. Possibly because everyone else was shifting about, but Qube knew the mascot well enough to know that she was incredibly attuned to everyone’s emotions, since she was the cleverest good girl that had ever existed.

“Squiggles,” she whispered to the sharktopus as the party turned away from the door they weren’t at all supposed to go through, without trying to trick their way in at all. “Can you sense anything strange about the Chosen One? Does he smell different at all?”

If anyone could tell that the Chosen One wasn’t who they thought he was, Squiggles could.

A sudden fear gripped her heart. What if the Chosen One had been replaced by a Dev, and she hadn’t noticed? He still sounded like the Chosen One, and moved like the Hero, but the Devs might be trying to trick them into saying something that would justify hobbling them with the Golden Prophecy while in the Devs’ realm.

She suspected that the Chosen One wasn’t telling the Devs everything that happened in this world (mostly because the Hero had pretty much told her he was concealing things), maybe they’d caught wind of this and were trying to sneakily gain information?

Squiggles, being the wise and smart girl she was, instantly swarmed up to the Chosen One and carefully sniffed him. After a few sniffs, she climbed him, and happily wrapped herself around his neck. Perched firmly on his shoulder, she opened her mouth, and drooled on him.

Qube was suddenly a little less certain in Squiggles’s possession-detecting capabilities.

“My darling,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar scuttled up to the Chosen One’s side as he, without any kind of external direction, led them to where Qube was sure the maze was located. “You really seem to be coming into your own. What’s sparked this sudden mature side? Don’t get me wrong, it’s wildly attractive —” the Hero made a horrified strangled sound “— but it does seem a little unusual.”

“Man, look, I’m just trying to — I dunno, do the right thing? Look, this is as new to me as is it to you. I just don’t want to get a bunch of people killed, or sequence-break things so hard that you guys don’t get your shot at confronting the Baddy Daddy.”

The Hero looked extremely uncomfortable as he started walking faster, and faster.

“Anyway, we’re nearly at the maze, so make sure you’re ready to go in here and do things so that you guys get the biggest chance to grow before I start bleeding out of my eyeballs or something.”

Squiggles hadn’t led them astray. Only the Chosen One could give such a rousing speech in such a poorly-delivered manner!

Which meant everything he’d done before was actually him. He was finally becoming the heroic Hero she’d always thought he was!