Prophecy Approved Companion

“Oh,” Qube said, which was an admittedly rather weak response to finding out that they might have failed their quest to save the world. In her defence, there weren't exactly a lot of good options, most of them being variations on “by the words!” “I don’t like this!” and other indicators that this was not well-received news. Anger, bitter recriminations, finger-pointing at members of the party who’d secretly been betraying them the whole time, all of these were things that sprung to mind as things to say, only to be instantly dismissed.

There was a moment of silence, as the Dryad Queen waited. It wasn’t clear if she was waiting for the Chosen One to burst into the room and immediately demand a solution, or if she was politely waiting for Qube to form a complete sentence.

Neither event happened. So, after a few more moments, the Dryad Queen continued: “But all hope is not lost. There is still yet a way we may snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.”

Qube’s own jaw clenched. “That’s amazing!” she said through gritted teeth. “That’s wonderful to hear!”

Why, by the words themselves, had the Forbidden Forest monarch not mentioned that immediately? Instead she’d said the horrible part, then stared with her creepy green balls of lights, trying to get a reaction out of Qube, no doubt so she could chide her for an over-reaction.

Little did the wooden woman realise that she was dealing with a specially-trained Childhood Companion! Qube had spent her entire life learning how to deal with things in a graceful and friendly manner, and she wouldn’t be tricked into saying something she might regret!

Qube carefully didn’t remember all the times she had, in fact, said things that she’d immediately wished she hadn’t. That wasn’t the point! The point was that the Dryad Queen was being very childish in her emotions, not Qube, and Qube didn’t want to talk to her right now because it was hard enough dealing with the Chosen One being sick without adding anything else to the mix!

Fortunately, she had two people with her who she just knew would love to talk to the Dryad Queen. As she turned to look at Sexy Screamy Spider Briar, a loyal subject to the Queen, and Sencha Bard, who was enamoured with the dryad’s beauty, she caught a surprisingly ugly expression on the Bard’s face. He was almost glaring at the Dryad Queen. When she blinked in surprise, however, the glare was gone.

“Sencha Bard?” she asked, almost frightened.

“Forgive me,” he said, sweeping his hat off his head. “I find I have little time for such verbal weaving. Please, fair and wise Queen, keep us not in suspense, but tell us how we may be saved.”

He was definitely feeling a strong emotion. Whenever he resorted to what Qube mentally dubbed his more “Bardic” way of speaking, he was generally attempting to woo someone, having a grandiose moment or… he was angry.

Sexy Screamy Spider Briar, also unusually, didn’t say anything. Instead she just folded all her arms and waited for her Queen to continue. She started tapping one of her feet.

Definitely Bad Guy had his head down, and was flipping through one of his books, not making eye contact with anyone.

Was the sheer power of the concentration of guardians getting to everyone? Were they all struggling just as much as she was? Qube squeezed her eyes shut for a second as she forced her mind to work through the cotton wool that seemed to have wrapped itself around every thought of hers.

“The only solution is for us to sever our connections to our gems, and use the last of our life forces to create new ones. If you take these new gems, and place them upon the Chosen One’s crown, then you may have a chance to defeat the Evil Emperor.”

Even through the cotton wool, Qube could tell that this was a terrible idea. She waited for one of the other guardians to speak up in protest, but instead they were all (for the first time since the party had arrived) completely silent.

“There must be another solution!” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar burst out.

“It is the only way,” the Dryad Queen said, bowing her head.

She wasn’t even glaring at Qube anymore. None of the guardians were. Instead, they were all just staring at the floor, waiting for the word to be given so that they could die.

…No. No, Qube knew what this was. The strange, slightly off-kilter way the Dryad Queen was talking, the total absence of input from the other guardians, it could only be one thing: this was the work of the Golden Prophecy!

Emotion surged within her. Not just anger and sadness at the thought of this happening, but confidence and determination too. She wasn’t just a prophecy-ordained guiding light to a potential Chosen One anymore. She’d travelled the kingdom! Fought terrible beasts (some of which were in the room) and forced the Devs themselves to recognise her specialness! (On accident, and now it turned out everyone was special, but still!) She was smarter, bolder, and had spent far too much time with the Chosen One to allow such a plan to take place.

“I forbid it!” she declared. She drew from the core of certainty with which she’d acted as a Healer and threw in her experience dealing with Royalty and Devs for good measure, making her heart as strong as steel.

This time the silence went on for several heartbeats. Her heart steadily became less steel-like under the tremendous pressure of nobody talking.

She drew from her rapidly-draining well of courage again, and pushed on.

“You may have noticed Squiggles earlier,” she said. “She’s currently guarding the Chosen One.”

No one was talking. What’s worse, they were all just looking at her. She quickly gathered more strength from the nearly-evaporated puddle within her.

“You may have noticed—” oh no, she’d already used that phrase!—”that Squiggles was wearing several crowns. Is that the crown you want us to put your soul-life-gem in?”

There! She’d asked a direct question! Now someone had to answer!

“That is the Chosen One’s crown,” the Dryad Queen replied evenly.

Two more pieces of evidence that the Golden Prophecy was being heavy-handed! The Dryad Queen called the Chosen One “Wood Warrior,” not Chosen One, and she would never allow Qube, of all people, to get away with forbidding her from doing something.

“That crown,” Qube declared, bolstered by her deductive skills, “was just given to us by the Evil Emperor himself!”

“The tyrant’s here?” The griffin jumped back and puffed up, feathers and fur rising in alarm.

“He hid it inside a chest inside the illusions of our friends’ ghosts,” Qube said with more triumph than grammatical sense.

“Are you sure it was his work?” the Akela asked, intrigued.

“Yes,” Qube replied. “No one else would have done that to our friends.” After taking a stabilising breath, she continued: “Which means he wanted us to have this crown. And he gathered all of you here, despite you all being the only ones who could possibly defeat him by making new gems.”

The guardians were now thoroughly unsettled. While before they had all been unnaturally tranquil about the idea of giving up their lives, they now looked incredibly uneasy.

“Dryad Queen, who told you that this was how you could defeat the Evil Emperor?” Qube asked bluntly.

“I… no one told me,” the Dryad Queen said. “It’s something I just know. Something we all know. It’s part of the burden of being a guardian. We hold great power, and this is the cost. We have no choice.”

“You always have a choice,” Qube said. She felt like she’d managed to grab onto lightning. This was it, this breakthrough — it was electric and new. She was doing what the Chosen One would have, had he not been drooling on the floor in the other room. She was breaking things, and finding a new way. “The Evil Emperor has tried to push us down this path, but we don’t have to follow it.”

She whirled around, the cotton wool within her mind burning away under the sheer joy at figuring out how they’d almost been tricked.

“Don’t you see what he’s been trying to do? The traps, the false choices, even the treasure chests with guardians at the end, he’s been trying to replicate the Temples in order to force us into a certain way of thinking. He’s been trying to exploit the ways we’ve been taught to think, to trick us into doing what he wants.”

Her thoughts blazed, leaving only clarity in their wake.

“That’s why we had to do the Temples,” she said, her eyes wide. “Not to get all the gems. The gems themselves were never the true goal. Otherwise the guardians would have come together and used them to defeat the Evil Emperor decades ago. No. We had to do them in order to realise that we don’t need the gems at all. We had to learn how to think creatively, and find a way to take back the kingdom that no one else could think of.”

The Devs had made the world, but had been told that people like Qube wouldn’t exist in it. Couldn’t exist in it. And she’d seen it play out, over and over, with people stuck in their rigid ways of thinking, blindly following what they thought reality was. Never looking around to see what their choices were. That was why they’d had to bring in the Chosen One.

He’d shown them how to challenge the status quo. How to think.

Qube’s opinion of the Chosen One, already extremely elevated, rose to new, dizzying heights. And with it, her confidence in her own logic grew.

“Why else would he gather the only people who could possibly hope to defeat him into a location we were nearly guaranteed to go? Would that make any sense at all?” She gave a short laugh. “That would be madness. No, he wants you all to sacrifice yourselves. You’re all leaders of your people — what would happen to them if so many different groups simultaneously lost their rulers? It would be a disaster! Even if we managed to overthrow him, and restored the King and Queen, it would still be a disaster. He would effectively have crippled the entire kingdom for years to come.”

“How do you propose to defeat him, then?” the Dryad Queen asked. While her tone wasn’t exactly humble, it didn’t carry the threatening undertone from before. Two white lilies had bloomed on her cheeks, giving her a pallid appearance.

Qube had absolutely no idea.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I plan on discussing this with the Chosen One when he’s recovered. While I obviously have some ideas—” this was a lie “—I would never dream of going ahead without his approval. However, the mana-rich environment is bad for him, so I must ask each of you to return to your respective rooms, and take shelter there until after we defeat the Evil Emperor. If any of you are needed for our plan, we’ll come and talk to you individually.”

She was doing it. She was taking charge, and being a leader, without actually leading anyone anywhere. She couldn’t wait to tell the Chosen One how she’d managed to break things, and make decisions like he was always pushing her to.

Such was her grip over the crowd that all the guardians turned to go back to their rooms without comment.

All of them except for one.

It wasn’t, to her surprise, the Dryad Queen, seeking to complain, discuss, or undermine her. She’d half expected the dryad to push back, seeing as she was the unofficial spokesperson for the guardians. Even the Akela would have made sense, since she seemed very proud and would be expected to baulk at being ordered to stay in her room.

But the guardian that stayed hadn’t spoken a word the entire time. The giant, multi-legged being, dragged from the depths of Lake Fear by powerful magic, remained when all others left, its rainbow-hook lure swinging gently from its forehead.

It was the Deep One.

And it wasn’t moving.