Surprisingly, the climb up the sand hill was without incident. The hand- and footholds were perfectly spaced for climbing — another potential sign of Temple sentience, Qube noted. Even the sand itself held its shape better than Qube would have expected.

At some point Sexy Screamy Spider Lady had stopped floating. Either the teleportation had messed with her spell, or it had simply run out. Either way, the sight of her attempting to climb the mountain of sand was disturbing, to say the least. She would sort of undulate from one crevice to another, her various limbs either phasing through the hillside or gouging out tunnels of sand. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to which limb would do what, but Qube was still a little bit too traumatised from seeing inside of the Hunter to want to ask any questions.

The sight of Definitely Bad Guy attempting to climb in a full robe was pretty amazing, though. He somehow managed to pull off brooding intellectual even when being climbed over by a very enthusiastic Squiggles.

Squiggles loved the sand hill, slorping up and down in laps around the group. Her tentacle suckers seemed to have absolutely no problem sticking to the sand, as she kicked fine particles into everyone’s faces.

Sewer Bard and the Chosen One fared best, their clothing actually being designed for freedom of movement. They cleared the top of the sand hill first, and disappeared over the lip.

As Qube pulled herself up onto the top of the sand hill, her first thought was that her tidal-wave-metaphor beach had come to life and plonked itself down in the middle of the Water Temple. The top of the sand hill almost looked to have been scooped out and made into an oasis. The bottom of the oasis wasn’t sand, though. Instead, it was stone tiles, similar to the Water Temple, but these ones were inscribed with strange geometric patterns and unfamiliar symbols. As the Chosen One stepped into the waist-high water, the symbols glowed bright blue.

In the middle of the oasis there was a tiny pile of sand, with the very tip of a giant white-ish oval poking out. The Chosen One brushed away some of the sand.

“It’s a giant egg,” he said, sounding slightly puzzled. “Probably that turtle’s egg. But where’s the Deep One or mermaid or whatever we’re supposed to get the tear from?”

He brushed away more sand, and, as his hand made contact with the egg itself, the world around them suddenly lit up. Qube had been so focused on the sand hill that she hadn’t really looked around. But before, where there had been only yawning blackness, there was suddenly a giant magical shield lighting up the sky around them.

Well, to call it the sky was probably a bit misleading. Instead, they were at the bottom of Lake Fear, watching the end of the battle between the Deep Ones and the merfolk. But their eyes were drawn to the very point above them where a massive Deep One was fighting with what could only be the Mermaid Princess.

The Mermaid Princess was the personification of beauty — her hair was red and gold, flowing out behind her as she sang note after note, each spell hammering at the Deep One. The Deep One was truly humongous, a continuously writhing cloud of ink and tentacles. Occasionally a terrible, bloodied eye would appear within the nest and black smog would billow out, threatening to overwhelm the Mermaid Princess.

As the tableau came into focus for the group below, the tiara the Mermaid Princess was wearing shone and shot out a beam of golden light. Quick as a flash, the Deep One responded with a beam of pure black. The two spells collided, sending out a percussive wave of energy, throwing the battling pair down, smashing them through the magical shield, which quickly closed in place behind them.

Before any of the party could move, the Deep One and Mermaid Princess slammed into opposite sides of the sand hill, obliterating it and throwing the group up into the air.

“[Lesser Shield],” Qube cried, instinctively shielding the Chosen One. But, surprisingly, no one was hurt when they hit the ground.

All the sand that had made up the hill was blasted to the sides, revealing a whole floor of stone slabs inscribed in exactly the same style as the dent at the top of the sand hill. Speaking of which — Qube looked around frantically for the egg. There, in the middle of the floor, it sat, perfectly unharmed, the section of floor that had made up the bottom of the oasis now fitting perfectly into the rest of the tiling.

The two combatants lay on opposite sides of the now-cleared room, both stunned from the impact of their falls.

“Noble Patron, quick! Use your harpoon to kill the Deep One and take its tear!” Sewer Bard yelled.

“The Deep Ones have so much to teach us! Do not be fooled by the mermaid’s shallow beauty!” Definitely Bad Guy also yelled.

The Chosen One, still standing in the middle of the room next to the egg, looked from the Deep One to the Mermaid Princess. He took a step back, and continued looking at the egg.

“Noble Patron, hurry! The beast will not be stunned for long!” Sewer Bard continued yelling.

“Quickly! Once that foul seductress gets her breath back, she will not hesitate to use her powers to control your mind!” Definitely Bad Guy, not to be outdone by the Bard, was also continuing to yell.

The Chosen One ignored them, and looked at Qube.

“So how much of your mana did you reckon that [Revive] spell would take?” he asked her casually, as if he wasn’t in the middle of a life or death dilema with a ticking clock.

“Chosen One,” Qube said worriedly, looking at the two downed Rulers. Both of them were twitching, but neither of them appeared to have recovered yet.

“Don’t worry about them,” the Chosen One said.

“But they could get up at any moment!” Qube protested.

“Trust me,” he replied.

She did.

“I feel as if it will take all my mana,” she answered after a moment’s consideration. “I just cast, so it may take me a little while before I have access to my full pool of mana.”

“That’s okay,” the Chosen One reassured her. “We can just wait until you’re ready.” A part of Qube wanted to correct him, to point out that two such powerful beings would be up and fighting again within moments. Honestly, she was surprised that they weren’t already back up and in action. It must have been a very powerful clashing of spells to knock both of them out for this long.

But he had asked for her trust. And so she gave it to him.

“In the meantime,” the Chosen One continued, as both Sewer Bard and Definitely Bad Guy resumed yelling about the need to murder the other’s choice, “I want to try something out.” As he spoke, he took out his Sacred Sword, and sized up the giant egg.

Qube had a sudden memory of the Fish Folk’s hut.

“Chosen One, wait!” she cried, as the Saviour of All Human and Human Adjacent Beings swung his Sacred Sword at the defenseless turtle’s egg. It stopped just short of it and, from the Hero’s surprised grunt of pain, it was not because of him attempting some kind of display of muscle control.

He dropped the Sacred Sword and shook his fingers, wincing slightly.

“Ow,” he said, rather dully. “Okay. Fine. You win this round. No eating the stupid quest egg.”

“You were going to try and eat the turtle egg that we’re supposed to sacrifice a life for in order to restore a city?” Qube nearly screamed. The Chosen One suddenly looked guilty.

“...Maybe?” he said, with a sheepish grin.

“Chosen One I — I — argh! I’m too angry to even try and think!” Qube threw her hands up in the air, her rising volume outmatching the Bard and Mage’s ongoing warnings.

“Hey, hey, it was just to try it! I was gonna fix it right afterwards!” the Chosen One protested.

“There is no fixing a magical egg once you’re eaten it!” Qube yelled. The Chosen One looked startled at her rage, which only made her angrier. “You can’t just do things like that, Chosen One! We need that egg to save the city, and get the special item to defeat the Evil Emperor and — and — and break his spell on me and save the world and you can’t just do things without explaining anything to me!” Qube was starting to cry now. The Chosen One stood before her in stunned silence.

“And we’re going to have to kill one of these two and I don’t know which and we’re supposed to be saving people, not killing them when they’re helpless and we never even got a chance to talk to either of them and see if they can sort out their differences and I hate this!” Qube was nearly sobbing now.

“I’m supposed to be your Companion, and guide you, and how am I supposed to do that if I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t even remember your name!”

She wept. After a minute she felt the Chosen One’s arm close around her, wrapping her in a hug. He held her in silence, as the storm of tears slowly subsided.

“Hey,” he said, softly. “I’m sorry. I forgot… I forgot that this is all different for you.”

Qube sniffed, her face buried in his chest.

“Look… there’s something I was meant to do a while ago. And I didn’t do it properly because… well, partly because I didn’t take it seriously. And partly because I didn’t want to.” Qube pulled away from the hug and looked up at the Chosen One. He was staring off into the distance, frowning slightly. “I suppose I was afraid,” he eventually confessed.

“The tests for the devs?” Qube asked, almost timidly.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Will something bad happen? Is that why you were afraid?”

He finally looked down at her.

“I don’t know what will happen.” He glanced away. “That’s why I was afraid. But… this isn’t fair. And it needs to be done. Properly,” he added with a grimace.

Qube silently processed this.

“Don’t worry, Chosen One,” she said, eventually. “If the devs are Good, then they’ll let us stay together. I — I want to save the world. I want to guide you on this quest. I want to be your Companion. And if the devs try and stop that from happening, well then, I … I will be very cross with them!” She scowled as ferociously as she could.

The Chosen One lost his serious expression and grinned at her.

“Truly terrifying!” he said, approvingly.

“Yes!” Qube shot back, deepening her scowl. “I will disapprove of them most strongly if they try and interrupt my life’s work!”

“But what if the world wasn’t real? Then saving it would be pointless, right?” the Chosen One asked, only semi-seriously. Qube stopped frowning to contemplate this.

“Well, it’s still real to me, so I want to save it!” she said, simply. An emotion too complex for her to decipher flitted across the Chosen One’s face, before being replaced with a gentler smile. “Even if it does force us to kill a possibly innocent Ruler,” she added morosely.

“About that…” the Chosen One said, his smile deepening. “What if I told you I had a plan to try and keep both of them alive? It might not work,” he added hurriedly, as Qube gasped. “But even if it doesn’t, we’ll have tried, right?”

“Of course, Chosen One!” Qube said, as two of her fellow companions continued their dire warnings in the background. “If anyone can do it, you can!”

The Chosen One’s grin was now back in full force.

“Then let’s do what we do best,” he said, pulling out two harpoons and holding one in each hand. “Let’s break some [snacks]!”