“Now,” the Chosen One continued, taking the lead, “Sencha Bard, Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, can you two go into the inn and get everyone to — wait, that won’t work.” The Chosen One tapped his chin.

“Go to your tower,” the Hero said to Definitely Bad Guy, “and check yourself for curses. Then you two go into the inn. Don’t talk to Zakora, but see if you can persuade the others inside to leave. If you can’t, don’t worry about it. Squiggles, you keep doing what you’re doing. Okay? Go!”

The rest of the group scattered, leaving only Qube and the Chosen One. From inside the inn, indignant squawking indicated that the Bard and Hunter had been noticed. Squiggles had gone back to slorping around the plaza, and Definitely Bad Guy, after glancing at Qube for confirmation, left for his Wizard’s Tower.

The Chosen One looked at the castle, then back at Qube.

“He knows that Zakora has the Temple gems!” Qube said urgently. “We need to protect her! And the gems!” she added as an afterthought.

The Chosen One scratched his cheek in thought.

“Her, yes. The gems, no,” he said surprisingly.

“But we need them to defeat the Evil Emperor!” Qube protested. The Chosen One, voluntarily giving up loot? Was he possessed? Was that why he’d seemed to have a brief bout of complex social skills?

“The guy’s already got a bunch of them,” the Chosen One pointed out. Qube blinked.

“That doesn’t mean we should let him just take more!” she said, but with less heat than before.

“You’re right,” the Chosen One said. “But what if we used this as a chance to see where he’d stored the other ones?”

“You mean if we hid and secretly followed him back to his castle and watched him put these gems with the others?” Qube asked, her eyes sparkling in admiration at how quickly the Chosen One had put that plan together.

“...Sure,” the Chosen One said. “What’s the worst that could go wrong?”

“He could kill us and destroy the Golden Prophecy, thus depriving the world of its Chosen One and dooming the entire kingdom to forever remain under his oppressive heel,” Qube helpfully supplied.

There was a beat of silence as the Hero stared at her.

“Which is why we, personally, shouldn’t be the ones to follow him,” the Chosen One said cunningly. “Instead, we’ll send someone else.”

“But won’t he just kill anyone who tries to follow him?” Qube asked. “Even I wouldn’t be able to, since I’m not invisible to him.” The Chosen One, not understanding how curses worked, seemed to have been surprised that the Evil Emperor had been able to see her. But then he was a Fighter, not a Mage.

The Chosen One sank into deep thought. Qube nervously looked around. The Evil Emperor had to be arriving any minute; there was no way her perception of time had been off by this much!

Unless it was something about their last encounter that had alerted the Evil Emperor to both their and the gems’ presence in the inn?

“I’ve got it!” the Chosen One shouted, making Qube jump.

“I knew you would!” she said automatically.

“We’ll use chickens!” he declared proudly.

Qube was suddenly less sure about his plan.

“Squiggles!” he called, making the sharktopus slorping laps around the plaza veer towards them.

“Hey girl,” he cooed as the pet reached them, “can you talk to chickens? Or get them to do what I say?”

Squiggles opened her mouth, revealing golden glitter still attached to her teeth. She’d yet to show any side effects of eating whatever unknown herbs the Chosen One had fed her in the sewers, but eating the Golden Slime seemed to have given her permanent teeth paint. Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said it was a fashion statement; Qube just thought it made the team mascot even more adorable.

She was a shiny sharktopus! What wasn’t there to love?

Squiggles wagged her shark tail, possibly signifying that she could get the chickens to listen to her, or maybe just happy that the Chosen One was paying attention to her.

“Think about it,” the Chosen One said enthusiastically to Qube. “Chickens can go wherever they want, right? And there’s heaps of them, so even if one gets distracted or whatever, we’ll still be able to find a whole bunch of them all in one spot easily. And they’re immortal, so it’s not like he can hurt them without them all going feral and flooding the place with warrior hens.”

His eyes took on a faraway look, and Qube just knew he was envisioning the Evil Emperor being attacked by a flock of angry chickens. She joined him in that daydream.

“That would be something all right,” the Chosen One said in misty tones. He shook himself, returning to reality. “Anyway, Squiggles, the success of this mission rests on you. That means no eating the recon team,” he said sternly. Squiggles tried to stand as upright as a baby sharktopus could. “I know you can understand us, and I assume the chickens can understand you. Or maybe I should try talking directly to the chickens…” he pondered, looking towards the inn.

Squiggles was now balancing on the very tips of her tentacles, shaking with enthusiasm to take on her special quest.

Was this… her personal quest? Qube asked herself, looking at how seriously the team mascot was taking this.

“I believe she can do it,” she said, warmth flooding through her. The Chosen One looked back at them, and saw Squiggles standing at attention. He coughed to hide a smile, before continuing in a serious voice:

“Very well. Your mother has said that you are ready for this quest, so don't let her down!” he said. Qube choked slightly at being called a mother.

“Metaphorical mother,” the Chosen One added cheekily.

“Chosen One—” she started, torn between giggling and righteous wrath. His grin widened, but he kept his eyes on Squiggles.

“So you get those inn chickens to agree to follow the Evil Emperor, and hang around wherever he puts the Temple gems, all right?” He continued instructing Squiggles. “If they don’t see where he puts the gems, they can just hang around him until we arrive. Got it?”

Squiggles quickly danced her assent, before diving into the inn.

“Which means we’re probably going to arrive to a throne room full of chickens,” the Chosen One said with deep satisfaction.

Qube couldn’t help herself; she laughed. The Chosen One just grinned at her, before his expression sobered.

“Now, how are we gonna avoid Sparky getting himself wrecked?” he asked.

Qube stopped laughing.

“Perhaps he’ll be able to remove the curse?” she asked optimistically, even knowing that the chances of that were slim to none. He couldn’t even remove the invisibility spell the Evil Emperor had cast on her just to hinder the Chosen One. What possible hope did he have of being able to remove a curse the Evil Emperor had placed to avoid being betrayed by those closest to him?

“Yeah, I wouldn’t count on that,” the Chosen One said grimly. He was rubbing his chin, a habit of his that seemed to be growing more frequent. Or maybe the Hero was just thinking more nowadays.

Qube took a deep breath. “He needs to tell the rest of the party about his past,” she said firmly. “We shouldn’t be keeping secrets from each other. I’m glad you covered for him so he could tell everyone himself, but it needs to happen soon.”

The Hero looked at her, his eyes bright.

“Especially,” she added, “if he needs to keep pretending to be loyal to the Evil Emperor if we happen to be attacked by him again. They need to know that it’s all a facade.”

“How much do you remember from before I Save Pointed?” he asked, gesturing at the blue ball floating outside the inn.

“Not very much,” Qube admitted. “It’s a bit like a dream. My sense of time was clearly wrong; otherwise he’d already be here by now.”

“The dude was going to curse him whether he remained loyal or not,” the Chosen One said gently. “It’s what people like him do. Hence the whole rewarded as a traitor deserves speech.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense!” Qube exclaimed. “That must have been because Definitely Bad Guy betrayed his betrayal!”

Qube wasn’t too sure about the grammatical correctness of what she’d just said, but the sentiment was one hundred percent true.

“Trust me,” the Chosen One said sourly, “it’s a thing bad guys love to do.”

“Then how can they possibly expect any kind of loyalty?” Qube argued. “No, it has to have been because of Definitely Bad Guy turning against him, otherwise the Evil Emperor wouldn’t ever be able to reward anyone! Why would anyone do a good job if their reward was death?”

“I mean it tends to only be spies and stuff that get that kind of reward,” the Chosen One said, watching Qube’s indignation with an air of fascination.

“But that’s the worst kind of person for him to gain a reputation for punishing!” Qube exclaimed. “Then anyone who’s sent to spy on a group of people would know that they’ll get cursed when they return and immediately be in a position to defect! Even if they only suspected that would happen, they’d be more likely to fail their quest!”

“Hey, that’s just what bad guys do in stories,” the Chosen One said. Qube, mentally reviewing the stories she’d grown up with, huffed.

“Yes,” she agreed begrudgingly, “but that doesn’t mean the Evil Emperor has to do what the stories say. I have no idea how he managed to take over the kingdom if he did such silly things. Even with prophecy magic at work.”

The Chosen One’s look of amusement deepened.

“Well, we could always test it,” he offered. “Get Definitely Bad Guy to act like he’s still totally loyal and see what happens. If he curses him, we just rewind time.”

Qube gave the Hero a look so withering it could have peeled paint.

“No thank you, Chosen One,” she said sweetly. “I’d rather not watch my friend cursed in front of me to prove a point, even if it only becomes a memory.”

The Chosen One winced, and threw up a hand in surrender.

“You’re right!” he said, shielding himself from her expression. “You’re totally right, put that face away, that’s even worse than the smile!”

Qube puffed her cheeks out at him, then returned to normal.

“Thank you,” the Chosen One said meekly, before sinking into thought.

“Look,” he said eventually, “the way I see it, we’ve got a couple of options. We could hide him somewhere so the Evil Emperor doesn’t find him, have him in his tower with you spamming [Revive] or [Minor Cleanse] if he does get cursed while I confront the Evil Emperor or…maybe…”

As the Hero followed his own chain of thought, Qube tried very hard not to picture herself standing over Definitely Bad Guy, drinking mana potions and repeatedly casting [Revive]. It wasn’t a very appealing image.

“There is something else we could try,” the Chosen One said with a hint of hesitance.

“What is it?” Qube asked eagerly. The Chosen One coughed slightly.

“Well, we could try… breaking the Evil Emperor,” he said. “You know. The old classic. Your [Heal].”

Qube looked at the Chosen One. The Chosen One looked back at her, and started to smile.

“Wouldn’t it be amazing?” he asked her enticingly. “Even if it doesn’t work, we can just go back and try something different.”

“All right, I’ll do it,” Qube said. The Hero blinked at her.

“Wait, that’s it? You’re not going to ask any questions or anything?” He seemed almost confused by her ready agreement.

“That means we’ll need to have Definitely Bad Guy here with us when it happens, just in case it doesn’t work and the Evil Emperor still activates the curse on him. I don’t want him alone in that tower with no one to help him. Unless you wanted to place him in the Royal Infirmary and tell the White Mage what was going on?”

“I don’t think she can interact with him,” the Chosen One said. Qube sighed internally. Of course, the White Mage would still think that Definitely Bad Guy was working for the Evil Emperor.

“Which means he’ll have to be here. Which means he needs to tell the group. And then… I’ll [Heal] the Evil Emperor.”