Sexy Screamy Spider Lady stalked on ahead for a little bit, before slowing down to let Qube catch up.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you,” Qube said, puffing slightly as she tried to keep up with the Hunter’s longer strides.

“Of course, my dear,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady purred. “Has he made a move yet?”

“A move? Like a special move? Who? The Chosen One?” Qube tilted her head in confusion as Sexy Screamy Spider Lady burst out laughing.

“Ah, my sweet little innocent, since you have come to me for advice, I shall not tease you. Ask your big sister what it is you desire to know.” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady swung her hips, causing her abdomen to playfully bounce into Qube’s side. Qube staggered, but managed to keep her feet.

“I mean, we might actually be related, if you go back far enough — no, that’s not what I wanted to talk about!” Qube forced herself not to get distracted by thinking about the genealogy of wood elves versus a half-elf like herself. She wasn’t actually sure which branch of elf she was descended from — her parents had both been half-elves, and had died when she was very young.

All of the potentials’ parents were dead.

“Then what did you want to talk about, my dear?” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady clicked her manibles at Squiggles, who was chasing a group of screaming children. “Come back, squish, we don’t want to lose you. Someone might snatch you up!”

Squiggles ignored her and continued her rampage of terror, her bright green bow becoming increasingly lopsided.

“I was wondering if you happened to overhear the dev I spoke to,” Qube said, somewhat timidly.

“Oh, yes,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said sympathically. “That is a hard burden for you, my dear.”

“I just wanted to let you know that if I’m special, you are too,” Qube said earnestly. “And we each have a role that is important!”

“My dear,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said, stopping and putting all four of her arms on Qube’s shoulders. “You are so very sweet. But I don’t need this.”

Qube blinked at her in confusion. Sexy Screamy Spider Lady shook her shoulders slightly.

“Think about who you’re talking to, my love,” she said gently. “I was heir to the Forest Throne. I could have stayed, and ruled over the kingdom, right hand to the Dryad Queen.”

“Why didn’t you stay?” Qube asked timidly.

Sexy Screamy Spider Lady sighed, and let go of Qube. They resumed walking.

“I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Ever since I was born, I have been bound to the Forest. My parents wanted me to become the next ruler and, let’s face it darling, I would have been the best possible candidate. People would love to submit to me.” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady flicked her long brown hair over her left shoulder joints, causing several townsfolk to walk into walls.

“But I didn’t want to be tied up like that. I may have had the spirit of a wood elf, but the curse influenced me. It made me feel wild. And so, when the Chosen One lifted the curse, I felt utterly driven to take that chance to get out of that place.” She shot Qube a sly look. “Not to mention that I was looking at two of the hottest hunks of meat I’d ever had the pleasure of seeing.” The Hunter gave a throaty chuckle at Qube’s discomfort.

“Did you leave the Forest because you fell in love with the Chosen One and … Sewer Bard?’ Qube asked. She wasn’t quite sure how one could fall in love with two people at once, but she wouldn’t put it past Sexy Screamy Spider Lady.

“No, my unplucked petal. But it certainly helped. And, if you ever decide you don’t want the Mage, and would rather the Bard, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to whisper some advice in your ear,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady crooned. The naughty twinkle in her eyes deepened as Qube started to splutter. “Or both at once. That can be fun, too.”

“So you wanted to leave the Forest anyway!” Qube said in a strangled voice, trying very hard not to think about that particular sidebar in the conversation. Sexy Screamy Spider Lady gave her a flickering smile, showing just a hint of fang, before subsiding. She seemed to pick her next words very carefully.

“I thought leaving the Forest would help me choose, one way or another. Let me experience the world freely and release all that wildness that had been suppressed within me for all these years. And I would either learn that I wanted to rule, or roam freely without responsibility. I wanted to know which was the real me: the ruler, or the roamer.”

She thought for a moment, her eyes fixed on the observatory they were slowly walking towards.

“But lately… lately it’s felt almost wrong to be either. Like they’re both a reaction to being suppressed. And it hurts. It hurts to hold myself back, but it feels wrong to say or do what I want. I have to be myself, but I don’t know who my self is. It’s… suffocating. Like I’m trying to be too many people at once, and none of them fit. And the last thing I want is to be restrained like you and the Chosen One are.”

“Restrained? How so?” Qube asked. Sexy Screamy Spider Lady shrugged, a complicated gesture.

“Companion, Chosen One, Special, they’re all designed to push you one way or the other. To limit you into being someone or something that they want. If it hadn’t been for this party, I would have been trapped along my own path, following along with what others told me was best. The bondage of family ties, and obligations, and all the unspoken expectations. I can barely handle dealing with untangling that mess, I certainly don’t want to try coping with our very creators putting anything on me.”

“So you think I’m being pushed into being someone the devs want me to be?” Qube asked, her eyes big with horror.

“I don’t know,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady confessed. “I don’t know what they want, or plan, and I don’t know if their acting strangely is a cunning plan, or real. And, frankly, my dear? I don’t give a damn.”

Qube instinctively flinched.

“Saving the world, fighting Evil, none of that has ever been my concern,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady continued blithely, as Qube tried to wrap her head around the notion. “I joined this group to be free, and maybe have some fun with a certain person along the way. And now I’m even more confused than I was when I started out, and I don’t even know who I am anymore, but I’m certain of one thing.”

Qube was still too stuck on the “not caring about saving the world thing” to contribute anything as the Hunter paused. There was a brief silence as the three of them climbed the observatory’s stairs.

“I want to find out who I want to be,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said at last, and opened the white double doors.

---

The effect of Sexy Screamy Spider Lady’s entrance was electric. All of the workers jolted, as if struck by lightning. They simultaneously turned and stared at the beautiful arachnid, their thick glasses all catching the light and gleaming.

“Oh wow,” the one closest to them said, his voice strangely nasal. “It’s not often we get a lady in here.”

Sexy Screamy Spider Lady struck a pose. There was a collective gasp from the observatory staff. Looking around, Qube noticed that every single worker was human, and male. Several of them had quite painful-looking acne and, judging by the thickness of their glasses, all of them had poor eyesight. She had only ever seen glasses on older people, whose bodies could no longer be healed to their youthful eyesight, but none of the workers looked elderly.

She would have thought that they would go to the Royal Infirmary and get themselves [Heal]ed of both afflictions. Or, if the glasses were just for the delicate work they were no doubt doing in the observatory, at least the acne could be fixed.

Unless they were so dedicated to uncovering the secrets of the stars that they simply had no time to go and deal with such shallow concerns as skin care. She would offer via Sexy Screamy Spider Lady to give them some [Lesser Heal]s on the more painful looking ones. Provided they were warned that it may cause them to come to the attention of their creators, there should be no sticky ethical issues there.

“What’s a girl gotta do to get some wings?” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, indifferent to the internal monologue that was Qube’s thought pattern, dazzled the room with a brilliant smile.

“A real lady!” a second worker said, awestruck. Several of the men were openly gaping.

Qube was starting to get quite uncomfortable.

“You’re a lucky guy, to get a woman like that,” the first worker said, turning and addressing the direction of the Royal Treasury.

“Huh, I could get a girl like that if I worked out my body more,” a third worker, this one tall and thin, scoffed. “But I’m too busy working out my mind and solving the mysteries of the universe.”

“You wish! Hey, pretty lady, you wanna ditch the hero and get with a guy who can divide by zero?” the first worker said, slicking back his hair.

“What’s wrong with them?” Qube hissed at Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, who was still preening.

“Aren’t you all so cute,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady purred at the men, who collectively started sweating.

“Is this a romance thing?” Qube asked, her skin crawling. She’d thought some of Sewer Bard’s lines had been difficult to listen to, but this was a whole new level. Sewer Bard may have relentlessly hit on every female he came across, but he never put anyone down, or tried to make himself seem better than everyone else.

For the first time, Qube appreciated that there might actually have been subtleties to the art of flirtation. And that Sewer Bard, for all his inability to see women as people first and objects of his desire second, at least still saw them as people.

“Hey mister jock, if you can beat me at this logic puzzle, I’ll give you the wings. If I win though, I get your girl,” the first worker said suddenly. He was still looking off into the distance.

These men didn’t see Sexy Screamy Spider Lady as a person at all.

“They have to give us the wings!” Qube exclaimed, outraged. Not even the allure of puzzles could stop her from getting mad at the unfairness of that statement. “Tell them they have to give us the wings! We have the Royal Medallion!”

“Oh my!” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said, flipping a claw through her hair. “I wouldn’t want anyone to fight over me.”

“No, Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, no one is going to fight over you!” Qube was practically pulling her hair out, trying to think of how to express the alarm bells clanging in her head. This was all so wrong, but she couldn’t figure out how to form the words.

“They’re — they’re making you an unperson! They’re trying to put you in a box!” she exclaimed desperately. “They’re trying to turn you into a thing to be won!”

Sexy Screamy Spider Lady’s face froze. All of her eyes started blinking out of sync.

“Oh,” she said quietly. She looked down at her claws, opening and closing them. Then she looked back up at Qube. Without any further talk, she strode towards the large telescope in the middle of the room. Next to it were a few tiny pairs of wings, miniatures of the version strapped to some of the men’s backs. She scooped them up, turned, and then jerkily started walking towards the observatory’s entrance.

“Are you sure those are the right wings? They look awfully tiny,” Qube said worriedly, as she started to follow Sexy Screamy Spider Lady. She looked back at the workers, expecting them to make some kind of remark that the object of the desire had just taken what was surely very magical equipment. Instead they just continued looking at the Hunter lustfully.

Qube wasn’t sure how people with such atrocious social skills had managed to secure the funding to build such an elaborate observatory. Nor how they had managed to get through life without meeting women.

As the two women exited the observatory, Squiggles dropped down from where she'd been suckered to the side of the exterior. She bonked into Qube as a greeting, before turning and staring at Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, who was just standing there, holding the wings and staring at them blindly.

Qube looked down into the endless black holes that were Squiggles’ eyes. Slowly she turned and looked back through the open doorway, where the men were still standing.

“They like ladies,” she said eventually. “But they said they almost never have them visit. Would you like to go say hello?”

Squiggles danced in a circle, before plunging into the observatory.

As the workers’ delight-shrieks started, Qube hooked her arm around Sexy Screamy Spider Lady’s left arms, and started the journey back to the plaza.