“The rest of the party,” Qube explained patiently. “You’ll need to tell them who you are, and let us take the lead in the next Temple.”

“Okay…” the Chosen One said, frowning. “Why do you want me to do that?”

Qube gave the Hero a Look.

“We’re supposed to be a team,” she said. “And so we’re supposed to trust each other. How can we trust each other if we’re keeping such big things a secret?”

“Sure, that makes sense,” the Chosen One said, “I meant more the whole ‘taking the lead in the next Temple’ thing.”

“Oh,” Qube said. She’d thought he would try to fight her on revealing his identity to the others, find some way to preserve his secret. “Well, you were saying that being independent was important to us all becoming special. So, we should be the ones in charge of the next Temple. It’ll be like Sexy Screamy Spider Lady’s Trial, only better!”

The Chosen One nodded thoughtfully. “Makes sense,” he said. “I’m cool with that. That way I can focus on doing my own thing, and see how you guys go with solving all the puzzles.” The more he talked, the more excited he seemed to get about the idea. “Actually, that would be amazing, seeing how you all solve a full Temple on your own. And you came up with it on your own! That’s some real meta stuff.”

Qube, still standing in the wreckage of Alderman’s house, looked around.

“By the way,” she asked, “how did you know where I was? Do you have a mark on me, like you do with Sexy Screamy Spider Lady?” Qube didn’t know how she would feel about that.

“Nah,” the Chosen One said, shifting slightly. “I didn’t know where you’d gone, and I was wandering all around Cobbletown trying to find you. Which felt super weird, to be honest. I even tried saving and reloading to see if that would help, but it didn’t.”

Qube tilted her head inquiringly at him. He coughed. “I tried doing stuff with the Save Point,” he clarified. “Anyway, cuz I’d done that, I couldn’t — I wasn’t able to do anything. So I ended up asking the Devs for help. It took a while to get our schedules to match, but I managed it.”

The Chosen One went silent, looking at Qube, but not really focusing on her.

“They freaked out a bit,” he confessed, refocusing on her. “Things nearly went… very poorly. But after a lot of yelling, they decided to check some things.” His forehead wrinkled as he tried to think of the best way to word it. “Part of being special is that the world ‘distorts’ around you. You, in particular, draw a lot of … attention. Given you’d almost always been with me, they hadn’t particularly noticed the ‘distortion’ before, but once you were on your own in a totally different area, they managed to locate you. Then they did something, I don’t know what, but it allowed me to come in at this Save Point.”

Qube was still feeling too raw to try and figure out what any of that meant. She’d only asked because the idea of him being able to find her anywhere she went was unnerving.

Strange how a single day can change so much. Yesterday she would have been pleased, and seen it as a sign of their closeness. Today, however, it just filled her with uneasiness.

It was going to take some time to get used to her new reality.

“I’m actually kinda surprised none of the others came with me,” the Chosen One said, looking around as if expecting the other party members to pop out from some stray rubble. “I really hope they haven’t broken anything doing this.”

“I don’t know how travelling through the Save Points would have affected the others,” Qube pointed out sensibly.

“Fair,” the Chosen One conceded. “All right. This place is giving me the creeps, so shall we go back to Cobbletown and find the others?” He turned towards Cobbletown, and his brow cleared. “Yeah, it seems like they’re over there,” he said with a sigh of relief.

“Do the others know that you can track them?” Qube asked, curious. The Chosen One paused.

“I assume so?” he half-said, half-asked. ”I dunno, actually. We’ll have to ask them. Anyway,” he rolled his shoulders, and stepped out of the ruined house, away from the horror. “Shall we go back to Cobbletown?”

Qube didn’t look around. She didn’t want to remember any of the details, or notice any new ones. She had to have faith that the Chosen One would keep to his word, and make this right. After all, though he may not be her childhood friend, he was still an incredibly powerful being from another place, specially brought here to save the kingdom, and the world. If he said the Devs could fix it, and that he could make them fix it, then he was probably telling the truth.

Qube pushed aside the small existential crisis that blossomed at the idea she now had to evaluate whether or not the one Chosen by the Golden Prophecy was being honest or not.

She already knew he was someone worthy of following — his actions had shown that. She just had to also believe that he knew what he was doing.

---

“Hey, so, now that everyone’s here, I have something to say: I’m not the Chosen One,” the Chosen One announced to the full party.

The rest of the party broke into noises of confusion, as Qube fought against the urge to slap her palm against her face.

It turned out, even though they weren’t childhood companions, the Chosen One still really, really needed a guiding light.

They’d walked in silence to Cobbletown, and then as soon as they’d arrived the Chosen One had hunted down all the other companions. They’d found Sexy Screamy Spider Lady in the Royal Library, being aggressively shushed by a flock of librarians as books went flying every time she moved. She was deeply absorbed in the second page of a book on law, much to Qube’s surprise. Squiggles they’d found in the Royal Kitchen, all the chefs cowering in a corner as she sat on a horde of chewed up pots and pans.

Qube had made her apologise to staff for eating their work tools, but that didn’t seem to smooth things over as much as she would have hoped.

The Chosen One had finally located Definitely Bad Guy and Sewer Bard in the Wizard Tower (after having another argument with the front door) before immediately making his shocking announcement. It was Sewer Bard who spoke out first.

“Forgive me, Noble Patron, or whatever being inhabits your body at this particular moment, but I don’t understand,” Sewer Bard said, giving a shallow bow. “Are you perhaps another Dev?”

“What? No, I’m still me, I’m just not the original Chosen One,” the Chosen One clarified as confusingly as possible.

“Are you saying that since we last saw you, you have been replaced?” Definitely Bad Guy asked, his eyes turning blood red as he activated a spell.

“No, no, way before that,” the Chosen One started to say. “I’m the same person you’ve always known.”

“So you’re still my Chosen One, darling?” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady ran a claw down her thorax.

“No, I’m not your Chosen One!” the Chosen One said, flustered.

“Then you’re someone else’s Chosen One?” The Hunter blinked as she looked at Qube. “Where is my Chosen One?”

“I’m not yours!” the Chosen One exclaimed. “We discussed this!”

“I discussed it with my Chosen One,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said with a dangerous pout. “If you’re not my Chosen One, then why should I listen to you?”

“Yes, I fear you cannot be the Chosen One we have known then,” Sewer Bard said, sadly shaking his head. “His devotion to our fair Hunter is the stuff of legends.”

The Chosen One gave an inarticulate gurgle.

“I can detect no curses, or changes,” Definitely Bad Guy informed the rest of the group, examining the Chosen One. “He appears the same as he always has.”

Qube buried her face into her hands.

Squiggles gingerly slorped up to the Chosen One, and sniffed his boots. After a second of contemplation, she happily climbed him, and tried to perch on his shoulder, wrapping her tentacles around his head to keep herself in place.

“I’m the Chosen One!” the Chosen One said from behind the nest of tentacles. “I’ve done all the things with you guys! I just — I lied about some stuff and I’m not who you think I am, except I’m the same person I always was to you and I never lied to you lot in particular!”

Quite how the Saviour of All Human and Human-Adjacent Beings managed to be so bad at explaining things, Qube would never know.

“What the Chosen One is trying to say,” she said, stepping up, “is that he isn’t from our plane of existence.”

“This is hardly news,” Definitely Bad Guy said, “we all know he was Awoken by the Golden Prophecy, written by the Devs. It is very clear that his abilities are beyond that of a normal human, even a magically enhanced one.”

Qube wasn’t entirely sure how she’d expected this conversation to go down. She’d thought there’d be cries of betrayal, and the others might even be mad at the Chosen One. She’d definitely thought that he would be able to explain the basic concept, and not confuse everyone including, it seemed, himself.

It appeared that, for all the revelations she’d had in the last day or so, some things hadn’t changed at all. So, just like she had her entire life, Qube tried to steer things onto the right track.

“Growing up, I had a childhood companion,” Qube started. “He was one of the Potential Chosen Ones in our village. His name… was Felix.” Once again she felt for any kind of connection, or echo of pain. Instead there was only gentle sadness. “He was the one Chosen by the Golden Prophecy, and became the Chosen One.”

“Your name is Felix?” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady asked the Chosen One. She tapped her left fang thoughtfully. “I could work with that.”

“I’m not Felix,” the Chosen One replied bluntly. He seemed to have gathered himself during Qube’s explanation. “When Felix was Chosen, his personality was… destroyed.”

Ah. There was the pain that his name failed to evoke. What little Qube could remember of the original Felix was generic adventures, some mishaps, and a big smile. Most of her memories had been overshadowed by the Chosen One’s more bombastic personality, possibly as part of whatever process was involved in his transfer. But it still hurt to know that her Prophecy-assigned friend was truly gone.

“And that’s when I was placed in his body,” the Chosen One continued as the party stared at him in silence. “I’m from the same place as the Devs, and this was always the plan.” He looked at Qube. “Was there anything else you wanted me to tell them?”

Definitely Bad Guy looked between the two of them. “Is this something you have always known?” he asked Qube, a strange undercurrent in his tone.

“I should have known,” Qube replied, “but I only just discovered this myself.”

The Chosen One turned and grabbed her shoulder. He pushed aside some of Squiggles’s tentacles so he could look at Qube properly.

“Oi,” he said sternly, “none of that. A lot of work went into making sure that you couldn’t know. Those lot told me that it would be straight up impossible for you to connect those particular dots, even if I told you a completely different name. Frankly, the fact that you were able to make that leap will make them all have a collective heart attack once they find out.”

Oddly enough, the idea of her puzzle solving skills giving the beings who made her entire world heart attacks made Qube feel better. Being special enough to cause godly-level creatures panic, while probably very dangerous, still felt nice. Kind of like an accomplishment.

For the first time in nearly a day, Qube smiled.