“Okay,” the Chosen One said, as if it was every day that one of his compatriots decided to openly challenge the Devs, “so do you want to think of your own name, or keep your current one?”

“I shall think of a name that I will choose for myself,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said. “It must be something fitting. Sensual, yet dangerous. The name of someone who walks their own path.” She narrowed all her eyes as she considered the matter. “Something like… Svetlana.”

The Chosen One choked, then tried to turn it into a cough. It wasn’t very convincing.

“What’s wrong with that name?” The Hunter, for all her talk of not caring what others thought of her identity, looked extremely put out by the Chosen One’s reaction. “It feels perfect for me.”

The Chosen One looked around, still pretending to cough, and retraced their steps through the sewers.

“Ah, nothing, I just need to check something,” he said airily, his face lighting up as he spotted a blue Save Point floating next to the iron ladder they’d used to enter the sewers. They still needed to find the quest giver to explain that Squiggles had eaten the Golden Slime they were supposed to capture. Qube just hoped this R. Hood was more interested in stopping the Golden Slime’s sewery rampage than what had actually happened to the slippery beast.

As the Chosen One flicked his hand through the Save Point, Qube wondered about his strange reaction to Sexy Screamy Spider Lady’s proposed name change. While it wasn’t quite as perfect for her as Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, something about it still felt right, natural, like it was made for her…

Oh no. Qube risked a look at the Hunter, to see if she’d figured it out, but the giant arachnid was still looking vaguely peeved as the Hero returned to them from his timeless sojourn in the Devs’ realm.

He ran his tongue along his teeth as he looked at the crew.

“So I’ve got your Dev-assigned names,” he said cautiously. “And they don’t know what’ll happen if I give them to you but then think, at this point, it won’t do anything. Certainly nothing horrifying should happen, especially when I told them what you’d decided as a potential name,” he nodded at Sexy Screamy Spider Lady.

“And what, precisely, is so unusual about my choice?” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady asked in a voice as silky as a spider’s web closing around a victim.

“Are you sure you want to know?” the Chosen One asked uncertainly. Qube slapped her palm against her forehead in a move she’d seen the Hero do often enough. Definitely Bad Guy was calmly waiting for the Hero to keep going, and Sewer Bard was regarding the Chosen One with narrow eyes.

The Hunter smiled at him, fangs glistening.

“It’s the name the Devs gave you,” he said hurriedly.

The Hunter’s face went blank.

“I see,” she said, with a surprising amount of bitterness. Her thorax inflated suddenly, and she blew out a breath. “Well, I shall just have to think of a better name, then. That was only the first one to come to mind. I should have known nothing easy was ever worth the hunt.

“I see,” Definitely Bad Guy pulled a book out of his robe and started scanning it. “Since she has shown no negative side effects to her own name, there is evidence to suggest that we shall not be harmed by being told the classifications given to us by the Devs.”

“I dunno that I’d call your name a classification, but sure,” the Chosen One said, eyeing the Mage. “Well, since you said you wanted to know their name for you, it was Sebastian.”

Definitely Bad Guy closed his eyes as the information sank in. He opened them again, the blue rings around his irises only making the deeper red closer to the pupils look brighter.

“I feel… a vague connection to it, perhaps,” the Mage said. “But I cannot be sure if that is merely because I expect there to be one. It is difficult to be objective.”

“And your name was something like Sasha? No. Sencha,” the Chosen One told Sewer Bard. Sewer Bard’s brow cleared, and he beamed at the Hero.

“Sencha, that was it,” he said, relieved. “I feel as if I’ve remembered the second half of a chorus. It’s a relief.” He unslung his lute and strummed a few bars, humming to himself.

Qube fidgeted. While it was nice to see everyone else getting their Dev names, she felt a little left out.

“And my Dev name is Qube, yes?” she double checked with the Hero.

“Yep,” he said, looking at Squiggles, who was happily wagging her tail on Sexy Screamy Spider Lady’s back.

Qube fidgeted some more, trying to figure out why she felt so strange.

“And I don’t have a special name you gave me when you adopted me?” she asked in a small voice.

“Wha—I—I didn’t actually adopt anyone,” the Hero hastened to disavow any parental responsibility. “That doesn’t mean I care about you all any less just because you’re not adopted. It’s just something that happens when everyone is accepted into the party and made a part… of the… quest.” The Chosen One slowly fell silent as Qube shrank into herself.

“…I wasn’t accepted into the party and made part of the quest?” Qube asked in an even tinier voice, tapping her two forefingers together.

“Well, no,” the Chosen One said. Qube bit her bottom lip. “You were already a part of the quest! And you were one of the two founding members of the party! There’s no way I could accept you into the group, there wouldn’t even be a group without you!”

The Hero reached out and put a hand on Qube’s shoulder, making her look up at him.

“Literally none of this would have been able to happen without you,” he said sincerely. “You’re my Childhood Companion; you think I can go around forming parties all on my own without you? No way!”

“I wasn’t actually your Childhood Companion,” Qube felt compelled to point out. “That was Felix.”

“Nope, that’s your job, you gotta do it, I ain’t paying you just to be a Healer, you got all the Childhood Companion and guiding light duties too, get to it,” the Hero said briskly, squeezing Qube’s shoulder and starting to march down one of the canals.

“Pay me— wait a minute, you don’t pay me at all!” Qube exclaimed as the Chosen One started walking faster.

“Can’t hear you, off to turn in our bounty, lalala,” the Saviour of All Human and Human-Adjacent Beings sang as Qube chased after him.

“Chosen One! Chosen One, get back here! Are you supposed to be paying me? Chosen One!”

***

Surprisingly, the Chosen One didn’t lead them back to the surface. Instead, he led them deeper into the sewers without any hesitation. It was disconcerting when he did that, reminding Qube that he had some kind of invisible map or mark that showed him where things were.

Ah, how naive she’d been when she’d first been confused by the Exiled Princess saying she’d marked something on the Hero’s map! Thinking that just because there had been no physical map, marking, or movement on her behalf of any kind that there was something strange about the exchange. Now she was much wiser to the world, and knew that the Chosen One could just occasionally gain or be given some kind of mental connection to various people and locations, even ones he’d never been to before, that he could use to track them down whenever he wanted!

It was just one of the wonderful ways that magic worked. For example, Qube knew that no matter where she went, or how hard she hid, the Chosen One would be able to use the Devs to locate her. Granted, given the meeting she’d had with the Evil Dev, that was a touch concerning, but the Devs were the equivalent of gods, so it was to be expected.

Would they be able to track her when she was in their realm?

Qube was pulled from her musings on the ability various beings who may or may not have her best interests at heart had to stalk her by Sewer Bard sharply inhaling next to her. Or should she think of him as Sencha, now?

“What’s wrong?” she asked, taking care of the more important question first.

“I recognise this area,” Sewer Bard said darkly. “This is where I was taken by the Thieves Guild.”

Now that he mentioned it, Qube could see a large wooden door in the distance that looked vaguely familiar. It was wide open, and inside she could just make out warm, orange lights flickering, a stark contrast to the cooler blue and green of the sewers.

“I remember you saying that they weren’t your friends,” Qube said, slowing her steps. Unfamiliar thoughts bounced around inside her head, clamouring to make themselves heard. “They caged you for stealing in their territory. Even though they’re thieves. Why didn’t they just ask you to join them? They kept trying to get us to join their group, even though none of us had stolen anything and didn’t have any thief skills.”

Well, except for all the shoplifting the Chosen One had tricked her into doing. And her forcefully re-acquiring the golden sword the guild had stolen from that ghost that then tricked her into owning a house.

Qube seemed to get tricked into stealing things a lot.

“I suspect—” Sewer Bard started, then caught himself. He rubbed his mouth as he looked at Qube, then glanced around. Since Qube had slowed down and the Bard had automatically matched her pace, they were a little behind the others; even Definitely Bad Guy was ahead of them, lost in his own thoughts.

“—The Golden Prophecy may have a hand in it,” he finished at last.

“Oh… Oh!” Qube exclaimed. “So the Golden Prophecy stopped you from agreeing to join their guild because they’re bad, and you’re Good, and that’s why they locked you up?”

“Perhaps,” Sewer Bard said, watching her very closely, “the Golden Prophecy is why I was caught by them in the first place. I’ve never been so clumsy as I was that night, and they have certainly never displayed so much stealth since.”

Qube tilted her head to the side as she pondered this.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “For me, the Golden Prophecy has only ever encouraged or discouraged me. It’s made it hard to do things, yes, but never outright changed events around me that I’ve noticed.”

“I may be wrong,” Sewer Bard said with an eloquent shrug of his shoulders. “I have certainly, how shall I say, felt the hand of fate lean heavily on me from time to time, but I’ve never read the Golden Prophecy, and do not know the scope of its narrative.”

“Wait, you’ve never actually read it?” Qube asked, astonished, only to instantly realise that her surprise was misplaced. The village had built an entire prophecy hut just to house the scroll the Golden Prophecy was written on; it made sense that not everyone would have access to a copy of the sacred text. She’d just thought, since the Evil Emperor had known about it, everyone would somehow just instinctively know what the Golden Prophecy said.

But he was an Evil Emperor with his own prophecy; of course he would know about theirs.

“I’ve not had the good fortune,” Sewer Bard said with a rather strange smile. “Such sacred texts haven’t exactly been left within eyeshot of a failed thief and mediocre Bard. But I have heard it spoken of, and know its role in keeping spirits alive through the oppression of the Evil Emperor.”

“Oh, well, the Chosen One has the village’s copy shoved in his backpack, so you can read it now if you want!” Qube said cheerfully. Then the actual contents of what Sewer Bard had said filtered through, and she glared at her friend.

“You’re not a mediocre Bard at all! You’re the best Bard I know!” she said indignantly.

But Sewer Bard wasn’t listening to her. Instead he was just staring at the Healer in disbelief.

“He has the Golden Prophecy shoved into his backpack?”

“Yep!” Qube said, cheerfully ignoring how she’d felt when she’d witnessed that particular act of sacrilege. “And I’m sure you would be an amazing thief, or even a Rogue, if you wanted to!” she added loyally.

“Thank you,” the Bard said faintly.