“Say family again. Come on. Come on girl, fa-mi-ly!”

Everything had ground to a halt. Getting the Chosen One to a Save Point, saving the world, defeating the Evil Emperor who was just up the staircase and behind a massive door, all of it was put to the side while the entire party tried to get Squiggles to speak again.

Squiggles, in a fit of mischief, and over-stimulated by all the attention, was slorping from person to person, happily drooling.

“Maybe she needs to be hugging us all again,” the Chosen One said as Squiggles bonked her blunt nose into him, demanding more pats.

“Squiggles, can you say Qube?” Qube asked, crouching next to her pet. “Qube? Come on girl, you can do it!”

If an outside observer, say the tyrant ruling over the castle, had happened to use their spy powers to peek at the group tasked with fulfilling the Golden Prophecy, they would have assumed that this sacred quest could not be completed unless Squiggles spoke again.

“I have some yummy treats for you if you talk again,” the Chosen One said temptingly. “Yummy treats for a clever girl breaking everything by talking!”

“Lady Squiggles,” Sencha Bard said, kneeling so that he was nearly eye level with the sharktopus. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hear your sweet voice once more. Please, I beg of you, speak.”

“My little sweet, while you don’t have to speak if you don’t want to, I’d love to hear you say ‘family’ again,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said with a coo.

“All right, everyone huddle up, we’re gonna try hugging her as a group to make her talk again,” the Chosen One said.

But, as anyone who has ever worked with children or animals before can attest to, trying to get one to do what you want wasn’t an easy task.

“Squiggles. Squiggles! This isn’t chasies time! Get back here!”

Squiggles, by now wildly over excited, activated whatever spell ingesting the Golden Slime had given her and was racing up and down the impressively large hallway, pausing only when she was too far away and waiting until she was just within grabbing distance before shooting off again, leaving a trail of golden glitter in her wake.

It wasn’t how Qube had imagined the moments before their final confrontation with the Evil Emperor would go, but it seemed fitting, somehow, that they were loudly racing up and down what should have been a place of dread, yelling at their mascot.

Despite all the shouting, thumping, and general hubbub, not a single guard came to investigate. Whether this was because all the guards in the castle were under the opposite mind control spell, and thus thought intruder noise was something to not look into when guarding, or the city guards and thieves had secretly started an attack on the castle’s gate and drawn everyone over there, Qube couldn’t say.

She could only be grateful that none of them were there to witness the indignity of the Saviour of all Human and Human-Adjacent Beings attempting to tackle a glittering, crown-covered sharktopus.

“Hey, no using spells! That’s cheating!” the Chosen One declared as Squiggles once again zipped away from right under his fingers. “Come on, you love hugs! Why no hug?”

The others, perhaps in the interest of preserving what little dignity the group had left, hadn’t joined in the chase.

“How are you feeling, love?” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar quietly asked Qube, as they watched the Hero race around after the mascot.

Qube considered this question, absent-mindedly rubbing at the tip of one of her ears. She thought about the question for quite some time, but the Hunter didn’t press her. She just patiently waited for her friend’s answer.

“I don’t know,” she eventually confessed. “I feel odd.”

The fog that had shielded her from her emotions had started to shift, allowing feelings to filter through. First disturbed by the urge to solve the riddles of tradition, then blown away by the shocking revelation that Squiggles could talk. Maybe. Unless the sharktopus talking had been a shared hallucination brought on by too much stress.

The presence of her inner self was still heavy, pressing against her while simultaneously pulling her towards the throne room, but it was manageable.

Was she coping? Or just in denial? It was hard to say.

“In a way,” she said slowly, figuring her feelings out as she spoke them, “I almost feel… free?”

Her entire life had contained an undercurrent of worry that she wasn’t up to the job of being the Chosen One’s guiding light. That she wouldn’t ever get to leave the village, that he wouldn’t get Chosen, that she would be what stopped him from getting Chosen somehow. Then, once he had been Chosen, her fears had morphed into an underlying dread that she wouldn’t be the best Companion ever, that others would do a better job than her, the person who was supposed to be prophecy-ordained to fulfil the role of childhood companion and guiding light, that she wouldn’t know enough, do enough, be enough.

But now she knew that she hadn’t ever been intended to survive past the first day. That the moment the Chosen One had been Chosen, she’d been living on borrowed time.

She couldn’t accidentally fail in being a guiding light because, by avoiding her death, she’d already failed. The very moment she’d left the village, she’d failed in her life’s mission. The quest she’d been preparing for her entire existence.

Just by surviving, she’d done more than the Golden Prophecy had ever expected of her.

She had already both succeeded and failed beyond all expectations.

There was something incredibly freeing about that thought.

No longer did she have to worry about whether or not someone would be better than her, or that she had somehow misled the Chosen One. No matter what happened in the future, she wouldn’t have to worry that a Companion who hadn’t accidentally allowed themselves to be a party to stealing from a bunch of innocent merchants, or didn’t have a history of kicking people, or hadn’t stabbed an unarmed pharaoh in the chest would have done a better job.

No matter who’d been the Chosen One’s companion, they would have died on day one.

At that thought, the fog within her mind finished dispersing.

“You know what?” she said, straightening up and throwing back her shoulders. “I do feel free!”

“Your words ease my mind,” Sencha Bard said quietly from the side. Standing slightly behind Sexy Screamy Spider Briar, he watched the Chosen One continue to chase Squiggles with a dispassionate gaze.

“How do you feel about it?” Now that the initial shock had passed, and the excitement of Squiggles talking had started to wear off, Qube remembered that Sencha Bard and Definitely Bad Guy hadn’t taken the news with anything like the grace of Sexy Screamy Spider Briar.

The Bard continued to watch Squiggles for a moment, before turning to Qube.

To her surprise, he wasn’t wearing a mask of politeness, and the dispassionate expression that had reawoken her unease slid away, to be replaced with a look of thoughtful contemplation.

“Lady Squiggles,” he called softly.

Squiggles, still running rings around the Hero selected to save the world, paused for a second and looked at Sencha Bard.

“Please come here,” he said calmly, reaching out a hand to the sharktopus.

In a display that made the Chosen One shout with playful frustration, Squiggles (who’d spent the last ten minutes categorically refusing to be captured for cuddle time), slorped up to Sencha Bard and nuzzled his hand.

“Otto the otter was designed to be our team mascot, was he not?” Sencha Bard asked the Chosen One.

“Yeah,” the Chosen One said from halfway down the corridor.

“But, even though she wasn’t given a place in the narrative, Lady Squiggles has not only become our true team mascot, but she has grown beyond all expectations.” Sencha Bard, kneeling, placed his hand on the top of Squiggles’s head, gently scratching underneath her ribbon. “She has become something beautiful, and unique enough to stump even the Devs.”

Squiggles was forming a small puddle of drool beneath her as her eyes rolled back in her head at the pleasure of being scratched.

“In much the same way each of us has grown beyond what we were shaped to be, I expect her to continue developing into her own self,” he continued quietly.

He smiled warmly down at their pet, before standing up, stopping his scratching.

Squiggles glared at him, grabbing his hand and forcibly planting it back on her head.

“Pet,” she said in the same high, childish voice as before.

“She really can talk!” Qube gasped in wonder.

“Fascinating,” Definitely Bad Guy said.

“Wha— why do you talk for him?” the Chosen One huffed.

“Of course my baby can talk,” Sexy Screamy Spider Briar said proudly. “She’s just independent.”

“So you can say Qube?” Qube continued in her mission to get Squiggles to say her name. “Of course you can! You’re such a smart girl, I bet you could say it easily!”

Squiggles looked at Qube with adoration in her flat, black eyes. “Mama,” she said, wrapping a tentacle around Qube’s ankle. “Mama pet.”

Qube choked as the rest of the group laughed.

“Told you that you were her mama,” the Chosen One said, still laughing.

Squiggles looked at him. “Papa!” she happily announced.

Now it was the Chosen One’s turn to choke in surprise. “Uh, no,” he said to Squiggles. “No no no. I’m way too young to be anyone’s parent.”

“And I’m not?” Qube shot back at him.

“I— okay, fair point, sure, no one here is allowed to be a parent,” the Chosen One conceded.

“I mean, I might be a parent to a bunch of items,” Qube admitted, “but that was more me being a ghost, apparently. A ghost midwife?”

“I don’t even want to think about that,” the Chosen One said. “Let’s just stick with the whole ‘no parents’ thing for now.”

“Thank you for trusting us with your secret of speech, Lady Squiggles,” Sencha Bard said to Squiggles, bowing slightly while continuing to scratch her head. “If ever you wish for lessons in elocution, or oration in general, know that you have but to ask and I am yours to command.” His smile grew. “Perhaps one day you’ll become a Bard yourself.”

Squiggles, worn out from both the effort of talking, and a good bout of chasies, disengaged from Sencha Bard and clambered up onto Sexy Screamy Spider Briar’s back, then promptly sank into her abdomen.

“Night-night,” she said, closing her eyes.

Qube felt her heart melt.

“You see,” Sencha Bard said softly, “even though she too is a mascot, and a talking one at that, she is leagues above Otto. Even someone assigned the same role can fulfil it in an entirely different way, and grow beyond that into something that can challenge even the Devs’ understanding of reality. You have already baffled them many times, and taught them that what they thought was impossible is right in front of them. I encourage you to dwell on this, Healer and childhood companion.”

Qube merely smiled at Sencha Bard, not commenting on his speech. Instead she turned to Definitely Bad Guy and tilted her head inquiringly at him.

While she was glad that Sencha Bard had accepted the knowledge that a substantial portion of his personality was a cliché, she didn’t feel like engaging with him on the matter, or dwelling on anything in particular right now. Her own emotions were still too raw for that.

“Definitely Bad Guy?” she asked.

The Mage, who’d been watching Squiggles with interest, which meant he was staring at Sexy Screamy Spider Briar’s abdomen, startled slightly when he realised Qube was looking at him.

“Ah, yes,” he said, lightly blushing. “I require more research before I comment on the matter. As it is, initial observation leads me to believe that she has the vocabulary and intelligence of an infant.”

Definitely Bad Guy was clearly coping just fine with the discovery that he was designed from birth to be seduced by Evil.

“Very well,” Qube said, then sighed as her Healer side reasserted itself, and reminded her that, while she technically didn’t have to act as a childhood companion, she was still a Healer. She looked up at the grand staircase they’d been standing in front of for nearly an hour, and suppressed the urge to gulp.

“Let’s get the Chosen One to a Save Point, so he can get some rest. And then… the throne room.”