Chapter 158: Book Three Chapter Eighteen: Timmy Trouble

“There!” Qube shouted, pointing at the well. A small crowd of people had gathered around the picturesque well, including a woman who was making a strange wailing sound. It was almost like she was trying to cry, but couldn’t quite get it right.

 

Squiggles, who was heroically leading the way, immediately tried to jump into the well. She was stopped only by Sexy Screamy Spider Lady hooking a claw around her green ribbon, and holding the eager sharktopus back.

 

“Tell them we’re here to help!” Qube urged Sewer Bard, who lost no time in unslinging his lute and playing a few commanding notes.

 

“Have no fear, gentle townsfolk!” he called in a clear, loud voice. “We have arrived to save this young boy!”

 

The townsfolk failed to seem suitably impressed by this, but at least the woman (whom Qube could only assume was the Lassie from the notice) stopped her noise, leaving only the sound of a dog barking somewhere nearby.

 

Qube hurried over to the side of the well and peered into its depths. Fortunately the well was empty, and a young boy was standing at the bottom of it, staring fixedly up at where the Chosen One was approaching from. The Healer, spotting no visible injuries, relaxed the smallest fraction.

 

“It looks like he wasn’t hurt in the fall,” Qube said, relieved. She glared at the people around them. “They should really board up this well, though; this is very dangerous!”

 

“Beggin’ your pardon, m’lord,” the woman who’d been wailing said to the Chosen One, who was slowly ambling up to the scene and had yet to speak a word. She sidestepped Sewer Bard to crank her neck and stare at the Hero. “We can’t get little Timmy out of the well. We need a rope, and a bucket. There used to be one, but —” the woman paused, and seemed slightly confused for a second. “I dunno what happened to it,” she said at last.

 

Qube stared at the woman, then slowly looked up to the multitude of small, triangle flags attached to a sturdy-looking rope that ran from rooftop to rooftop. Being invisible to the city inhabitants, only her fellow party members caught the half-elf’s look of disgust at the stupidity of the mob.

 

The Chosen One started cleaning his left ear, totally unconcerned with what was happening before him.

 

“Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, can you please shoot the ends of that rope?” Qube asked politely. The Hunter gave Qube an odd look, but obligingly shot at both ends of the rope, causing it to fall to the ground.

 

The Chosen One coughed slightly, gaining Qube’s attention as she started stripping the flags off the freshly liberated rope. She looked up at him.

 

“Hey, Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, you’ve got a rope in your inventory, right?” he asked the Hunter.

 

“Of course, my love,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady purred, and pulled a tightly coiled rope out of her abdomen.

 

Qube looked down at the rope she was holding. The rope that, technically, didn’t belong to her. Then she looked back at the Chosen One, who grinned at her.

 

Qube threw the rope at him.

 

“Why didn’t you start with that?” she yelled, as her friend just laughed at her frustrations.

 

“Hey, you were having too much fun being the leader!” the Chosen One defended himself, as Qube picked up the rope and threw it at him again.

 

“Only because you were being too slow!” Qube exclaimed, throwing the rope for a third and final time. “Hurry up and rescue that kid!”

 

“All right, all right!” the Chosen One said, this time catching the rope. “They wanted a bucket too, though. Maybe you should find one?”

 

This time Qube didn’t move, instead steadily staring at the Hero, waiting for him to produce a bucket. He grinned so gleefully that she decided to bust out her ultimate move.

 

“Chosen One,” she said, her Understanding Smile in full effect, “could you please rescue the little boy? You’d be my Hero, Hero!”

 

“Ah!” The Chosen One shielded his eyes from the blinding determined friendliness her smile unleashed. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I have a bucket! I have six!”

 

Qube didn’t bother to ask why the designated Saviour had six buckets in his backpack. She merely accepted that he did. Mostly she was just glad he hadn’t tried to harpoon the child.

 

In fact, the Hero was so flustered that he dropped his collection of buckets and the rope down the well, causing a quiet “ow! ow! ow!” to echo up the stone walls. He threw a broom in too, for good measure.

 

Qube recognised that broom. That was the broom from the village. Had the Chosen One been carrying a broom for this entire adventure?

 

Why?

 

Qube was about to tell the Chosen One to stop dropping household items onto the little boy’s head when the townsfolk around them started cheering. A strange scraping sound was coming from within the well, and as the adventuring party peered down into the darkness they were greeted by a peculiar sight.

 

Timmy was slowly floating up the well. He was clutching at nothing, his hands gripped around an imaginary rope as he levitated up out of the well, scraping against the stone occasionally, and casually passed through the small wooden roof over the former watering hole.

 

Had Timmy died? Was he a ghost? But no, ghosts were bright blue and exploded into nothingness while leaving you in possession of houses you never asked for, they didn’t start drifting up into the sky. And, make no mistake, Timmy wasn’t slowing down. If anything, he was accelerating as he got free of the crowd, surging up towards the clouds.

 

“Well that’s new,” the Chosen One said, watching Timmy ascend.

 

“Is that supposed to happen?” Qube asked worriedly. 

 

Then little Timmy got stuck in the sky.

 

“Oh hey!” the Chosen One said excitedly, pointing at the sky-stuck child. “That’s what happened to you!” he said to Qube. “Remember?”

“Yes, thank you, Chosen One,” Qube said primly.

 

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“I don’t remember you getting stuck in the sky, love,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said, her children’s faces frowning.

 

“It was a long time ago,” Qube said, before hurrying on to add, “anyway, we should help him. It’s very unpleasant to be stuck in the sky.” She gave the Hero a meaningful look. He had the grace to appear sheepish.

 

“Thank you for saving little Timmy!” the formerly wailing woman said, nodding enthusiastically at the Chosen One. The unseen dog barking was now replaced with some annoying whining.

 

“I’m afraid, my fair madam, that we are not responsible for this,” Sewer Bard said, cutting in between the Hero and the human. The woman ignored him, instead continuing to nod with increasing speed. Several of the other townsfolk also started to nod along with her. Soon the whole group were silent, just vigorously nodding their thanks at the Hero.

 

It was a bit creepy, if Qube were to be completely honest about the whole thing. At least she knew why the group had put the notice on the board rather than doing anything about Timmy’s dilemma themselves. They were clearly very…odd.

 

“Squiggles, stop chewing on that,” Qube said absentmindedly as the team’s mascot started trying to eat the flags on the felled rope. Squiggles just wagged her tail, but kept trying to inhale the colourful fabrics.

 

“Darling, you’ll choke,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady chastised the sharktopus gently. “Here, let me fix that for you.” The Hunter started tying the rope around Squiggles, knotting it in various places so that each coloured flag rested against the top of one of Squiggles’s tentacles, like triangular armbands. Squiggles drooled in pleasure at her new look.

 

“Well, looks like we’ve fixed it,” the Chosen One said in pleased tones. “Timmy is outta that well all right.”

 

“So, how shall we get Timmy down?” Qube asked the Chosen One pointedly as her pet was playing dress up. She wasn’t going to get tricked into accidentally destroying public property again, no matter how adorable it made Squiggles look!

 

“We could try and hook a rope around him,” the Chosen One said innocently. Qube gave him a level look.

 

“Do you think you could lasso him from down here?” she asked sweetly. A little bit too sweetly. “Or possibly a ladder,” she said, still in that very sweet tone of voice.

The Chosen One looked vaguely guilty.

 

“You have a ladder in your backpack, don’t you, Chosen One?” Qube asked.

 

“...Maybe,” the Chosen One replied shiftily.

 

Qube tried very hard not to think about how the Chosen One had managed to fit a ladder inside his backpack, any more than she’d wondered about her staff fitting. At some point she’d just accepted that pocket magic was beyond her current understanding, and that she would need to sit down and really study secret spaces until she could learn how they worked, and how she could make her own.

 

This noble resolve was almost instantly put to the test by the sight of the Chosen One pulling a full-sized ladder out of his pocket.

 

Qube glared at the ladder, but didn’t allow it to taunt her with its pocket-based shenanigans. 

 

“So who wants to go rescue the kid?” the Chosen One asked as he carefully leaned the ladder against Timmy’s floating legs. Surprisingly, it looked stable as it rested against the boy.

 

Sexy Screamy Spider Lady squinted all her eyes at the ladder, then looked down at her many legs. “Perhaps someone more suited for this particular physical activity should attempt it,” she said.

 

Definitely Bad Guy was sweeping his magic-enhanced eyes over the crowd, and Sewer Bard was thoughtfully strumming on his lute. He hummed a few notes, and a wave of green mana washed over the crowd.

 

“I have not detected any spells being used,” Definitely Bad Guy said to the Bard, who nodded. “I do not know how the child is flying.”

 

Squiggles was too busy trying to eat her decorative flags to pay any attention to Timmy.

 

“Fine, fine,” the Chosen One said begrudgingly. He started climbing the ladder, and Qube hurriedly grabbed the lower rungs to stabilise it against Timmy. Sexy Screamy Spider Lady joined in, carefully hooking her claws into the ladder and watching its reaction with narrowed eyes.

 

“You’re getting better at not flinging things around,” Qube said encouragingly to the Hunter. Ever since her last meeting with the Dryad Queen, the giant arachnid had been making concentrated efforts to be more aware of her surroundings, and as a result she almost never sent things flying around the room.

 

Qube’s comment wasn’t just her being supportive, though. It was also a very subtle reminder to her fellow party member to be extremely careful not to let the ladder start vibrating, without embarrassing her by pointing it out directly.

 

Qube was very diplomatic like that.

 

Judging from the look the Hunter slanted at her, Qube could tell that she had managed to decode her secret message.

 

The Chosen One got to the top of the ladder and started trying to grab Timmy, who kept sliding through the air just out of reach. After a few more sideward slides, Timmy flipped over, and the Chosen One managed to grab him and yank him free of his sky prison.

The ladder immediately tried to fall, but was gripped in place by the two women at the base. The Chosen One, holding the child like some kind of festive balloon, slid down the rungs at top speed.

 

The rest of the crowd continued nodding at them.

 

“There you go,” the Chosen One said as he gently released his grasp on Timmy. “No floating off again, okay?”

 

Timmy stood still for a second, as if truly contemplating whether or not he wanted to start floating again, before running off to the formerly-wailing woman and hugging her legs. This seemed to snap the woman out of her nodding zone, and she started laughing and picking the boy up. Even the rest of the crowd stopped nodding, and started cheering wildly.

 

Qube felt a warm glow at their good work, watching as the boy flung his arms around the neck of the woman who could only be his older sister. The Chosen One, however, seemed less pleased by the experience, and was watching the crowd with a thoughtful expression.

 

“Give me a second,” he said, wandering over to a convenient Save Point. He passed his hand through it, and the world shuddered.

 

“Okay,” he said, still looking thoughtfully at the celebrating townsfolk. “Seems like we’ve got to stay in this area for a while. Let’s do some more of these social quests.”

 

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