Chapter 32: Chapter Thirty Two: Twin True Fire

Qube was interrupted from her planning of future crimes against human and human-adjacent beings by the appearance of a giant, sparkly doorway in the middle of the room. A blue Save Point also appeared next to said portal. Qube eyed it dubiously as the Chosen One passed his hand through it. No brain-melting visions appeared, no strange doubling sensations. It was a totally normal interaction between the Saviour of All and his mysterious blue ball of light.

 

The doorway/portal was sparkly red and black, which was yet another level of colour coordination amongst the Temples that Qube was impressed by. She was going to have to release a special book just on the different themes of the Temples! Were they influenced by the environment around them or…

 

Her contemplation of her future as the leading scholar in Temple Magic was paused by the Chosen One suddenly clapping his hands together. Qube jumped.

 

“All right!” he said, seemingly totally and utterly refreshed by his interaction with the Save Point. “Let’s go finish this Temple!”

 

And, so saying, he stepped through the sparkly doorway.

 

---

 

Sure enough, the sparkly doorway was another teleportation portal. Qube was quite pleased at herself for recognising that. It also happened to drop them into the very centre of the volcano, which she was slightly less pleased about.

 

They were standing on a thin flat disc of what looked like obsidian. It was floating in the air, surrounded by a sphere of magical protection that held back the slow-moving magma that pressed on them from all sides, its eerie, red light the only thing that illuminated them. If that shield disappeared, then they would be engulfed by the magma instantly. There were no ladders, no doorways, only the quiet rumble of ten million tonnes of heated death moving around them.

 

Qube eyed the shield nervously. Possibly it was made out of the same stuff as their Fireproof clothing? 

 

In the middle of the flat, dark disc, there was a pedestal, with a golden flame burning atop it.

 

“Sweet, found it,” the Chosen One said, casually stepping towards it.

 

The disc vibrated, and seemed to shift beneath their feet. The metal box, which had been tucked away in Qube’s backpack, squealed into life. The Chosen One sighed.

 

“Great. More talking,” he said, and turned Qube around so he could rummage through her backpack. As he did so, etchings formed beneath their feet, and Qube suddenly realised that they were standing on what looked like a drawing of a dragon. As if in reaction to her gaze, the inscriptions suddenly moved, and a black outline of a small dragon sprung up from the surface of the disc.

 

It growled at them, obsidian tongue and teeth seeming to absorb the light around them. The metal box that the Chosen One had just pulled out of Qube’s backpack (which, if she were being totally honest, she didn’t actually remember him putting in there in the first place, but that was probably just some kind of pocket magic at work) squealed again, before a deep, gravelly voice issued forth.

 

“Welcome, to the True Fire,” it boomed.

 

“Interesting,” the Chosen One said, and stuck his hand through the outline of the dragon.

 

“I have — wait, what are you doing?” The obsidian outline of the dragon jumped up in the air, knocking away the Chosen One’s hand. It stared down at the Saviour of All, its face a perfect outline of the First Exposure to Chosen One Expression.

 

“Huh, so only the black itself is modeled? That seems strange…” the Chosen One said, reaching up and grabbing the lower-hanging outline of the dragon’s belly. He pulled on it, and the dragon was once again dragged down, before wriggling free and flying up again. Quite how it was flying when its wings consisted only of black outlines was a curious question, but Qube was reasonably certain the answer was dragon-based magic.

 

To be honest, when the King Salamander had been talking about the First Breath of dragons, she had expected the dragons to be a little more… solid.

 

“I have waited a hundred years for a Hero to come and rescue the True Fire,” the mass of squiggles growled.

 

“Exactly a hundred years, huh?” the Chosen One seemed oddly unimpressed by such a round number.

 

Sewer Bard thoughtfully strummed his lute.

 

“Legends do tell of a sacred flame, locked away in the heart of a volcano a hundred years ago. Perhaps this could be said flame?” he posited. “I know a beautiful saga about it, if you would like to hear it.”

 

Qube frowned. Had the Salamanders been waiting that long? And it didn’t seem like the Lava Slime could survive that long without food. Although she wasn’t entirely sure what the biological necessities of either species were, it still seemed excessive. No one else seemed to be questioning this, though, so she simply filed it away as another thing to research when they got back to Cobbletown.

 

There was just so much she didn’t know about the world!

 

The Chosen One seemed much less interested in learning the secrets of the world, though, and more interested in grabbing the dragon again.

 

“Get down here,” he ordered the obsidian construct.

 

The dragon ignored him, and continued to deliver its exposition.

 

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“Though the volcano has been sustained by the echo of said fire, it is now dying down into embers. This flame, this True Fire, must be returned to the physical plane, where it can— stop that,” the dragon outline swatted at the Chosen One, who was jumping up to try and grab its tail.

 

“Hang on, I want to see what this does,” he said, turning to Qube. “Okay. Get on your knees. I need to mount you again.”

 

Definitely Bad Guy turned several very interesting shades of red and Sexy Screamy Spider Lady gasped so sharply she started choking on her own venom as Qube, Childhood Companion to the Golden Prohecy’s Chosen One, sighed and knelt, allowing said Saviour to crouch on her shoulders once more.

 

Sewer Bard, as always, just looked lost.

 

The Chosen One, crouched on his faithful Companion’s shoulders, was finally able to jump through the frame of the mystical obsidian guardian of the True Fire, for all the world like a lion through a hoop. He then tried to make one of his party members jump through, but none of them had really seemed able to understand exactly what was going on, or what he wanted from them.

 

So, after a few more jumps, and an attempt to break off a piece of the black outline, the Chosen One finally climbed off of Qube’s shoulders.

 

The obsidian dragon, meanwhile, had explained its entire backstory, and was waiting for an answer. Qube almost admired how the obsidian dragon, after a few repeated cries of “stop that!” had just launched into its spiel explaining the mystical origins of the True Fire, ignoring the fact that the person it was talking to was currently inside it. Even its eyes had stopped tracking the Chosen One after he jumped through it, and were instead fixedly staring out across the disc.

That kind of dedication to reciting a speech it had no doubt been memorising for a hundred years really spoke to Qube. She hadn’t been able to hear it over the Chosen One’s shouted commands at her, but she appreciated the dragon’s efforts, nonetheless.

 

“Okay, so, slimes or salamanders, yeah?” the Chosen One asked casually.

 

“Well, Noble Patron, it seems a little bit more complicated than that…” Sewer Bard started to explain.

 

“Nope!” the Chosen One said cheerfully. “That’s it. Hey, you,” he addressed Qube, “come over here.” After a moment he added: “Please.”

 

Qube, a little flustered by the Chosen One’s politeness, stepped up to stand beside the True Fire. The Chosen One looked at her, and rubbed his chin.

 

“Hmm, how to pull this off…” he muttered to himself. “Okay. There’s no Save Point here, but I saved just before we came here so I can always skip through the dialogue… I’m not sure what would happen if you died though? You would probably just reload in, that’s what’s been happening with the regular reloading… unless your death triggers some autosave [balderdash]. Urgh, this is why I hate single save files.”

 

Qube understood almost none of what he was saying, but she did find the parts about her potential death a little disturbing. While she was obviously ready and willing to give her life in the fight against Evil, she had been rather hoping to not die. But she did find his references to the Save Point interesting...

 

Maybe the Save Point had something to do with saving her or the Chosen One’s lives if they needed to? In which case no wonder he kept interacting with them — maybe he was transferring over some of his life energy? Or giving his “report” to the Golden Prophecy in some way? What was the purpose of these Save Points?

 

“Well, I’m just going to have to risk it,” the Chosen One said with a shrug. “Right, you, [take].” And here he pointed at the True Fire, which was either the by-product of the sky and land coming together, or the first breath of the first dragon.

 

Qube, of course, instantly reached out and grabbed the powerful artifact.

 

After all, what the Chosen One asked of her, she did without hesitation.

 

As she touched it she felt a horrible sensation, as if she was being pulled into the flame itself. As if it wanted to use her as fuel.

 

“Pull it free.” The voice of the Chosen One cut through the feeling, and she instinctively yanked the True Fire from its pedestal. It stuck for a second then, with a POP, she stumbled backwards, falling onto her butt. In her hands, she still clutched the True Fire, and on the pedestal before her… was the True Fire? Qube stared at it, perplexed. How had she even been able to hold a part of the True Fire in the first place? It was a flame. There was nothing to grasp. Why had she stuck her hand into a magical flame without a single question? Was it just because the Chosen One had issued her a direct order? She had felt some strange compulsion to obey him when he had ordered her to take it, similar to when he ordered her to follow, stay, or sleep.

 

It felt like the Golden Prophecy was back inside her.

 

Qube stared into the True Fire that danced on her palms, an exact twin to the flame that still graced the pedestal.

 

Her mind instantly started spinning explanations — the True Fire could not be diminished, taking fire from fire didn’t reduce the flame anyway, some kind of magical fuel — but, for once, she didn’t want to try and figure out what had just happened.

 

She was just extremely pleased that her bond with the Chosen One was so strong that she was able to plunge her hand into a naked flame without a moment’s hesitation! Truly, she was becoming better and better at being a faithful Childhood Companion! Alderman was going to be so proud of her when they went back to the village.

 

A wave of homesickness crashed over her as she remembered the village. Once they had a few Temples under their belt, she might be able to ask the Hero if they could quickly stop by the old home and check in on the other Potential Chosen Ones. Sure, Quinton had been a pain in the butt, and never taken her efforts to be the best Potential Companion seriously, and Quince tended to lapse into silence for days at a time, but (aside from, of course, the Chosen One) they had been her best friends. They had been the only ones who really understood how it felt to maybe have the fate of the world dependent on how good they were at friendship.

 

In a weird way, Sewer Bard reminded her of Quinton. Maybe that’s why his flirty comments annoyed her so much — they reminded her too much of how Quinton would try and distract her from her training (no doubt so he could become the better Childhood Companion!) or would act like his muscles made him a better fit. But, even though they had the same job, Quince and Sexy Screamy Spider Lady couldn’t have been more different. Qube almost laughed, thinking about how Quince would react to Sexy Screamy Spider Lady’s antics.

 

All this flashed through her mind in the time it took for the Chosen One to grin at her, wild and triumphant, before reaching out and plunging his hand into the True Fire still on the pedestal.

 

The world went dark.

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