And with that, we’re back to Ruley and co. Sigh. They head to the castle, Scias in tow, which leads nicely into what feels like my hundredth “This makes no fucking sense” rant of the recap. See, I know Ruley and Sandy are to intelligence what Fifty Shades is to literature, but surely even THEY should have entertained the notion that Scias shouldn’t be trusted, having been assigned to keep tabs on their activities!? We know that Scias isn’t exactly dedicated to his role, and doesn’t seem to care what the party gets up to either way, but if I was attempting to break a suspected criminal out of jail, bringing along someone who’s in the pockets of the jailers would be top of my list of things NOT to do.

After stopping off at a handily-placed nocturnal Manilo merchant, the group approaches the castle. Now, you might expect a castle, especially a castle currently holding a prominent political prisoner, to be pretty heavily-guarded at night. Oh, how naïve you are. Such an assumption would only prove to be correct if this was a game where things actually make sense. Instead, we’re supposed to believe that the main entrance of the castle is completely devoid of guards, with only a solitary soldier guarding one of the several interior passages. “He certainly is keeping an eye on us, isn’t he?” observes Sandy, regardless of the fact that they’re currently hiding around a corner and the guard hasn’t spotted them yet. Christ, things are getting bad when even the dialogue makes no sense whatsoever. “I suppose it wouldn’t do much good talking to him, would it?” Sandy continues. Yes, that conversation would undoubtedly go well:

“Hello Mr Guard, we were wondering if you could help us with something. You see, one of our friends is being held under house arrest in one of the towers, and we’d be mighty grateful if you could help us to get him out.”

“Sure thing, miss. Head up the stairs, take the second left, walk to the end of the corridor, then up the spiral staircase. If any of my colleagues try to stop you, just tell ’em Jim okayed it. Oh, and here’s the key to your friend’s room. Glad to be of help!”

Next, Sandy decides that this is the best possible moment to determine Scias’s loyalties, because why the hell not. When she asks if he plans to stop them, he replies that he was only instructed to tell the Lube-Yans if they did anything, except with 200% more stuttering. “Thank you Scias. I guess you’re one of the good guys!” Sandy simpers. I know she’s right, but Jesus Christ–this level of gullibility really shouldn’t go unpunished.

With that thrilling exchange out of the way, I finally regain control. There’s actually another guard on the other side of the room, but he’s fast asleep (how original!) and blocking the doorway, so I instantly take him out of the equation. The non-sleeping guard is apparently incredibly short-sighted, because he doesn’t react at all until Sandy is standing mere inches in front of him. As well as being near-blind, I figure the poor guy is mute as well, because he doesn’t even get to deliver a line. Instead, a text box pops up and reveals the gimmick of this dungeon–defeating the guards before they call for help. This may seem a challenging task, but fear not! Lube-Ya’s guards are a considerate bunch, and wait around for an entire turn before they even consider running off, giving our heroes ample time to leave them laying.

It gets better. Purely to see what happens, I allow one of the guards to get away. Guess what punishment lies in store for the intruders. Go on, you’ll never guess. OK, I won’t keep you in suspense–rather than being executed on the spot, or thrown in jail, or brought before Prince Cowlick, or any number of believable possible outcomes, they’re just thrown out and told not to come back. That’s right–a group of people breaking into a castle with the intent of liberating a prisoner are simply given a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again. I have no words. Christ, I know I’d probably still complain if the game designers slapped me with a Game Over screen, but even that would make more sense than this.

But there’s more. After an attempted prison break and assaults on a number of guards, you could be forgiven for expecting Lube-Ya to put some preventative measures in place…beefed-up security, perhaps. But no. When the group sneaks back into the castle–though “strolls casually back through the front gates” would be a more accurate description–there are no extra guards. It’s like these people WANT someone to take Clay away (and I could be on to something there).

Incredibly, we’re not done suspending our disbelief. Remember those guards who were knocked out during the first attempted break-in? Well, they’re still around. As in “still out cold on the ground where they fell”. Either Lube-Ya has a serious dearth of guards, or Prince Cowlick is such a dick that he won’t even relieve his men of their posts when they’re unconscious.

I think I’ve poked more than enough holes in this embarrassing excuse for a prison break already, so let’s skip to the dramatic finale. We cut to Clay’s prison tower, or, to be precise, the night skies above it. The camera lingers on the crescent moon for a few moments as Mr Charisma himself sighs “Elina…how could I let this happen!?” What was that? You thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse? Oh, my sweet summer child, what do you know about wank?

What follows is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the arrival of Sandy and the others spares us a melodramatic, wanksty monologue from Clay. On the other hand, it also stops him from throwing himself off the balcony in despair. And, well, the addition of Sandy to a scene is never a good thing. Clay does a double-take, all “What are you guys doing here?” Excuse me just a moment.

DUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know a sarcastic retort would spoil the intense drama of this scene, but I would have loved for it to happen anyway. Sadly, Sandy gives him the truth: “We came to help you get out of here! To help you escape!” And I sincerely hate you for it. Rather than expressing gratitude to those who misguidedly consider him a friend, however, Clay decides to rain on their parade: “What good would that do? I mean, in the first place, where would we go, anyway?” You’re welcome, Clay. It was hardly a huge struggle to get here, but you could at least pretend to be happy, you know?

To her credit, Sandy doesn’t burst into tears from Clay acting meeeaaaan to her. Instead, she warns him that his tribe will lose their shit and ignite a civil war if he’s executed (personally, I think they’d have the champagne on ice). She then ruins this surprise reality check by reverting to type and simpering “As long as it’s with you, [Clay]…I’d go anywhere!” Barf. Of course, this mushy sentiment is enough to convince Clay to escape with them, his reasoning being that they’re the only ones who care about rescuing Elina. Before resuming the Great Elina Hunt, however, he wants to stop by at Worent to “stop them from doing anything stupid”. Ugh, there aren’t enough faces to palm. This is akin to Tidus declaring he wants to stop someone from being annoying.

After booting Clay into the back row–and he clearly hasn’t been using his free time to work out, since he’s lagging five levels behind the rest of the party–Ruley begins what should be a leisurely stroll back to the entrance. But the game designers are going all-out in their determination to make me pay for crossing the Golden Plains unscathed, and immediately throw the group into a battle with a trio of Toxic Flies. These fuckers, you may recall, handed me a Game Over in embarrassing fashion back in Part 6, so I’m sure you can appreciate the fear coursing through my veins right now. Did I mention that I haven’t saved the game since I started recapping? And that I will likely drink myself into oblivion if I have to play through all of this again?

Somebody must be watching over me, because the party emerges victorious. TikTok even manages to steal an item from one of the flies using her Filch Felch ability! Back outside, the gang pushes right past a pair of gossiping guards, further incrementing the Nonsense-O-Meter. Seriously, I think this cements Lube-Ya as the uncontested winner of the “Worst Security in Videogame History” trophy.

This entire recap is pretty much one place of misery after another, because Worent is our next stop. In a masterclass on fawning, the Worens gush all over Clay and his daring escape from Lube-Ya as soon as he enters the village. One woman gasps “I heard you all snuck into Castle [Lube-Ya]…didn’t anyone see you?” Don’t even get me started, lady. Also, how the fuck has news of The Great Lube-Yan Prison Break already reached here, when not one person in Lube-Ya even seemed to be aware that anything was amiss!?

Back at the Elders’ catbox, Clay is welcomed with open paws. One of the Elders–let’s say Smudge, because I don’t really care either way–tells him he should go and talk to his mother, who’ll surely be able to advise the group on their next move. Because her first plan of action worked so amazingly well. If her next brainwave involves forged weapons, volcanoes or faerie shit, I’m putting this recap on indefinite hiatus.

With the latest objective in their never-ending journey now made clear, the group is all ready to leave. But first, Ruley decides to pay Una a visit, a complete waste of thirty seconds when it turns out I still haven’t met the freaking requirement to learn her skills. I freely admit that this is because I am thoroughly terrible at this game. Incidentally, a random NPC outside mentioned something about a girl who used to beat Clay up all the time when they were younger, and, in the absence of any other warrior women around here, I think we’re supposed to assume he was referring to Una. Not that I care in any way about Una or Clay’s backstory, but I’m just covering my own ass here–after what I’ve endured in the past hour and a half (is that ALL!?), the last thing I want is for someone to get on my case for omitting this very important piece of character information.

Cut to Tarhn’s camp. The scene picks up after Clay and Tarhn have already had their mother-son reunion, for which I’m giving my eternal gratitude to the game designers. Seeing Clay in one “emotional” scene was almost too much for me to handle. Clay says he’s sorry for being such a dumbass, but mother dearest dismisses it: “I know I’m your mother, but you’re old enough now that you don’t need to apologize to me when you’ve done something wrong…” That’s good to know, because I imagine she’d get sick of hearing a few hundred apologies every single day. The rest of the conversation establishes that the Empire has demanded huge tracts of land as part of the new treaty negotiations, so I guess Clay’s execution wasn’t the only “difficult demand” it made in exchange for the totally-legit King’s Sword. That one delicious condition would have been more than enough for me, but here we are.

From this tidbit of information, Clay somehow reaches the conclusion that the Empire is searching for something. Right on cue, Sandy has an uncharacteristic brainwave and suggests that Ruley is what the Imperials are searching for. She points out that back in Sarai, the Imperials claimed to be looking for a [Non-]Dragon, and this was shortly after she found Ruley naked in the middle of the desert. Subsequently, the Mud Non-Dragon became violent around him, the faeries claimed he has a Dragon’s Eye…and he’s used his Non-Dragon transformation a few dozen times in battle, not that she includes this piece of information in her theory. “Nothing about him is normal!” she shrieks. I’m not even sure if she or the others are canonically supposed to know about Ruley’s true nature yet, but if they’re only just cottoning on now, they’re even bigger idiots than I originally suspected.

Tarhn responds with her wisest words yet, like that really counts for anything; if Ruley is indeed a Non-Dragon, both the Empire and Lube-Ya will want to use him for their own ends. “Maybe if we take him to meet the Wind [Non-]Dragon in Wyndia, he can tell us what we need to know!” Sandy pulls out of her rectum. “Makes sense to me,” Tarhn replies. I think anything would make sense to someone who’s imbibed the amount of pot she clearly has. “If you want to know about a [Non-]Dragon, the best place to ask is another [Non-]Dragon!” Thanks, Tarhn, but a Non-Dragon is a creature, not a location, no matter what the mystical spirits in your pipe might tell you.

Tarhn puts down her drug paraphernalia long enough to pull something from her jeans pocket and hand it to her son. Please don’t be a condom. To my relief, the object is actually something called a Jadestone. “You can use that to get through the ruins to Wyndia!” Tarhn reveals. I have to point out that it’s mighty convenient that the object required to open up the route between Lube-Ya and Wyndia is in the possession of a hippy living in the middle of nowhere and with no known connection to either city. Some may call this “contrivance”, but I’m just happy I don’t have to go on some sprawling, multi-headed fetch quest to obtain the damn thing. Also, Tarhn has actually done something useful, due to which I’m too shell-shocked to nitpick. Don’t worry–it’ll wear off in time for my next recap.

That recap, however, will have to wait–there are only so many things a person can cope with in one sitting, and a visit to Sandy’s hometown is certainly not one of them. More to follow once I’ve stocked up on alcohol!