Before he tries to solve the blindingly difficult urn puzzle, Tony heads over to a nearby stone pedestal to retrieve another Magickal Codex with no matching rune. For those of you keeping track, that’s one magical circle, two codexes (codices?), and two runes. And he still can’t cast any spells. Lord almighty.

Back to the urn puzzle. So Tony has three matching urns, one of which is filled, one of which is empty, and one of which is broken. You know, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Tony has to make all three of the urns match somehow. The easy solution would be to break all three of them, since Tony doesn’t exactly have a tube of superglue in his tunic with which to fix the broken one. But that wouldn’t be taking into account the random fountain in the corner of the room. While it would be funny if the game designers stuck it there and it had nothing to do with any puzzles, of course that’s not the case. To me, the fountain looks like a stylized face with water pouring out of its mouth into a small basin. Here is RETD’s take: “A disturbing rendition of a monstrous devil! It is contorted into what appears to be a fountain. What sickly liquid is this draining into the pool, trickling from a scum-encrusted spout?” What a fucking drama queen. From the way he’s wigging out about it, I’m guessing it must be spewing Tidus santorum. And I’ve officially hit a new low.

Tony, while no stranger to bodily fluids, is not about to stick his hands in this nasty crap. I make him fill the Squirtle urn anyway. But oh no! Tony clumsily drops the urn, causing it to shatter. Well, shit. But all is not lost — there was a green rune hiding inside the thing. I recognize it as the Bulbasaur rune. Yes, that means Tony just found the Bulbasaur rune inside the Squirtle urn. This doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. At least he finally has a rune that is smaller than a zombie’s torso. Coincidentally, this rune matches the codex that Tony found in this very room! Is it possible that Tony might be able to cast an actual spell before his chapter is over?

Also, I’m guessing that this disgusting fountain is the baptismal font that Chickenmonk spoke of. This brings a whole new level of odd and stupid to the whole scenario. Once again, we’re back to the issue of whether the monks are all evil or if only some are evil. If Chickenmonk’s story is true, and he’s just an innocent bystander caught up in the nefarious plots of the actual evil monks, then why does he find nothing odd about going down into a scary secret basement to fill urns with gross poop juice? And why does he just stand in that room for the rest of the chapter instead of running the fuck out of there and warning his fellow non-evil monks? None of the possible scenarios make any sense at all. I will leave it up to you guys.

Looking around, Tony realizes that there are no other doors to the room. But there’s another tapestry in the middle of the wall, approximately the same width as a door. Hey, wait a minute! In order to pass through, Tony must set fire to it once again, even though evil and/or non-evil monks presumably pass through this all the time. I assume they’re not burning and rehanging a tapestry every time they use this door. But hey, I like burning stuff. Plus, RETD informs me that the tapestry is approximately as yucky as the fountain, and probably should be burned anyway.

At the end of another corridor, Tony enters a room that practically has a neon sign reading “Evil Plans Afoot Here!” He’s just in time to see a black-robed fellow pass through an ornate sliding door. Luckily, the monk is oblivious to flaming Tony and his flaming torch. Once the door slides shut behind the probably-evil monk, Tony takes a look around this creepy lair. It appears to be an underground library, albeit a small, cramped one. Books line the walls, and a small round table sits in the center, complete with more books, some loose papers, and some burning candles. The books, RETD says, are terrible religious texts written in monster language. Wait, how does RETD know this? This is just one more hint that he’s not exactly the most savory of random exposition providers. Naturally, the sliding door is locked to Tony. On the floor directly in front of the table is a carved plate, with a somewhat familiar symbol. It’s a triangle with a small circle at each corner, and RETD informs us that it has “dried splashes” on its surface.

Hmmm, this is a puzzler. Three objects with small circular bases, somehow associated with liquid? It’s just not ringing a bell. Jesus. Tony finds that by standing on the floor plate, the secret door opens. But this is a Zelda-style switch where something is needed to hold it down. Well, this is just too much for Tony to handle with his zombie brain, so he pokes around the room some more. He should be glad that the room’s occupant left some magical items for him to acquire. These monks are so nice and helpful when they’re not carrying out their dastardly plots!

Tony acquires the ANTORBOK (Project) codex, which matches the very first zombie rune he found. On the table, Tony finds the final item he needs to — GASP! — cast a freakin’ spell! Namely, it’s the “Enchant Item” Spell Scroll. To recap (heh): in order to cast this one spell, Tony had to find a magic circle, three runes, three matching codices, and the spell scroll. For all that baggage, I should be able to cast Ultima rather than this Enchant Item BS.

RETD gives me a little demo of how to set up spells and assign them to buttons on the controller. All you need to know is that a three-point spell requires one Pokemon rune (in this case, Bulbasaur) and two other runes (in this case, Item and Project). The Pokemon rune gives the spell its alignment. The Enchant Item spell not only makes weapons more powerful, it also fixes broken items. And Tony just happens to have not one, but two broken items in his inventory! How lucky that Tony discovered the very spell that would fix the very items he needs in order to proceed!

Well, I may get on with it. With his fancy new blue magic bar, Tony can now fix the two broken urns. When he casts the spell, a female voice seductively — yet creepily — calls out the name of each rune as the corresponding symbol lights up on the floor around Tony. For the record, the voice belongs to the Pokemon God Bulbasaur — we don’t know this yet, but it’s going to be really irritating to play dumb about it. I’m sure the idea of Bulbasaur with a sexy woman’s voice is not a new one in the realm of fanfiction, but I’m going to place this firmly into the “regret” column in terms of my Pokemon = Ancients analogy.

Tony needs to fill the two newly repaired urns, so he returns to the fluid-spewing fountain. Of course, RETD can’t resist commenting on this process. “Dunking the urn into the foul smelling fountain, it becomes filled to the brim with rank fluid. It is a lot heavier now, and rife with foeter.” Well, someone certainly bought a thesaurus recently! Also, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starting to suspect that the liquid in the fountain might be somewhat less than pure.

Tony lugs the three smelly urns back to the library. At this point, I have even more unanswered questions, and I’m not talking about the obvious “How did he manage to carry all three urns without dropping or spilling them?” Namely, if this floor plate is needed to hold open the door, then how did that robed jackass manage to open it without using the plate? And if there is a way to open it without triggering the switch, then why is the switch needed at all? Plus, the fact that Tony was able to open the door simply by standing on the plate means that anything above a certain weight should work. Why couldn’t he just grab a bunch of books from the shelves and pile them on the plate? Also, let’s pretend that only these three filled urns will trigger the switch when placed in the correct locations. Doesn’t it seem kind of weird that Chickenmonk was carrying one around, intending to fill it up? Was he trying to open the secret door for some reason, or was his urn-filling story true, in which case, the urns just happen to be used for multiple purposes? And why were two of the urns just lying around in random locations, with one of them containing a rune?

Pointing out the silliness of this situation isn’t going to open the door for me, so I do what the game wants me to do and place the three filled urns in the correct locations on the floor plate. How funny would it be if that didn’t open the door? But of course, it does. Tony proceeds down yet another corridor — I swear, he must be in the next town over by now — and enters a door to find the guy in the black robe. Again, it would be hilarious if this guy was just a regular, non-evil monk who was preparing for the next Bible study or something, but no. There’s no way that anything innocent is going on here. First of all, the room is dark, with weird designs carved into the walls. At the far end of the room is an altar with a book on it, lit by about two dozen candles. Oh, and there are Charmander zombies lying on the floor. It’s good that they’ve already been dispatched, so I won’t have to fight them or anything.

The black-robed guy turns away from the book when Tony enters the room, and starts talking in a stereotypical Evil Guy voice. The camera gives us a nice close-up on his face so we can see the rotting skin and bloody crevices in nauseating detail. What is it about this chapter and rotting faces, anyway? “You have come to return my book…” the Bishop (yet again, I’m tired of playing dumb) begins. Does he mean the Tome of Eternal Darkness? That was kind of out of the blue — it’s not like Tony stole it from this dude’s office. That weird other dimension kind of forced him to take it. The Bishop does one of those clichéd bad guy things where he promises a “quick death” as a reward. Battle time!

It figures that Tony would have to fight this fucker while in his weakened, rotten state. Thankfully, the Bishop’s own weakened, rotten state slows him down. Also, Tony just happened to enchant his sword before he entered the room, and while the Bishop stands in one place punching at the air, Tony sneaks up behind him and hacks his head with the sword. This entire sequence is accompanied by Tony’s high-pitched battle cry. It’s very epic. Halfway through the fight, the two Charmander zombies randomly rise from the floor to make my life miserable. I guess they were just napping. At any other time, Tony might appreciate the chiseled musculature of the zombies’ buttcheeks, but he’s kind of preoccupied now. A bunch of hacking, slashing, and violent sword thrusts into the ass later, Tony stands triumphant. Of course, his health bar is in the toilet and he’s half insane, but that sounds like how I feel on an average day.

Tony retrieves the Bishop Key from the Bishop’s putrid robes. Now he has what he needs to save Charlemagne! Sure, Tony’s totally gross and unpresentable now, but he’s hoping Charlemagne will find his long, hard blade impressive. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Tony’s trek back to the surface is fraught with peril. First of all, his insanity has given him the disturbing habit of randomly thrusting his sword through his hand. This doesn’t affect the game or his health in any way, but it’s icky to watch. I’m not sure if this is a Tony-specific behavior, given his zombification, or if any character will do this when the sanity bar drops low enough. It’s amusing to think that only Tony does this, kind of in a “Hey, check out what I can do now!” type of way. The Golden Showers Spell hits him again the moment he leaves the room. This time, his beautiful girl hair starts falling out in patches, and his face becomes even more grotesque. Even worse for me is that he is now much slower and more hunched over. Controlling him is like steering a rusty shopping cart through frozen molasses.

The first time I played this game, a couple of my friends were watching. One of them made a comment on Tony’s movement at this point, perhaps meaning to say he was “hunching along” or even “slumping along.” Unfortunately, it came out “humping along.” Now, whenever I’m controlling a particularly slow character (or object, vehicle, etc.) in any game, I refer to it as “humping along” and the character often gains the nickname of “Humpy McHumperson.” Yes, I’m subjecting you to yet another of my personal in-jokes, but I’m sure we can all enjoy a good laugh at the word “hump.”

Anyway, the defeat of the Bishop has respawned zombies along the entire path back to the main cathedral, and now I’m stuck with Humpy McHumperson and his shitty health bar. Even this wouldn’t be so bad, if it weren’t for the new enemies introduced at this point: little scorpion-like dickholes called trappers. Trappers, as their name would indicate, enjoy trapping me in an alternate dimension filled with monsters. The only way to avoid them is to walk, rather than run, past them. Yes, that means I have to make Tony move even slower. I manage to avoid any trapping this time around, but I’m sure I will not be so lucky in future recaps, and I can more properly describe the alternate dimension then. I’m so looking forward to this.

When Tony enters the room where he met Chickenmonk, he finds the dumbass still there, still “ambl[ing] around nervously.” God, what a useless douche. I just remembered that when he saved this guy from the terrifying Pokemon zombies earlier, it was possible for Tony to accidentally strike down the monk. Trust me, I know this firsthand. For some reason it never occurred to me to try killing Chickenmonk after he gave me the sword. What was I thinking? Well, it’s my recap, and just to amuse my sad self, I’m going to pretend that Tony, in a crazed zombie rage, completely loses his mind and kills every living (and undead) being in his path. Chickenmonk, expecting his own demise at the hands of the evil Bishop, is surprised when he’s cut down by the man to whom he gave the sword in the first place. He instantly regrets his lack of self preservation skills as well as his unpleasant daily trek to the slimy buttfountain. But it’s too late, as he is now dead.

The Golden Shower Spell is becoming more and more frequent, and it attacks Tony once more as he leaves this room. I really wish the camera didn’t insist on a close-up of the spell’s effects, because this time around, it looks like Tony applied clown makeup with a piece of shit. He now moves at a slow humping walk, completely losing the ability to run. Thankfully, he reaches the ladder to the surface without dying. I don’t know how he can climb a ladder when he can barely walk, but only the Black Screen of Lazy Animators knows the answer to that riddle.

A low growl, reminding me of those dogs from Ghostbusters, greets Tony when he emerges from the secret bookshelf. Hasn’t this guy been through enough already? The monster makes its onscreen debut in a most cinematic fashion, revealing itself as a large, red, muscular, bipedal creature with three heads. Whichever evil monk summoned this thing when Tony was in the basement also took great pains to seal off the staircase to the sanctuary with a shiny red barrier. It still looks like Tony could squeeze through the unguarded railing, but it’s not like the game is that sophisticated. Luckily for Tony, his brain hasn’t completely rotted away, so he remembered to enchant his long, impressive sword before he entered the library just in case something like this happened. It’s amazing how that worked out.

You might recall that I mentioned something earlier about the alignment of spells, and if you’ve been paying extra special attention, you might notice that I am using a Bulbasaur-aligned enchantment to fight a Charmander-aligned monster. In the Pokemon world, this might be the recipe for disaster, but in this case, a weapon enchanted with any alignment is stronger than a non-enchanted weapon. The pissed-off monster in the library is called a Horror, but that name is way too generic. Since it has three heads and growls like a monstrous dog, I’m going to name it Fluffy. Yes, I’m stealing a nickname from Sam, but it’s still more creative than calling it a “Horror.” I guess the game designers forgot to smoke their pot the day they came up with that name.

The trick to killing Fluffy is to stab its three heads while avoiding its constant red lightning attacks and claw swipes. In spite of Tony’s slowness, his low health bar, and utter inability to target the correct body part, he makes Fluffy his bitch. Somehow, I am not impressed by this new enemy type. Ironically, after successfully defeating that badass-looking motherfucker, Tony is struck down at the bottom of the stairs by a group of Mewtwo zombies. But wait! A shimmer of golden light surrounds Tony, and he is resurrected with a full life bar. Sweet! It’s like that part at the end of Final Fantasy X where I fought the aeons and Yu Yevon and couldn’t die! Except this instance isn’t as awful and tedious. Something good happened to me! Sure, it means Tony must continue to suffer rather than die a merciful death from his condition, but hey, it’s not my problem.

At long, long last, Tony painfully humps his way over to the audience chamber to warn Charlemagne of the attempt on his life. Given that the enemies are already within the cathedral and Tony has been fucking around for the last half hour, I think it’s safe to say that Charlemagne, at the very least, has already figured this out. As soon as Tony unlocks the door, the camera switches to a disgusting close-up of a contorted dead face belonging to some guy wearing a crown. Damn, I hope Charlemagne didn’t witness this guy’s death — I’m sure that would have been very distressing to him. Obviously, this hideous corpse is actually Charlemagne, and if the jeweled crown didn’t tip us off, Tony’s less masculine version of the Darth Vader “NOOOOO!!!!!” does. Well, shit. Not only did Tony risk life, limb, and attractiveness to protect this guy, but it was all for nothing. This might qualify for “Worst Day Ever” along with the day I first watched the Pond Scene.

Speaking of vomit-inducing, Tony has another attack of the Golden Showers, this one rotting him away to a skeleton as he finally collapses, screaming about his failure to save Charlemagne. For the record, Charlemagne apparently died in 814 A.D. of pleurisy. The Wikipedia article said nothing about a conspiracy of murder created by Charmander the Pokemon God. Since Wikipedia is never, ever wrong, I think it’s safe to say that this version of Charlemagne’s death is fictional. It’s this type of helpful information that keeps you coming back to this site.

The black-robed monks standing around the room stare at this spectacle, unable to keep from gloating. “You are a fool for trying to save him, [Tony],” one of them growls in a generic menacing voice. Actually, it appears to be Voldemort from the beginning, although it would not make any sense for him to be in this room, much less give Tony a scroll for Charlemagne when he was just going to jog on over to the cathedral to directly murder the emperor. For that matter, assuming they’ve all been in here with Charlemagne since before Tony’s arrival, what the hell are they doing just standing around in here with Charlemagne’s corpse? Wait, I’m pretty sure I don’t want that answered. “His fate was decided many centuries ago, as is the fate of this world,” Voldemort pulls out of his ass.

The camera switches to Tony, who still appears conscious, although he’s writhing around, emitting golden sparks and looking generally gross. Voldemort takes this opportunity to deliver his final line: “Despite your faith, there is little to save you from the power of [Charmander]!” I admit, I typed that all out just for the dramatic hilarity of sticking a Pokemon name in there. After Voldemort finishes his scenery chewing, he rears back and something bursts out of his chest in a spray of blood. The monster poses for the camera in all its red skinless glory. Its head resembles an evil dog, but it stands on two legs and has praying mantis arms. It’s about the size of Voldemort, so I think it must have been controlling him rather than, say, gestating in his organs. Also, I guess the mystery of the dead monk from earlier is now solved.

Happily for me, this is the end of Tony’s chapter, and the grotesque cover of the Tome closes over the Photoshop filtered image of the dog mantis. Back in the present, Alex has lost quite a bit of sanity from the lack of sense-making in the chapter. After Ellia’s chapter, you’ll recall that Alex had to solve an insultingly simple candle puzzle to find the next page. I admit, this time around I’m actually stumped over how to proceed. After consulting the strategy guide — yes, for a puzzle in this game — I find out that Alex has in her possession a key to the second floor. Well, slap my ass and call me a bitch.

It doesn’t really matter that she’s been holding this key all along, since it breaks the second she sticks it in the keyhole. Don’t you kind of wish that would happen to Sora? Now, you might be thinking that Alex, in order to use the Enchant Item spell, must find and collect all the appropriate runes and items wherever they might be. Conveniently enough, the Tome of Eternal Darkness isn’t just a nightmarish storybook. It’s also records magical spell information. In other words, anyone who reads the Tome can immediately use the exact spells that were discovered in that chapter. I’m not really sure how that works, especially since Tony didn’t get a chance to enter this information in the Tome before lapsing into his undead coma. So who exactly wrote down the specifics of the spell? Does the information just randomly and magically appear in the book? And for that matter, since Ellia’s chapter took place centuries after Tony’s, wouldn’t she have had access to his chapter, thus learning the Enchant Item spell? Or was his chapter added long after hers by some different person or magical method, despite the order in which they actually occurred? None of this really works, does it?

Alex uses the knowledge she somehow gained from reading the latest chapter to magically repair the key. Now Alex is free to explore the upstairs, and that means you get to read more of my descriptions of rooms in the mansion. First of all, there are roughly twenty thousand paintings on the walls, and Alex has the option to look at every single one. I’ll save you the time: they’re all creepy, and none of them really apply to anything. Who would’ve guessed? In one room, Alex finds a piece of paper stuck behind a painting. Okay, so there’s one useful painting. That means it was only a 99.9% waste of my time. The piece of paper is not Edward’s secret Harry/Snape epic fanfic, though. It’s something much more benign — a chapter page from the Tome called “The Gift of Forever.”

The room also contains a locked gun cabinet, and any doubts over whether I’ll eventually be packing heat are put to rest when Alex discovers some ammo on a nearby dresser. Oh my goodness, what if a child had discovered that?! Clearly Edward wanted children to die. He was a terrible man!

Technically, I’m done with what I need to do in this recap, but the earth would stop spinning if I didn’t finish exploring the upstairs. Hold onto your hats, this is going to be a real thrill ride! When Alex heads down the hallway to the right, she sees a ghostly male figure dressed in 1700s-style clothing — complete with extra masculine ponytailed wig! — walk through a solid wall. To add some additional creepiness to the scene, the figure turns and stares at Alex right before he disappears into the flowered wallpaper. Eek! Bravely, Alex examines the blank spot on the wall, only to find a very obvious door that was wallpapered over. Unfortunately, Alex’s bladed weapon is unable to cut through wallpaper, so this mysterious closed-off room will have to wait.

There’s another room in this section of the hallway, but it’s too dark for Alex to examine, and there are no flashlights or candles available anywhere in the house. As she approaches an eerie stained glass window of a woman at the end of the hallway, some scary voices begin whispering. This is just in case the floating Charmander rune and the harmful forcefield didn’t clue us in that something important is located here. Once again, Alex must wait for the proper time to grab this rune.

On the other side of the upstairs, Alex finds more unnerving artwork. Rather than a painting, this one is a bust that slowly turns to watch Alex as she walks by. I’m not sure which is worse — the creepy moving statue part or the pervy voyeur part. Alex, probably used to being stared at by rude bastards, continues to the single room at the end of the hall. This one contains a bed, some ammo, and a dresser with a magic symbol on it in place of a keyhole. For the thousandth time, Alex can’t do anything with this. In spite of all the weird shit there is on the second floor, it’s still surprisingly boring.

The room has an attached bathroom, and I’m sure that fans of this game will complain if I don’t mention the infamous bathtub scene. When Alex — read, the unsuspecting player — examines the empty tub, the camera does this sudden cut to Alex’s body lying in its own blood in the bottom of the tub. This is accompanied by a bloodcurdling scream. I will admit to all of you that I jumped about two feet when I first played this part, and so did the other two people watching me play. I still can’t watch this part with my eyes all the way open. A split second later, the tub is empty again. In other disturbing news, there is brown crust in the toilet bowl.

For some strange reason, there’s an old piece of parchment on the toilet tank. RETD informs us that this is a journal page belonging to Maximillian Roivas, presumably one of Alex’s relations. I hope we find out exactly who he is, especially since we’re poking around in his diary. There really isn’t anything worth sharing on the page. Basically, this Max person is very depressed and feels like a naive douchebag because of something he discovered. It’s like every personal journal entry ever.

I have exhausted all of my options for this chapter, so I’m going to go ahead and cut it off here. Without an expository cut scene, I have no idea what’s going to happen next time. But it probably involves death, zombies, creepiness, and phallic weapons. Hooray! See you in Part 4!