Live look-in at Mamie’s sous chef

I choose the leftmost fork of the three first, because it is the one with the save point–this is either superbly logical of me or the exact wrong choice. Past the room with the three corridors, the ruins open up to the overcast, verging on stormy skies, leaving me with a lot of questions about how this place has remained both sealed and secret. I guess I didn’t ask this about Suikoden II‘s also-outdoor Sindar ruins, but I have to admit overhead recon wasn’t on my mind in that game, maybe due to the fact that that one didn’t have flying fucking mounts in it, and also those ruins weren’t literally in the backyard of two population centers.

ANYWAY. The ruins are filled, thus far, with blue Dragonites and flying mermaids with lyres that they use to put Hugo and Fubie to sleep so they can’t help kill the Dragonites that are roasting their friends alive. Cool, great. Good thing I have enough medicine for a hundred people in Hugo’s bags! The lizards and mermaids are sometimes accompanied by “Malifaux,” sentient marble columns with faces on each side that stomp on Sarge’s big duck butt like Thwomps crushing Mario. I only even bring them up because the name is both evocative and tells us nothing about them. “Bad fake,” really, sounds more like the conclusion of a Trump tweet, but if these are corrupted, fake marble columns, that would also all be of a piece, I guess. This western fork of the ruins, thanks to the handy map I have for some reason, exits to the east and the north, with three clearly marked dead ends where I’ll probably find skeletons with recipe scrolls jammed in their eye sockets. (Hugo actually finds Byakko Chain Mail on the only body in this area–which I maybe should give a once-over for holes before I equip it on anyone–and a script for Nadir on a pile of bones later in the dungeon. It turns out this is a script for a dramatic reenactment of Barry’s Mortal Kombat-scored final battle against the Count, which makes me think this particular skeleton was possibly already a skeleton when it “died.” He was just on a pilgrimage to the north to pitch his memoir to a publisher.)

Low-energy, Sad, etc.

The left fork is otherwise fruitless, so Hugo returns to the ruins’ nexus and takes the fork to the right. I am very grateful for this map, as these ruins would be incomprehensible without it. Hugo takes some stairs up to a catwalk bridge and proceeds all the way to the ruins’ southeast corner to find a body carrying Old Book Volume 4. I’m sure this will be scintillating material, given that this dude clearly died trying to find his glasses so he could read it, but we will get to that when Hugo returns home. Hugo backtracks from this crucial find and heads north from the first screen until he reaches steps leading to the inner ruins, and a save crystal. I have lost the plot entirely on how any of these criss-crossing paths interconnect, but I am pretty sure the middle fork from the first room ends up being completely vestigial. This probably means there is a literal pile of gold just past that doorway, but I guess I’ll never know now!

While we’re still in the boring stages of this place, a note on Futch and Bright, now that I’m getting to use them in battle, and for the first time in the series Futch is worth the trouble: obviously, like Hugo with Fubie, Futch can ride Bright in battle. What sets this pair apart is that Bright will first blast a fireball at their target before the two of them fly over to engage in melee. But even if that fireball incinerates their quarry–which it often does–Bright still lifts off and flies over to where the foe was standing just a moment ago, and then he and Futch shrug and eat popcorn for the remainder of the turn. It actually endears him more to me to be reminded that Futch is still kind of a pud. I don’t think I could handle it if he were a stem-to-stern stone-cold, foxy badass.

Back to the “action.” Up the steps, Hugo moans that Team Mask has too much of a lead on him, a commentary on the entire game if I’ve ever heard it, but of course it also turns out to be kind of wrong, as Sarah appears to tell him, “Sorry, but you can’t go further!” I mean, I guess Hugo was so far behind that Sarah was able to double back and wait to ambush him, but I strongly prefer the narrative that makes Hugo wrong as close to 100 percent of the time as possible. Sarah saunters down the steps, unnecessarily explaining that her male comrades are in the middle of a “very important ritual” ahead and she is here to buy them time. Giving Hugo further incentive to hurry up seems unwise, especially when the current Fire Bringer are comprised of some of the least hasty people I have ever seen.

This would all, of course, be more of a problem if Hugo were smart, and, well. “Ritual? What ritual this time?” he asks. I don’t know, chief, why don’t you rush up there and see for yourself? No? You’re going to stand here and talk instead? Understood. “It would be impossible for you to grasp our ultimate goal,” Sarah replies, contempt all over her face. This is true of Hugo and of me, since I just don’t have enough tape on Team Mask’s activities at this point, and also half of what he’s said and done seemingly contradicts the other half. I’m sure it will all make sense at the end! That always happens.

Sarah does request that her foes turn back and genuinely does seem like she doesn’t want to fight them, surely because she’s worried she might brain fart again and cast Kindness Rain when everyone’s at full health. And to that end, when Hugo and Co. refuse to slink back to Buttfuck Castle, she makes sure she has allies to overheal, summoning a party of chimeras and floating suits of armor. Oh no! Not a markedly less difficult version of Team Mask’s usual bullshit!

Not that this fight is, I think, supposed to be that hard–it’s more about making me use up even a few rune slots before dealing with whatever the Mask is cooking up back there. Thankfully, Baby Viki only needs one to deal with Sarah’s phantom creatures, and that’s all it takes for the fight to end. It took me longer to type the last two sentences than the fight actually lasted. “This is exasperating!” Sarah yells at them while her face remains entirely stoic. That’s, uh, a skill. “Stop trying to go where you don’t belong!” Come now, Sarah, it’s not like Hugo is trying to break into CERN, or even a bookstore at Florida State. But before she can, I don’t know, yell at him some more or attempt to summon more monsters this party will lay waste to in 20 seconds, a massive earthquake shakes the ruins. Somewhere ahead, a bright blue point of light flashes in the darkness, a prelude to ice crystals erupting violently from the ground in a snowflake pattern. A snowflake of snowflakes! I wish those words still only referred to pretty ice fractals, because they make me feel bad to type now!

Just a bad trip, my buddy, don’t worry about it.

By the time the seismic activity stops, the ruins are sheathed in frigid fog. It looks like someone turned on a dry ice machine, which possibly means the Undertaker is about to come down the stairs. I wouldn’t rule it out. Nor, it seems, would Sarah: while Hugo and his friends are looking all around them like if they’re just eagle-eyed enough they’ll spot the freezer that’s been left open, Sarah says to herself, “Does this have something to do with the power of the rune? Did something go wrong?” No, I don’t think this has anything to do with the True Water Rune. This is ice. And vapor. Don’t be daft, woman. Sarah runs off to figure out what’s happened, and Team Hugo is on her heels. I mean, Hugo isn’t going to figure out shit. But he’ll be present when other people do.

It takes roughly four seconds for Hugo to lose track of Sarah in this fog, though it’s not really obscuring visibility that much, and there’s also only one direction she could have gone. It doesn’t matter at all, is my point. But though she must be ahead of them, Hugo encounters not Sarah as he walks further north, but another magical creature: a blue-green serpent covered in pretty pink fins and surrounded with a phalanx of ice crystals, known as the Water Dragon. (Excuse me. “WaterDragn.”)

Despite all the ice, this fight is very much not a chill hang. (*waits for a high-five, no high-five appears*) The dragon uses each icicle it has as a very invasive, very unwelcome projectile, and it also can’t be physically attacked until the ones in front of it are gone. Total hairy bullshit, right? Well, that’s why Viki Junior is here. Like she did with Sarah’s conjurations, Viki busts out Open Gate, the first-level spell of her Pale Blue Gate Rune. This wipes out all but the back two icicles with plenty of time for Hugo and Futch to zoom on over and bash the Water Dragon’s snout in. Incidentally, the Water Dragon is the creature featured in Pale Palace, that same rune’s third-level spell. Why, was this thing summoned by a Pale Gate Rune too? BUT WHOSE???

(I actually don’t know–it might be the manifestation of the True Water Rune or some hand-wavy nonsense–but I am almost out of opportunities to perform this dumb WHO IS THE MASK act.)

While the Water Dragon still does a lot of damage even when handled right–and it does keep regenerating the stupid icicles, which in turn fucking heal it, too–this approach makes it sound pretty straightforward and even easy. And it is! Assuming you are a thoughtful gamer who pays attention and doesn’t just charge like a bullheaded asshole into every boss battle with the confidence that Hugo and Fubie’s brute force plus a Shield Rune can accomplish anything. So, for people who are not me. But like King Adolf, First and Thankfully Last of His Name, this boss fight has caught me flat-footed before and therefore I am, if anything, overprepared for it. Just this once, I am trying to not look like an incompetent buffoon. My reward for the three whole rounds it takes to jam the Water Dragon back in its Pokéball is a Flowing Rune. This would seem like a pretty sweet reward if literally any other scene were about to play out.

This was one (subpar) turn. Nerf Hugo and Fubie.

Hugo calls this deadly encounter “a close one” like he just stepped to the side of a speeding bus. Apt! Once the danger has passed, Caesar shows up with Apple, Lucia, Chris, and Geddy. (HMMMM.) “Sorry, Hugo,” Caesar says. “It took longer than I thought to get ready.” Unsurprising–Caesar’s casual just-rolled-out-of-bed look is no accident, but I doubt he’s willing to wake up an hour earlier to get it perfect without being late to work. But getting right to the point, Apple hurries Hugo along, insisting the sudden wintry onslaught is only a “fraction” of the True Water Rune’s “awesome power.” Look, it casts Kindness Rain as a LEVEL ONE SPELL, I’m fucking aware, thanks.