ambra receives a sword, a queen is murdered, pride waits
trill approaches baby nero to tell him what had just happened at the bank with envy. baby nero is miffed we didn’t kill envy & instead chose to save him from azazel & return him to his usual state.
trill brings up nero’s demon arm & asks why nero doesn’t trust monty to help with it. it’s complicated. trill suggests that nero ask honestly for help instead, but nero insists he has it under control. also, we have much bigger problems to deal with.
ambra returns with the new sword the archangels made. it is VERY powerful & dangerous.
marsh dreams of naimei. a large fish swims underwater, marsh can only see its shadow. two figures stand before him. claws on his shoulders, which turn into a strong grip. someone embraces him from behind. feathers nestle against him
marsh awakes to dwayne protectively watching over him, his tears dripping onto marsh’s face
he transforms into a cat, finds trill’s room, & burrows into the pile of people on their bed.
the next morning, trill enters the kitchen holding a cat-marsh. carmen reveals she had a nightmare. marsh turns back into a person (still in trill’s arms) & hits the ground with a thud. he says he had a weird dream too.
gutter arrives with the morning paper: the queen of naimei had just been murdered.
marsh thanks dwayne for his help in previous fights, asking him if he can do anything else cool. can he turn into a hat? he does not want to be a hat. what do you want to be then? protecting you.
the group arrives at [alisa agohn’s … evil base of operations???] with the intention of stealing the final earth stone.
gutter gives marsh his x-ray glasses – they can see if someone has a heart or not & what state it’s in.
upon arriving, both trill & nikolay roll natural 1’s, step on a teleportation circle, & end up trapped in anti-magic cages dangling over a corrupted magic pool.
marsh asks dwayne to retrieve the keys hanging above the cages & rolls a natural 20 to catch the key mid-air & deliver it to nikolay.
marsh can see alisa still has her heart, but it is blue from pride’s control over it. marsh activates the van cleave, which breaks her contract with pride & renders her dead. the hearts in the other room suddenly go dim – in 12 seconds, the hundreds of people those hearts belong to will die. including nadine. marsh rolls a natural 1 & doesn’t understand what’s going on, only that people are scared & upset that alisa was killed.
nadira summons honestly to help keep the hearts alive. we get 1 additional minute.
trill asks monty for a favor & pulls an ankh out of their fanny pack, runs over & hands it to marsh. marsh uses the ankh on alisa & brings her back to life. we learn she had been under pride’s control for at least 100 years. she resumes her concentration on the spell keeping the hearts alive. marsh also casts healing spirit & summons dwayne to heal alisa.
ambra retrieves the earth stone.
the group follows pride into the room with the hearts. pride is holding two hearts in his hands. one is nadine’s. he breaks the jar on the ground and moves to stab it with his sword, but nadira moves to parry it, taking the attack upon herself. it hits, but marsh activates his phoenix grace, taking the damage upon himself. (nadira gets stabbed so takes the effects of the sword, but marsh takes the damage). pride is confused & angry. he stabs the other heart – we are unsure who it belongs to.