This episode is a masterclass in high-fantasy action sequences that still deliver intense character development.
Be warned: spoilers ahead.
This episode begins with a crew of ditch-diggers building defenses for the empire when a lone soldier approaches from the horizon. As she draws nearer, the defense overseer charges at her with a joust, but he’s easily defeated with a slice of the soldier’s long sword. She plows through other knights of the empire with gory ease, leaving a trail of blood and limbs behind her. She leaves no survivors as vultures swoop down and finish off the scraps.
After the credits, the Mighty Nein walk through a town in search of a mysterious merchant. This merchant will sell Caleb a pendant similar to the one Owelia destroyed. This pendant will throw other volstrukers off his path. Beauregard, still suspicious of Caleb’s intentions, sneaks off to deliver her orb to her boss. Her boss tells Beau to be wary of Caleb because one cannot simply leave behind the volstruker life.
Caleb has a vision of one of his former classmates from magic school. Now, without his pendant, he’s susceptible to other volstrukers finding his location. This former classmate has the slip of paper that Owelia burned up as she was dying, reading ‘Bren’ — Caleb’s birth name. This informs the volstrukers that Caleb is still out there.
Trent and Essek continue to train with the beacon. Trent becomes stronger in his control of the weapon and he promises Essek that he will help heal his mother’s disease. One of Trent’s right-hand men walks in to inform Trent that the king requests his presence. When Trent goes to the king, he realizes that it’s an ambush by the Cobalt Soul. They detain Trent and send him away.
Mollymauk leads the crew to an inn where the merchant does business. Despite it’s treacherous aesthetic, Molly keeps his cool and recognizes multiple of the regulars at this inn. The merchant informs the crew that in exchange for the pendant he needs them to retrieve an Arcane Compass from some ancient ruins. The group agrees. To make sure the Mighty Nein uphold their end of the bargain, the merchant takes a blood sample from each of them, allowing his to track their journey.
Trent gets tortured in the kingdom’s dungeon, but he refuses to speak unless it’s directly to the King. Granting this wish, the King meets with Trent, apologizing for lying about the beacon and proposing that, with this weapon, they’ll now win the war against the bright princess. At Essek’s home, his mother informs him that the Bright Princess called her army to the war front. Essek knows they’ll all lose this battle because Trent and the opposing military control the beacon.
The Mighty Nein sneak into a cave, beginning their search for the Arcane Compass. Because the route is riddled with booby-traps, Caleb sends Nott ahead to sneak past any traps nimbly. Nott accomplishes this with relative ease and with the help of Beau. Caleb and Beau grow more tense as Caleb gets suspicious as to why Beau had been sneaking around earlier in the town.
Finally, at these lost ruins, Caleb uses his magic to see a way to get to the Arcane Compass. It requires Beau to trust Caleb, which is something that neither of them are keen on. In these ruins, a voice calls out to Fjord. It’s the same voice he heard when he first gained his powers. He jumps into the water to follow the voice as Caleb and Beau argue their way to the Arcane Compass. Reaching the top triggers one last trap in which massive stone sculptures come to life and attack the group. Now, with the Arcane Compass, without Fjord, and with king’s knights on their way to stop the group, Caleb and Beau need to find a way to escape.
Fjord swims closer and closer to the voice, reaching a glowing eyeball that tells him to abandon his friends. Though tempted, Fjord uses his magic abilities to turn the sculptures on the king’s knights, allowing the Mighty Nein to escape. After this close encounter with death, Beau and Caleb have a newfound respect for one another, and Beau comes clean about her secret meeting with her boss in town.
At the war front, Trent uses the beacon to fend off the opposing army. Essek warns the army’s general, but without enough time to call off the attack, Essek and the General escape and watch the Princess’s army be vanquished. Furious, the general realizes that Essek facilitated the stealing of the Beacon. Then, the episode ends.
This episode developed Beau and Caleb’s relationship through the action-packed trials of this cave system, and resulted in an episode full of action and exciting emotional beats. This is a difficult feat to accomplish, as usually you can only have one or the other: action or emotion. Here, the actions the characters experienced lent themselves to the development of their relationships, as most of the trial was built on trust.
Rating: 9/10