Part 7: Wherein Brandon Consorts with a Witch

Music: Faeriewood (Tindeck)

Last time, we made it through the dark and horrible hellhole known as the Serpent's Grotto Labyrinth, and we've arrived in the Faeriewood. Personally I'm just happy we'll never have to set foot in there again. Note the apple sitting on the ground. If we missed out on the first one, or ate it, we can get a second one here, but this is the last one we'll ever find. Lose out on both, and you're boned.



The scenery is actually quite nice here. That's a big moon, though. Before I forget, let's see if Brandon has anything new to say now that we've entered a brand new area.



How am I supposed to know what to do!? Who would notice if I just went home?

Brandon has reached peak whine. On the other hand, he is just saying what we're all thinking.

There's nothing else on this screen that interests us, other than the very dithered background, and there's only one way to go.

Hmm... if there's a merchant near here, I'll get new socks.

Brandon provides some spontaneous thoughts when you enter this screen for some reason. Par for the course, they're kind of unrelated to anything that's actually going on. Moving on...



Ow geez what the heck, game.

Rather than killing Brandon (as you might halfway suspect it would at this point in the game), the branch just knocks him out cold and the screen fades to black. When we wake up, we're somewhere else entirely, in the company of probably the only person in the game with any brains.



Video: Zanthia (Youtube)

Music: Zanthia (Tindeck)

Oh, my head! What am I doing here? Did you transport me magically?
You got hit on the head, and I dragged you in here.
Who are you?
I am Zanthia. You must be Brandon.



Zanthia is actually the youngest of the mystics, and probably not much older than Brandon, who is about eighteen at this time. Brandon quickly changes the subject before the the topic of who changed whose diapers has a chance to come up.

So what's in the cauldron? A potion for time travel?



Oh!

The game emphasizes the awkwardness of the conversation by putting a long pause here.

Did Darm and Brynn at least get all the gems activated on your amulet?

Oh, hey, about that...

I have two.
Two!?



Y-- no...

They said they didn't have much magic left.
Nobody has much magic left!
Can you help me?



Fine with me. I'll go, but how will I get there?
Oh! Didn't Darm do anything?
He recommended I come see you.



Okay, I'll give you what I can, but I don't care if you are the Prince, I'm not giving up my wardrobe spell or my enchanted aquarium!
The Prince? Who's a Prince?

Oh, that's right...



geez calm down

I can't believe they would do this!



Listen Brandon, we're in trouble. Go to the Enchanted Fountain and fill a flask for me. I'll get things set up for your potions.

Now that the conversation is finally over, Zanthia gives us an empty flask (which just appears attached to our cursor, ready to be put into the inventory) and sends us off on another fetch quest. Before we do, let's poke around her house.



Wasn't that her laundry? I guess Zanthia smells like a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Are you a donkey? Go get the magic water!

Geez, all right, we'll go. There's nothing else in here we can look at right now anyway.



Music: Faeriewood (Tindeck)

Apparently Zanthia lives in a swamp. We were at a scenic hilly landscape before. How far did she drag us?

A prince? Prince of what?

Gee, I don't know which among the myriad things we've heard of you could be the prince of, Brandon. Let's just focus on finding that enchanted fountain Zanthia was talking about. I'm not sure what we need a potion for, but Zanthia's the alchemist here, so we'll trust her. By the way, did you notice there are two little eyes poking out of the water? Let's give them a closer look.







Oh, okay.

This one is not even related to a puzzle. It's just a giant swamp frog thing that eats you if you click on it. All you have to do to avoid gruesome froggy death is... not click on it. Click anything else on the screen, including either exit, and you can continue unscathed. It's just there to... punish you for exploring, I guess? Speaking of which, let's go left and start exploring this swamp Zanthia evidently lives in.



... oh. I guess it was another identical forest area all along? Great. You can't leave any other direction from Zanthia's hut, either, and this screen only has one other exit, to the left. We're forced to draw the conclusion that it's just the area immediately surrounding her house that looks like a swamp, possibly due to illegal dumping of alchemical waste. Moving on.



Nuts. On the upside, finding the Enchanted Fountain was easier than we thought! On the downside, Malcolm's back to torment us some more.

Video: Malcolm at the Enchanted Fountain (Youtube)

Music: Malcolm Encounter, Variant (Tindeck)

How goes your quest?
I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

Yeah, like a flute! Wait, we dropped that...

Are you ready now? Shall we joust?

We can turn into a ball of glitter. Would that help?

At this moment I only seek water from the fountain.

There's no need to tell the homicidal nutcase wielding ultimate magical power what we're after, Brandon.

What a shame!



... and I MUST have some fun.



Perhaps some hide and seek will amuse us both.

Another fetch quest? Just please don't throw that thing into the labyrinth.

If you need water, you'll have to fix the fountain first. I cannot tell you where to look. For that is neither fair nor fun!

This isn't fun either.





Well, that went pretty poorly. Malcolm has sabotaged the fountain, and all the magic water is gone. We have no clue what Malcolm did with that crystal ball, but we probably need it back. We'll start with what Brandon does best: complain to Zanthia about this turn of events.



Malcolm was there.
Let me explain, Brandon. Without magic water, none of my potions are possible.



Actually, now that you mention it, we can already fly, so maybe if you could just point us in the right direction we could give that a go and skip the whole magic water rigamarole.

But you need the water, right? I'll find some. Maybe some splashed out... or I can wring some out of the moss.

If only it were that simple.



Bring the magic water from the fountain first, and then we'll talk.

Nothing for it but to play Malcolm's stupid hide-and-seek game. By the way, another empty flask has mysteriously appeared in Zanthia's hovel. It's not really clear that we need more than one bottle, but Brandon's rampant kleptomania makes it a moot point. Yoink.

Better start looking for that orb. On the way, another look at the fountain provokes more whining from Brandon.



Going up from the fountain eventually takes us back to the area where a tree tried to murder us.



To the south is a strange little door.



Finally, somebody has a front door.

There's nothing else we can do with the door right now. We're far too big to fit in there, anyways. Let's try west from here.



That's different. Doesn't look like the orb we're after, though...

What's the Royal Chalice doing here?

Wait, you instantly recognize the Kyrandian regalia on sight, but you're too thick to figure out the whole prince thing? Whatever, let's just steal the damn thing.



It's stuck. That's spooky! What holds it there?

Thwarted again.



Most of the Faeriewood is just more nondescript forest. The amount of useless filler in this game actually gets pretty annoying after a while, and we haven't seen the worst of it yet.



Our aimless wandering eventually takes us to this place, somewhere off to the west of where the chalice is. Is that bush supposed to be on fire? With how messed up the Kyrandian flora is, I'm not actually sure.

I thought I smelled something burning!

Let's examine it for good measure.

Ow! That's hot!

Or just jam your hand into it, Brandon, I'm sure that works too.

Rats! And me with no hot-dogs.

This is actually a puzzle we have to solve to progress. We don't have any real reason to put the fire out other than general do-goodery, but we must. We don't have any water or anything like that with which to put it out, but it wouldn't matter if we did. The solution is something we already have on hand.



I did it! I made the flames go out!

Hey, it's that orb. This puzzle is pretty strange. There's no real reason to think "I bet this spontaneous woodland fire is where Malcolm hid the thing we want", but I suppose banking on your average adventure gamer compulsively attempting to solve every puzzle he comes across isn't an altogether bad strategy. Also note that this is the first time we've had to re-use something we used for another previous puzzle. If you discarded the scroll of winter after using it to clear the lava flow in the Labyrinth, you'd have to trek all the way back there to pick it up again. This was the sole reason we hung onto the scroll, so now we can actually drop it with good conscience and replace it with the orb.



Now I have the Crystal Ball!

Uh... sure. Let's just fix that fountain.





... speak for yourself, Brandon. But hey, on the upside, we got that magic water Zanthia wanted!



You are a Prince. THE Prince, actually. Your parents were King William and Queen Katherine... did you know Malcolm murdered them and seized the Kyragem?



This is Brandon's entire reaction to learning of his true lineage. He doesn't even say anything here, just out for a brief instant.

We had him locked in the castle. But now he's loose.
Malcolm! That old jester?

Actually, this entire conversation is weird. Brandon knows who Malcolm is. He's referred to him by name several times now. Why is he suddenly confused?



Will it give me powers?
It will be difficult. I'm sure the vestments have been lost. Malcolm probably wears the crown.

What is Zanthia even talking about? This is approaching Twin Peaks level nonsense.

You'll need luck, if nothing else.
Are you Mystics powerless? Can't you free the Kyragem?

I would say that Brandon is just being whiny as usual, but when you think about it, this entire incident happened because the Mystics sat on their hands for the past eighteen years and did nothing while the seal on the castle waned.

Only you can do it now. The pact requires royal blood.

That sounds ominous.

What should I do?
Let's mix a potion. Go get some blueberries.

So there we go. Royal heritage revealed. Brandon has his eyes set on revenge, Zanthia has hers set on making blueberry muffins potions. If you click on her at this point...



... you get what looks like another fourth wall breaking moment, but it's probably accidental; Zanthia says the same thing regardless of whether you're trying to give her anything or if your hand is empty. We need to go find some blueberries. There is one spot on the western side of the map, near where the fire was, that we haven't visited yet.



Pretty! That bush looks relevant to our quest.

Blueberries.

Awesome. Let's trek all the way back to give these to Zanthia so we can finally get this alchemy ball rolling.



Oh, god damn it.

You might be wondering what happens if you pick up some blueberries before Zanthia sends you out to pick some, to pre-empt her little vanishing act. The simple answer is it doesn't work, and you'll be forced to go all the way back to the rainbow pond again to trigger the event:



Next time, we'll get lost in the forest some more, and try our hand at delicate, magically volatile chemical experiments. What could possibly go wrong?