Getting back to Cleyra, the mood is pretty grim. With the sandstorm gone, an attack seems imminent, and everyone suspects that Brahne is somehow behind the harp's breaking, even though no one's offering anything resembling an explanation as to how. We're put in brief control of Freya before reuniting with the rest of the group and finally being able to equip all the new gear I bought before fighting the antlion.
We start heading dow the tree, but soon encounter a group of Alexandrian soldiers. Having to kill the poor, out-classed enemy soldiers who are just following orders without any ability to understand the bigger picture usually bugs me in RPGs, but it's worse when the soldiers in question are all skinny women in Chainmail Bikinis who are shorter than me and that I can dispatch with one standard attack from anyone but Vivi. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against fighting female enemies on principle, but I'd feel better about this if they were at least a little bit physically intimidating. At least Quina can't eat them, because that would be a whole other level of creepy.
Oddly, I'm not running into waves of soldiers ascending he tree; I'm being ambushed as I descend. That doesn't make any sense, though, since ambushes suggest that they're defending a position, not assaulting one. Freya seems to agree, as she points this out after the third ambush, and Puck confirms it by coming to let us know that the actual attack force is already in the town. We hurry back to town, Beatrix appearing on our heels to gloat about how we fell for their trap.
That... doesn't really make any sense. How did the Alexandrians know we would come down the tree? It's just as likely that we would have stayed in Cleyra and fortified our positions instead (for that matter, why isn't that exactly what we did?). Or, you know, pulling up the ladder that's the only way to actually enter the town. It would be easier to believe this was a trap if the Alexandrians had done anything to actually draw us out of the town, like staging an attack designed to trick us into pursuing their "defeated" forces into a vulnerable position. For that matter, we were standing on a rope bridge over a lethal drop when we decided to turn back; why didn't they cut the bridge as we were trying to cross it? Heck, why didn't Beatrix just attack us when we were only a few yards away from her? She's already proven that her fine ass is plenty bad enough to curbstomp us without breaking a sweat, so why didn't she just parachute directly into Cleyra with the first wave of attackers and dispatch us in the first round of battle?
Rushing back to town, we see black mages with fancier coats, and therefore more powerful than the ones we've encountered before, teleporting in as little balls of light. One fries Dan with a fireball. From here, we encounter groups of survivors who we have to direct through the town to try and avoid incoming enemies, and getting them killed. Fortunately, there's a save moogle right at the beginning if we screw up and get a few of the civilians killed.
After guiding the survivors to the cathedral and wiping out several more groups of Alexandrian soldiers and black mages, we get cornered by another trio of teleporting mages before we can make it inside the building. It seems like we're about to be presented with a Sadistic Choice of which refugees to save but instead, in swoops Freya's missing boyfriend to save us all by killing the mages one by one.
...and that wasn't a viable option for me because...?
No time for that now, because Sir Fratley has... AMNESIA! Not only has he forgotten who he is, but he's forgotten Freya as well. It turns out that Puck found him during his travels (though of course he had forgotten who Puck was, too), and his instincts as a dragon knight of Burmecia brought him back when he heard of its fall. Either word travels extremely fast on Gaia, or else Fratley's epic adventure didn't take him past the local pub, and he's just drunk off his rocker right now.
His duty discharged by dispatching three enemies, Fratley leaves again, and Puck follows after him. Freya decides not to go after him, apparently having smelled all the booze on his breath.
Suddenly, the high priest of Cleyra screams like a little girl because a grown woman is holding a sword to his throat. Yes, Beatrix has somehow entered the cathedral without any of us noticing, despite her only being on the other side of the same room. She steals the magic jewel from the harp, saying that none of us know its true power, then stuffs it in her cleavage and jumps over all of us. Chasing her out of the cathedral, we take a moment to talk to all the Burmecians and Cleyrans we saved, who each thank us with items. One of Dan's sons gives us his nymph card, and I'm just going to go ahead and not stack that with the rest of my deck until I have a chance to wipe it with a damp cloth....
We catch up with Beatrix outside, where she attacks, chiding us for thinking she was running away. Um, what was she doing, then?
Beatrix is just as tough as before, with the same attacks and all, which makes that Auto-Life spell Quina learned last time all the more valuable, but still ultimately takes the team down with her Stock Break and no explanation as to why she isn't just killing us now. On the up side, this battle isn't on a time limit, so we actually get to finish stealing everything from her. Our hinies thoroughly schooled, she jumps into a black mage's little light ball and teleports away. Well, why couldn't they just teleport directly into and out of the room with the harp? They wouldn't have had to kill anyone or suffer any casualties if Beatrix had just done this from the start.
More black mages conveniently walk all the way up to the cathedral from wherever they were before this just to teleport out, and the party decides that if their deadliest enemy would jump into a magic ball of light, they would to. One of the mages actually waits until Vivi gives him a little nod to show that he's ready to go, for crying out loud. Quina, however, declares that it doesn't like heights, and just walks off screen.
We cut to Brahne aboard her airship, wielding the Dark Matter her jesters extracted from Garnet. This allows her to open a portal to hell in the sky over Cleyra, from which the Outrider appears, and hurls his magic spear into the tree, destroying it in a fiery explosion.
...well, crap. Glad I bothered resetting the game so I could save all those people from the invading army. Oh well, at least that unholy abomination that haunts my dreams known as "Quina" surely perished in the explosion, too.
The magic balls deposit us on the deck of Brahne's airship. Beatrix is nowhere in sight, despite only leaving and therefore arriving moments before us. Freya is paralyzed with grief for the extinction of her race, but there's no time to indulge in any silly emotion, because Beatrix just came out of the cabin on the deck above us. She runs into one of her soldiers, who starts praising her for a job well done, but Beatrix cuts her off, feeling that she's been reduced to second fiddle after Kuja. She watches a group of black mages being ordered around and laments that the queen isn't taking her feelings into consideration any more than she is theirs, then heads off to present her with the magic stone. The implication seems to be that Beatrix is against this war, but she hasn't exactly shown that in her dialogue leading up to this point.
When Beatrix reaches her, Brahne immediately asks if she got the stone, which means that Brahne nuked Cleyra without knowing whether the whole point of the attack had been accomplished. Brahne says something about needing one more jewel, and Beatrix bristles at not having her efforts acknowledged. She asks after Garnet's condition, but Brahne blows her off. Garnet's of no further use to her, and she plans to have the princess executed when they get back to Alexandria, to both Beatrix's and our shock. We can't very well expect to win a fight here, so our best bet is to beat Brahne back to Alexandria and rescue Garnet before the queen arrives.
Darn it, if only we had some way to magically travel over vast distances at extreme speed!
