Skypiercer Part 3 (finale)

The finale of Skypiercer brings exiled princess Elusia home at last. Alongside her friends Kaja and Atalantos, she storms The Dread Fortress to face her uncle Agdrel, the Shadow King, in the throne room that once belonged to her father. It is the episode where nearly everything the Deathmatches are built on is born: the Grandmaster, the Arbiter, the Acolytes, the arena, and a certain box with a very suspicious name.

The Story

On the Cliffs

The party waited with Craven Eldonbridge on a cliff above a lava field, staring across at the fortress’s great orc-skull mouth. A black storm crackling with chaos lightning hung over the fortress and refused to drop. Their army had swelled into the thousands. Craven summed up the mood: “Well, it’s almost time. Assuming Vythorn is going to live up to his word.”

Elusia thanked her friends and asked them how they could face death so calmly. Kaja answered first: “From blood comes life, and death is no stranger to us. It is not the end… It is simply a path.” Atalantos agreed: “There is no shame in death. In fact, there should be celebration.” Elusia kissed Kaja on the forehead.

Each of them prepared in their own way. Atalantos kept his old, battered gear on purpose, reasoning that an enemy beaten by a man with “only a stick” would learn real fear. Kaja had her “death club” of necromancy apprentices track down a hard-to-refine rock, which artisans shaped into a stone heart of deep onyx veined with crackling blue. She left her students with a warning: “Remember, you cannot cheat death… Don’t make me hunt you down, because I will.” Elusia put on armor black as night, with gold scales down her right shoulder and arm and a black cloak bearing her family sigil. It felt, she said, like “wearing somebody else’s clothes.”

The Charge

Vythorn arrived, and Elusia addressed the army from the air:

“No princess has come back to save you, but it is an empress that will lead you… No little girl will help you, but I, your warrior queen.”

“We do not fear the chaos,” she went on. “We shall embrace it and make it our own… We are the natives of this land.” Craven led the charge on horseback as shadow servants poured out of the fortress’s mouth, shadow hardening into flesh and blood.

The Ceremonial Chamber

Vythorn led the trio inside, to the very room Elusia had been sent away from on the night of the coup. The Knights of Chaos who had sacrificed themselves for her still stood where they had fallen, turned to stone: Sir Eros, Sir Rickson and Sir Boros. “Your uncle, Agdrel, he likes to come down here and remember his victory,” Vythorn explained. “These statues are his trophies.” Elusia knelt and kissed Boros’s feet, and begged her friends never to make the same sacrifice. Then Vythorn vanished to clear the path ahead.

Elusia was not sure she trusted him. “He has always been one to serve my uncle,” she warned. “The most vulnerable time would be when we’re switching power.”

The Dragon Knights

The shadows in the halls began moving wrong. Kaja lit a bonfire, revealing a dragonborn in a metal mask fitted to his face, a red cloak and black garb, wielding two blades of pure shadow. These were The Dragon Knights. Elusia explained that long ago, when her uncle was “just Agdrel the Shadow, a great warrior,” these dragonborn had been his loyal horde, and they could slip through walls and shadows alike.

The three fought back to back in a triangle. Elusia dropped to her hands and knees to check the floor for traps, and Kaja, in her best silk dress, got right down with her: “If I’m going to die here, I’m going to look good doing it.” Elusia lit a torch from the magical lanterns to keep the knights at bay, but one knocked her short sword away and tried to drag her into the wall. Atalantos bear-hugged another clean out of the shadows so Kaja could blast it, and branded one with the symbol of Cor’thun. Kaja arranged her own kill to look like Elusia’s work. When the knights died, their bodies dissolved into shadow and left only armor behind.

A Tomb of a Home

The trio walked on through kitchens, game rooms, servants’ quarters and guest rooms for distant relatives, all empty “like a tomb.” Elusia remembered it as it had been: bright gold decorations, paintings of her father and his family, goblins carrying trays, servants and royals sometimes eating at the same table. Her father, she said, “didn’t have quite the taste for the sword as the rest of us” and loved extravagance. The great banquet hall, with its magical night-sky ceiling, lay in ruins.

A troop of Dragon Knights surrounded them. “My king awaits your presence,” their leader said. They went willingly.

The Shadow King

Elusia kicked the throne room doors clean off their hinges, and a goblin bard with an electric guitar and a hip amp played them in. (At the table, the bard was declared canon on the spot.) Red banners and skulls hung where gold had once gleamed. Mages crackling with chaos energy surrounded the refashioned throne of Faucius, and on it sat Agdrel, with Vythorn at his right hand.

The Shadow King had grown grayer and whiter, with long white hair, a white mustache and pointed goatee, and a hooded cape of pure shadow crackling with lightning. He looked slumped, old and frail. He probed their memories, then made his case. “I had always hoped that you would return home… and that you may serve at my side. For the good of the Void.” He called himself more of a father to her than her real one: “Always counting his coins? … I raised you.” Faucius, he said, was “a stupid and cowardly man, hiding behind his golden shield in battle,” who “would never even have won the Chaos Wars without my assistance.”

Elusia was having none of it. “My father may have loved his coins, but your greed has you loving power.” She refused to join him. Agdrel threw off his cloak, which split into two shadow blades, and grew taller and stronger by draining the life and chaos energy from one of his own acolytes.

Then he turned on his right hand. “Vythorn, you weasel, you treacherous snake. I’m almost proud of you. It would be you to usurp me. Always one for a little bit more knowledge. The what-ifs, plaguing your decisions.” Shadows skewered and bound Vythorn, and Agdrel began redirecting the damage he took into his former servant.

Fire and Light

“For my life, I have always fought as the spear of Cor’thun,” Atalantos declared, drawing his sword, Defender. “But today, I fight as the sword of the Empress.” Kaja sprouted skeletal dragon wings glowing with black light: “As a servant of death, death also serves me.” Elusia set the red carpet ablaze, and the light weakened Agdrel’s shadows. She shot through the tendrils binding Vythorn and freed him, while Atalantos unleashed a wave of life that killed the Shadow King’s remaining acolytes, leaving him with nothing left to feed on.

“You may court death, but I am death,” Agdrel snarled. He dragged Elusia down into the flames and stabbed her until she fell. “Wouldn’t want your face to get ruined for the funeral.”

Kaja reached her in her death form, and death itself spoke through her: “It’s not your time.” She raised Elusia and laid a ward against death over her. “My angel,” Elusia breathed. “Today, I belong to you,” Kaja answered.

Elusia hurled her pouch of diamonds from the Plintos estate into the firelight, scattering it so no corner of the room was left in shadow. “Mother guide me.”

The Final Blow

“I will never kneel to any of you,” Agdrel swore. Atalantos made sure he never got the chance to flee. He drove his spear through the Shadow King and himself together, pinning them both, and handed his moment to Elusia: “Shoot him, shoot me if you have to, but he dies here and now.” Her arrow struck true. Then she dropped the bow and stabbed an arrow into Agdrel’s eye and face again and again. “The kingdom is no longer yours.”

When it was over, she realized she had killed the last of her family.

Vythorn knelt over Atalantos and reversed time on the spear wound, undoing part of it. The strain cost him: “the black falls away from them until he has nothing but glowing white wings.” “Sorry, I failed you, Empress,” he said, though Atalantos still bore a large wound. Then Kaja and Elusia finally kissed.

The Grandmaster

Vythorn told them the armies would surrender now. He sank Agdrel’s body into the floor, sent it elsewhere, and moved the throne outside. Before the people, Elusia gave her first speech as ruler: “The time of darkness is over… honor shall be our currency… death is never where our story ends… The princess who was gone returns as your empress.”

She turned to Vythorn: “You shall be the arbiter of all things.” He accepted, crowned her with a black crown, and the chaos storms over the fortress finally parted.

“This is the one who pierces the sky! I present to you, Your Grandmaster, Elusia Skypiercer!”

With her ornate dagger, the Grandmaster knighted Kaja and Atalantos as her new Knights of Chaos: “My trusted kin, for you are family to me now.” She asked the crowd not to follow her, but “to become my acolytes,” and The Acolytes knelt and chanted. The cheering got so wild that people ripped their shirts off, while a few soldiers who hadn’t heard the war was over kept stabbing shadow servants anyway.

Then the Grandmaster decided how the victory would be remembered. “We need a day of remembrance for this… From here, we shall always have an arena, a place for us to prove our worth… Arbiter… We shall have a deathmatch.” The Arbiter transported everyone to the arena for the very first Deathmatch.

Epilogue: Gerald

Sometime later, Italian leather boots clacked through a laboratory deep in the fortress. The Arbiter stood over Agdrel’s body. “There’s so much knowledge within you. Someday you will die. But not until I’ve learned everything. That I might serve the Grandmaster and the people of the Void.” He ripped out Agdrel’s soul, wrote it out as the name AGDREL, rearranged the letters into GERALD, and bound it into a box. And so Gerald, the Box of Chaos was born.

Notable Moments

• Kaja got down on the floor to check for traps in her best silk dress, because if she was going to die, she was going to look good doing it.
• A goblin bard with an electric guitar and a hip amp played the heroes into the final showdown.
• Atalantos ran himself through on his own spear to pin the Shadow King in place for Elusia’s shot.
• Saving Atalantos with time magic turned Vythorn’s black wings white.
• Vythorn became the Arbiter, Elusia became the Grandmaster, and the first Deathmatch was declared, all within a few minutes.
• The origin of Gerald: the Box of Chaos’s name is an anagram of the soul inside it.

Memorable Quotes

• Kaja: “From blood comes life, and death is no stranger to us. It is not the end… It is simply a path.”
• Atalantos: “There is no shame in death. In fact, there should be celebration.”
• Agdrel, the Shadow King: “Vythorn, you weasel, you treacherous snake. I’m almost proud of you… Always one for a little bit more knowledge. The what-ifs, plaguing your decisions.”
• Agdrel, the Shadow King: “You may court death, but I am death.”
• Atalantos: “Shoot him, shoot me if you have to, but he dies here and now.”
• Elusia: “Honor shall be our currency from here on out… death is never where our story ends.”
• Vythorn: “This is the one who pierces the sky! I present to you, Your Grandmaster, Elusia Skypiercer!”
• The Arbiter: “There’s so much knowledge within you. Someday you will die. But not until I’ve learned everything. That I might serve the Grandmaster and the people of the Void.”

Full Round-by-Round

Every beat of the episode, with timestamps (click to expand)

1. 0:00:13 — Before the battle. The party and Craven wait on a cliff above a lava field facing the Dread Fortress’s orc-skull mouth. A black storm crackling with chaos lightning hangs over the fortress and won’t drop. The army is now in the thousands.
2. 0:02:01 — Elusia thanks Kaja and Atalantos and asks how they face death so calmly. Kaja: “From blood comes life… It is not the end… It is simply a path.” Atalantos: “There is no shame in death. In fact, there should be celebration.” Elusia kisses Kaja on the forehead.
3. 0:07:53 — Preparations. Atalantos keeps his old, worn gear on purpose: beating an enemy with “only a stick” puts fear in them. Kaja has her “death club” acquire a hard-to-refine rock; artisans craft a stone heart (deep onyx, crackling blue veins, worth 500 gp, “I need it for a spell later”). She warns her apprentices: “You cannot cheat death… Don’t make me hunt you down, because I will.” Elusia’s armor: black as night, gold scales down the right shoulder and arm, black cloak with her family sigil. It feels like “wearing somebody else’s clothes.”
4. 0:15:35 — Vythorn arrives. Elusia’s speech from the air: “No princess has come back to save you, but it is an empress… your warrior queen.” “We are the natives of this land.” Craven leads the charge on horseback. Shadow servants pour from the fortress’s mouth, shadow turning into flesh and blood.
5. 0:21:30 — Inside: the Ceremonial Chamber. Vythorn brings them to the room Elusia left from. The Knights of Chaos still stand where they died, petrified statues: Sir Eros, Sir Rickson, Sir Boros. Vythorn: Agdrel comes here “to remember his victory. These statues are his trophies.” Elusia kisses Boros’s feet and asks her friends not to make that sacrifice. Vythorn vanishes to clear the path.
6. 0:27:25 — Elusia doubts Vythorn. “He has always been one to serve my uncle… The most vulnerable time would be when we’re switching power.”
7. 0:37:38 — The Dragon Knights. Shadows move wrong in the hall. Kaja’s bonfire reveals a dragonborn in a metal mask fitted to his face, red cloak, black garb, two blades of pure shadow; they move through walls and shadows. Elusia’s history: when Agdrel was “just Agdrel the Shadow, a great warrior,” he had a loyal horde of dragonborn followers, his Dragon Knights (0:42:04). They fight back-to-back in a triangle. Elusia checks the floor for traps on her hands and knees (Kaja, in her best silk dress, gets down too: “If I’m going to die here, I’m going to look good doing it”). Elusia lights a torch from the magical lanterns to keep them off her; one knocks her short sword away and tries to pull her into the wall. Atalantos bear-hugs one out of the shadows so Kaja can blast it. Atalantos brands one with the symbol of Cor’thun. Kaja makes her kill look like Elusia’s.
8. 1:04:09 — Walking through the old home. Kitchens, chambers, game rooms, servants’ quarters, guest rooms for distant relatives, all empty “like a tomb.” Memory: bright gold decorations, paintings of Faucius and his family, goblins carrying trays, servants and royalty sometimes eating together. The great banquet hall with a magical night-sky ceiling is in ruins. Elusia on her father: “He didn’t have quite the taste for the sword as the rest of us” and liked extravagance (0:29:57).
9. 1:11:28 — A troop of Dragon Knights surrounds them. Their leader: “My king awaits your presence.” They go willingly.
10. 1:13:46 — The throne room. Elusia kicks the doors off their hinges. A goblin bard with an electric guitar and hip amp plays them in (“that’s canon now”). Red banners and skulls where gold used to be. Mages crackling with chaos energy, Vythorn at the right hand of the Shadow King, on Faucius’s refashioned throne.
11. 1:17:07 — Agdrel. Grayer and whiter, white mustache and pointed goatee, long white hair, mage robes, a hooded cape of pure shadow/chaos energy crackling with lightning. Slumped, old, frail. He probes their memories.
12. 1:18:16 — The confrontation. Agdrel: “I was more of a father to you than he was… Always counting his coins… I raised you.” He calls Faucius “my brother… a stupid and cowardly man, hiding behind his golden shield in battle,” who “would never even have won the Chaos Wars without my assistance.” He asks Elusia to join him; she refuses (“I have no daughter of yours,” 1:26:50). He throws off his cloak, which becomes two shadow blades, and grows taller and stronger by siphoning the life and chaos energy of one of his own acolytes (1:28:09).
13. 1:30:46 — Agdrel turns on Vythorn: “Vythorn, you weasel, you treacherous snake. I’m almost proud of you. It would be you to usurp me. Always one for a little bit more knowledge. The what-ifs, plaguing your decisions.” Shadows skewer and bind Vythorn, and Agdrel redirects damage he takes into Vythorn.
14. 1:36:27 — The fight. Atalantos draws Defender: “Today, I fight as the sword of the Empress.” Kaja casts Otherworldly Guise: skeletal dragon wings glowing with black light. Elusia sets the throne room’s red carpet on fire; light weakens Agdrel’s shadows. She shoots the tendrils binding Vythorn and frees him. Atalantos’s Tides of Vitality kills Agdrel’s remaining acolytes, so he can no longer feed. Agdrel drags Elusia down into the fire and stabs her unconscious.
15. 2:10:14 — Kaja revives Elusia in her death form: “It’s not your time.” Death Ward. Elusia: “My angel.” Kaja: “Today, I belong to you.”
16. 2:16:47 — The diamonds. Elusia throws the pouch of diamonds from the Plintos estate into the firelight so no corner is left in shadow (resolves the diamonds question). “Mother guide me.”
17. 2:22:18 — The end of the Shadow King. Atalantos spears Agdrel and himself together so he can’t escape, and gives his attack to Elusia: “Shoot him, shoot me if you have to, but he dies here and now.” Her arrow lands; she drops the bow and kills Agdrel by stabbing an arrow into his eye and face again and again (2:25:40). She realizes she has killed the last of her family.
18. 2:29:27 — Vythorn reverses time on Atalantos to undo the spear wound (partly). The strain turns his black wings white: “the black falls away from them until he has nothing but glowing white wings.” “Sorry, I failed you, Empress.”
19. 2:32:43 — Kaja and Elusia kiss.
20. 2:34:21 — Aftermath. Vythorn: the armies will surrender now. He sinks Agdrel’s body into the floor and “transports it elsewhere,” and moves the throne outside.
21. 2:38:30 — Elusia’s coronation speech. “The time of darkness is over… honor shall be our currency… death is never where our story ends… The princess who was gone returns as your empress.”
22. 2:40:39 — The Arbiter. “Vythorn… You shall be the arbiter of all things.” He accepts and crowns her with a black crown. The chaos storms part: “This is the one who pierces the sky! I present to you, Your Grandmaster, Elusia Skypiercer!”
23. 2:42:26 — New Knights of Chaos. Elusia knights Kaja and Atalantos as her Knights of Chaos with her ornate dagger: “My trusted kin, for you are family to me now.” She asks the crowd “to become my acolytes.” They kneel and chant. 23b. 2:44:55 — The crowd cheers and rips their shirts off; some soldiers haven’t heard the war is over and are still stabbing shadow servants. Mudcat was eating popcorn.
24. 2:45:49 — The first Deathmatch. “We need a day of remembrance for this… From here, we shall always have an arena, a place for us to prove our worth… Arbiter… We shall have a deathmatch.” The Arbiter transports everyone to the arena for the first Deathmatch.
25. 2:46:46 — Epilogue: Gerald. “Sometime later,” in his laboratory deep in the Dread Fortress (Italian leather boots clacking), the Arbiter stands over Agdrel’s body: “There’s so much knowledge within you. Someday you will die. But not until I’ve learned everything. That I might serve the Grandmaster and the people of the Void.” He rips out Agdrel’s soul, writes it as the name AGDREL, rearranges the letters into GERALD, and binds it into a box: Gerald, the Box of Chaos.