Things are not going well on the Mud Whale. The Marked (those who can use chakra thymia) are reaching their limits, including Masoo. Just as Masoo pauses to catch his breath he notices Kuchiba heading towards some Skylos soldiers. Kuchiba picks up a stray sword and prepares to fight the masked men, but Masoo picks them off with arrows and saves his life. One of the disarmed guards, revealed to be a child and not an adult at all, makes a snide comment and Masoo kills them with Kuchiba’s sword. The two are surrounded by more of Skylos’ soldiers, and Masoo prepares to continue fighting despite his exhaustion.
Over on Skylos, Ouni is severely wounded. A sword is stabbed into his leg, leaving him crippled in agony on the ground. Then from out of nowhere Nibi leaps down from above and starts fighting the bald commander. Nibi helps Ouni to his feet and the two fight back against Skylos’ men. All looks like it’s going well, aside from some moments where Ouni struggles to stay on his feet and keep fighting, until Nibi turns his back to the soldiers and is shot through his chest, then struck from behind by several spears. He dies as I figured he would this episode.
Predictably, Ouni loses his shit. He’s able to tap into his thymia, which isn’t supposed to happen on Skylos, and turn his magic into flying discs of rage with which to slaughter all the soldiers around them. One of these discs hits nous Skylos and slices its face in half.
Immediately ghostly limbs of energy gush out from Nous Skylos’ body and cover the hallway in ethereal-looking flora and fauna. Lykos is hit in the head with a falling piece of ceiling stone, so Chakuro is forced to carry her. As Chakuro watches Ouni lose himself in his rage and grief, the three of them (along with Nibi’s body) are taken to some kind of magical plane of existence. Chakuro is a bystander to what happens next.
Ouni sees child!Nibi sail towards him on a ship. The floor is made of sand, as are the walls. Nibi and Ouni say their goodbyes to each other in their own way. As Nibi’s boat sails away he becomes an adult, and before he passes on he tells Ouni that despite him always talking about wanting to leave the Mud Whale, in reality Nibi was just happy with his life on Falaina. Ah well. It’s clear through flashbacks and memories that Ouni and Nibi were best friends, even if they didn’t always agree with each other.
Ouni passes out and Chakuro and Lykos are taken to a place where time looks suspended, like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. Nous Skylos offers to make Chakuro a deal: if he promises to offer the emotions of everyone on the Mud Whale to the “great nous Anthropos”, she will give him an item that will help Nous Falaina “evolve to the next level.” Chakuro declines the offer, saying that if he accepted it then the lives of Sami and everyone else who died will have meant nothing. Giving their emotions to the nous would allow everyone to live in some kind of brainwashed, fairytale world where all they saw and experienced were happy things, and Chakuro didn’t want to forget his friends who died. Nous Skylos is impressed with his answer and decides to give him the item for Falaina anyways.
At this point, with Nous Skylos dead or dying, the floating island is starting to fall apart. Lykos awakens and together she and Chakuro help Ouni to the outside, with Ginshu and the sole remaining SDF member following close behind.
From the Mud Whale Suou and some other people watch Skylos sink into the sea, and Suou cries thinking that Chakuro and the others have died. However to his immense relief he spots the five of the ambush team using their thymia to keep a piece of wreckage afloat on the sand sea. Seeing that Skylos and everyone on it is dead, all of the Skylos soldiers on the Mud Whale commit suicide by walking into the sand sea. o_o
My thoughts: Interesting how both Skylos and the Mud Whale do most of their fighting with young soldiers (children and teens) instead of adult men. I wonder why this is?
This sounds really mean to say, but my consolation for Nibi dying is that everyone on Skylos also died. The bald commander, the ranking officer with the blue hair – fuck them all. Serves them right for attacking the Mud Whale, ha!
But now that the attack has ended and Skylos is destroyed, what next? Will there be some kind of retaliation from the Mainland over the loss of Skylos and its nous?
I’m also curious about this “great nous Anthropos”, and whether we’ll get to see it before the season ends. What could it look like? How powerful is it really?