The Eminence in Shadow – 12 – Through the Red Door

That big red seal-looking thing? It’s a door; a door that won’t stop following Cid no matter where he flies. Since it won’t go away, he decides to go through it. His Shadow Garden maidens have the same idea, and make their appearance at the arena before Alexia, Rose, and Archbishop Nelson.

Beta does a terrible job pretending to be her comrades’ hostage, while Nelson’s assassin Venom attacks Epsilon but only manages to slice off her fake boobs. She quickly re-forms them with her slime suit, and in any case everything happens too fast for the princesses to notice. Shadow Garden jump through the door, and Alexia and Rose follow, bereft of anything better to do.

They arrive in a strange and oddly futuristic sci-fi place that is the true Sanctuary the church has hidden from the rest of the world. In this inter-dimensional space there’s a statue of the real Great Hero Olivier, who was not only a woman, but looked just like Alpha (since they share blood). Alexia and Rose are rightfully very confused.

Rather than meeting up with Shadow Garden, Cid ends up in a different “section” of the Sanctuary, in which the real legendary witch Aurora has been incarcerated for centuries (she’s also voiced by Eureka herself, Nazuka Kaori, who possesses one of the more ASMR-triggering voices).

After exchanging pleasantries and freeing her from her straitjacket (she’s nude underneath but he doesn’t so much as blush), Cid agrees to help Aurora get out of this place, which is apparently constructed out of stored memories, among them a young Aurora crying, whom the older Aurora slaps.

Meanwhile the ladies find themselves in the main research facility of the Sanctuary, where the Diabolos Cult experimented on children with “Diabolos Cells” in order to create “Diabolos Beads”, a drug that can make members of the cult immortal and invincible.

Olivier was one of the few who survived the experimentation, a brutal affair carried on with the banality of a congenial modern office. One of the lead researchers was the not-so-good Archbishop himself, Jack Nelson. Alexia wrongly but hilariously surmises that hair loss was a side effect of the beads.

Alpha correctly surmises that Jack Nelson is one of Diabolos’ twelve Knights of the Round, which rings a bell for Alexia since her betrothed longed to become one of them. With no further need to hide his identity, Nelson starts to gloat, only to be impaled and cast into a pool by Delta.

Delta is ready to be scolded by Alpha for disobeying orders not to kill him, but turns out Nelson is made from stiffer stuff. He wipes away the reality of the research facility, leaving a white void where he proceeds to create copies of himself. But both Alpha and Delta are more than game for a fight.

This episode was a mind-bending trip and a half, introducing a real sci-fi underbelly to the fantasy surface world where Cid ended up after dying. It’s notable that much of the episode doesn’t involve him at all. It makes one wonder how much longer he’ll insist this is all a game!