Secrets of the Wand, Part 1

<- Previous episode /  Next episode ->

Full episode list: List of Magical Monster High School Drama! episodes

This page is about the sixth episode of Magical Monster High School Drama! It was released on May 12th, 2017, directly after Goops Live on the Moon!, the fifth episode.

Production
The episode was written by Kitto M and cowritten by the usual writer for the show, Terry H. The episode featured the voices of Kitto M, George H-S, Marco D, Terry H and Phil C. Marco D, the voice of Akio, was only briefly in the episode, while Sir Dank, Phil C's character, was revealed to be able to speak common. It is not known currently why he chooses to only say "I am Dank" around the main characters, but due to some of the lines of other characters in this episode, it has been theorised by fans that he may speak an ancient emphatic or tonal language. The episode features the character Illack, who is voiced by Terry H, alongside the main characters. Terry admits that the character is a favourite of his, and has revealed that Illack is heavily influenced by a character from the Devil May Cry series of video games.

Plot
Rowan, after returning from the moon of slimes, visits the Item Delving Society. They ask the society's head, who does not offer her name, whether she would assist Rowan in delving into the Wand of Promethia, in order to unlock its true power. The Item Delving head asks if Rowan will be going in alone, to which they tentatively reply "yes", then takes the wand from Rowan to examine it - causing Quentin to reappear. The head strongly suggests that Quentin delve with company, especially as Quentin would not be able to use the wand's power to transform while delving. Quentin then goes to find the rest of the party while the Item Delving head looks after the wand. While looking for Akio, he encounters Dimitri the vampire, and introduces himself anew as a friend of Rowan's. Dimitri points Quentin in the right direction, and Quentin heads off to Felix's basement.

On the way there, Quentin bumps into Sashi coming the other way, and recruits the kitsune to his cause. He then continues to Felix’s basement and finds Akio recovering from a failed surgery to remove the restraining device in his body that prevents him from using the power of the Wand of Promethia. Akio does not agree to join Quentin's delve so hastily, instead asking what is in it for him. He laughs at Quentin’s offer of money, knowing that Quentin in fact has none, and then demands shoes and other clothing. After this, he refuses anyway, and leaves to go and sleep.

At the same time, Sir Dank wakes up from his own nap, and attempts to find the others, going first to the place he saw them last after their trip to the moon of slimes: the portal room. There, he reveals that he can in fact speak common when he asks the portal guard where his friends went. The guard does not know, and tells him to stop wasting his time. Sir Dank then heads to the next place where he thinks the group could be, the clubrooms. There, he meets Dimitri for the first time, and manages to convey through mime that he is looking for Akio. Dimitri helpfully takes Sir Dank to the science building, but neither he nor the tanuki know about Felix’s room, so Sir Dank decides to begin at the top of the building.

He enters a faculty room on the top floor and sees a science classroom with a strange collection of burners, flasks and glass tubes on the far counter. Upon examining this contraption further, he realises that it is a coffee machine, and looks around for a mug. He finds one with the words "Dr. no 1" on the side, and makes himself a mug of coffee, then turns round to find someone else has entered the room. A dark haired woman in a white labcoat is glaring at the tanuki, arms crossed. She asks Sir Dank what he thinks he is doing, and he only holds up the mug. Understandably annoyed that a student invaded her space just to steal her coffee, the woman asks Sir Dank to follow her. At this point, an image of glowing red eyes and grinning, sharp teeth appears only to Sir Dank. Bored of Quentin and Akio squabbling, Sashi, in the basement, had scryed the tanuki with her sixth sense and decided to have some fun. Sir Dank promptly jumps through the window and falls four floors.

Quentin and Sashi leave the science building to find a concerned Dimitri with an unconscious Sir Dank. Dimitri tells them to fetch healers from the infirmary, and they do so, then the tanuki is taken away. Quentin, Sashi and Dimitri then return to the Item Delving clubroom, where Maia - the society head, who Dimitri knows - explains that the three of them might not be enough, and that the wand is powerful enough that there will likely be combat. At this point, Dimitri respectfully declines to accompany Quentin, saying that he is not built for fighting. Instead, he offers to help find Zero, having a greater knowledge of the school than the transfer students.

While he goes to find Zero, Quentin goes to the DC tower, where he attempts to recruit Kimberly to help him delve the wand. Kimberly refuses, and threatens to confiscate the wand, upon hearing how dangerous the delve may be. After she leaves, Illack, the DC member who officiated Akio and Rowan's duel, approaches Quentin and tells him that he might want to do the delve quickly before Kimberly makes good on her threat, and that he may be able to help... for a price. Quentin then agrees to bring Illack an orange lightsaber for his assistance, and Illack joins the party. They meet Dimitri outside the tower, sans dragon. Dimitri explains that he found Zero in the library, but that she said that she was busy, and that she wanted to make it known that her name was "Zeroeth", not "Zero".

Quentin and Sashi go to the library to convince Zeroeth in person, and find her researching anti-teleportation wards, paranoid after the previous incident. She states that she is busy, and that she does not really care for increasing the wand's power. In response, Quentin reminds her that each embodiment of the wand has saved her from death once already, which she grudgingly aknowledges. Sashi then speaks up, saying that she could help Zero with wards for her room after the delve, and at this point she agrees to accompany the party. Quentin, Sashi and Zeroeth return to the clubroom to find Sir Dank, now recovered, who also agrees to join the mission. Then, they and Illack prepare to delve the Wand of Promethia. Maia equips all of them with wristbands and tells them that they give a limited ability to sense others with wristbands, and will also pull a character out of a delve if they remove the band.

After this, Maia waves her hands over the wand, and initiates the delve. Quentin, Zeroeth, Sashi, Sir Dank and Illack all find themselves in a dim hall lit by some unseen source. Giant pillars with worn faces carved into them dwarf the party members, while a constant, haunting wind blows eerily. The hall is made of dark stone polished to an almost metallic or glasslike sheen, and features three huge archways to other parts of the structure, veiled with magic. One doorway, the largest, and the one featuring the most decoration, lies before them, while two other smaller archways are to either side. In the darkness, Illack and Sashi hear giggling and footsteps like those of a small child.

Illack suggests the party remain together, before using divination magic to scry what is beyond the three doorways. Through the leftmost portal he sees a large, circular room of stone, with carved and painted murals all the way around, and two doors leading from it. In the middle of the room is a circle of grassland, cut in half by a river. Within the circle is a shrine, and next to it sits a woman, and around the grassland there are birds and animals, as if the scene were outside. All of the living things in the room seem to stay within the grassland, as if there were an invisible wall preventing them from stepping out onto the stone.

Behind the middle doorway, he scries a bridge. The bridge leads over a dark cavern containing thousands of cages. Each cage contains a figure with two heads, writhing and screaming silently, flickering as if multiple images were overlaid. One face is constant: an Arabic woman with strong features. Every pained figure carries her head, identical on all of them, but on each, the second head is different. Some are also Arabic looking; some are more Caucasian, but all writhe in pain without noise.

Past the arch on the right, Illack envisions an expansive desert, all smooth dunes of white sand. Shattered dragon bones punctuate the landscape, appearing the same bleached white colour as the sand, while a red sun glows over the scene. A distant figure is just visible through the heat haze.

Illack wakes from his trance to find Zeroeth waiting for the rest of the party impatiently, having been about to head for the middle door. She had asked Quentin about what they need to do in here, but he had seemed rather unsure himself, saying Promethia told him he "needed more speed". Illack interrupts to suggest the party first check out the leftmost doorway, and Zeroeth huffs, before leading the way there instead. Within, it all looks as Illack saw. The woman in the circle rises, and turns her head to the party. Her eyes are covered by white cloth. At the same time, every bird and animal in the circle moves as one, as if controlled, and many eyes stare at Zeroeth, who is first in line.

The party proceeds to converse with this individual, who introduces herself as Ophelia. Zero walks round the stone circle to examine the other two doors out of this room, finding a room filled with water holding a swimming woman and sunken ruins; and also a dark corridor where a torch passes. Meanwhile, all of Ophelia's animals, who she uses as her eyes, stare at Sashi, who is invisible. In this room it is learnt that there are several souls such as Ophelia used to power the Wand of Promethia, and prevent an eldritch being trapped within from escaping. In life, Ophelia caused destruction and plagues in order to then help and heal people after these disasters and appear a hero, as shown in the murals in her room. Now, she wishes to escape her entrapment within the wand she once used to increase her own power, but she may not leave the circle without a soul to take her place. She whispers to Sashi to free her, and she attempts to push Quentin into the circle, but he manages to regain his balance. From this point, Illack and Zeroeth keep a close eye on Quentin, but as the party moves forward into the darkened corridor off this room, Sashi promises to Ophelia that she will free her.

From then, Zero leads the party into the next room, a the inside of a circular burial tower. Sarcofogi with carven images of the dead line the walls, level up on level upon level, to a tiny circle of blue sky above. Examining the room with his scrying, Illack finds that the dead are arranged oldest to newest moving up the tower, and at the very top, lie two open coffins. These two bear the names of Quentin and Akio, who, having held the wand, are doomed to be trapped within it on death, to guard the Twin. Past this, he sees a door leading to a room that appears as a black void. Illack uses his information on the history of the wand weilders through the names on the coffins to confuse Quentin by naming his family and ancestors.

Meanwhile, Zero, peering at the next highest level using her long neck, sees the torch bearer once again, and calls out to them. The figure approaches the middle of the tower, and reveals himself to be an old man, keeper of this room. He introduces himself as Ptolemy IV, and offers to answer the group's questions. He tells them that Promethia is not here, and greets Zeroeth as a proud warrior, revealing that Quentin's line once made powerful allies of the dragons rather than fighting them. He also hails Sir Dank as one of a noble line of mage tanuki, said to be the most powerful magic users in the multiverse. While the chances that Sir Dank is actually part of the same line that Ptolemy knows is extremely slim, the old man did appear to understand the tanuki, calling him the most eloquent member of the party. After gaining this information, the party thanks the old man and leave, as there are no doors out of this room that anyone but Illack knows of.

After this, the party votes to explore the rightmost room... but after Illack whispers what he saw in there to everyone but Zero, they all try and persuade her not to come. She protests, but then agrees to remain in the hall if Quentin also stays behind. Illack, Sashi and Sir Dank then venture into the desert, leaving Quentin and the dragon behind. Once they enter the room, they realise that the sand does not feel like sand. It is far too smooth. Sashi realises that the "sand" is in fact more dragon bone, ground up into a fine powder. The entire desert is made of innumerable dead dragons. After realising this, they spy the distant figure against the heat haze, balancing upon a spear. Upon their entrance, the figure drops from this position and begins to approach, floating over the sand.

The mysterious figure turns out to be a woman weilding a spear with a head appearing to be made of Quentin's wand and another, white wand, locked together. She introduces herself as Selene, and gives the party information regarding the two wands. She reveals that there is a Twin, an eldritch being, trapped within each wand, the black, and the white; with two goddesses to watch over them: Promethia, in this wand; and Zephora in the white wand. Once, in her time, the wands were joined together, but they were split to reduce the strain on the goddesses. She also comments on the fact that she can sense a dragon outside, and they attempt to explain that Zeroeth is an ally.