UNEARTHED: After last time ended with Filia having some sort of breakdown at a revelation we pick up this episode with... no immediate explanation as to what that was about. Ok.
Snowy mountains are a new environment for the gang, at least.
They come upon a temple that has 'endgame second-or-third-to-last dungeon' written all over it, which is only reinforced as they are immediately hit with a cutscene upon stepping inside. If you had guessed that the Golden Dragons who insisted that they and only they knew what was best for the world and genocided this other dragon race that they insisted was totally up to no good for reals were actually the ones who could not be trusted, well, congrats for having a basic level of genre knowledge. Of course the reasoning behind the Ancient Dragon's extinction is stupid as hell, and of course it's because they had the final macguffin everyone is looking for.
We also see that the reason Xellos is still hanging out with Almayce and his gang is that he agreed to help out as long as they let the Monsters borrow some of Darkstar's power to resurrect ol' Shabracadabra, which is exactly how this will shake out I'm sure.
Anyway, Erulogos shows up to be an asshole and Pharos Sirius shows up to just kind of be there and then a swarm of Golden Dragons descend on the temple as if the messy situation couldn't get more messy.
VENGEANCE: Oh Xellos. You tried so, so hard to be the intimidating baddie. But you had your moment back when you were torturing Valgaav, and while you very nearly succeeded here in grabbing the macguffin, Lina was there to put you back in your place. RIP intimidating villain Xellos.
(yes he gets away with it in the end anyway, but any tension he had built up was long gone after Lina jumped on his face)
Meanwhile Erulogos hasn't reminded us what an asshole he is in like five minutes so he decides to genocide the Golden Dragons for the hell of it which is supposed to full of dramatic irony or whatever, but it mostly just fills time.
Best part of this brawl between everyone present is, of course, Amelia exploiting Xellos's weakness, and Zelgadis only half-heartedly going along with it, just enough to get the job done.
But anyway, after Lina gets the final weapon, which is a bow that fires Kamehameha's apparently, Erulogos has to remind us again what a giant asshole he is and kills Almayce for... some reason, I'm sure. Xellos gets the weapon, though, and bamfs out of there, with Erulogos in hot pursuit.
Sirius looks at Almayce's body and spends like half a second thinking about maybe actually doing something, but then teleports off as well. Such a deep character.
And now we're set up for the last four episodes. By this point in NEXT Phibrizzo had kidnapped Gourry, and this doesn't pack quite the same punch. But if I remember right the next four episodes are all one giant fighto so buckle up for that I guess!