All together again

While crossing the ice flows the party got trapped by some big fish monster that used the magic in the air to weaken the group, Yuri just had enough time to toss Karol aside and tell him to run for cover. Deciding not to leave the group, Karol attacks the monster head on and manages to knock out it's control of the magic, allowing the rest of the group to catch up. After that fight Karol passes out form the cold and the effort of fighting the fish alone and has to be carried to the next town to recover.

They hear at the next town that the commander is using Estelle's power to fill the capital with toxic levels of magic, and also no one from the poor district Yuri came from as been seen among the refugies (but all the rich folk were helped by the Flynn's knights). So Yuri leaves during the knight to try and fix things himself, but the rest of the team have long since caught on to his "lone wolf" act and quickly catch u with him (whacking him when they do for is stupidity). The capital is over run with giant plants and monster, making the poor district inaccessible, so they make their way into the palace. After a series of odd puzzles they manage to get to the top of the palace where the commander and Estelle are, and then they had to fight a mind controlled Estelle... twice... ouch.

During the fights though the commander has enough time to use all the dense magic in the air to shoot a giant magic beam into the ocean, which causes an island to rise that has a gigantic magic crystal on top of it. He then teleports away before explaining what he wants to do with it. After the fight Estelle finally returns to normal and the team has all ti's members back, and the whale-dragon is better so they can now go anywhere again! The team then decides to head straight for the new island and face off against the commander, but I had other ideas to use the new found freedom. I flew around and took out two more epic monster (including the one I couldn't get before on the mountain), visited the onsen (they were open, but the baths were closed for now), beat the 50 monster match in the arena (not yet ready for the 80), and looked around for some more side quests (none so far) before saving for the day.

Ah, it's good to have a healer again, I was getting tired of having to constaly pump healing items into everyone every battle. The only down side is that the secret achievement when battling Estelle needed some item that you only get in a cut-scene only if you visit a particular inn at a certain point in the game, which I didn't... So this is the first of the secret fight achievements that I was not able to get...