The Brothel

At least the game gives you the courtesy of knowing that there's a boss fight ahead; you can hop back down to where you first saw Farah to find more smashable crates for sand, as well as a secondary weapon rack.

Boss Fight: Mahasti

As with the last boss fight, this fight is divided into two halves, but this time, the first half of the fight is the tougher of the pair.

You begin here as the Prince, forced to deal with the Mahasti in hand-to-hand combat. This can be difficult to do, since she has some powerful attacks, but you have an unlimited amount of time to deal with her, so try to focus on staying away from her blows. She doesn't have any especially long-range attacks with her daggers (although she will throw them at you if you attempt to move to one of the other platforms here, so try to focus on low-risk attacks, like the primary attack off of a wall, or an Aerial Landing Slice, (where you face Mahasti, jump over her, and slash at her in midair), or the Tailspin Angel Drop, which is the result of a vertical wallrun and the secondary attack button.

Video Walk-through

Beating the Mahasti merely requires you to survive as the Prince, then destroy her as the Dark Prince.

Watch It »

If you are forced into regular attacking, be careful to keep your guard up as often as possible, as Mahasti can unleash a ten or twelve-blow combo with little warning. You can guard your way through the entire combo, if you wish, but she'll occasionally kick you clear off onto another platform, forcing you to jump or wallrun your way back to the Mahasti to engage her again. If you're bold, you can try hitting your primary attack button while blocking to counterattack during the Mahasti's combo; she has enough attacks that you have a good shot at landing a counterattack, but she may counter your own counter! It's best to just focus on the low-risk moves here, but don't get frustrated if you take damage, as you're about to get healed all the way.

Every once in a while, try to use your primary dagger attack on Mahasti; you'll probably get pulled into a sword clash animation where you and she attempt to overpower each other. At this point, just jam on the primary attack button to push the weapons back at her. If you manage to overpower her, you'll get a couple of free hits in; if she overpowers you, she'll throw you over the side of the platform. The reason this is important is that, after you take off around a quarter or a third of her life bar, entering one of these sword clashes will transform you into the Dark Prince, ushering in the second (and far easier) section of the fight.

Second Phase

The Mahasti doesn't seem too keen on dealing with you when you're the Dark Prince, and will indeed retreat to the far corner of the area and attempt to throw daggers at you for a while. These are fairly easy to avoid, so long as you keep moving. You'll have to wallrun or jump to one of the other corners to reach her, but you'll be confronted with an Illusion when you reach it. No worries; they're easy to kill and will offer up sand to restore your health with.

Take advantage of the smaller monsters here to regain health as the Dark Prince.

When you near the platform that the Mahasti's on, she'll attempt to jump off of it; in order to hit her, you'll have to use your Eye of the Storm power to slow down time just before you jump up to face her. With that done, you'll be able to close in on her and attack her with your weapons; you should be able to get a pair of combos in before the slowdown wears off and she escapes to the far platform, forcing you to do all this again. Still, though, you shouldn't be taking any damage during these sequences, aside from the damage you naturally take over time. The Illusions will still allow you to refresh your health through killing them, though, so you shouldn't be in any danger of dying.

When the Mahasti's health is almost at zero, she'll start jumping away from you when you attempt to attack her while time is slowed. When this begins to occur, jump onto her platform without activating Eye of the Storm. She won't escape from you this time! Just attack her until you enter into a sword clash, then overpower her to end the fight once and for all.