(This is part of my journey playing through Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within. You can follow the entire series on the Nostalgia Lane page.)

With Gabe transforming into a werewolf and Grace dealing with a live pigeon stuffed into her coat, our heroes are dire straits. Not the band, the danger. Grace hops in the car to go assemble the lost Wagner opera.

Grace first makes a pit stop at a Catholic church/shrine where people come to petition the Lady for help to be cured. It would be really hilarious if she left a little werewolf statue as a prayer, but nothing doing. The place has something to do with Ludwig, but the mute monk inside isn’t really helping with answers. At least she picks up some holy water, which will be great when we reach Castlevania.

Grace heads back to Neuschwanstein to get those pesky Wagner opera sheets. To distract the guard, she pours out the holy water onto one of the antique chairs and then frames it on a kid when a guard shows up. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. Lying that kids are peeing on priceless treasures by dousing them with sacred liquids. I’m honored to be part of this game experience.

Grace resteps the dream that Gabe, finding each of the opera sheets hidden around the castle. There’s a bit of stealth and sneakery involved with grabbing them so that the guards don’t see, but it isn’t much trouble.

This is where Grace’s stealth pigeon comes into play. She lets it out into the castle — why not, really? — and that distracts one of the guards so that she can swipe the final opera sheet. Meanwhile, just think about all of the bird diseases that the two humans now share, having fondled that disgusting sky rat.

With the opera in hand, Grace needs to get the final part and I guess that has to do with this church. She wheedles Gerde into allowing her to take the silver heart that Gerde put on Wolfgang’s tomb, because what’s a little grave robbing between friends?

Having gotten a taste for desecrating the dead, Grace has no intention of stopping. She prays to the Lady at the church, who obliges Grace by sending a strong wind to blow out all of the candles and give Grace enough time to plunder an urn for the final directions that Ludwig handed that old lady in the flashback. Grace rushes over to her boyfriend Georg with the opera, and two months go by…