Ugh why is this not WORKING
I guess I’ll put the writing in now and try the link in a separate comment
. “Surrender!” The Champion cries, lifting them through the ash and into the sky.
. “My Champion. Time is running out.” The Champion twists around at the Light Dragon’s words, watching the boat from on high. Nearly the whole boat is ablaze now, only the back third spared from the fire. Flames lick up high into the air.
. “Do you see?” The Champion growls, turning back to face Kendal, holding him up only by the throat. “The ship will burn and founder, and the innocents on board will die in defense of an evil that would gladly devour us all! Are you willing to pay that price?!”
. “Are you?”
This was a surprisingly quick write. There’s not a lot of stuff going on compared to the recent pages.
Well. This is bad. I don’t remember when I made my prediction for how long the boat would last, but I think I can now confidently say it won’t last another week.
Also, I had this ready at like 8:30 and I tried it twice with the link to my doc in but… not working. So. I might need some help?
…Okay, what the actual Hades WHY ARE MY COMMENTS NOT GOING THROUGH!! THIS IS LIKE THE FOURTH TIME IVE TRIED!!
PLEASE work
. “Surrender!” The Champion cries, lifting them through the ash and into the sky.
. “My Champion. Time is running out.” The Champion twists around at the Light Dragon’s words, watching the boat from on high. Nearly the whole boat is ablaze now, only the back third spared from the fire. Flames lick up high into the air.
. “Do you see?” The Champion growls, turning back to face Kendal, holding him up only by the throat. “The ship will burn and founder, and the innocents on board will die in defense of an evil that would gladly devour us all! Are you willing to pay that price?!”
. “Are you?”
Ugh
I had this ready at like 8:30 but it’s not working!
Maybe cause I’ve been trying to put my link in? I have no idea (crying emoji)
Given that the rain is accounted for with the streaks of grey lines in the background, and that Micheal seems to be quite far away in Panel 3, I think we can safely conclude that they’re ash/smoke of some kind.
“Surrender!” the Champion commands,
Holding the Vessel by the throat.
“Time is running out,” his Lady warns,
The fire is consuming the boat.
“The innocents on board will die,” he threatens,
“Are you willing to pay that price?”
“Are you?” asks Kendal, gripping his wrist,
As tight as an iron-boned vice.
Only if Micheal blows off Kendal’s question and just gives an excuse to Kendal would I be in total agreement with you @Ongoing. If Micheal admits that Kendal has valid counter argument then room for dramatic tension and deeper storytelling I think. Shades of grey have more interesting play then stark black and white. (smile)
Uh oh, looks like our friend Kendal is in a bit of a sticky wicket. Whatever should he do?
The Starfire? Power of friendship? All good ideas! But none are as good as this!
As far as we know, Primordial Water is dead. Like, really dead. Life seems to be the sole survivor of the Primordials, and as she’s the literal embodiment of survival that makes sense to me. Unless you mean the Leviathan, in which case, I doubt it, based on her reaction to chimeras. And Alinua is a very limited vessel for Life. She’s got no soil, nor plants, nothign but a bag of seeds. I wouldn’t place her as a hard-hitter on the water. Under it might be a different story though.
life is morbidly afraid of helping alinua because she thinks that if she helps her alinua will die of life overdose and mutate everything around her wich is something that life hates, its why life doesn’t speak to alinua unless she is spoken to first unlike lucy who is in constant contact with michael, we also never saw lucy and walter speak to anyone when they aren’t in controll of the host so no life isn’t doing anything because she literally can’t
Oh…oh wow, now he’s gonna pretend he cares about innocents? I’m…really hoping this guy doesn’t get a redemption, because this is the kind of hypocritical bs that I really have trouble forgiving.
Oh good, Kendal isn’t gonna get all angsty when he’s not the one at fault. Because the only correct response to “Ha! See? Your actions are endangering innocents!” is “No, your actions are endangering them. I’m doing what I can to make you stop.”
That’s a good point, the VD doesn’t seem to really care one way or another about killing people, if the planet weren’t his prison he probably wouldn’t be bothered to destroy it. He would still eat the sun mind you , seemingly out of habit as apposed to some need to survive which is evil, but he seems far more casually villainous than the paladins seem to regard him.
Erin voices the opinion, when reading about the destruction of the Ancient’s city, that is was just a side effect of damaging the pedestal and creating the storm. He didn’t care one way or another about the city, so it’s destruction wasn’t a deliberate choice.
While Michael says “Countless have suffered and died at his whim”, he’s not necessarily referring to Cave Crawlers, but in general. He destroyed the Ancient City on a whim, and is apparently capable of possessing dragons.
You know I’m curious just how long this has been taking, I lost track of time a while ago, it’s still daytime right. I remember the clouds letting some sunlight through before Erin punched a hole through them, which I’m pretty sure was only a few minutes ago but now it seems the clouds are thicker. I’m mostly noting it because mer-folk are supposed to be nocturnal I think, so I wonder if any would be awake at this point for the crew to run into.
Me: no no he very obviously does not want everyone else to die! Also I highly doubt he’d wait till the others were dead just because Kendal was stubborn (there’s a reason Kendal is asking, the paladin is nigh certainly bluffing). the paladin is only attempting to murder non-innocents (according to his beliefs and Erin shares a body with void dragon so while you can argue that Erin himself is innocent the void dragon is not so it’s something of a moot point) and highly unlikely to simply allow innocents to die! To a certain point. It has yet to be definitively proven that he has reached that point (this statement shall be retracted if he does something that indicates full willingness of death of innocents). Also I could argue that the paladin doesn’t want to directly murder anyone but could be willing to allow indirect (even if directly caused by him) measures take them out. If he had a clear cut line between direct and indirect he would not technically be a hypocrite so long as he stuck to whatever he defines as indirect.
i’m really suprised how everyone seems to be acting like he’s a villain instead of just an antogonist. he’s been rash yes, but not without reason. He thinks the void dragon is a world-ending threat and he isn’t even wrong about that. It makes sense that he’d want to see that goal to completion and “not be delayed”. its understandable that he would think killing a single innocent person (erin) or perhaps more would be worth it. i mean this is obviously more of a morally grey area than *he* seems to think, but killing 6 people to save the entirety of the world makes sense. If anyone else was in that possition and did decide to do it i don’t think i could blame them for it.
The main thing is that the whole void dragon possesion is unfixable and the only known way to fix it is to kill erin. sure there’s erins soulshaper thing and supposedly several backups, but no one even knows if those will work. also the soulshaper thing isn’t 100% certain to even actually fix it or fix it permenantly. The light dragon and their sect probably wouldn’t even know about the soulshapers.
also another slight tangent but i know a lot of people have been talking about how suprisingly little the light dragon and paladin know, but i feel like thats kind of unfair. i mean they already know way more about void and the void dragon than basically anyone else in this world. The only reason WE know anything more is because erin has been lucky enough to ACTUALLY speak with the guy. the paladins would’ve never had that.
Gotta be honest, I don’t think Kendal bears any of the blame for that fire. There’s some fun philosophy to be had arguing whether Dainix is responsible, but Mr. Paladin definitely at least earned an assist when he suppressed Dainix’s ability to control the fire.
Oof. This turned into a bit of an essay. Apologies.
This is interesting. I’ve been trying to figure out why Kendal would ask this; he isn’t one to ask a question for no reason, and up to this point, Michael’s made it pretty clear he’s resolved himself to do whatever it takes if it means ending the threat of the Void Dragon. I feel like this is his last chance: stop this, or Kendal is going to stop holding back.
Kendal doesn’t want to hurt Michael, but he’s prepared to break him if that’s the choice he’s presented: Michael, or his friends. There’s no question what he’ll choose, but it’s his decision.
It’s another parallel to Erin as well. Erin left Kendal to Zuurith’s mercy and has thrown his friends into danger because he feels he has to do whatever it takes to try and sever the link to the Dragon. But it’s still his decision, and his conscience reflects this. And ironically, he thinks it’s ALL his decision that he’s placed them in danger, despite being shown various points that they’re choosing to stay.
Michael doesn’t want to kill these people, not even Erin, who he sees as a victim (Kendal may be a grey area). But even seeing the danger of Dainix’s power, he refused to drop the diadem unless he was given free rein to kill Erin. He’s asking Kendal to let him get on with his duty. To him, it isn’t a choice.
Kendal’s giving him one last chance to make it one.
(…Buuuuut I still want to see him get his ass kicked a little bit. What? I’m not a saint.)
I worry that Kendal is ALREADY trying and Michael is just that dangerous. His powers allegedly surpass Erin’s, and Falst is concerned. To be fair, Kendal’s only major ‘Done Playing Around’ moment so far was against Falst, who is not nearly as dangerous as the Champion. Narratively, it wouldn’t make sense for Kendal to dramatically outclass everyone they butt heads with. I think the Champion is on a new level, perhaps even rivalling Tynan.
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: am I? ARE YOU??
Image source: price
tumblr text: everyone is very shouty today
Twitter text: smoooooke on the water
Ugh why is this not WORKING
I guess I’ll put the writing in now and try the link in a separate comment
. “Surrender!” The Champion cries, lifting them through the ash and into the sky.
. “My Champion. Time is running out.” The Champion twists around at the Light Dragon’s words, watching the boat from on high. Nearly the whole boat is ablaze now, only the back third spared from the fire. Flames lick up high into the air.
. “Do you see?” The Champion growls, turning back to face Kendal, holding him up only by the throat. “The ship will burn and founder, and the innocents on board will die in defense of an evil that would gladly devour us all! Are you willing to pay that price?!”
. “Are you?”
This was a surprisingly quick write. There’s not a lot of stuff going on compared to the recent pages.
Well. This is bad. I don’t remember when I made my prediction for how long the boat would last, but I think I can now confidently say it won’t last another week.
Also, I had this ready at like 8:30 and I tried it twice with the link to my doc in but… not working. So. I might need some help?
…Okay, what the actual Hades WHY ARE MY COMMENTS NOT GOING THROUGH!! THIS IS LIKE THE FOURTH TIME IVE TRIED!!
PLEASE work
. “Surrender!” The Champion cries, lifting them through the ash and into the sky.
. “My Champion. Time is running out.” The Champion twists around at the Light Dragon’s words, watching the boat from on high. Nearly the whole boat is ablaze now, only the back third spared from the fire. Flames lick up high into the air.
. “Do you see?” The Champion growls, turning back to face Kendal, holding him up only by the throat. “The ship will burn and founder, and the innocents on board will die in defense of an evil that would gladly devour us all! Are you willing to pay that price?!”
. “Are you?”
Ugh
I had this ready at like 8:30 but it’s not working!
Maybe cause I’ve been trying to put my link in? I have no idea (crying emoji)
“My Champion. This is a solvable problem. Fly out a couple hundred meters, chuck this guy into the ocean, then come back and deal with everyone else.”
Kendal is grabbing the Champion right back; I don’t think Michael can shake him off.
sure but he has a sword and kendal has very cuttable arms
*the capacity to make a light-based cutting implement
I mean, Kendal DOES have starfire bones. Those are probably not very cuttable.
Are the grey circles flecks of light in the first panel, or are they bits of the boat/ash?
I think they might be rain
Given that the rain is accounted for with the streaks of grey lines in the background, and that Micheal seems to be quite far away in Panel 3, I think we can safely conclude that they’re ash/smoke of some kind.
Hypocrite, you are
To pin all the blame on him
When you could save them
How could he save them? He could have prevented this situation but how can he fix it now?
“Surrender!” the Champion commands,
Holding the Vessel by the throat.
“Time is running out,” his Lady warns,
The fire is consuming the boat.
“The innocents on board will die,” he threatens,
“Are you willing to pay that price?”
“Are you?” asks Kendal, gripping his wrist,
As tight as an iron-boned vice.
Oh My Goodness! The breathing thing! Whatever will happen next?
I love your Gravatar. Is that Achilles and Patroclus?
The innocents suffer, and time’s running out
But Ani here just throws the blame about
Wow. Up until this point Anakin Lightwalker at least seemed tentatively understandable. But this level of hypocrisy … F*ck this guy.
Only if Micheal blows off Kendal’s question and just gives an excuse to Kendal would I be in total agreement with you @Ongoing. If Micheal admits that Kendal has valid counter argument then room for dramatic tension and deeper storytelling I think. Shades of grey have more interesting play then stark black and white. (smile)
Uh oh, looks like our friend Kendal is in a bit of a sticky wicket. Whatever should he do?
The Starfire? Power of friendship? All good ideas! But none are as good as this!
A fantasy glock 17.
So you don’t think Primordial Life might be able ask for aid from a large and distressed looking watery friend? Or Alinua?
As far as we know, Primordial Water is dead. Like, really dead. Life seems to be the sole survivor of the Primordials, and as she’s the literal embodiment of survival that makes sense to me. Unless you mean the Leviathan, in which case, I doubt it, based on her reaction to chimeras. And Alinua is a very limited vessel for Life. She’s got no soil, nor plants, nothign but a bag of seeds. I wouldn’t place her as a hard-hitter on the water. Under it might be a different story though.
life is morbidly afraid of helping alinua because she thinks that if she helps her alinua will die of life overdose and mutate everything around her wich is something that life hates, its why life doesn’t speak to alinua unless she is spoken to first unlike lucy who is in constant contact with michael, we also never saw lucy and walter speak to anyone when they aren’t in controll of the host so no life isn’t doing anything because she literally can’t
Oooooo I was correct to immediately nab this one as my favorite
oh he is DELICIOUS. we love an antgaonist that is not just complex, but conflicted, arrogant, AND hypocritical all at once
Michael and bad life choice, name a more icônico duo
Erin and bad life choices?
Oh…oh wow, now he’s gonna pretend he cares about innocents? I’m…really hoping this guy doesn’t get a redemption, because this is the kind of hypocritical bs that I really have trouble forgiving.
Uh…. Dainix is getting more purple and void-y, that’s probably not good.
Oh good, Kendal isn’t gonna get all angsty when he’s not the one at fault. Because the only correct response to “Ha! See? Your actions are endangering innocents!” is “No, your actions are endangering them. I’m doing what I can to make you stop.”
Last chance fly boy.
Uno reverse
Another statement that calls into question how much the paladins actually know about the void dragon
That’s a good point, the VD doesn’t seem to really care one way or another about killing people, if the planet weren’t his prison he probably wouldn’t be bothered to destroy it. He would still eat the sun mind you , seemingly out of habit as apposed to some need to survive which is evil, but he seems far more casually villainous than the paladins seem to regard him.
And they seem to think he causes cave corruption on purpose, based on what the champion said. Anyone got some more examples of this?
Erin voices the opinion, when reading about the destruction of the Ancient’s city, that is was just a side effect of damaging the pedestal and creating the storm. He didn’t care one way or another about the city, so it’s destruction wasn’t a deliberate choice.
While Michael says “Countless have suffered and died at his whim”, he’s not necessarily referring to Cave Crawlers, but in general. He destroyed the Ancient City on a whim, and is apparently capable of possessing dragons.
Yelling at Kendal as if it’s his fault
I wonder if the fish people & big water snek will come out soon.
You know I’m curious just how long this has been taking, I lost track of time a while ago, it’s still daytime right. I remember the clouds letting some sunlight through before Erin punched a hole through them, which I’m pretty sure was only a few minutes ago but now it seems the clouds are thicker. I’m mostly noting it because mer-folk are supposed to be nocturnal I think, so I wonder if any would be awake at this point for the crew to run into.
Interesting how widespread dainix’s fire has become. In the past it’s been mostly humanoid, but I’m not really seeing any human shape in there
Everyone else: Hypocrite
Me: no no he very obviously does not want everyone else to die! Also I highly doubt he’d wait till the others were dead just because Kendal was stubborn (there’s a reason Kendal is asking, the paladin is nigh certainly bluffing). the paladin is only attempting to murder non-innocents (according to his beliefs and Erin shares a body with void dragon so while you can argue that Erin himself is innocent the void dragon is not so it’s something of a moot point) and highly unlikely to simply allow innocents to die! To a certain point. It has yet to be definitively proven that he has reached that point (this statement shall be retracted if he does something that indicates full willingness of death of innocents). Also I could argue that the paladin doesn’t want to directly murder anyone but could be willing to allow indirect (even if directly caused by him) measures take them out. If he had a clear cut line between direct and indirect he would not technically be a hypocrite so long as he stuck to whatever he defines as indirect.
i’m really suprised how everyone seems to be acting like he’s a villain instead of just an antogonist. he’s been rash yes, but not without reason. He thinks the void dragon is a world-ending threat and he isn’t even wrong about that. It makes sense that he’d want to see that goal to completion and “not be delayed”. its understandable that he would think killing a single innocent person (erin) or perhaps more would be worth it. i mean this is obviously more of a morally grey area than *he* seems to think, but killing 6 people to save the entirety of the world makes sense. If anyone else was in that possition and did decide to do it i don’t think i could blame them for it.
The main thing is that the whole void dragon possesion is unfixable and the only known way to fix it is to kill erin. sure there’s erins soulshaper thing and supposedly several backups, but no one even knows if those will work. also the soulshaper thing isn’t 100% certain to even actually fix it or fix it permenantly. The light dragon and their sect probably wouldn’t even know about the soulshapers.
also another slight tangent but i know a lot of people have been talking about how suprisingly little the light dragon and paladin know, but i feel like thats kind of unfair. i mean they already know way more about void and the void dragon than basically anyone else in this world. The only reason WE know anything more is because erin has been lucky enough to ACTUALLY speak with the guy. the paladins would’ve never had that.
Its been only me and maybe two other people talking about what the paladins know, as far as I know
Its been only me and maybe two other people talking about what the paladins know, as far as I know
“The innocents,the innocents!” Says the guy attacking the innocents
Hypocrites are like that.
Gotta be honest, I don’t think Kendal bears any of the blame for that fire. There’s some fun philosophy to be had arguing whether Dainix is responsible, but Mr. Paladin definitely at least earned an assist when he suppressed Dainix’s ability to control the fire.
TL;DR: I’m gonna turn that last one back on you.
Oof. This turned into a bit of an essay. Apologies.
This is interesting. I’ve been trying to figure out why Kendal would ask this; he isn’t one to ask a question for no reason, and up to this point, Michael’s made it pretty clear he’s resolved himself to do whatever it takes if it means ending the threat of the Void Dragon. I feel like this is his last chance: stop this, or Kendal is going to stop holding back.
Kendal doesn’t want to hurt Michael, but he’s prepared to break him if that’s the choice he’s presented: Michael, or his friends. There’s no question what he’ll choose, but it’s his decision.
It’s another parallel to Erin as well. Erin left Kendal to Zuurith’s mercy and has thrown his friends into danger because he feels he has to do whatever it takes to try and sever the link to the Dragon. But it’s still his decision, and his conscience reflects this. And ironically, he thinks it’s ALL his decision that he’s placed them in danger, despite being shown various points that they’re choosing to stay.
Michael doesn’t want to kill these people, not even Erin, who he sees as a victim (Kendal may be a grey area). But even seeing the danger of Dainix’s power, he refused to drop the diadem unless he was given free rein to kill Erin. He’s asking Kendal to let him get on with his duty. To him, it isn’t a choice.
Kendal’s giving him one last chance to make it one.
(…Buuuuut I still want to see him get his ass kicked a little bit. What? I’m not a saint.)
I worry that Kendal is ALREADY trying and Michael is just that dangerous. His powers allegedly surpass Erin’s, and Falst is concerned. To be fair, Kendal’s only major ‘Done Playing Around’ moment so far was against Falst, who is not nearly as dangerous as the Champion. Narratively, it wouldn’t make sense for Kendal to dramatically outclass everyone they butt heads with. I think the Champion is on a new level, perhaps even rivalling Tynan.