. Falst reaches up as the Ignan guards race across the glass bridge towards him, scrambling up to the top of the fireseed. He glances back at them as they shout, making sure they aren’t able to follow him.
. Then a cinderpede smashes into him, lifting them both off the fireseed. Falst grunts as its pincers wrap around his chest, ribs cracking. He grabs one of the pincers, then rips it off, trailing green blood.
. But this is too much. Kendal’s sleeve, already frayed, snaps.
. Falst’s eyes trail its path as Demonheart-Dainix plummets toward the lava far below.
Hello hello early this time. Also bets on if rock Danix is actually in danger because of the lava or it it is just because others won’t be able to get to him in time.
I don’t think Rock Dainix is in danger, per se; lava is Fire and won’t hurt him. However, it won’t revive him because (like a normal fire) it’s nore Fire enough. At that point the problem becomes retrieving a Rock from a pool of lava.
oh no
welp, calling it now: We’re getting another Falst Ambiguous Magic Moment™.
…Yknow, the Primordials’ souls are what power magic as used by basically everyone. The reason VoiDy and LaDy are more active is because they, being still alive, can do their soul magic with intention as opposed to “please do this for us thank you very much”. What’s stopping a particularly plucky mortal from using their own soul as a reservoir of power for doing magic? …What if the Ferin Curse was designed to increase the chance of this happening? Interesting stuff to think about.
This sounds so cool, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s possible with what we know about magic in this world so far 🙁 Primordial souls aren’t made of ‘soul energy’ like human souls are, they are made of seperate energy completely unique to that primordial. Primordial energy can only control the physical matter of the primordial it came from, so if Soul energy was similiar to that, then it shouldn’t be able to control primordial matter. So far, it seems instead to be able to control the primordial energies, which is how channeling works! Then again, we don’t even know exactly what soul energy is yet, or where it comes from, so there’s plenty it could do that we don’t know yet!
Well, Primordial energy doesn’t just control the matter it makes. Because right at the start of the series, we saw the Collector heal the ground. Earth is not Life but she can manipulate it with Life anyway. In one specific way, but still.
We know that Primordial souls can be channeled to perform magic with the remnants of their bodies, and to some extent can also be used to do Other Interesting Stuff (see elemental corruption, etc). I think the main difference is that Primordial souls are gigantic, larger than any other souls on this planet. You’re only using a tiny fraction of a dead being’s soul in order to manipulate a tiny fraction of their body. It makes sense that their souls would be less intricate than the same thing at a much smaller scale. Stone’s energy can only manipulate its own form, akin to how you cannot will someone else to move in the same way you will yourself to move. This is part of why the Collector needs Vash. We know how large the soul of Vash is, and how it is apparently made of ‘strands’. It seems that all souls are thusly composed. If the ocean stood up, you would not be able to compare the size of a human to it. It’s a matter of frame of reference. The Collector needs Vash because she has a vague understanding of manipulating portions of Life, but doesn’t know how to apply it to the manipulation of other souls. I think it’s also something to do with how gods in this world are capable of incarnating despite not having souls in the traditional sense.
Also, look at the situations we have seen Falst do his Thing. He’s displaying extraordinary willpower in the two data-points we have, saving Dainix from the Glunk despite being exhausted and injured, and ripping the Diadem off his head despite being in immense pain. He has willed something to happen, and it has happened despite it not normally being traditionally possible. Compare and contrast with how city, forest, lake gods incarnate through willing a form to become existent, the Light Dragon(?) willed Tam’s breath weapon into bweeming, and the Void Dragon does things through his avatar, aided by the Worst Case Scenario Tattoo Erin unwillingly got and willpower. The VD has done some of its most destructive stuff through being very angry, and has willed Dragon Tynan to be very hurt. Now also see on a larger scale the few times Life tried to observe what she had became, causing the Chimeric Plague with her soul’s energies moving and manipulating the world outside. She was imprecise, but her willpower was much greater due to her soul being ginormous. Now, when given an avatar through Alinua, she is capable of precision, but also restricts the amount of power she permits to pass through Alinua except in grave circumstances, likely out of fear of harming Alinua through sheer overpower.
Red has a system of souls that at first blush seems disparate, but I think by analysing the similarities across all the scales, you can come to a few conclusions that make a large amount of sense. I’ll happily admit this is just a theory, but it seems to me to be the most logical explanation for all these souls and how they work.
tl;dr Primordials gigantic, city-souls less big, humanoid souls tiny, but all operate on similar principles so there is likely a correlation between how the Light and Void Dragons use their souls to perform feats of magic using their essences and how Falst does his Difficult to Explain Thing.
To answer whether it’s lava or magma it could technically be either.
Liquid rock in real life can’t actually exist in this state, if it’s just lying still in a pool than the top layer will cool and turn back into stone, sorta like ice on a river in winter, the surface is frozen but what’s underneath is still liquid in that case what’s underneath would be considered magma. For lava pools to exist with liquid on the surface it has to be continuously moving usually churned by gasses or eruptions to keep the lava liquid, sorta like how a cement mixer works.
So I think in this case it would be considered lava because it’s visibly liquid on the surface.
Even though in real life the surface wouldn’t be liquid so it would be magma
Was a bit confused by the panel order here; I only got to panel 6 after panel 8 and it looked like he magically healed Kendal’s sleeve…
Anyway! I think Falst will chuck the fireseed at the falling Dainix-rock, which will turn him back just as he hits the lava. He’s obviously fine because Ignan and also Demon. Falst meanwhile desperately holds onto that cinderpede.
Ignan: Stop right there, criminal scum! Nobody breaks the law on-
(Falst is then bodied by the centipede because the guard locked them into dialogue while the fight was still ongoing. We’ve all been there.)
For all the dread I’ve been having about the Ignan guards finding Falst, the angry shaking of their shovel-brushes just makes me think of the exasperated Zuurith guards trying to get Tess to come off roofs. They’re not Falst’s main concern, and may even help Falst, if only so they can capture him alive.
Wow, that centipede came out of nowhere and properly WHAM’ed Falst. I wonder how much the volcano’s noise and smells are messing with his senses; that scarf my protect him from being harmed by fumes and heat, but that doesn’t mean he can sense things properly. Or maybe he’s not used to which smells and sounds mean danger here.
Right, how are they getting out of this? Can Falst grab the demonheart with his hands and a ledge with his feet? Might one of those Ignans use fire magic to fly, like in panel 5 of 1-13-23, to catch them? Maybe Falst will grab the demonheart and stab it with the fireseed shard, thinking that at least that way he can save Dainix if not himself.
Unfortunately, given Falst’s self-sacrificing attitude towards his friends, especially Dainix, and how he, in his own words, “barely took a hit in that fight” on the boat, that last one sounds very likely.
UHOH
Well. I’m pretty sure falling into lava prooobably wouldn’t hurt Dainix since he’s currently a rock and also a fire person, but how would they ever get him back out if he fell in?
Knowing that (and assuming it’s normal lava), could it be possible for the ignans to walk on the lava? Someone suggested signals swimming in it, but it seems more plausible for this to be the thing ignans do (unless… ignan mud bath in lava?)
I think it’s probably fantasy lava but behaving like mud, judging by Red’s reply to an ask about the Ignans who got splashed with it a handful of pages ago
Oh. Oh, yeah, okay, I was right to worry about how frayed that thing looked several pages ago. Oh dear.
On the bright side, the lava is Fire, and Dainix is a burned-out Crucible who needs fire, so maybe it wouldn’t be harmful for him? Provided the Ignans can fish him out soon enough to restore him? Though it wouldn’t surprise me if Falst makes a desperate gambit to catch Dainix either, at great risk or harm to himself.
That poor catboy needs a nap. And a hug. I hope he gets them eventually.
Bewildered guard who was posted here to worry about giant killer centipedes, not the world’s most death-defying minor vandal: “Uhhh, hey buddy, looks like you dropped your bag in the lava. You seem weirdly flammable, want me to just go out there and grab it for you?”
I’m glad the random knowledge about volcanoes I’ve amassed over the years is finally coming to good use, allowing me to think through literary analysis of this volcano heist.
Also most centipedes that have mandibles like that are venomous, so Falst might be in even more trouble than he seems, I don’t remember if he’s resistant to venom or not or if living in lava might make them not venomous some how, so I don’t know how worried to be.
I mean, living in lava, why would they need venom? Anything they eat will be fried anyway. Unless there’s a whole biome of other lava creatures down there, in which case the point is moot.
In that case, getting to the fireseed wouldn’t have been necessary. Falst could just have yeeted Rock Dianix into the lava and let him come out on his own.
Poor Falst! Just when he got the shard the nasty magnapede separates him from Dainix! Kid can’t catch a break! I like your name for these pests @Ongoing, every apt! You’re killing me Red! (but I only mean that in a Total Drama Island (TM) way, and I know you know what this means Red, because you are omnivorously eclectic ways from your OSP work!)
Welp, time to prune the old character tree. The roster needed trimming back down to five, anyway. Dainix was a dynamite character, but his presence was causing the shippers to overheat. Plus, an odd number makes it easier to develop the semi-obligatory love triangle.
as a shipper myself and also someone who thoroughly enjoys Dainix’s relationship with more characters then just Falst, HMPH! And also I’m really hoping that was a really terrible joke you just made
*Not trying to be a critique, freaking LOVE this story!!!!!! just hoping this will be answered later in the story*
If he knew he was going into a volcano, why didn’t he stash him somewhere super safe and come back to him after the heist? We can already see how much he obviously cares for him
That would require either leaving Dainix with Kendal (bad idea bc Kendal is supposed to be the distraction, and so the heist could have theoretically failed at the rendezvous stage), or finding a spot to leave Kendal that wouldn’t be stumbled upon by the volcanic Ignans, that Rakhn wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t be damaged by any consequences of the distraction fight, that Falst would remember, and that he could swing past on his way out. Overall too many variables to be worth it, imo
And besides, Falst might just like the feel of having Dainix close by even as a rock!
That, and we don’t know how long Dainix has. It’s best to perform the operation as soon as possible, and that means taking Rock-Dainix with Falst to jab him with Fire in situ.
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: did you really think you were gonna get out of fighting one of these stupid things
Image source: rip
Bluesky Text: use caution when skedaddling
Tumblr text: wait we need that
. Falst reaches up as the Ignan guards race across the glass bridge towards him, scrambling up to the top of the fireseed. He glances back at them as they shout, making sure they aren’t able to follow him.
. Then a cinderpede smashes into him, lifting them both off the fireseed. Falst grunts as its pincers wrap around his chest, ribs cracking. He grabs one of the pincers, then rips it off, trailing green blood.
. But this is too much. Kendal’s sleeve, already frayed, snaps.
. Falst’s eyes trail its path as Demonheart-Dainix plummets toward the lava far below.
Emotions through words is hard lol
Hello hello early this time. Also bets on if rock Danix is actually in danger because of the lava or it it is just because others won’t be able to get to him in time.
I wouldn’t fuckin’ risk it if I were Falst.
If he can’t handle starfire than he probably won’t do very well in lava.
Ah, but lava is Fire, unlike starfire
I don’t think Rock Dainix is in danger, per se; lava is Fire and won’t hurt him. However, it won’t revive him because (like a normal fire) it’s nore Fire enough. At that point the problem becomes retrieving a Rock from a pool of lava.
He’s gonna use light magic, I’m calling it
That would be SO cool
Either that, of Caliban appears to catch their champion.
*or
As Falst makes his escape, a magmapede surges
And hurtles him down where its kin emerges
Falst has had much more expressive eyes since he went full chibi, can he return to normalcy?
Never. His mouth is covered and he still needs to fill his audience amusement quota.
“Hey guards? It’s ok, he likes being robbed!”
Quick altercation
A menacing centipede
Falling rock boyfriend
oh no
welp, calling it now: We’re getting another Falst Ambiguous Magic Moment™.
…Yknow, the Primordials’ souls are what power magic as used by basically everyone. The reason VoiDy and LaDy are more active is because they, being still alive, can do their soul magic with intention as opposed to “please do this for us thank you very much”. What’s stopping a particularly plucky mortal from using their own soul as a reservoir of power for doing magic? …What if the Ferin Curse was designed to increase the chance of this happening? Interesting stuff to think about.
This sounds so cool, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s possible with what we know about magic in this world so far 🙁 Primordial souls aren’t made of ‘soul energy’ like human souls are, they are made of seperate energy completely unique to that primordial. Primordial energy can only control the physical matter of the primordial it came from, so if Soul energy was similiar to that, then it shouldn’t be able to control primordial matter. So far, it seems instead to be able to control the primordial energies, which is how channeling works! Then again, we don’t even know exactly what soul energy is yet, or where it comes from, so there’s plenty it could do that we don’t know yet!
Well, Primordial energy doesn’t just control the matter it makes. Because right at the start of the series, we saw the Collector heal the ground. Earth is not Life but she can manipulate it with Life anyway. In one specific way, but still.
I thought that that was a unique property of life – like how water could mimic others? If im wrong, that would have so many cool possibilities!!
We know that Primordial souls can be channeled to perform magic with the remnants of their bodies, and to some extent can also be used to do Other Interesting Stuff (see elemental corruption, etc). I think the main difference is that Primordial souls are gigantic, larger than any other souls on this planet. You’re only using a tiny fraction of a dead being’s soul in order to manipulate a tiny fraction of their body. It makes sense that their souls would be less intricate than the same thing at a much smaller scale. Stone’s energy can only manipulate its own form, akin to how you cannot will someone else to move in the same way you will yourself to move. This is part of why the Collector needs Vash. We know how large the soul of Vash is, and how it is apparently made of ‘strands’. It seems that all souls are thusly composed. If the ocean stood up, you would not be able to compare the size of a human to it. It’s a matter of frame of reference. The Collector needs Vash because she has a vague understanding of manipulating portions of Life, but doesn’t know how to apply it to the manipulation of other souls. I think it’s also something to do with how gods in this world are capable of incarnating despite not having souls in the traditional sense.
Also, look at the situations we have seen Falst do his Thing. He’s displaying extraordinary willpower in the two data-points we have, saving Dainix from the Glunk despite being exhausted and injured, and ripping the Diadem off his head despite being in immense pain. He has willed something to happen, and it has happened despite it not normally being traditionally possible. Compare and contrast with how city, forest, lake gods incarnate through willing a form to become existent, the Light Dragon(?) willed Tam’s breath weapon into bweeming, and the Void Dragon does things through his avatar, aided by the Worst Case Scenario Tattoo Erin unwillingly got and willpower. The VD has done some of its most destructive stuff through being very angry, and has willed Dragon Tynan to be very hurt. Now also see on a larger scale the few times Life tried to observe what she had became, causing the Chimeric Plague with her soul’s energies moving and manipulating the world outside. She was imprecise, but her willpower was much greater due to her soul being ginormous. Now, when given an avatar through Alinua, she is capable of precision, but also restricts the amount of power she permits to pass through Alinua except in grave circumstances, likely out of fear of harming Alinua through sheer overpower.
Red has a system of souls that at first blush seems disparate, but I think by analysing the similarities across all the scales, you can come to a few conclusions that make a large amount of sense. I’ll happily admit this is just a theory, but it seems to me to be the most logical explanation for all these souls and how they work.
tl;dr Primordials gigantic, city-souls less big, humanoid souls tiny, but all operate on similar principles so there is likely a correlation between how the Light and Void Dragons use their souls to perform feats of magic using their essences and how Falst does his Difficult to Explain Thing.
Maybe Rakhn can get Dainix back later? He wouldn‘t be in too much danger in the lava right? 😐
Wait, is the lava still magma at this point?
Schrodinger’s Lava Lake, where the spicy rock soup is both magma and lava until it spills out and becomes lava for certain.
To answer whether it’s lava or magma it could technically be either.
Liquid rock in real life can’t actually exist in this state, if it’s just lying still in a pool than the top layer will cool and turn back into stone, sorta like ice on a river in winter, the surface is frozen but what’s underneath is still liquid in that case what’s underneath would be considered magma. For lava pools to exist with liquid on the surface it has to be continuously moving usually churned by gasses or eruptions to keep the lava liquid, sorta like how a cement mixer works.
So I think in this case it would be considered lava because it’s visibly liquid on the surface.
Even though in real life the surface wouldn’t be liquid so it would be magma
Oh shit we need that.
Was a bit confused by the panel order here; I only got to panel 6 after panel 8 and it looked like he magically healed Kendal’s sleeve…
Anyway! I think Falst will chuck the fireseed at the falling Dainix-rock, which will turn him back just as he hits the lava. He’s obviously fine because Ignan and also Demon. Falst meanwhile desperately holds onto that cinderpede.
Cinderpede… that’s a good one!
Got it from Bluesky a few pages back!
Oh nnnooo… Also the centipedy things have green liquids inside them? Gloriously icky!
Ignan: Stop right there, criminal scum! Nobody breaks the law on-
(Falst is then bodied by the centipede because the guard locked them into dialogue while the fight was still ongoing. We’ve all been there.)
For all the dread I’ve been having about the Ignan guards finding Falst, the angry shaking of their shovel-brushes just makes me think of the exasperated Zuurith guards trying to get Tess to come off roofs. They’re not Falst’s main concern, and may even help Falst, if only so they can capture him alive.
Wow, that centipede came out of nowhere and properly WHAM’ed Falst. I wonder how much the volcano’s noise and smells are messing with his senses; that scarf my protect him from being harmed by fumes and heat, but that doesn’t mean he can sense things properly. Or maybe he’s not used to which smells and sounds mean danger here.
Right, how are they getting out of this? Can Falst grab the demonheart with his hands and a ledge with his feet? Might one of those Ignans use fire magic to fly, like in panel 5 of 1-13-23, to catch them? Maybe Falst will grab the demonheart and stab it with the fireseed shard, thinking that at least that way he can save Dainix if not himself.
Unfortunately, given Falst’s self-sacrificing attitude towards his friends, especially Dainix, and how he, in his own words, “barely took a hit in that fight” on the boat, that last one sounds very likely.
UHOH
Well. I’m pretty sure falling into lava prooobably wouldn’t hurt Dainix since he’s currently a rock and also a fire person, but how would they ever get him back out if he fell in?
Depends if it’s real lava or fantasy lava.
If it’s real lava, its density is so high that Falst could walk on it and barely make an impression on the surface.
If it’s fantasy lava (i.e. water that melts you if you come in contact), then yeah, that’s anyone’s guess.
Knowing that (and assuming it’s normal lava), could it be possible for the ignans to walk on the lava? Someone suggested signals swimming in it, but it seems more plausible for this to be the thing ignans do (unless… ignan mud bath in lava?)
I think it’s probably fantasy lava but behaving like mud, judging by Red’s reply to an ask about the Ignans who got splashed with it a handful of pages ago
Welp time to see if lava works, or huck the fire seed at him before he hits lava
terezi is that you
My guess is that either he yeets the shard down to Dainix, or his spooky eepy magic helps. 🙂
Oh. Oh, yeah, okay, I was right to worry about how frayed that thing looked several pages ago. Oh dear.
On the bright side, the lava is Fire, and Dainix is a burned-out Crucible who needs fire, so maybe it wouldn’t be harmful for him? Provided the Ignans can fish him out soon enough to restore him? Though it wouldn’t surprise me if Falst makes a desperate gambit to catch Dainix either, at great risk or harm to himself.
That poor catboy needs a nap. And a hug. I hope he gets them eventually.
I think it’d be really fun if we got another Falst Magic Moment™ because that would be two for two of magic boyfriend saves
DAINIX!!!!! *gasp, scream, sob* FALST!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!!!!! . . . . . . . . . Maybe they have PLOT ARMOR!
That was my reaction too lol
He’s gonna jump after it. How much with that scarf protect him? Could we theoretically get a Falst under the lava shot?
He started smoking when under 5 meters above the lava, soooo….. 😬
Bewildered guard who was posted here to worry about giant killer centipedes, not the world’s most death-defying minor vandal: “Uhhh, hey buddy, looks like you dropped your bag in the lava. You seem weirdly flammable, want me to just go out there and grab it for you?”
DAINIX, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m glad the random knowledge about volcanoes I’ve amassed over the years is finally coming to good use, allowing me to think through literary analysis of this volcano heist.
Also most centipedes that have mandibles like that are venomous, so Falst might be in even more trouble than he seems, I don’t remember if he’s resistant to venom or not or if living in lava might make them not venomous some how, so I don’t know how worried to be.
I mean, living in lava, why would they need venom? Anything they eat will be fried anyway. Unless there’s a whole biome of other lava creatures down there, in which case the point is moot.
Would it be too predictable if falling into the lava sufficiently reignited Dainix?
In that case, getting to the fireseed wouldn’t have been necessary. Falst could just have yeeted Rock Dianix into the lava and let him come out on his own.
Chekhov’s Giant Millipede
Poor Falst! Just when he got the shard the nasty magnapede separates him from Dainix! Kid can’t catch a break! I like your name for these pests @Ongoing, every apt! You’re killing me Red! (but I only mean that in a Total Drama Island (TM) way, and I know you know what this means Red, because you are omnivorously eclectic ways from your OSP work!)
We need to get Falst some new clothes, theirs are not surviving this heist arc
Welp, time to prune the old character tree. The roster needed trimming back down to five, anyway. Dainix was a dynamite character, but his presence was causing the shippers to overheat. Plus, an odd number makes it easier to develop the semi-obligatory love triangle.
as a shipper myself and also someone who thoroughly enjoys Dainix’s relationship with more characters then just Falst, HMPH! And also I’m really hoping that was a really terrible joke you just made
Terrible joke??!! I was tipping my hat to Red’s OSP videos.
Poor Falst, hope he’s better at catching a rock than he is at catching a break!
When the DM made these really cool monsters and they’ll be damned if you get out of this encounter without fighting them
I mean, lava MIGHT do him some good
*Not trying to be a critique, freaking LOVE this story!!!!!! just hoping this will be answered later in the story*
If he knew he was going into a volcano, why didn’t he stash him somewhere super safe and come back to him after the heist? We can already see how much he obviously cares for him
That would require either leaving Dainix with Kendal (bad idea bc Kendal is supposed to be the distraction, and so the heist could have theoretically failed at the rendezvous stage), or finding a spot to leave Kendal that wouldn’t be stumbled upon by the volcanic Ignans, that Rakhn wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t be damaged by any consequences of the distraction fight, that Falst would remember, and that he could swing past on his way out. Overall too many variables to be worth it, imo
And besides, Falst might just like the feel of having Dainix close by even as a rock!
That, and we don’t know how long Dainix has. It’s best to perform the operation as soon as possible, and that means taking Rock-Dainix with Falst to jab him with Fire in situ.
TL;DR: This encounter is mandatory.