2.6.15
on January 28, 2026
at 3:00 am
live footage of me storyboarding this page: “oh wow, we’re getting into this now? okay then-!”
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
live footage of me storyboarding this page: “oh wow, we’re getting into this now? okay then-!”
oh golly me it’s dainix
I have found someone who loves Dainix more than me. That is concerning.
No, that just means the Dainix fan club is growing stronger.
genuinely the ultimate goal for me is to be his #1 fan I will do ANYTHING
Such dedication
Drown out all competitors
Simple and true love
I need to drown the others? why that seems simple enough!
oh golly me it’s Falst
Oh my golly me it’s Tess
oh golly me it’s Erin
Dainix’s face in the first panel
“IT CAME OUT OF ME?!”
That was certainly an appropriate reaction he had, lol
*gasp* tell me more about ze lore
Hmmmm. I guess this is technically true, cause Walter did call the Light Dragon his “Other.” And they’re both draconic in nature and were worshiped together by the Ancients. Soooo Light Dragon and Void Dragon are one Primordial split in two? Or two primordials with different interpretations on the same fundamental element…
maybe they’re like the two aspects of lightning?
Maybe the element is real, but the light dragon itself only came into being through worship or because its domain is the mind/soul?
My guess is the Light Dragon came into being when Void and Fire sparred, and only made herself known when the Void Dragon commissioned the twins to make people, granting them the souls and wills that let them resist Void’s orders
It’s definitely worth noting that, in that first prologue where the Light element manifests and gives everybody free will or whatever… We get the Void Dragon talking, we have speech bubbles from him, but we never hear the Light Dragon talk. Is it possible she didn’t actually exist yet, but something in the mortals independently transmuted the Void into Light, creating their free will?
Maybe the light dragon is the Void Dragon in a brightly illuminated hat?
I think another possibility that needs to be considered here is that Erin is making an assumption – that the Void Dragon is like a Primordial, following the same rules as a Primordial except in a different shape. However, that assumption might not be true. It’s possible that Dainix is right about the primordial elementals, but the dragon energy operates by different rules.
Erin has a bit of confirmation bias here – he doesn’t want to believe that the beliefs of the Paladins are real, so he’s focusing on evidence that confirms that belief.
This is a really excellent point! Erin is absolutely biased here because he desperately doesn’t want the Paladin’s belief system to be true. But he is still treating VD like a Primordial, when it’s entirely possible that he (and by extension LD) is really not. Wonderful theory.
And here I really, really thought Erin was gonna grudgingly admit that the Light Dragon might actually exist…
I think he will in the next page or two and we might get some interesting conversations with the paladins.
I think this is The Secret Third Thing that’s neither “The Light Dragon is fake!” nor “The Light Dragon is real!”
This is more “Yes, the Light Dragon IS real, but only because it’s also the Void Dragon…”
Remember when Danix was a void-corrupted fire monster on page 2-3-40? He transmuted the void into something that looked kinda like light, except it was sparkly and had more colors inside it. It looked like it went through a prism. What if void and light are both different versions of whatever that element is? VD mentioned his ‘other’ while expositioning to Erin in the caves, so it sounds like they’re equals, and if they can be turned into each other then it makes sense that they’d be different forms of the same thing.
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: “which means it isn’t a separate eighth primordial which means I was right all along which is really the important part about all this”
Image source: transmutation
Tumblr text: oho?
Bluesky text: good morning!
. “It came out of me?!” Dainix yelps, looking down at himself in panic.
. “No. Certainly not in those quantities,” Erin says, thinking. “While each of us no doubt contains a small amount Void in a stable form within our bodies — that amount of energy simply could not have been housed in you before you transformed.
. “But I think you created it. And I don’t think you made it from nothing.” Erin looks at Dainix. “Dainix, please tell me what you know of transmutation magic.”
. “It’s… it’s the higher property of Fire magic,” Dainix says, confused. “Materials can be changed from one form to another, or tempered to remove impurities. Lead into gold. Granite into sapphire. Water into acid. That kind of thing. But I’m not a Fire mage. You’ve been taught much more about this than I have.”
. “I have, yes. But your Soulfire is capable of things even I can’t do,” Erin explains. “So here is the crucial question. Do you believe you could transmute a material from one ELEMENT to another?”
. “Like… Stone to Water, or Wind to Life?” Dainix asks.
. “Exactly.”
. “No. That’s impossible.”
. “You’re sure?”
. “I’m confident,” Dainix says firmly. “Tahraim described my transmutation as drawing out a material’s hidden potential. I don’t think any Primordial had the potential to become a totally different one.”
. “Then unfortunately I have my answer,” Erin says. “The power of the Paladins is very real.” Dainix and Falst watch as he uses his stylus to scratch a circle around an element loop he had drawn in the stone — the Void Dragon to fire to Light to fire, and back to Void. “It can have no other source than the Void Dragon.”
Well, fuck my life, what?
Paladins won’t be happy
But I, for sure, am
Split personality? Something superficially similar to conjoined twins? How is it that the Void Dragon and Light Dragon appear to have different personalities despite this connection?
Mmmh, lore, tasty.
Also, nice confirmation that Dainix remembers (parts of) his conversation with Tahraim on the boat.
He might be right, or he might be *almost* right. But the thing is, whichever it is, OH MY JOD THIS IS SO EXCITING all this looooreeee!!!! The implicaitons! The theories! Dainix’s face in the first panel! Void/Light antithetical or parallell? The lighting effects to be anticipated!
If Erin is right, I am terrified.
If Erin is not, I am slightly less terrified.
All according to plan.
But people can transmute coal (earth) into fire, which then transmutes itself into air. Or are coal and smoke just allotropes of fire? And if so, why is fire named after a form of it that only briefly exists?
Maybe coal is some stone/fire-fusion, and when coal burns, it releases the fire phlogiston-style, leaving the stone-Aspect behind as ash. Maybe the fire then fuses with the surrounding air to create smoke as an air/fire-fusion. (I love trying to chemistry the magic system!)
If I recall, Aurora has a lot of “composite” materials containing one or more elemental essences. a mix of Stone and Fire would work – if not chemically (since the coal does not *turn into” fire), then magically speaking as the essence of Fire is “coaxed out” of the coal, leaving only Stone behind. Similar to the alchemical theory of phlogiston within flammable objects.
As an addition to this, there might not need to be any essence of Air therein. Coal dust is still coal, and the particulates in the smoke are still from the same Stone essence. Although that then raises the question of what *does* count as Air at all… so then it’s possible that smoke is a Stone/Air composite.
Huh, weird – I’d tried to post in response to this before, but it doesn’t seem to have appeared, while a post I made elsewhere came up immediately.
Short form: In the magic system, it’s the nature of fire, lightning and life that by default they don’t exist in their ‘natural’ state, but subsumed into one of the more, for want of a better word, material elements. Fire can be absorbed into air or earth, lightning into air or water, and life into water or earth.
So the coal is essentially fire absorbed into earth. When it burns, the fire is initially released, then it subsumes into the air, while the earth remains as ash.
The dumbest smart guy ever
Dainix: Uh, should you really be drawing great runes of Fire and Void casually on the floor?
Erin: These aren’t the great runes. (shows his Fire tattoo and Void branding) See? My depiction of Fire is off, and this dragon has no legs.
Dainix: Does that really make a difference?
Falst: Of course it makes a difference.
Erin: Thank you! Someone else who understands.
I wonder whether it’s a Crucible’s combat potential or transmutation prowess that Caliban and Tahraim are interested in. While I doubt Cali is looking to deck themselves in lead-to-gold transmuted bling (I don’t put it past them though), being able to call on Fire’s higher property so easily and completely may be more valuable than an exceptionally strong warrior.
Here it is. The Void-Light Transmutation theory, discussed extensively in the comments of 2-3-17, has entered in-universe debate. What wasn’t discussed in those comments however was Erin’s point here about whether Soulfire can transmute one element to another; the answer being ‘no’ confirms that Void and Light are different aspects of the same element.
A minor thing, but I like how Erin seeks Dainix’s confirmation of that fact instead of just assuming it himself. Erin recognises Dainix’s unique power, values his insight, and, after everything he’s been though, is open to the possibility he and his education could be wrong.
And now I’m wondering if those two gods have some mad plan to have Dainix to try to transmute The Void Dragon into just more Light Energy, actually “killing” him.
oh I really want to see this now actually
While I like the idea, I find this unlikely:
1) The Void Dragon is immortal, as are Caliban and Tahraim, and Crucibles have existed for a long time, despite their rarity. If their plan was to destroy the Void Dragon, it seems pretty arbitrary that they would only attempt it now.
2) As far as Caliban and Tahraim are aware of the Void Dragon, it’s a dormant Primordial locked in an unbreakable prison. Erin has only been possessed for couple weeks, and these are the first Ignans he’s run into. I don’t know why Caliban would care or even notice.
Aw yoss im here on time. Anyways… LORE DROP WOO
This is playing nicely into a theory that I have – that both dragons are, at their core, the same. They both are – for lack of a better word: “wanting/desire”. And one of them has turned the wanting into creation (“I want, so I create”), and the other into destruction (“I want, so I consume”). But they are not so different, they are driven by the same impetus. The whole thing is kinda poetic – what drives a universe into being/existing if not the feeling of desire/want, coupled with the power to do something about it? I also love that “want” does both in the English language – “wanting” is “desiring” and “lacking something”, which are very close in nature and describe both the creative drive of the light dragon and the hunger from the void dragon.
oh. this is brilliant. best take i’ve seen—i sincerely hope you’re right because this is my leading theory now, too
Oooo I love this so much. It would make so much sense. Any thoughts on how this works with Kendal having no Void in him at all? Both VD and LD realized this separately (though it is funny how LD called the lack of Void itself a ‘void’). And if we’re following the idea of Void/Light being two sides of desire/want, Kendal until recently didn’t ‘desire’ anything for himself. Only in that dream sequence with his fallen cityfolk did he start thinking about what he wanted. Less I’m mistaken and there were strong signs before I’ve forgotten.
I like this theory very, very much, and thus must give you the Crown Jewels. 💎👑💎
HUH????
TWIST???
Is it really a twist if we saw it coming a mile away?
(Yes. Yes it is.)
omfg Dainix’s expression in that first panel. He looks like so alarmed and horrified, his ponytail bushy like a terrified cat’s tail.
Lore drop! I think Erin is almost right, but not quite all the way there. He doesn’t yet seem to recognize that the Light Dragon herself is real, while we’ve seen that she is. Either she’s a whole being transformed from the Void and now a source of Light in her own right, or she’s half of the original primordial that was somehow transformed or split in twain. (At least, those are the two possibilities I can think of that make sense.)
Still, good deducting by Erin, and good for him for drawing on Dainix’s knowledge of his own soulfire.
My theory is that the void-light split was either the cause or result of the Ancient civil war. Perhaps one led each front?
we see the light dragon act in the prologue of aurora when sentient beings are being created so it cant have been the result of the ancient civil war, so it must have been the cause
So, a few possibilities:
1) Walter and Lucy are two halves of something bigger that was sundered in two, some kind of Free Will Primordial maybe?
2) Lucy was created from Walter somehow, possibly by Void being transmuted into Light during the initial fighting between Walter and the primoridals. She then stayed hidden until the opportunity to disrupt Walter’s plan arose in the form of giving free will to the newly created mortals.
3) Void and Light are two presentations of the same ELEMENT, but Walter’s the only SOURCE of it, with Lucy being a mortal created god that is associated with Void’s Light form, as Erin initially theorised in regards to the Paladins. Perhaps something in the mortals themselves transmuted the Void?
Worth noting that, Walter’s had a really strong reaction to Allinua channeling Life (along the lines of “Oh no, HER!”), which we have seen NONE of when the Floof Squad’s encountered Paladins, even when faced with a Paladin channeling Lucy the same way Erin channels Walter. Are they less of a threat than Life, because it’s just the followers of a mere god playing at being a primordial?
And, on top of that, in the prologue, we see Walter talk, but never Lucy. We see the Light ELEMENT acting on the newly created mortals, but there’s nothing there to confirm that element was being harnessed by any sort of will, just that clearly it’s not Walter doing it, nor is it part of his plan.
(Did not mean for this comment to be in this thread whoops)
To your point of his reaction to Life, he also doesn’t have that reaction to Alinua anymore because she isn’t trying to kill Erin and as such not a threat. He had a good reason on the boat not to fight Tam himself, because doing so would risk turning the floof squad against him. He didn’t react because he knew Kendal would protect him. As per his “agreement” with Erin from the end of Arc 1, mentioned last page, which also tells us that VD considers the Paladins such a huge threat to himself that he agreed to stop trying to kill the floof squad, because he needs them all to protect Erin.
I do also think that the Light Dragon is a split-off version of the Void Dragon (or whatever original Dragon primordial had existed)
However, I do find it weird that we don’t get any mention of the Light Dragon in ANY telling of the Primordials’ story. Would it be possible for both the Paladins’ story and the Mages’ story to be true at the same time? Also, it was mentioned that the Light Dragon could work alongside the mage’s elemental link, without overwriting it or requiring them to have one from birth. To me it feels like both the Light and Void Dragons aren’t simple primordials, but something different from them
oh my gosh dainix’s face in that first panel is so sillyyyy I love hiWAIT WHAT????? ERIN WHAT???????? PLOT TWIST OF ALL FUCKIN TIME???????
I really appreciates that Red can confirm my theories in a way that still surprises me / raises more questions / keeps me wondering. She has this foreshadowing game on lock.
I almost feel like Walter might actually consider that statement an insult. The lackeys of his Other are using HIS power? Absurd!
He’s apparently never seen his power transmuted before meeting Dainix. So no reason to know.
But now I’m wondering, just when did the Light Dragon show up on the scene? Was she at the big fight between Walter and the Primordials? Was she elsewhere and came around later? Or did her existence begin some time after Walter was imprisoned? The Twins were apparently using some Void energy in creating the various beings they made. If Light and Void are simply two aspects of the same primordial nature, did the creation of the various races create the Light Dragon as well? We’ve been thinking that the moment all the races gained sapience/sentience/free will was an act of the Light Dragon, but it might have been her birth.
My current theory is that while all the primordials and Walter were fighting some of the void got transmuted into what would later become the Light Dragon.
Are you saying that Light and Void are two aspects of the same element? I’d better go put on my shocked face.
(seriously, though, I’ve been waiting for when we finally get this confirmed but wasn’t expecting it to be so soon)
If Void and Light are different aspects of the same element, that makes the prologue very interesting… It seems VD may not understand this? But Erin’s question at the library still stands, where did She come from?
So the reason Erin doesn’t want to get near the paladins is because it could allow more void to enter the surface world, giving VD more power and begin the process of consuming or rather converting the LD?
Nah he’s avoiding them because they’re trying to kill him, and he NEEDS them to be trying to kill him to be a threat towards the Void Dragon, but he doesn’t want them to ACTUALLY kill him. Erin also still doesn’t seem to believe the Light Dragon exists (at least as VD’s opposite and equal.)
Hell yeah, in universe… confirmation? Theorizing? Either way, acknowledgement of the thing I thought was going on! As well as others, and I’m not sure if Void and Light being the same element (and therefore the Light Dragon not being a Primordial in the same way, like, Life is) was so much hinted at as nonverbally shown.
Now then, what does this mean for either of their Primordial statuses? No idea. My running theory is that Light Dragon’s initial essence was created whenever Fire attacked Void Dragon before he was imprisoned, then as it coalesced she slowly, by the nature of this essence, developed will and thought, enough to corrupt humans in the prologue, and then lore shenanigans, whatever was talked about in the archives.
Ah, but I believe this theory predates me. Read And Find Out, then?
I’m all in on my “Two-and-a-half dragons” theory where Walter and the Light Dragon (Whitney?) are the same dragon but then the fake light dragon is also real. Invest now
I call her Wanda
Oh gawds, that’s just messing with my mind, since Walter and Wanda are my parents’ names
L.D.’s fanfficial name is Lucy, but call her whatever you want
EXCUSE ME????????
OHHHHH of course!! its not an eighth element, its the seventh again! well now i just feel silly for not realising
“Wait, it’s just the seventh element again?”
“Always has been…”
Hang on, how does that square with Dainix transmuting himself into fire? His ‘core’ is where he’s putting everything that isn’t fire, to some extent, but it can’t be *everything* that isn’t fire, because it would weigh a hundred pounds or more. He has to be either transmuting parts of his body’s elemental makeup into fire, or he’s losing a ton of water every time he transforms and somehow getting it back when he reverts.
His core is in fact almost as heavy as Dainix’ body, minus whatever the fire elemental matter in his body weighs. The only people who’ve interacted with his core so far have been Falst and Kendal who both have vastly superhuman strength, so they wouldn’t struggle to carry Dainix in any form.
Dainix’s core does contain all his non-fire material and is correspondingly heavy. Its just that Falst has enhanced strength as a Ferin and so could carry it.
DUN DUN DUUUUUNNN
I KNEW IT!!
walter and lucy are one and the same, probably split during the fight with the primordials given fire’s presence and they further split personality wise after walter was inprisioned…
tho i have my doubts walter and lucy are aware of that
THEY’RE SAME GUY IN DIFFERENT GUYS LET’S GOOOOO
I love the way you can see Erin’s fire rune in the last panel. Very cool artistic choice
OMNOMNOM juicy tasty lore.
yin and yang kinda thing?
Oh No! A misunderstanding based on technically accurate information that just so conveniently enables a “let’s you and him fight” arc with mutual aggression on both sides.
How will we *ever* resolve this.
(the commenter said, eating popcorn out of the bag while grinning ear to ear)
void+fire=light, light+fire=void?
How are the palidins going to react to this…
“And when you hold the very essence of [hunger] in your hands… I wonder if you’ll recognise the feeling.”
RED YOU GENIUS WHEN I FUKCGING GET YOU (affectionate)
Wait which page is that from?
2-3-37
“Reach inside yourself. Touch the void and feel the potential the Dragon neglects. Is destruction innate to the material of hunger, or is it jus the form that hunger has shaped itself into?
“Melt it down. Burn away all traces of its past forging and transmute it in the crucible of your soul until you refine its purest form. And when you hold the essence of hunger, stripped of pretense and pride-
“I wonder if you’ll recognize the feeling.”
It’s interesting to consider what Erin knows here. Because while we all know the Light Dragon is a real person, Erin does not.
However, Erin does know that they have stories about a Lady Dragon protecting and empowering them and that they seem just as committed to keeping the Void Dragon in jail as VD wants out.
So, while one could certainly theorize that there’s some “7.5th” Primordial of “Purified Void,” possibly created during the Void/Fire fight, Erin doesn’t exactly have empirical evidence for that, just a lot of things that lead in that direction.
This is an interesting one. Perhaps where Erin is off here is that the Void Dragon does have the potential to become a totally different primordial.
But… another possibility for the origin of the Light Dragon that I don’t think has been actively suggested yet is that she and the Void Dragon splitting was the actual origin of the Void Dragon in the first place. The Void Dragon came from the void between the stars, according to the lore we have. Thing is, though, there isn’t a pure vacuum anywhere, and if we carry that over into the Aurora universe, this “void between the stars” should still have some amount of something, perhaps light. What if those two things that are naturally together being split apart formed both the Void Dragon and the Light Dragon? What if that split is also related to why the Void Dragon tries to eat stars? …To reclaim what he is “missing” due to his creation actually being something split in half? Perhaps the Light Dragon really is the Void Dragon’s equal and opposite.
Ooh, and Dainix purifying Void at the end of the boat fight could be him combining them or something? Making the element that they were before they were split? Hmm. I can’t wait to see what gets confirmed!
This, and at one point Lucy said that Walter stole her form IIRC
Judging by the alt text, Red did not plan on revealing this so soon. However, this shows us a very good way to write a smart character. Erin decides to pick apart the previous situation, and see what conclusions he could draw from it. None of the steps he takes are inherently genius, but the calm and precise way he goes about it is a sign of intellect. Erin can be very competent if he’s in the right headspace, possibly the most competent in the party.
Genderfluid void dragon confirmed
That implication legit didn’t even register in my brain
thank you for opening my mind to all these new possibilities lol
Wuh oh!
I mean Dainix does literally transmute the void into a tiny light dragon, so they may be two sodes of the same coin, but that doesn’t mean they’re both not real. Or does Falst making light make him a void mage? He did have a bit of void in him at the time though, idk
Thing is, right before the void transmutation stuff, I started considering if there were potential Void Mages, and specifically… If people like Falst’s mom, who spontaneously become Cave Crawlers (remember the Cave Crawler transformation is Void corruption) might be potential Void Mages, if they knew. If That’s a possibility, and Void and Light are the same element in different forms, then Falst’s Light powers have an immediate possible source?
I was gonna make a joke about how the characters are finally figured out what we the readers had been thinking for a few months but I checked the dates and it was well over a year ago we saw Dainix create void. It’s been a year and a half since we got on that stupid boat. Rapidly ages
Ngl, I thought the Void Goop that came out of Dainix was leftovers from the Goop Thing from the dungeon arc
Could be! It’s entirely possible that Erin is wrong that he’s just really adamant about the Light Dragon not being real. She clearly is her own entity with her own will, and the power of conscious thought is quite different from the power of consumption. Then again, it is interesting that LD couldn’t control Kendal, calling him a void. The two possible explanations are:
1. An entity without Void is also without Light because they are one and the same
2. Kendal lacks Light for the same reason he lacks Void: his body was made by a god that didn’t have control over either Void or Light.
Kind of a tangent, but while we’re here theorizing … I find it weird that Kendal evidently lacks Light … because he *is* capable of free will and conscious thought. Perhaps an excessive input of Life (which seems uniquely tied to the concept of a soul in a way that the other elements aren’t) serves as a substitute for both consciousness/free will and consumption, so what we perceive as his free will might be something slightly different? I mean, gods clearly are capable of thinking and acting while incarnated, but they’re not *truly* in control; their domain dictates their form and personality, as evidenced by Gleicann.
Seems unlikely that it’s the void goop, considering what excess void does to people. Transmutation is by far the most likely thing, especially because the void appeared as an apparent side effect of Dainix shredding Tam’s hardlight shield.
Maybe the elements Kendal is missing, and his capacity to become an autonomous being, is related to the starmetal in his bones. There’s bits of the expanded lore that suggest that Primordials are stars or the children of stars — perhaps Kendal having starmetal in him gives him some of the traits of a Primordial, in the way they would be possessed by a living Primordial. The elemental Primordials had a will of their own, despite their own unique substance and existence, after all.
I understand absolutely nothing
Dainix is a bit off-model in panel 1 – the pattern on the bottom of his poncho is missing.
AHA! *That* is why it looked off. Thank you for pointing that out!
I feel like this world is based on the HSL color model.
Of course this is the page where I fully catch up on the new chapter and can’t read more!
The same thing happened when I started, I caught up right as Erin started his little hike underground in Chapter 7. I have the worst timing.
Erin being right > Dainix’s brief identity crisis nodnodnod
Red mentioned a while back(on Tumblr) that someone had hijacked the keyboard while she was storyboarding. Should have figured it was Erin — he was probably impatient after convalescing for like a a chapter and a half. “Now AS I WAS SAYING–” Of course, Dainix’s expression in panel one stole the show anyway, nobody tell him.