December 8th, 2023
8 Dec 2023 · page 1192 of 1306
Sounds kinda familiar.
Cast: Arpana Sherpa, Thea Pryce
Comments (22)
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Right for who, Thea?!
Is something (the Fourth Anchor itself?) using her to try to free the magic from the confines of the anchors? If so, that sounds like a very bad idea…
But will liberating the magic make it available to The People, not an entitled elite?
Maybe the story will end that there will be no magic anymore somehow, humanity will reject it because it is ultimately too dangerous. There were some hints about political struggles and attempts to regulate magic. Anti-magic people were always villains? I can't remember. It would be a twist.
But there was still magic in 2013: enough to mess with Alexa's phone when she visited Widdershins.
And the imbued trains were still running.
Having read the other ten books, I've been saying magic is too dangerous for years, but no-one listens to me.
Magic Power? No Thanks!
Sooo, what should be done instead?
JUST STOP MAGIC!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, GIRL!!!!! maybe it'll take along time... the last one took like two years, right?
Oh, this is bad! I hope protecting itself doesn't mean collapsing the room where Arpana and the children are.
Moreover, Nyree isn't at her anchor to defend it!
I think those might be snowflakes blowing in from the left in the last panel. Maybe Chomolungma is about to protect itself by sending in a blizzard.
They look like beads from the door curtain.
They seem to be floating around lightly in the wind, though, not falling. That's a lot easier for snowflakes than beads!
And then there's an unusual amount of magic currently flowing through the place ... which often is shown to subject only _in_animated objects in the area to zero-g ... ;-)
Thea, saying "I'm doing what's right." without any supporting reasons as to WHY what you are doing is right frequently means that you are actually wrong.
I was worried, but then she said she's doing the right thing. Good thing she clarified that.
...potentially, removing all magic from this world.
Thea, I know your father forced you to do magic for him, but THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO HEAL. (that or she's possessed.)
A recap on what Thea's Deal is, for those curious (it has been more than a year, after all!):
Though she had some doubts initially, she ended up completely buying into her father's sketchy utilitarian argument that improving millions of American lives by moving the anchor to their country was worth the loss of slightly fewer millions of South American lives in the tsunami that would be caused by the anchor moving (https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/april-29th-2022)
Later, she was grabbed by some sort of living wave of water which emerged from the 4th Anchor doorway, and then her eyes glowed as she spoke out loud to...something. Whatever it was, it offered her some kind of deal, which would require a lot of hard work on her part, but supposedly all for the best. She accepted, and willingly followed the living wave into the portal. (https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/july-8th-2022)
So presumably, draining power from the anchors is part of the deal she made. The real question is, who did she make the deal with? Did the 4th Anchor itself actually want to be untethered, and drag its fellow anchors along with it? Or is there a powerful spirit which wants to drain power from all the anchors to accomplish some titanic feat? Or is there some other option I'm not thinking of?
Oh geez, I just remembered - when we saw Lei and Pryce at the Fourth Anchor viewing platform earlier in the chapter (https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/may-12th-2023), something happened that made the magic in the area disappear, including Lei's own magic. That must have been when Thea took the power of that anchor like she's trying to do here.
Oh goodness, I had completely forgotten about that! Good catch!