My wife cautioned me to research whether or not ice conducts electricity before putting up this page, which is good advice since I just assumed it did. Water conducts electricity so ice should too, right? Well, it turns out, water doesn’t conduct electricity. Not pure water. It’s all the impurities in the water that conduct the electricity, or rather all the ions swirling around that are provided by the impurities. Same thing goes for ice, only since ice is cold, the ions aren’t so much with the swirling. A chunk of frozen sea water will conduct electricity if you put enough volts through it, but it is a better insulator than melted sea water. Therefore we can posit a few things about Dabbler’s attack. One, the ice she whips out of the sword is loaded with rock salt or something. I guess the diamonds or magicite or lightning phoenix eggs or whatever you what to think they are that she has in the hilt are intentionally impure for that reason. Look, it’s magic ok? Two, she puts a shitload of volts in that electricity attack. Four million at least. :)

Originally I had planned for Dabbler to cast some sort of Magic Missile pinwheel attack to keep Heavenly busy while she reconfigured Soulreaver, but it didn’t fit. I also wanted Sydney to grill Dabbler about where the second handle came from, which is a reasonable question. I originally tried to conceive of a way that would work, the best options I came up with had flaws. One was that each handle was shaped like a U if you looked down the length of it. Maybe a better way to describe it is like an stick of celery. Take a second stick, flip it over, then they kind of fit into each other, only Soulreaver’s handles would fit together with machined precision, and never get floppy if not refrigerated. That would physically work, but could make the grip awkward in both configurations. The other idea had the handles corkscrew shaped. That could potentially make them the right circumference in either configuration, but then separating them would be a pain in the ass. In the end I decided that one handle is phased inside the other, which is a huge cheat, but again, magic. I mean it’s a sword that shoots out elemental attacks based on what magicite has been stuffed in the guard so I figured it wouldn’t upset anyone too much.

Anyway, all that extra stuff would have made for one if not two more pages, and I wanted to wrap up this fight and move on. Sydney can give Dabble the third degree about the sword later.

Heavenly Sword is fun. Her name is a little cumbersome, granted. Same number of syllables as Wonder Woman, but anything over three syllables is in need of a nickname IMO. The more thought I give Heavenly the more I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ve seen of her, but she’s done for now. When she comes too she’ll feel like she had a hard night of drinking and woke up next to the Energizer Bunny, only all his fur is missing and it’s just a bunny shaped mass of exposed wiring.

I am on vacation this week, puttering around Florida, so contact may be intermittent, but expect a comic as usual on Thursday.


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