Issue 20, Page 21
Afterlife TOS can be pretty harsh, huh.
Transcript
1: Rhoda is being split in half and pulled apart. The tiny hands of Tazim’s multiple bodies tug at her from either side, and her body is splitting down the middle, skin peeling away from exposed muscle. She screams in agony.
Rhoda: Nggaah- AAAHH!
Tazim (off-panel): What do you desire?
2: Rhoda, face being split in half tries to concentrate. Her skin giving way to muscle, revealing bone.
Rhoda: T… Tazim… Talash…
I need your s-str… strength and cunning… help me save Julia.
3: Rhoda’s skeleton is exposed as her body is split into layers down the middle, peeled back.
Tazim: What will you give for this power?
What will you sacrifice?
All things have a cost.
4: Rhoda is split apart, divided into skin, muscle and bone. Her face grimaces sadly and stares down.
Rhoda: Anything.
She did so much for me, and… hgff… and I failed her…
I have to fix this…
5: Many heads of Tazim lean close to listen, her skull begins to split open too, bright gold light glowing from within it.
Rhoda: Melissa and Julia… they deserve better…
Tazim: Julia has gone where your kind must never go.
I can help you save her from this fate.
I can keep YOU from this fate.
And… I can give you what you’ve always wanted:
Freedom from the horrid fate that all mortal souls must one day face.
But there
is
a
PRICE.
… Huh.
My only thought right now is, wonder what those sparks above her head could be. Other than that, I’ll probably brainstorm for a day, then maybe have a bunch of stuff to spew out.
I don’t know.
I’m guessing that the yellow sparks-stuff is part of a spell that’s making Julia’s body do all kinds of odd tricks, or something.
Everything has a cost… deals with demonic forces, Things That Should Not Be, death itself… this is how some fall… and never come back.
Yeah.
this story is getting very spooky.
Even if this blue guy gives Julia + her friends a tolerable, eternal paradise, Julia will…I think…be stuck as his [right hand servant ?] for who knows how long.
That sounds sort of like being the assistant to [Mister] Dream, in the Sandman [R] comic books, by Neil Gaiman.
As his assistant, what sort of frightening, and horrible jobs will she have to do for him? *shrugs*
Immortality is in itself a burden. To live forever is a curse, you stay the same while those who you love age and die. That is the price of immortality, knowing that you’ll have to watcg everyone you know and love die
That sounds so rehearsed.
If some demon considers my mortality (and ability to age) a fitting price for a boon, then, by all means, I have friends whose mortalities I can sacrifice, too, lemme give ’em a call 🙂
In time, the advancement of technology will allow (very nearly) anything to become possible. You wouldn’t have to worry about losing loved ones if they too were immortal. Though of course, even “immortals” would require some form of energy intake to continue living, so “immortality” would still have a price.
Alrighty. Here are my thoughts adtwr brainstorming for a day. Woo!
1. I get the feeling that the noodle dragon is about to crack open her skull like an egg to mess with her astral brain…. A little concerned about how that will go.
2. Ahe definitely should have asked for what options there were on what to give as a price. Never, EVER say anything… Most of the time.
3. They stated that Julia has gone where their kind must never go. This has lots of possible meanings. Maybe they aren’t a hundred percent “meant” to be TOWC? Or perhaps it has something to do with the dream-like state she’s in right now.
That’s all I’ve got, for now at least. So, until later!
I think noodly thing is trying to say the creatures of Earth were not meant to -leave- it. That Earth is a prison. Julia was transported to another planet and she “turned” because there was no Shankar radiation to keep her from reverting to an Idol form.
Fair. However, it still makes me wonder: Earth definitely seems like a “prison” of sorts, for TOWC. However, where’s the radiation being generated? By the Earth, sun, some kind of astral thingamajig? Who knows!
Regardless of that, we’ve scene that TOWC still seems to exist elsewhere, close to Earth at least. In this case, the moon.
So, how far does this “prison” reach? The others didn’t turn while on the moon, so we know there’s radiation there. That still means that TOWC that was present there may have been someone/something else in the past.
If some satellite or space probe or space station drifts into the right spot, while orbiting the Earth, does a piece or pieces of TOWC have a chance of drifting to and latching onto the structure(s)?
… Man. Space is weird.
Didn’t someone find an idol on the moon at one point in the story?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s caches of hidden idols, or things made out of the same material, inside Earth’s core, and that’s what creates the Shankar radiation.