Traal Anno 4
We got a little comedy out of Penk’s over-gifting and his deer-in-the-headlights response to rejection on the last page. But really, all things considered, he’s taking this very well. You can barely even tell what just happened between him and Magda. It probably helps that they have strong relationships as teammates and friends to fall back on. It’s not like all his time with her was just spent waiting for a chance to make his move.
I love Penk’s dialogue in panel 5. On the one hand, he is still deferential enough to Harky that he frames their disagreements as failures on his part. He’s not living up to expectations, and it can’t be the expectations’ fault! But on the other, those disagreements are starting to build in him so much that he vents one more of them without even thinking about it.
(I think he and Harky are both right, kinda… Gifts can be threats, but you can’t always assume that’s true. Assuming it of someone like Auraugu is probably being paranoid. But if the Don and Iver are around to criticize your every move, you have to factor them in.)
Okay, I guess the Champions are doing more of a binary “gift-for-gift” thing than a round-robin. Maybe Penk set that up because of how he hoped this exchange with Magda would go.
Goblaurence will never “find out,” of course…it’d be a pretty dark series finale if he did…but let’s just call that scenario one of the Watcher’s What-Ifs.
I like to think that Hammerhead is being only half-serious as I don’t imagine he actually believes he can eat /everybody/. But I’m sure that if he managed to do it, he’d stick by his promise and would think it a great and honourable gift.
Nah…eating Goblawrence last doesn’t mean eating everybody else, first…it just means waiting until his last mean to eat him.
One day, HAMMERHEAD will be old, and weakening. His voice won’t carry so well, so someone else will take over as leader of the school. So HAMMERHEAD wanders off, and seeks out Goblawrence.
‘Hello, Goblin.’ ‘… ‘Ello. Long time no see. What can I do fer ya, mate?’ ‘It’s time for my last meal, and I made a promise.’
I like to imagine that Hammerhead has a mental priority ranking of whom to eat, and he’s just putting Goblaurence at the very bottom of that list. The other people in this camp would probably also be fairly low on that list, compared to any human or elf.
That said: I’m just reminded of his parting words to Penk, so maaybe he does have some unhappy thoughts about the rest of the bunch. In that context, and given that Hammerhead does not really change his opinion, ever, he may just have made a very big and serious promise.
“Hey, Goblawrence? Remember when I say I eat you last? I lied.”
It seems that for some reason the original version of this page is marked as being part of Chapter 39 instead of Extra Bits like the rest of this story.