Yeah, hey, you know what? Who needs escape plans? Those are for the movies, where people plan things. Dak doesn’t plan, Dak just does stuff and sometimes it works. And sometimes he gets punched in the face! Also, bringing up the canid king this way to a soldier, even if the king is an effete empty shirt stacked up against his generals (well… general now I suppose) you don’t go cursing them.

I mean, probably. Maybe you can. I wouldn’t do it while I’m being tortured/imprisoned beneath one of their military garrisons, is all I’m saying.

So we’ve brought up King Janus before — the canid king and de facto leader of Aisling. Of course, there’s a spectrum of effectiveness when it comes to royalty, and as we learned in chapter 2, the wider interpretation here is that Janus tends to follow his generals’ lead and isn’t very effective on his own.

Something like this would be known amongst the rank and file, but still, there’s a time and place to insult a king and a loyal foot soldier isn’t going to stand for that nonsense in his house.

For guest art this week, I wanted to share this wonderful piece of artwork that Elson Wong (aka Darkspeeds) posted onto Twitter a little while ago:

It’s Quin and Dak escaping! Looking at that sword, it looks like Dak’s gotten over his fear of blood in his bid for survival! It also looks like Quin might’ve used that quarrel in a more physical quarrel with a guard? These two are pretty badass here, aren’t they? Elson did a pretty awesome job!

I love the lighting and color here — it’s very gritty, befitting both the environment and the bedraggled state of our heroes. I can’t speak as to how the real escape attempt goes down just yet (we’ll find out in the coming weeks), but it’s always fun to see readers capture moments and alternate possibilities in artistic form.

Thank you for the amazing work, Elson! And also thank you for posting up the process images for this, including the incredible initial sketch:

Priceless :)