Forsaken Stars Monday, November 23, 2009

Issue 1, Page 19
Sera ties Azzi to the fission core column, wondering all the while if she's taking the correct course of action, remarking that her father once told her never to make a deal with the devil. Azzi counters with the idea that it's not so much a deal as mutual favors (as if that's somehow a completely different animal). After all, when did the devil last surrender to make a deal? To further make his point, Azzi assures the Captain that he has no interest in her soul. Sera laughs at him and counters with the fact that she is a Soulless, a human born outside the Godshield, outside of God's purvue, and therefore she has no soul to steal. But Azzi isn't so sure of that.

But more to the point, you the readers know that the only soul Azzi is concerned about is his own. As she leaves the fission chamber, he quietly thanks her.

So this is a bit of craziness, inspired by the X-Men films' Cerebro and Astonishing X-Men's Danger Room. This is the interior of the big sphere that is the Bluebird's power source and main source of normal space propulsion, the fission chamber. I thought it would make a great set piece. It sets up Azzi for some intense, Christ-on-the-cross-style suffering, which you'll see in issue two. A vampire in a fission chamber? It's like a matchstick in a brush fire. So why would he agree to this? Maybe he sees it as part of his atonement, a requirement on his road to redemption, the only choice Sera, and perhaps fate, left him with.

"The narrowest path is always the holiest." --Depeche Mode