Olivia has a big dose of that kind of impetuosity that usually only works out if you’re the heroine of a YA novel. One of these days it’s gonna backfire on her.

The bottom panel owes a ton to the cover illustration for a Tim Zahn short story I read in the eighties. Standing at the center of a big X of alternate versions of yourself was a side effect of a warp drive in this story.

This is the page where we remind you that Olivia has gotten here thanks to mysterious family secrets that she refuses to go into, and that the Baron is only going to let her get away with that so much longer.

It took me a while but I finally figured out what to make buildings inside the giant space station look like. Basically I looked at the sixties SF cover work of Richard Powers, thought about how he was probably going about making it happen in paint, and tried to do the same kind of thing in Illustrator.

I may be going back into previous pages and redoing some of the buildings before I declare this chapter well and truly “finished”.

giant doggo is friend to all tiny mice

or at least all tiny mice whose tiny kitty friend knows the Ancient Words

I just want to say that I am having a lot of fun straddling a line between making this ancient robot be both a friendly doggo and a scarily large piece of machinery.

24.3.6: Ye Beastie.

1. Be forthwith and unafraid of the luminous angels you may meet. You can recognize them by their colors: white with a blue-and-silver halo, black with a halo of golden spiderwebs, and maroon with a small measure of crystalline halos are the most common. Refer to appendix 24.18 for further details on less-common tranches of angels.
2. Thou wilt know the Keepers by their blue-and-silver halo. Keepers may assume many forms during the course of their duties, and are like the furnace of a star if not pacified. To greet a Keeper, vibrate S?QGt’VGOOf, and pet its snoot in your friendliest manner.

— VX6, Codex Serenissima, Fourteenth Revision (completely depreciated in VX8)

Back to this side of the story for a bit. Weird ancient architecture and a weird spiky robot-thing.

If you are beginning to get the feeling that Olivia is maybe a little overconfident, then you are probably correct. Surely this will not get her in trouble in the future.