Drasvin

So that's what an Immortal being reborn looks like. Neat. Presumably, an improper reset, their questions would just be left hanging, with little to no recollection to answer them.

It took me a moment to realize that the light haired person in panel three is Diane and not Sarah. Her haircut looks good, though. No living person should have access to old magic systems (The uryuom are probably less a case of gaining access to an old magic system than their natural magic is no longer incompatible with Earth magic), though old magic artifacts will be coming back online. Based on the title of the newspaper he's reading, he might be in the D.C. area, meaning he's probably on his way home, though he could be headed to another location for work.

It doesn't have to be anyone else's motivation, if Pandora wants to be seen in public with Sarah, she'd take the necessary step to make it appear that she belongs there. As you mentioned yourself, making herself real student is NOT necessary to be seen in public with Sarah. Just looking as student will be enough. It's unlikely someone would actually bother to check if she's visiting any classes, or in case she would, if she has them subscribed or what's the word. I'm not sure about US, but in Europe hardly any university teacher is checking attendance, and the ones who do check in the other direction - they complain if someone will appear on exam without ever being in class, but if someone appears in class and not on exam? Probably wasn't feeling being able to do that exam. The bigger the university, the less likely is someone would be making sure everyone belongs here, with the possible exception of gate, which Pandora can skip or go through invisible. Depends on the teacher. I imagine the administration for the school wouldn't like teachers teaching someone that hasn't paid their tuition. Though that would depend on word getting back to the administration, which again depends on the teachers in question and how high profile Pandora is. That would require the government to abandon, or at least ease up, on their secrecy policy, which I doubt they would do by the time the cast goes into college. Though it would be an awesome idea. Any school that knows what a headache an Immortal can be, especially with their tendency toward a substantially different system of morals and ethics. She could do both, but that's effectively doubling her work load, and even Immortals have limits of how much stress they can take. Though if she's careful with her scheduling, it actually would be a good idea if she wants to act more openly, as learning different subjects could help with understanding how human's perceive the world.

The mystery of the Dunkels deepens, though based on the commentary it's not going to be answered anytime soon, if ever. There's no need for every one of the Main Eight to have a parent with active magic or obvious potential. Simply being human means they can gain, learn, and improve magic. With the exception of special talents like wizardry and other special talents like what Susan, Diane, and Sarah have, the only difference between different humans his how much work and training they have to put in to get to a given level of power and ability. Which is similar to other fields that raw talents can play a role in. I also remember the Dunkels mentioning something along the line of them not being sure what Edward's job entail (though I can't seem to find the page, so my memory might be lying to me) which further supports that Mr. Dunkel doesn't work in the same agency at least. I was thinking he likely worked for the private sector as there's some implication that the Paranormal Division of the FBI handles or is heavily connected to all paranormal governmental activities in the USA(And Edward is a rather big name in the DGB), but then I remembered that any magical talent that Mr. Dunkel may or may not have doesn't have to be related to his job or his acceptance of strange things. He could simply be an auditor for the IRS or an accountant for FEMA or something else relatively mundane and any magical abilities would be potentially helpful, but largely irrelevant. Mr. and Mrs. Dunkel might trust Greg simply because Elliot and Ellen trust Greg. I'm rather certain they would have had discussions about his martial arts classes, if nothing else, for the small talk purpose of asking Elliot how his day went, and would have learned that Greg is a dependable, if sometimes goofy, guy.

MORE HUGS! Someone on Twitter mentioned it made them think of Twilight Sparkle with a Darth Vader-esque voice.

Hugs!

Based on the links in the commentary, it looks like next up we'll get Sarah and Tedd talking about what happened to Box.

I agree with this pyromaniac uryuom. Fire is a wonderful thing worthy of celebratory laughter.

Poor Ashley. She's been through a lot. Ellen has already displayed an extreme dislike of sleep magic, so I doubt that will be used. Simplest answer would be in the back of a windowless van. Arthur strikes me as the kind of person that would be willing to deal with unsavory consequences to achieve the desired goal. "The ends justify the means" though maybe not as extreme as characters that live by phrase tend to go. Magus had refused to amplify Edward's emotions, which is what led to the falling out between him and Pandora. Edward's actions were driven entirely by his own anguish and rage. Though even if Magus had been influencing Edward, I think that'll only justify Liefeld's decision to move Edward to another (new) division instead of firing him completely, which is likely what would have happened if he didn't have the connections he does.

Or leave, they may have migrated to the other half of the world where the people didn't hunt them down. Arthur's sure that no one has seen a true Dragon before, or at least in a very long time, but Ellen, Elliot and Ashley met Griffins who were also supposedly mythical creatures so it'd be pretty easy for them to believe that real Dragons existed. Given how much information is missing from official channels, I would not be surprised if Arthur doesn't know about the other half of the universe. (Or at least that it's technically part of their universe and not a separate universe altogether) It's possible, but it could also be a callback to another conclusion jumping event. Ellen is a true Olympian when it comes to conclusion jumping.

Dragons are awesome. Little things like them not existing won't get in the way of that. Besides, maybe dragons existed once upon a time, but one of the magic resets caused them to go extinct.

I suggested that the crystal was meant so seal whatever held the power inside. though maybe it was meant to harness the scale's power in a more controlled manner? Another possibility I thought of is that the crystal might have been the magic energy equivalent of congealed blood that was later shaped into an aesthetically pleasing form by some wizard, which would account for why the crystal's power was similar to the power of the scale. I don't think the war was started over the scale (or the animal it came from). Once the Golem's memory had been properly jogged, their desire was for humans to have nothing. Seeing the scale in the box could have sparked some degree of recognition of that goal without causing the full recall of events. My guess is that the uryuoms in question were looking to carve out a place to call their own. Just happened that the place they wanted was already occupied. Going from that, the Golem wanted humans to have nothing, because that's the situation their kind was forced to deal with.

That's a dragon scale. ... Is Ellen a dragon now? Also, it seems everyone keeps being wrong about what the "Diamond" was. I wonder what the original purpose of the thing was before Abraham got a hold of it. My guess would be to preserve the scale, either for study, power collection, or both.

But it would carry much more weight with Ellen if it was someone she already knows and trusts. She's suspicious of Arthur's motivations because she only knows him based on that others may have said about him, if his daughter was his assistant or another agent, there's no reason to be instantly convinced of anything, but if his daughter is Mrs Dunkel, someone Ellen loves and trusts, then of course she'd have a "huh...okay...." moment. It would carry more weight, but his statement doesn't need to. Arthur might want to quell Ellen's suspicions and put her more at ease, but if he doesn't, then the course of events doesn't really change that much. The worst that might happen is Ellen try to convince Ashley not to accept Kevin's help, but I suspect that Ashley is already firmly on-board with Kevin training her. A suspicious Ellen might be an annoyance going forward, but not really detrimental to any of Arthur's plans (And if she turns out to be detrimental to some plan, he could just ask Edward to exposit at her talk some sense into her)

Arthur has a daughter. Interesting, though in retrospect it's not surprising. Bringing about offspring is not an uncommon occurrence for people. There are numerous reasons for a given individual to not have any offspring, but various biological urges and instincts lead to offspring to be the norm. That said daughter was seemingly unintended and that Arthur supported her anyway is surprising and heartwarming. That could make sense, though, as she appears to be his secretary, that would suggest nepotism which runs counter to his assertion of ideal American values (Hypocrisy or outright misdirection isn't out of the question though) All three seers we know off being related? Two are suspicious, but all three, that would be too much. Susan, meanwhile? Hmmm ... she wasn't in basement when they were looking at Arthur in TV ... she does have some talent ... ok, we can't rule her out completely. Though it's been implied that Susan's magical talent is from her paternal side (With Adrian and her father looking extremely similar) But she was created by magic and has obviously shown to have thoughts that are independent of Elliot's. Though she was created by magic, Ellen is a flesh and blood human I don't believe there have been any hints or signs that Arthur is at all related to Adrian. He doesn't have the Raven family talent, Pandora doesn't seem to have made any attempt to ensure his or his daughter's safety after her revelation about Adrian being able to have children, and given that Susan's father looks extremely similar to Adrian despite the large number of generations between them, that would suggest that resemblance runs strong in his bloodline and Arthur looks nothing like Adrian. Not at all actually. He could have simply added that line for emphasis. If Ellen questions who his daughter is (or if she would assure such a thing), he could call her. Cell phones are ubiquitous. Whether or not Ellen believes Arthur and his daughter is her own prerogative and is unlikely to affect his decisions much if at all.

I wonder if Kevin has always been sapeint, or if he absorbed some of the Dewitchery energy too and that "brought him to life"? If he was sapient all along, it seems a bit cruel to have stuffed him in a crate for decades just because he's not a very good teacher. Also, when creating a magical AI, does magic do all the work, or is there any programming involved? If Kevin is not unique as a sapient artifact, then maybe magical AI creators ought to be giving electronic AI creators some tips... Based on this page, it appears that Kevin was completely non-functional before the Diamond was shattered. "I should even be able to talk to you." So likely he absorbed some energy from the Diamond, which fixed whatever was preventing him from functioning, assuming that his lack of function wasn't from a feature of magic being suppressed to lock away a previous system of magic and the Diamond just powered him up after the soft 'reset' released all the locks. As for creating a magical AI, I imagine magic does most of the work. Designing AI is hard, not just from a hardware stand point, but because the software is difficult and complex to put together. Modern AI development is largely centered around machine learning procedures, which can make a program that is really good at the thing it is being designed for, but the code is too tangled and complex to be understood by even the people who ostensibly designed it. Similar to a brain: the functions individual nodes/neurons are understood, and clusters are vaguely grasped, but the whole is beyond. Arthur apologized for talking to the meddling kids in an interrogation room in www.egscomics.com/comic/2018-05-23 I missed that line. Makes sense though. From my understanding interrogation rooms can feel rather uncomfortable or even oppressive.

Well that was mildly unexpected. Makes sense for Arthur to be Kevin's creator/father. There also appears to be a mirror behind Arthur in panel 4. Seems they're in an interrogation room instead of some random office or conference room. Which is an obvious place to have a discussion like this, but didn't occur to me earlier. Kevin is a seemingly sapient entity, though one that was artificially created. It's only polite to treat him as a person.

I have a feeling that Sarah is going to be envious, unless they can recreate the giving of wizard-ness. If she wasn't any sort of magic user before, she's probably a long way from getting spells of her own. What she needs is to see at least one low-power spell a few times to use her wizards ability to learn other people's spells. Once she knows one, she can start practicing it. Ellen's "blonder" beam (http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/2017-07-23-ellen-demo-15) should be a low-power transformation that Ashley would like. Let's see ... she is dating Elliot, who can transform to any female, and already saw Ellen's FV5 beam ... I don't think she will have shortage of transformation-related spells. But she's WIZARD. That means she can learn any spell she wants. And considering her low power and the amount of spell people around her can show her, it's possible she won't get any OWN spells at all - like, that she will "fill all slots" with learned spells. I don't think wizards learning other people's spells prevents them from gaining their own spells normally. It's not like they have limited slots they can fill with spells. They just have an additional way to learn new spells.

There will likely be more explaining and such needed for loved ones, but at least the situation has been diffused enough that they can stop worrying about where they are. And given what had happened over the night, a couple people flying around Moperville is unlikely to attract any attention towards magic that the global lightshow wouldn't have. Likely the only reason they didn't is the fact they didn't know where to go. Unfortunately, Magus and Sirleck were such an out-of-context threat for the main cast that the cavalry would have to more or less trip over the location they were needed at. A problem further complicated by how far away the facility is.

I wonder how well Magus would have faired if the urteronc had been in top fighting form instead of badly damaged.

I wonder if Magus landed on the Golem's chest or its head. Hard to tell from the angle in the last panel. Though either way, I doubt the Golem is down for the count. Such things have a tendency to be highly resilient. This one survived a blast from a god-like entity after all.

One should not underestimate guardians of ancient, mystical places, especially if they're willing to be polite. If they weren't powerful enough to deter any attackers, then the places they guard wouldn't have lasted to become ancient. And politeness on their part means that you aren't a threat to them and they would rather not take the time cleaning up your remains. Yeah, but comparing it to modern Uryumocco would probably be like comparing Common English to Latin, though Latin of course isn't long forgotten but it's very niche in it's usage today. So far it actually seem like comparing current English to Shakespeare one. Given that Dan's commentary states that modern Uryuoms wouldn't understand the ancient language, it's at least like comparing modern English and Old English (like what the original poem of Beowulf was written in) as modern English speakers can understand Shakespearean English(also known as Early Modern English), albeit with some difficulty. That's why the most important device on any machine is internal chronometer. Any war machine should suppose that no order is valid for more than 100 years and if more than 1000 years passed, it's certainly museum exhibit now. Yes, but the golem has been inoperable for all that time, with it's systems and functionality being actively suppressed. Any internal chronometer likely wasn't running either, so while the golem can obviously tell it's not at the library any more, it most certainly doesn't know how much time has passed.

Escape from the Mall is a canon storyline

The golem mentioning that Ellen having a lot of the kind of power that woke it and the other artifacts would be the same as Tara mentioning that Ellen had a "different kind of magic potential" so it wouldn't necessarily mean that Ellen absorbed any of the power after diamond shattered but that she already had the power because she was created by it. The golem was able to trace the power to its origin in an open, but otherwise nondescript crate, so they might be able to detect how the magical energy flowed from the Diamond's remains/core through the facility.

It looks like Ellen might be the one to end up with old system magic after this is all said and done, probably from power seeping into her from the remnants of the Dewitchery Diamond. I also think the silhouette looks dragon-ish, though I might be biased. I really like dragons.