Grrl Power #1468 - Princess Alice of Batenberg's Gambit (Patreon)

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Prophylaxis, in case you don't know (that includes me, I had to google chess terms) just what it's called when you "play defensively," or at least try to deny your opponent whatever strategy he seems to be going for. Like in pool, you want to sink your balls but if possible also leave the cue ball in a bad spot for the other guy in case you miss.

Ryzyl didn't cast Mirror Image, he cast... I don't know. Army of Me or something. Basically one of those high level spells that creates actual copies of him that have the same equipment and spells and stuff that lasts all of 10 minutes, or something like that. And when it ends, he gets the memories of each one back. Good for quickly exploring a dungeon, overwhelming an opponent, pooling all their coin and cheating a merchant out of his bushel of apples, that sort of thing. Actually, if the spell was really well crafted, there'd be an option to not absorb the memories, because most of what he's going to get back from this encounter is a lot of crushing, burning and choppy-choppy.

In panel 2, Max is doing an "X" swipe, followed by a heart stab - hopefully that's more or less what it looks like - but as I'm posting this, I realize that the heart stab is a little superfluous, because she's stabbing right in the middle of the X, which has already been thoroughly quartered. She should have stabbed him right in the middle of the face, probably. Although, during her 3 months of hyperbolic time cargo deck training, she probably got up to the point where she was fighting fairly advanced magic wielding opponents - advanced like "has spell in place that allows them to shrug off a single fatal blow somehow" or "upon receiving a fatal wound, this spell rewinds time to just before the injury was received (up to three seconds) and teleports you up to 10 feet in a safe direction." Which is one of those high level spells that does no good if you get chopped in the femoral artery and it takes you a minute to bleed out. But it's great against decapitations and boulders, whether launched via catapult or giant. So I guess Max is just making sure her kill shots stick. It's the sword equivalent of the double-tap.