As will be revealed on the next page, this area is known as "the Fringes". It's a kind of buffer zone between our world and the spirit world. Although we haven't seen it before, you may remember that Starflower visited the Fringes when she was trying to telepathically contact the Shaman back in Chapter 11.

When I first imagined this place, I saw it as somewhere very bright with few details except for one or two abstract shaped objects floating around. Partly to make things easy for the artist, it was pretty much a void. Well, as you can see, Nickel doesn't do "easy" and, instead, he presented me with this wonderful fantasy landscape!

Even then, I still imagined the Fringes as bright, hazy place. And I continued to see it that way until I received Qoiri's flats for this page. It was immediately obvious that he'd nailed the feel of it and that "dark and sombre" was the way to go. All of which just goes to prove ... sometimes the art team understands a writer's world far better than the writer himself!

Don't forget, you can leave a comment (or ask a question) in the Shades forum!