Kill Six Billion Demons IV: “King of Swords” (part four)

After Cio gives Killy a magic lesson, we fade to black for them to make some magic together and then fade back in for the following pillow talk. Cio surmises that even though they're having a pretty good life, Killy has been increasingly melancholy about something. It takes a bit of prodding from Cio, but Killy eventually grants that while everything has been going well this past year, she feels strangely disassociated from her own success and happiness. The house - bought/scammed with gold her body looted while possessed by Incubus' minime and "built" in a way completely foreign to her - does not feel like her house. Her body - implanted with a device she barely understands and bolstered by angelic training that she can only recieve BECAUSE of that device - does not feel like her body. She doesn't feel like any of the skills she's been learning are actually bringing her closer to rescuing Zaid, if that even is still her goal at this point. The choices she made that led her here don't feel like her own choices. Most of all, well...

I mean, she's not wrong there. Even if not for the prophecy, she's antagonized at least one demiurge to the point where it's a wonder she hasn't already dropped an asteroid on their god-house by now. She can't continue to not drop an asteroid on it forever.

Cio just groans and walks away, telling Killy that she's tired of her refusing to just be happy and enjoy things while she has a chance to do so. Killy is...rather hurt by this, considering that they were in the middle of post-sex cuddling, but for Cio the mood has just been killed.

A little weird of Cio to be getting like this, given her own insistence just a few minutes ago that she and Killy still "aren't really dating." And it's definitely not helping with Killy's sense of out-of-placeness.

Obviously, the solution is to get Nyave in on this too. White Chain would just make things worse, and Princess doesn't seem to be Killy's type, so it's got to be Nyave. Or else just go fishing around Throne and recruit a full polycule of new characters. At least one of them has got to be able to provide what Killy needs emotionally.

Lonely and frustrated, Killy goes to sleep after dinner. As she lays unconscious, she begins the final lesson of her daily routine, which...um. I...am not sure what to even say to this.

Can she really just not get rid of him, no matter what? I can't imagine that she still considers them to be on speaking terms, after he very predictably screwed her over just like she said she'd try to kill him if he did.

If this has been a nightly or near-nightly occurrence ever since Yre, then that's an even stronger reason for Killy not to be setting up a longterm residence in Throne of all places. We don't know that Incubus can't dreamwalk into other universes, sure, but we also don't know that he can. Every instance so far has been either in Throne itself or in the ethereal desert immediately surrounding it. Shouldn't they at least by trying to test his range? Or getting Killy someone to teach her about dream-magic in the hopes of keeping him out (I doubt he's the only practitioner of it in the entire multiverse, even if he may be the best at it)? Maybe they did try these measures during the timeskip, but if so I really wish the comic would make that explicit.

...okay, to be fair, this next page makes it seem less like Incubus has been doing this every night, and more like he's just been popping back in once in a while to try again.

God, he must be so annoying.​

Or...actually, I don't know. Because right after that, we get this:

"If we're gonna keep working together."

This might just be him trying to wear her down, or gaslight her, or something. But it could also suggest that she actually has been continuing to cooperate with him, at least to some degree. And, well...I'll be frank. If it's the latter, then I'm not sure I can retain my interest in Killy as a protagonist. I really hope it's not that.

In response to her barked question, Incubus starts smugly lecturing her about how, while he considers himself an excellent judge of strength, he's not sure how clear of a judgement he can make in her case. It's like she's still afraid of power. She has it right in front of her, but she shies away from it. He continues to weasel word and neg for a while until Killy gets sick of it and, after amusingly shifting her dream-avatar into gymclothes, decides to try and beat a straight answer out of him.

Incubus acts as if this is a sparring practice rather than an attempt to enact genuine violence against him for coercive rather than didactic purposes. Like I said, I really hope that he's wrong and this is just him being obnoxious and her having given up on just ignoring him after trying it for many nights without it getting rid of him.

Well, I guess one of my questions from the end of the last volume has been answered. The white hair isn't a good thing. Assimilating Succubus has not made Killy more resistant to his dream-intrusions, but rather more vulnerable. Well, there did have to be consequences.

Speaking of consequences, it also occurs to me that - despite Killy's ability to change her clothing and other external details in dreamspace, and her earlier insistence that her current body doesn't feel like hers - she still has her scars and white hair in the dream. Also, when she goes into demiurge mode and manifests her halo and lightning spear, the scars start glowing along with her Key. Both the facial scars from Cio and the puncture-marks from Mottom. Not sure what all is up with that, but in light of her earlier comments about alienation from her own body it feels ominous. Especially if it's following her into the dreamworld.

On a brighter note, when Incubus keeps smugging at her instead of answering as he dodges her swings and thrusts, she gets mad enough and he gets overconfident enough for this to happen:

Hmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Not sure if I should trust this.

On one hand, Incubus looks genuinely miffed about getting cut here. And obviously, the panel's emphasis on those blood droplets flying free is reminding us about the rules of Solomon David's tournament to foreshadow the possibility of Killy winning it.

On the other, Incubus is a very good liar. And, with his mastery of both swordplay and dream magic, I could see him doing a convincing pretence of being outmanoeuvred when he actually let himself get cut on purpose. Probably to make her overconfident about that very same tournament and thus aim her at yet another of Incubus' rivals.

There's also one very weird little detail that might be significant, or might not be. Back during the superhero scene with Killy storming Omun Vash's lair, the under-the-page captions were mostly snippets from a martial arts encyclopedia about various whacky magical fighting techniques from around the multiverse. One of the techniques mentioned, and which was bizarre enough for me to remember while forgetting about most of the others, was something called "The Head of John." You learn to sustain a powerful ki-field (or "atum" as the book calls it) around your skull, and then implant three metal bits into your forehead that maintain it. Supposedly, if you do this right, it makes your head and neck completely impervious to damage, even just skin damage. Incubus, notably, has two extra metal bits in his forehead as well as a larger one outlining his Key in the middle.

Now, maybe that crazy portal-lightning-spear Killy occasionally uses is able to overwhelm even the Head of John's protection. It appears to be the same weapon that Zoss used against the Prime Angels in their godzilla-sized supersynths, so I can buy it being able to no-sell any sort of armor or shielding. But then, we're in a dream, and Incubus can do a lot of sensory trickery in dreams. That's not Incubus' physical body, it's a psychic projection that he has an unknown (but potentially high) capability to adjust as he sees fit.

So...I think it's overall more likely than not that he chose to let himself get cut there. Yeah. Not for sure, but more likely.

Incubus turns away from Killy and glares sullenly out into the void, as if trying to get his temper back under control. Maybe a sign that she really did outfight him for a second there, or maybe just part of the performance. Anyway, he turns back around with a smile on his face (despite the cut on his cheek still bleeding) and congratulates her on that attack. However, he tells her, she really does need to learn how to keep herself in glowy halo demiurge mode for longer than a couple of seconds. It's been a year now, and she can still only manage a couple of seconds. But, if she keeps trying, if she starts really applying herself to these nighttime "lessons" of his, he knows that the two of them can win in the end.

...

Okay seriously why aren't Killy and her friends making getting him out of her dreams their top priority?

...

Killy, smoking in the wake of her short-lived hypermode burst, tells him that she doesn't care about "winning," especially not with him. She just wants to survive this and come out the other side with Zaid alive as well. Incubus, predictably enough, thinks that that's a very naive way to try and live.

To illustrate his point, he tells her a story. Which she pays attention to, for some reason. Why is she believing any word out of his mouth about anything, at this point? I swear, if she really is still considering him any kind of ally or even non-enemy I might actually lose my ability to care what happens to her. Anyway, his story takes place on a planet called Rayuba.

...

Hah. Okay, yeah, the cheek-cut was completely deliberate by him. This whole interaction is just him priming her to go make trouble at Solomon's tournament.

...

So, Rayuba. Was supposedly a nice place in the distant past. Is a nice place right now too, at least superficially. During the Multiversal War though, it was seized by a particularly ruthless demiurge by the name of Yemmod whose army was in desperate need of supplies. Catastrophic infrastructural and environmental damage was dealt in the initial clashes (it's not explicit, but from the sound of things Rayuba was already a contacted world before the war broke out, and Yemmod's forces had to seize it from the previous demiurgic ruler). After securing Rayuba, Yemmod methodically stripped it of any and all natural resources, including population. Pockets of local resistance were met with genocidal retribution.

There was only one tiny section of the planet that Yemmod didn't loot down to the bedrock. This was the domain of the Brotherhood of the Silent Voice, a small order of monks who practiced a martial art called...oh god what a lazy fucking name..."ki rata." Literally just "karate" with the vowels changed. Anyway, ki rata is supposed to be the most dangerous and powerful martial art in the entire multiverse. Why this one monastery on this one random planet was the only place that practiced it probably has a long, complicated, and interesting story behind it, but it's not relevant to the one Incubus is currently telling. Yemmod avoided the monastery's immediate surroundings, and kept some WOMD's in reserve to destroy its whole subcontinent with if the monks decided to fight him. However, he need not have bothered, because the masters of the deadliest martial art in existence were avowed pacifists who wouldn't actually use their art for martial purposes if their lives and the lives of everyone they knew depended on it.

"Fools," Incubus calls them. And frankly, I don't think he's wrong on this one. Assuming he isn't lying about this detail, of course.

Anyway, during the scouring of Rayuba, a defeated warrior came to the monastery seeking to join the Brotherhood.

You'd think a LOT of refugees would have been petitioning the monks for refuge, not just this one guy. Hmm. Incubus is definitely omitting something.

On an anthropological note; the name "Rayuban Home Guard" is what makes me think this was already a demiurgic fiefdom before Yemmod came. I've previously pointed out some unfortunate homogeneity in the way the satellite worlds are depicted, but the fact that this world government's army has a name like "Rayuban Home Guard" suggests that they were aware of the multiverse and had potentially had some experience with interdimensional conflict.

On another anthropological note, the term "citizen-soldier" is pretty specifically evocative of Sparta. Surprising, given the mixed Semitic name and fashion sense, but it's a big multiverse. Whether that means that Solomon David came from a home grown Rayuban Sparta-analogue, or that their previous demiurge ruler came from one and decided to remake one or more local societies into that mold, I couldn't say. At any rate though, knowing that Solomon started out as something like a Spartiate might enable some insights into his personal psychology and biases. I'll definitely keep that in mind.

Anyway, Solomon became a monk, and lived and practiced and studied among them while watching the rest of the planet die. Over the following years, the air was processed, the oceans drained, and the minerals scraped away until Rayuba's surface looked like that of the moon. Even the sun was destroyed (it's not clear if that happened as a delayed consequence of the initial war, of if Yemmod actually harvested the damned star to help fuel his war machine). The monks survived, for a time, their mystically enhanced bodies able to survive the cold, foodless wasteland of poisoned air and parched rock. Presumably, they were either planning to flee to Throne and vanish into the midst of the many refugees from many other worlds soon, or to just let themselves slowly die. It was in this utter desolation that Solomon completed his training.

After wiping out the other monks - the only other remaining life forms on Yaruba larger than a tardigrade - Solomon hunted down Yemmod, crushed his skull, and pried the first of his eventual 111,111 keys out of its remains. The Rayuba of today is essentially an artificial world, rebuilt entirely by the industrial and magical resources of the Celestial Empire.

Again, some aspects of Incubus' story seem improbable enough that I don't think he's being truthful. It's also important to note that unlike the last time one of the Black Seven told us a detailed narrative like this, the narrator wasn't actually present for the events described, so some inaccuracies might not even be intentional on Incubus' part. This could be Incubus' distortion of Solomon David's own distortion of what actually happened.

That said, within the narrative that's been presented to us, I think Solomon David was in the right when he dealt with the monks. Regardless of who he was and what he did as a citizen-soldier. Regardless of what he'd subsequently do as a demiurge himself.

...

On the topic of "what he'd subsequently do as a demiurge himself," and being much less charitable toward the Celestial Emperor now, I wonder if Solomon had to harvest at least one other world to death himself in order to get the stuff to restore Ryuba with. Instead of just making THAT world his capital and letting the tombstone of his original homeworld remain as a memorial to what was lost.

I don't know if Solomon ever actually did destroy a world himself, let alone for such a petty reason. From the sound of things, he only became a demiurge after the worst of the conflict had already happened, so his hands may be relatively clean compared to the others. But, given his demonstrated affinity for style over substance when it comes to being a good ruler, I wouldn't be surprised either way.

...

So, Incubus completes his story. I'm not entirely sure why he told it, though, aside from putting Solomon David in Killy's thoughts. Like, I don't understand what Incubus wants Killy to think the reason he told her this was.

It...seems to me like the monks were the ones who were made examples of, here. Not Solomon. Did he really not win, by any reasonable metric? Or even most unreasonable ones? He's not in a worse situation than Incubus. He's not in a worse situation than any of the other six, I don't think, except maybe Jagganath.

Is the point that victory is something you can never truly have, because life is always a struggle? Maybe? You can still be victorious in one specific conflict, though. And like...this whole aside started with Incubus telling Killy thought he thinks they can win if they work together, not that she'd want to after last time. So...is he saying the rules are different for him and her than they are for the other demiurgi? That they alone can win at the eternal game of violence, for some fucking reason? Or is he just hoping she isn't paying enough attention to catch this contradiction and realize that he's just messing with her head without saying anything of substance?

She might call him on his bullshit right after this, or she might not. From here, we skip directly to the Conclave of the Demiurgi, where Solomon David has called the other Black Kings for another meeting like the one Mottom called at the end of book one. Surprisingly, he was able to get Mottom AND MAMMON to both come in person this time. Granted, it's taking him and everyone else present to stop those two from just opening up on each other with full spell barrages.

Mammon is able to remember that he's mad at Mottom. This must be one of his good days.


Anyway, this meeting scene is probably going to get pretty information dense, and I'm already over 3k words. I think that's a post.