Kill Six Billion Demons IV: King of Swords (part seven)

With Mathangi's interlude over, it's back to Team Killy taking some RnR time in their apartment nestled in the skull of Un-Whoever. They're playing poker with some Grand Dragon coins and a deck of playing cards that Killy drew herself.

Okay, that's actually the kind of cultural touch that I feel like the comic hasn't been doing enough of recently! We were told that half of the 777,777 universes contain some version of "Earth" in them, but this is confirmation that our/Killy's Earth is still very distinct from its alternates, with history and cultural evolution that went in unique directions. No one in the contacted multiverse has seen the standard 52-card deck before, or heard of specific games like poker. They probably have other tarot-ish cards (including possibly some common ancestry, since mystics might have played around with those enough to spread some glimpses of them across multiple worlds), and assuredly have their own games to gamble on with them, but not our world's version. Given that Cio and Princess, at least, seem to be really getting into the game, I think it stands to reason that if Killy's world were to be conquered its card games might well become part of Throne's cultural background. A few centuries later, hardly anyone would even remember which world that deck was taken from; it would just be part of imperial culture.

Like I said, I've been missing stuff like this in K6BD. I'll be glad to start seeing it more often again.

Anyway, as Killy expresses frustration at White Chain not getting the hang of bluffing (and, as the bottom caption points out, being weirded out that the noblemen depicted on the cards don't correlate to any actual historical figures), we see an unpleasant looking character approaching the house.

The face looks nothing like hers, but the green jester outfit and the wormlike forearm annulations are distinctly Gog-Agogish. She often has a little throng of clownlike attendants following her around at the meetings, though, so this is probably one of them.

Did Gog's agents really find them before Mottom's did? That strikes me as extremely unlikely, even with Mottom having her stupid war with Mammon to focus on. That whole war only started because of her maniacal urge to get revenge on Killy, after all.

Hmm. Is it going to turn out that Gog-Agog has been sabotaging Mottom's search? Surreptitiously protecting Team Killy's secrecy for her own strange reasons? That would make sense. If that's the case, then I think Killy's secret benefactor is about to reveal herself and start twisting her arm for a favor in return.

Back inside, they finish another round of poker and take a little break. Cio goes out onto one of the balconies for a smoke, looking morose and barely speaking. Killy follows her and asks what's wrong, and starts getting frustrated when Cio refuses to open up about it. Before the conversation can continue though, the creepy jester on the street below leaps thirty feet up onto the balcony right in front of them, delivers a dramatic "Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to humbly introduce..." flourish, and then...erm...does this:

On its own, this would just be weird and gross. Reading Gog-Agog's boss card though, the implications get a whole hell of a lot darker.

"The great devourer, scourge of worlds."

She's a bunch of worms. There are a bunch of people all dressed like her. And we just saw her explode out of one of those people, seemingly consuming his flesh to reconstitute her own humanoid form in the process.

Well. If Solomon David is the least bad of the Black Seven to live under, I think we just found out who the worst is. In fact...there might not be anyone living under Gog-Agog's rule at all. Or, if they're alive, they might be so infested that they barely...fuck. That's billions, possible trillions, of people, or what used to be people.

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. If I'm correct though, then this is absolutely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the greatest mass murderer in cosmic history.

Also, "she" might actually be an entire species. Or...well, maybe not? Did she used to be human, before turning herself into the distributed consciousness of this cosmic parasite pandemic? Was "she" originally a Servant species tasked with keeping the soil of Throne aerated or something, and that modified themselves into parasitism using demiurgic magic? Her power word is "Beast." That could mean she never was human (or even anything remotely humanlike, a la Mammon) in the first place.

The Key probably teleports from host to host to create her avatar-form out of the "local materials." Teleportation and plane shifting are the most basic functions of the keys, after all. Or maybe she doesn't actually need it to be on location at all for her to form the clowngirl chestburster body. Maybe she keeps it buried under a giant swarm of herself in some ultra-secure world she's infested, and beams a worthless glowy white rock into her avatars as a decoy or something.

Anyway. A seventh of the contacted multiverse is most likely either a) dead, or b) dearly wishes it was.

Heh, now I'm getting Stephen King "It" vibes. Cosmic horror in a dorky-looking clown package.

...

Oh, also, she has a theme song provided in the caption.

On its own, this song sounds appropriate. If you know the song's origins, it's very, very appropriate.

...

Well, back to the story. We'll see if Gog-Agog really does live up to her "scourge of worlds" title as horribly as I currently suspect.

Anyway, Killy and Mottom don't agree on much, to say the least, but the two of them do share a single common reflex.

It's an understandable one, to be fair.

As Gog uncrushes her face, Killy asks her how she found them. Lol, what a fucking stupid question Killy, seriously, have you been taking any pains at all to make yourself hard to find? Like I said, I suspect the only reason Mottom hasn't found her is *because* Gog-Agog found her first (though on further thoughts, 2 Michael's agents might also be running interference here). Anyway, Gog-Agog laughs at the question, and explains that no one can hide from her anywhere; she's just in too damned many places. There's always someone willing to be Gog-Agog. There's so much misery in the contacted multiverse, after all, and just look at the alternative she offers them!

She's basically a 50/50 cross between the Many from System Shock 2 and Papa Nurgle from Warhammer 40K, with a bit of Stephen King’s “It” and HP Lovecraft’s “The Festival” for aesthetics.

I guess this means that infestation needs to be at least semi-voluntary? If she needs to lure and tempt people, instead of just holding them down and shoving worms into whichever orifice strikes her fancy. Granted, if she rules your damned planet, creating the conditions neccessary to manufacture consent are pretty trivially easy for her. It's a limiter, but mostly just one that curbs her expansion into uncontrolled territory; in her own "empire" (more like "colony," or perhaps "endemic") it makes virtually zero difference.

Then again, the focus on a waitress, specifically, being infected feels like it's supposed to suggest at less voluntary and less informed transmission methods. She's handing people's food to them, after all...

Also, and perhaps most surprisingly, those are TV's people are watching her on every channel of, and this scene appears to be taking place in Throne. A panel earlier, she also gestured at a billboard of one of her movies or shows or whatever on the Throne skyline. Nobody seems to have electricity or radio technology, though. This is the first time we've ever seen anything like television or even film in the comic outside of Killy's homeworld. I'd have assumed that Gog-Agog was just more permissive about what sorts of technology are allowed to exist within her own empire, but this is clearly going on in Throne, which raises a lot of questions.

Maybe it's not actually radio television, but some special analogous device that Gog-Agog has exclusive control over? Looks like a TV box from the outside, but all mystically locked to Gog-Agog's Keys and powered by little pale devils in hamster wheels or something? The other Black Kings don't mind if she distributes them on Throne, as long as she makes sure they can't be replicated and used freely by nonstate actors? Maybe?

I don't know, it's a stretch no matter which way you try to interpret it.

Well. Regardless. She has hosts in Throne, hidden among the general population, and she has enough multitasking and data processing ability to use all of them to passively keep an eye out for Killy. I have to wonder why the other six let her infect people in Throne, frankly; it seems like a perfect prelude to start launching a covert invasion of their own empires. Maybe they have a way of screening her out of their regions of control, idk. Anyway, she claims to be a big fan of Killy (her number one fan, in fact), and that she'd really love to be her and vice versa. She pulls a worm out of her self and offers it to Killy; just swallow it whole, and it'll reproduce in her stomach quick as anything and integrate with her central nervous system, and then it's just welcome to the family, hope you don't mind if we all share your Masterkey.

Okay, she doesn't say that last bit out loud, but it's pretty obviously her motive.

Killy wisely (low bar, I know, but still) tells her to fuck off. Gog affects surprised disappointment, and says that still, she might have another offer Killy may be more interested in. And, okay, I just have to show you this panel.

A big part of the fear of clowns is that the smile is painted on, and you can't tell what expression the person in the gaudy outfit is actually making. This close-up of Gog-Agog gets to the root of that, and goes further with it. It's so clear that we're looking at a worm with a human face glued onto it. It's not just a fake smile. It's a fake everything. Something completely inhuman and alien trying to trick the observer into thinking they can relate to it.

More and more, I'm leaning toward the suspicion that Gog-Agog was never human. Or at the very least, if she was, transformation into her current state has moved her so far away from the human condition that she might as well not have been.

She tells Killy about Solomon David's tournament. She hates Solomon David and wants to see him dethroned, for reasons that Killy doesn't need to know or care about. However, she ALSO - for some fucking reason - is in charge of arranging the elimination matches, which means she can fix the contest to a pretty far extent. If Killy enters the tournament, Gog will assure she ends up facing Solomon, and then she just needs to draw a single drop of his blood to dethrone him. Whether Killy makes herself the new Celestial Empress or gives the crown to someone else or divides it up or whatever, Gog-Agog doesn't seem to care. The way she's telling it, she just has a personal grudge against Solomon and wants him removed from power.

Killy still isn't biting, so Gog plays her trump card.

There's something kind of subtle being done, here. Killy already knew that Zaid is being held by Solomon David (at least, Cio knew, and while it's possible that she withheld that information from Killy I don't think that she did). She should have thought of that immediately as soon as Gog told her about the tournament, and frankly she should have been following Solomon's name in the news enough to already know about the tournament herself.

The fact is, while rescuing Zaid was her initial heroic motivation at the end of book one, too much has happened since then. Killy has seen too much. Done too much. She's saved too many people, and killed too many others. Zaid doesn't matter anymore. Or rather, he DOES matter, but not more than Nyave. Not more than Cio or White Chain. Not more than the ill-tempered gardener priest, or the helpful pie-vendor. Killy has new goals, and more important ones with further-reaching consequences than rescuing one particular civilian out of the billions held in bondage by the Black Kings.

But she still THINKS that Zaid is the goal. Or at least, she thinks that she should think that. Otherwise, she'd have no reaction to Gog-Agog "reminding" her of this thing that she already almost certainly knew about and forcing her to consciously acknowledge it. For some reason, she wants to think that this is what her story is still about. And, speaking of treating real life like a story, Gog-Agog is even framing it AS a story in her little pitch, describing Killy as the hero to Solomon's villain and Zaid's damsel.

I don't think Gog-Agog knows about this contradiction in Killy's motives. She apparently baits people into ingesting her parasites using (among other possible methods) mass media, so sculpting stories to appeal to people against their better judgements is probably just force of habit for her. She may have thought Killy really is just earnestly still trying to rescue Zaid and just taking a year off to lay low. Or she might have divined the truth and be pitting one part of Killy - the part of her that is invested in this strange perception of herself as being here to rescue Zaid even though she'd rather be back home brewing coffee and watching ersatz Disney movies with her sorority sisters - against her greater self that acknowledges its greater reality. Why part of her is still clinging onto that at all, I'm really not sure.

Either way, hmm.

I'll wait to see where this is going but - between Gog's shtick and Solomon's shtick - there's a certain branch of critical theory that I almost brought up once or twice in my Chainsaw Man reviews that might end up being much more relevant here.

...

Gog informs Killy that Zaid is being well treated by the Celestial Emperor for now, but that could change at any time. Solomon just needs to get bored of waiting for something interesting to happen with Zaid, or for Zaid to try something stupid, before he decides he's no longer worth holding onto. At which point, he'll likely just kill him in a heartbeat. Gog illustrates this last point by chopping off her simulacrum of Zaid's head and letting it roll on the floor a bit before it collapses into a pile of worms and she grows her own face back.

I feel like Gog might be deliberately playing up her own gruesome nature here. If she tried to make herself seem too normal or reasonable or human, Killy would probably be less trusting of her. Of course, the gruesome mutilation of human(ish) bodies in front of Killy's eyes will also give her a more viceral sense of urgency about rescuing Zaid, just through subtext. The mess of blood-slicked worms on her patio floor also instills a natural desire to clean something, or fix something...to ACT, at any rate.

Gog-Agog watches Killy stammer and wince a bit, and then tells her she looks forward to seeing her at the tournament before dispersing and crawling away.

On one hand, I'd probably advise Killy to not take the bait.

On the other...maybe taking the bait actually isn't such a bad idea here?

The tournament does seem like a good opportunity to cause some disruption, if that is indeed Killy's new goal. Even if she doesn't win, or even if she doesn't intend to win, there's all kinds of intel-gathering, networking, and other revolutionary activities that can be done from within an event like this.

Hmm.

Well, Killy seems to be pretty indecisive about this herself. At dinner, she's still haunted by the question. Along with the horrific imagery, sense of paranoia, and general SAN damage she just had inflicted on her, presumably. White Chain and Princess both counsel her against it.

On the other hand, Nyave - taking one of her occasional steely-eyed and fiery-voiced vacations from demure silence - has the exact opposite opinion.

Well, she's at least aware of how her personal biases might be coloring things. Even with that taken into account though, she's not making the worst argument in the world. Killy's brand of bullheadedness, the power of the Masterkey, and the luck of the draw have so far generally combined in ways favorable to their group.

Nyave also starts getting a little philosophical, though. All her life, she says, she was taught about Throne, the cosmic city of the gods. About the angels who embodied the Old Law. The demigods with stars in their foreheads who served the eternal seven. Now she's been to Throne, met an angel and a demiurge, and seen the black kings for what they really are. They're all just people. White Chain is just a normal cop who happens to also be super strong and made of fire and stone. Killy is just a normal twenty-something who happens to have a McGuffin lodged in her face. Throne is just a normal city, only it happens to be much bigger and perhaps slightly shittier than average. The Black Kings are just common maniacs like you could find in any psych ward, only they happen to be in charge of the multiverse.

What that means, Nyave says, is that the entire cosmic pecking order is bullshit, and also not really all that "cosmic." Angels aren't different or better than humans. Demiurgi aren't different or better than commoners. That means that everything is a scam, and no one is owed anything based on their station. It's time to hoist the hammer and sickle, and fucking with Solomon David's regime is as fine a way to start as any.

...

Heh. Unaddressed in this speech of hers is the fact that Nyave is, herself, of noble blood and title. She mentioned that her father is a king or something back on Mykos, a while ago in the comic. I wonder if she's followed this logical train all the way to its terminal station yet? Well, if not, I think she'll get there soon enough.

...

With Nyave's piece said, Princess shrugs and says that eh, whatever, tournament could be kinda fun too. There'll be fighting at least. Fighting is cool. Red devils like to fight, after all. So, now White Chain is the only dedicated naysayer.

Just as I was wondering how Cio would advise her here, Killy turns around and asks her herself. Turns out she was in the room this whole time, but just being very uncharacteristically silent.

She's...not having an easy time, it looks like.

Killy asks her what's going on. She keeps chopping the vegetables. She asks more firmly. More chopping. She gets mad and barks at Cio to open up and communicate and be supportive for once in her goddamned life. Cio responds with the author's latest panel of meme bait.

Cio clarifies that unconvincingly delivered statement with a monologue. This is the furthest she's ever been from the monster that was Yabalchoath. After the catastrophe in Mammon's fortress, it's also thrown into very immediate, very stark contrast. In this life, she isn't hurting anyone, for once. She isn't even complicit in anyone being hurt, aside from the most basic "no ethical consumption under magocratic oligarchy" sort of way. She's working, cooking, teaching, and playing, and she feels fulfilled doing this and nothing else. She might not be advancing her career as a fanfic writer/chronicler, but she doesn't need to be doing that, and frankly, even THAT probably tended too close to her previous self what with its fixation on documenting destruction and excess. She hasn't just changed since she was an ebon devil. She's changed since she was the entity we got to know in books one and two.

Going back into battle, or politics, or anything even adjacent to power, would jeopardize that growth she's undergone. That's why she gets so distant whenever Killy talks about her own longterm plans or prophetic role or what have you.

...

Cio doesn't say this part in as many words, but she's also proving something to herself by living such a peaceful, unassuming life. Back in book three, she gave that whole speech about the selfish, antisocial nature of devilkind. I never bought it, but she did, and it's implied that most people (devils and nondevils alike) do. In the year's timeskip since then, she's become living evidence to the contrary...but is this actually a case of a devil legitimately shedding its antisocial programming, or just a contrarian devil stubbornly pretending to have done so just to (selfishly and egotistically) prove a point?

The sooner she backslides, the harder it will be for her to convince herself that it WAS anything besides the typical stubbornness and pettiness that devils are known for, just turned in a superficially pro-social direction.

On the other hand though, if you're looking at her behavior through this framework, then continuing to NOT backslide would also just proof of how narcissistic and egotistical devils can be. Living a lie and acting a part, on and on and on, just to spite people's assumptions? Classic devil behavior right there!

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Cio's inner judge is unpleasable.

Also, as a little aside: this right here is 100% my shit. This is what I think fantasy and scifi really bring to the table that so-called "literary fiction" never can. Dissecting human nature and human experience using a nonhuman frame of reference.

...

Killy tells Cio that she understands. However, she can't be happy living a placid life interrupted only by occasional low-stakes superheroing right now. So, Cio says that until Killy gets back, they're going to have to cut ties.

I can't blame Killy for being frustrated and a little hurt by this. However, I also think that Cio is making a very reasonable decision, and one that no one besides her has a right to make. After what almost happened last time, I might even call it the most responsible choice she could make.

Unfortunately, Killy is less than understanding about this. Part of this is doubtless because she's still rattled by Gog-Agog's...whatever the hell you'd even call that performance...earlier that day. Part of it, though, is just a product of mounting stress and frustration, and the fact that Killy was never all that emotionally mature herself in the first place.

I do wonder, though. What *does* the white hair signify, exactly? Is this selfishness and egocentricism partly something she retained from Incubus?

Anyway, she tries to tell Cio she can't just back out on her like that, and advances on her. Cio tells her not to touch her. Killy keeps coming closer. Jump cut to Killy, White Chain, Princess, and Nyave stepping through the portal to Rayuba, with Cio nowhere in sight.

Killy also has a band-aid on her nose that she didn't have before. The implication being that she might have tried to touch Cio after being told not to, and been more harshly disincentivized from continuing to. Not an auspicious start to Killy's tournament arc, to say the least.

I'll end this post with this awesome panel of them approaching the newly built arena to sign Killy up.

The giant stylized statues of Solomon David are such lol. But besides those, I really love what Rayuba as a setting brings to the comic. Totally different color pallette, atmosphere, etc. All this time spent in Throne started making things look a little samey, and this handily solves that problem. At the same time, the throng of tournament-tourists littering the causeway brings the familiar Throne colors and silhouettes into the frame as well, juxtaposed against the very different Rayuban background. Making it clear that this is still the world of Kill Six Billion Demons, just a different planet within it.

I also like how the slightly tilted horizon line twists the pristine geometry of the monuments and gives a subtle hint of wrongness and imperfection. Solomon David is very good at maintaining appearances, but even he can't completely paint over the imperfect reality. The stage of his theater state is getting a little tilted.