Kill Six Billion Demons II: “Wielder of Names” (part five)
The previous chapter ended with Killy - de-aged to twelve or so by Mottom's disturbingly fleshy looking apples of youth - being dragged off to a ball by that same demiurge. The timing of events, including the ball, the tribute ceremony, and the feast that may or may not have been laid out purely for show to mess with Killy's head, suggests either some bizarrely careful planning by Mottom, or time manipulation. From what we've seen, she's both crazy enough for it to be the former and powerful enough for it to be the latter.
This chapter starts off on the other side of the Palace of Radiance, with a couple of soldiers standing guard on the upper deck. They've got guns and somewhat WW1-looking equipment, so I guess Mottom does make use of industrial age technology. Whether she has any mundane tech more advanced than early twentieth century era remains to be seen, but if so she's chosen not to issue it to her rank-and-file guards.
Also, these guards are male. Yeah, the fate of those tribute girls is looking more and more ominous, as there's way too many of them to make up such a small proportion of the Palace's crew. Starting to get Elizabeth Bathory vibes, honestly.
Suddenly, the pair of guards look up in alarm as they start to hear Linkin Park playing from somewhere in the background. They can't pinpoint the direction, but it sounds like it's getting closer...
Just brazenly attacking Mottom's HQ. He'd best have a *really* good stealth system and escape plan ready.
Juggernaut Star kills the potential witnesses before they can see his landing, unpacks White Chain's old avatar from the back of the edgecycle, and removes the spike inserted by Michael's "executioner" that's been keeping it inoperable. White Chain reanimates it just in time to experience being bodily thrown into one of the upper deck entrances and onto a hallway floor.
It sounds like White Chain's synth had some customizations that Michael removed before handing it over to the thornies. Interesting. And yeah, White Chain is making a pretty damned good point in the second panel there. Can you just imagine the alternative?
Juggernaut Star: "I HAVE COME TO ASSIST YOU ON YOUR CONTEMPTIBLE MISSION, DISGUSTING HUMAN FLESH-POX!"
Killy: "Um...wuh?"
Juggernaut Star: "DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS, VERMIN! THE ANSWERS WOULD ALL BE BEYOND YOUR BESTIAL COMPREHENSION, AND ALSO THE SOUND OF YOUR VOICE DISGUSTS ME!"
Killy: "...if you feel that way, why are you offering to help me?"
*JS cuts her in half*
Juggernaut Star: "FORGIVE ME, MASTERS, FOR I HAD NO CHOICE!"
Speaking of Juggernaut Star's reliability or complete lack thereof, he tells White Chain that he's been ordered to withdraw and let her meet up with Killy...but that he's not going to. Ladies and gentlemen, The Law. Well, okay, to be fair it's entirely possible that Juggernaut Star was ordered to pretend to disobey an instruction to withdraw immediately as some sort of motivator/reverse psychology thing for White Chain, but I'll need to see more evidence before concluding that. Anyway, as White Chain asks him what the fuck, a servant woman comes into the hall pushing that cart of giantbone teapots from the tribute ceremony, and White Chain has to quickly knock her out before Juggernaut Star can kill her.
Juggernaut Star's response to this is remarkably restrained, merely instructing White Chain to kill the unconscious woman instead of throwing her aside and doing it himself. He even manages to keep his hands away from his crotch while giving the order. White Chain refuses, insisting that even if this woman saw a brief glimpse of the two angels before losing consciousness, they can easily ensure that she doesn't raise an alarm without killing her. This prompts Juggernaut Star to make the most unintentionally (from his perspective; hopefully not the author's) hilarious speech since the legendary career of Severus the Derisible.
Oh my god I can just picture JS crying tears of blood as the other angels take turns reading his poetry aloud and laughing at it.
I wonder what his reaction would have been if White Chain just let that cup hit the floor and then told JS she was telling Mottom that she just saw a thorn knight break her teacup.
She doesn't do that, unfortunately. Instead, she just impatiently tells Juggernaut Star that while she'll go along with the Prime Angels' plan in the name of hopefully fixing the multiverse up a little, she's not going to just gank an unconscious civilian. Makes me wonder if she'd have actually bit the bullet and killed Killy like she said she would at the end of volume one, had Killy not escaped with Cio. Anyway, Juggernaut Star responds with something that's literally just one step removed from the navy seal copypasta, and then tells White Chain that she'd better find Killy before he does, or else he'll tear Killy's arms and legs off.
Yeah. Sure. I bet Metatron would just love it if you did that, Juggy.
Cut away from Juggernaut Star telling White Chain about all the unthinkable torments he's going to inflict on her if she doesn't stop showing people his DeviantArt, and back to Mottom and Killy.
All of the revelers scattered around the vast deck, Mottom tells her, are royalty or royalty-equivalents from across the many thousands of worlds she's opened. So, Killy ought to be impressed. Unfortunately for the hat mummy, Killy is too overwhelmed to be impressed by pretty much anything for at least the next few days. She also says that this ball is being held in Killy's honor, which I'm highly skeptical of. Mottom already has a bunch of VIP's aboard for the tribute ceremony, and throwing a ball for them is probably SOP.
...
This is a tangent, but the mention of "thousands of worlds" makes me wonder. Each of the Black Kings owns 111,111 keys, for a potential empire of that many parallel worlds. We know that some worlds were completely ravaged during the demiurgic civil war, but not how many. We also know that some gates have yet to be opened, or were opened once but then closed again for millennia since. With all these factors combined, how many universes do each of the Black Seven actually rule in practice? Is it closer to one thousand, or one hundred thousand? Impossible to say until we're told.
Once you get to multiversal scales, it becomes impossible to tell by looking if an assembly consists of five hundred worlds' worth of aristocrats or five million's. It's all just incomprehensibly vast.
...
When told to have some food (a completely different expensive feast than the one she laid out in that other room earlier, presumably) Killy tells her that she wouldn't eat it even if she was hungry. She's seen the state of Mykos, and knows where that wealth comes from and how. The backhanded social commentary here is so obvious that I don't think I need to go into it. Killy asks Mottom if she even does any actual governing, or just extracts resources and spends them on parties. Mottom replies with a non-sequitor only slightly less batshit than her sudden table dance last chapter, and says that she and Killy are both prisoners.
Killy dyes her hair. Mottom is an interdimensional warlord. As you can see, they are both prisoners.
Oh my god I think we've finally found someone who can talk philosophy with Kimblee!
There's a reason for her focusing on Killy's hair, specifically, and it's not just because she may have only noticed the color change when she de-aged. Nadia's hair was apparently what got the late demiurge Hastet Om's attention when he toured the backwater planet she was born and raised on. She was something of a math prodigy, to hear her tell it. And, even as the teenager she was at the time, she already had strong foody tendencies and was learning to be a good cook. She also had plans to become a priestess, whatever that entailed in the context of her native society. But, Hastet barely seemed to notice all those traits when he took that girl from his newly conquered realm to be his wife. He just liked her hair.
No wonder she hides it under a comically large and obscuring hat most of the time. If that backstory doesn't make you self conscious about your hair, nothing will.
Uh huh.
There's a complicated sleight-of-hand trick Mottom is doing right here. I'm not sure if she's aware of it herself; it depends on how honest versus how calculated this performance she's giving Killy actually is.
Patriarchy seems to be the norm in at least most of K6BD's multiverse. Based on the angel scenes in this volume, that may be down to the creator gods' biases rather than just material conditions. But, for the last however many hundreds or thousands of years it's been since the war, the multiverse hasn't actually been patriarchal at the highest levels of power. We've got seven cosmic tyrants, three of whom at least appear to be female. That's pretty close to gender equality within the ruling ultra-elite. They're each powerful enough to do with their worlds basically as they see fit, so long as it doesn't weaken their hold enough to give the other six ideas. We don't know anything about Voldemort or Gog-Magog's gender politics yet, but Mottom at least seems to have opinions on the subject. The stage is set for a massive paradigm shift as far as gender roles go.
So, after however long it's been since her ascension, why are the vast majority of the kings and guildmasters presenting tribute before her throne still male?
In the tribute scene, we saw some devils and vapras standing guard and filling out paperwork around the throne. It's hard to tell what gender a devil is, or even if they have gender, barring some exceptions like Cio. But the vapras? Men.
When Mottom first started this spiel, I thought the story was about to do a "woke capitalism" or "we need more female drone operators" critique. But no, that's not actually what we're looking at with Mottom's organization. Either this feminist speech she's giving is a purely fabricated attempt at fishing for sympathy, or she's got something much weirder and more neurotic going on with regards to her attitudes toward gender. I'd say internalized misogyny, but it seems like it might be way more convoluted than just that.
Nadia confesses to Killy's accusation; she doesn't rule, she feeds. Not herself, though. Not really. She does take solace in the luxury and excess of her surroundings, but most of her energy is spent appeasing the boundless appetites of her nobles and administrators. The kings, the emperors, the guildmasters, the cartel leaders, if she were ever to stop impressing them, accepting tribute from them, and giving lavish gifts and hosting lavish events for them in turn, they'd turn against her, and then on each other. Her empire would fall into civil war, and then the other six - Jagganath in particular - would take advantage of the chaos and wreak even greater destruction across the multiverse.
Killy's response is identical to my own. And also the second best reaction image to come from the comic thus far.
You can be terrified of the consequences of not appeasing your courtiers.
You can also summarily turn your courtiers into trees without a thought for the consequences when they displease you.
You cannot do both of these things at the same time.
The tale Mottom is weaving casts herself as being both too strong and too weak. It does not hold up to even a basic level of scrutiny.
Killy asks her who the hell can force her to do anything when she's this powerful. Is she really such an impossible coward that she can't try to push for even minor, incremental reforms against her nobles when she has such a force advantage over them? Mottom insists that yes, yes she is in fact that much of a coward.
Okay. But. She turns the ones who don't like the status quo into trees. That's not appeasement. That's proactively taking a side other than the one she claims to have sympathies for.
...hell, if she felt like her nobles were collectively strong enough to bully her, she could solve that problem by opening a whole bunch of new gates and creating an alliance of worlds who don't want to be despoiled. Combined with her personal magical power, she could use that new bloc to force the old guard into compliance with just about any reforms she wanted short of dethroning or executing them all.
And I don't think her nobles ARE collectively strong enough to bully her in the first place, so even that's an unlikely hypothetical.
So yeah, this is bullshit. Total, complete bullshit. The only question is whether or not Mottom's bought into it herself, or if she was just hoping Killy would.
Well. There's also the question of why she's even fishing for Killy's sympathy in the first place. What does she want from Killy that she couldn't just take by force? I meant the only question besides that one.
When asked how the hell her dilemma is supposed to make sense, Mottom says "A thousand lifetimes of pain." This woman loves her non-sequitors. Killy is momentarily saved from having to hear more fragmentary nonsense by the arrival of a servant woman with an urgent message: there's a major discrepancy in the guest list, and one of the guard stations near the entryway just went dark. The latter is obviously down to Juggernaut Star's entrance. The former could be related, or could be something else. Mottom receives this urgent message with due seriousness, ie she completely brushes it off. Though this does distract Nadia just long enough for a familiar face in the crowd below to get Killy's attention.
Why hello there, Probably-Meti! Are you one of the discrepant guests?
...if so, then the others are probably the bounty hunter dogpile from Throne. They're taking an awfully big risk by infiltrating the court of one of the Seven, if so, but their profession is one that appeals to people with more courage than common sense, so.
As Killy ponders the mysterious noodle-vendor's reappearance, she suddenly feels a sharp pain in her feet. The effects of the fruit are wearing off, and she's started outgrowing these child-sized shoes again. Damn, it can't have been more than a couple hours at the very longest. These apples of youth are a lot lamer than the ones in Norse mythology. Killy asks to leave, either because she's about to burst out of her clothes or because she's creeped out by the noodle lady.
Fucking hell Mottom do you have an irrational fear of following sentences with related sentences?
Mottom tells Killy that now, by virtue of...um...having talked to her I guess, I don't fucking know...Killy is now fated to be a queen someday. This is a fate she can't escape, though she will want to. A thousand lifetimes of pain are now in store for her as well; she will be very lucky if she dies before then.
Unless, like, she just refuses to become a queen. That's a thing that a person can do, you know.
Then, having seemingly tired of the ball that she dragged Killy to for no good reason, she declares that it's time for the next part of the tour.
Time for a walk in the arboretum, I suspect.
Split for image count.
Mottom leads Killy into the "veneration hall," an area that looks like a cross between a mausoleum and a greenhouse. Appropriate, given Mottom's "blood flower" motif that's all about superficial beauty supported by death and rot. This place has apparently been in her husband's family for some time before she was forcibly made part of it.
Hastet wasn't the first of his royal dynasty, apparently. I wonder if the Oms were a royal family on their homeworld before Hastet traveled to Throne and became a demiurge, or if they were a demiurgic family that conquered a world or two and made themselves kings during the Second Conquest era. Either way, I think Nadia had already succeeded her husband by the time of the Universal War, but it could also have been during it.
Anyway, in Hastet's culture it was traditional for the royal couple to do their coupling in this grim-looking temple structure full of statues of their ancestors. Something about the love of their wives creating mystical energy that would be used to keep the kings' souls warm in the afterlife. Very Egyptian concept. Between this and the very Pharaonic-sounding name "Hastet," I suspect that his family came from the Egypt counterpart of one of the (according to White Chain) 388,888 universes that contains a parallel Earth. I'm not sure if Hastet and his immediate ancestors actually believed this, or if it was just a lingering tradition from wherever they first came from, but either way he kept the Veneration Hall in use during his reign.
Regardless of how seriously the Oms took these beliefs by the time the demiurge Hastet sat the throne, Nadia doesn't believe in the afterlife at all. Apparently the undead beggars in Throne don't constitute an "afterlife" in her estimation. This prompts Killy to ask the obvious question, which Mottom answers very clearly with her silence.
I still suspect that it isn't "killed" so much as "redesigned his physiology into a long lived but nonsentient form that likes sunlight and hates the paper industry," but close enough.
As Nadia leads Killy deeper into the shrine, she explains that while Hastet was always a cruel husband, he got worse as he grew older. When Nadia's once-radiant white hair began to lose its luster, he began taking mistresses, and then things got REALLY fucked up. Unlike Mottom who made public appearances at his side, these other girls never had to be seen after he took them into the palace, so he was free to do much, much more to them.
I'm not sure if Nadia artfully defaced those female statues in imitation of how Hastet mutilated his concubines so she could use them as a visual aid, or if its just an artsy symbolism thing that the author is doing. I'd normally assume the latter, but after the hyper-extravagant showy bullshit we've already seen Mottom do for Killy's benefit I honestly wouldn't put the former past her.
So, she ganked him in his sleep while he was passed out in here alone with whatever girl he'd just murderfucked. I guess either the guards weren't ordered to keep her out, or she'd already secretly learned enough of her husband's magic to avoid detection. She tore the Key of Kings out of Hastet's lifeless skull, and buried his corpse in the shrine's central garden. Then, she claims, she collapsed from exhaustion and slept for three days.
Reading between the lines, I wonder if that three day exhaustion period was a side effect of implanting the Key into her own head; as a not-fully-trained sorceress at the time, she might not have done as neat a job of it as Zoss did with Killy. Then again, reading between the lines of this story is kind of...well, I'll get back to that in a few more paragraphs.
On the third day, as her strength was beginning to return, Mottom was startled awake by Hastet's weak, whispering voice from the central garden. Calling for more women. More wives. As Mottom reaches this part of the story, she walks Killy into the central garden. As they proceeded into the shrine, the plantlife gave way more and more to fungi and decomposers. Here, in the middle, is what appears to be the source.
The Mykosian tribute girls - including the one insectoid lady - lay dead beneath the branches, their bodies bound in the Pharaonic burial pose and their throats slit. One by one, their bodies are hung upside-down from one of Hastet's branches over a large basin. Once the corpse is dry and the basin full, the blood is poured down Hastet's perpetually open mouth where it emerges from the roots, and the next body takes its place. There are no leaves on Hastet's fungus-like branches, but there are thick bunches of fruit. Familiar, fleshy-looking fruit that are being harvested by the basketfull.
I'm not sure if this is worse than I was expecting the fate of the tribute-girls to be at this point, or exactly as bad. I think exactly as bad is about right, albeit with more visually grotesque postmortem treatment.
...
While I'll probably have much more to say about this in the post-volume wrapup, there are three things I'll touch on now.
First: I appreciate the atypical Lovecraft shoutouts with Hastet's design. The buried corpse grown into an oversized, fungus-covered abomination that thirsts for blood despite not physically moving is straight out of "The Shunned House." Like, all the way down to details like the semi-phosphorescent mushrooms that got thicker and thicker as they approached the burial site. The way the fruit-bearing tree grows out of his belly and crotch area might also be a subtler allusion to "The Dunwich Horror," which shares some notable themes with this little backstory. Most authors who do Lovecraft allusions shout out to the same handful of stories in the same handful of ways, so I appreciate this.
Second: Connecting to the above, I may have to amend my earlier statement about the gender ratio of the Black Seven. I'm not sure if Nadia actually IS the ruler of this seventh of the multiverse. Remember when Killy asked her if she ever does any actual ruling, as opposed to just extracting and consuming? Like, say, a creature made mostly out of stomach might do? She might be the brains of this operation, but that doesn't mean that she's the one calling the shots. Even if they are onloy very simple, very primordial shots being called.
The fact that the base of the tree appears to grow almost as heavily from Hastet's crotch as it does his stomach - again, very "Dunwich" - also has a darkly perverse connotation when you think about what those "fruit" might technically be. The fruit that Nadia is still desperately, messily wolfing down like she can't get enough of them.
Third: looking at how Nadia seems to be farming Hastet, and rereading the story she told Killy, I think Killy's already provided us with a concise description of the latter.
The story Mottom is telling works on pure fairy tale logic. And sure, K6BD has plenty of fairy tale sensibility built into it. But it's not just that. There's at least a little more grit and rational self interest in this world than there is in the story Nadia's peddling. So, put yourself in Nadia's shoes. You fear and hate your husband, and have just worked up the courage to murder him for the sake of his victims. Suddenly, you find out that he's turned into some kind of undead abomination and is calling for more victims. What do you do?
Obviously, you fucking kill him harder. And then kill him even harder again a third time if he comes back from that.
Also, here's a couple of logistical questions that come to mind:
1. Was undead-Hastet specifically explaining that he wanted more women bled to death and their blood fed to him? How articulate is this fucking tree-fungus-corpse monster supposed to have been? Like, just forget entirely for the moment that Mottom allegedly killed him because she didn't want to see him hurt any more innocent women and would have had no reason to suddenly do a 180 and help him hurt more.
2. Why the everloving hell would Mottom think to eat the fruit he was growing? How could she have possibly known they would reverse her aging? What could have made her think they would have any positive effects at all, or even that they wouldn't do something horrible to her? Even if she was already a knowledgable wizardess by that time and could have done a little analysis before tasting, is that the kind of risk you could ever see an actual person taking?
Yeah. The instant you come at this story with anything other than a completely symbolism-over-logic fairy tale reading, it falls apart like a sand castle at high tide. Now go back a few more pages and oh, will you look at that, Mottom spent the whole conversation leading up to this story trying to rattle Killy and get her in a confused, highly emotional state of mind.
I don't think it's pure fabrication. The best lies always contain at least a grain of truth. In this case, I suspect that it's more than just a grain. The basic sequence of events may be accurate. But I think that Mottom is leaving a lot of steps out, and adjusting some of the others to make herself look more innocent. Like, is it really just a coincidence that he turned into a tree, specifically? IE, the same thing that she turns her enemies into as a matter of course? With no explanation given for how or why his body might have done that all on its own?
Feeding Hastet's undying hunger and lust - and through it her own immortality, her purpose in life as woman and wife in her own estimation - really does seem to be the driving force behind her "rulership." But I don't believe for an instant that she just haplessly stumbled into this state of affairs. Like Killy said, Mottom's assertions that she's helpless and powerless in her position don't make any sense. She's not powerless against her nobles, she just pretends to be because that makes her life easier to deal with. As with that first victim narrative, this second one does correctly identify a rapacious consumer who demands that she feed it. But, just like with the nobles, she's bending over backward to avoid admitting that nobody's forcing her to comply, or that she had a starring role in creating (or at least massively enlarging) this system to begin with.
I will say in Nadia's favor that she is a skilled demagogue. If I were in Killy's place, I'd probably be shaken enough to buy it uncritically. I suppose one should expect nothing less from a dictator of her status.
...
When she gets over being too horrified to speak, Killy asks Mottom what the hell she wants from her. And here's where Nadia betrays her motives.
Once again, the best lies have an element of truth. And, once again, I think that Nadia's lie is mostly one of omission.
Is she truly disgusted with herself and her nihilistic excuse for an empire? Probably. Does she want out after doing this for centuries? I'm willing to believe it. Does this explain why she'd beg Killy to be her successor as opposed to choosing one of her vassal kings or vapras? Hahahahahaha no.
Remember, Mottom was the one who called that meeting at the end of volume one. She takes the prophecy of the Successor more seriously than most of the others. Based on how the angels seem to be scheming to twist the fulfillment of the prophecy in their own favor, I think we can assume that prophecies can only be subverted rather than averted, and Mottom probably knows that as well as the angels do. The Successor is supposed to slay the seven-headed beast. Well then, now would be a good time to stop being one of the seven heads, wouldn't it? And who better to take her place than someone who's already a loose end in the unfolding story, who already is going to have the person who Mottom thinks is the successor's interest and attention due to the Master Key?
Get Killy to take over Mottom's empire and become a replacement Black Queen at the last minute. Get her addicted to the luxury and power of the position, just as Nadia herself was. Not wanting to give that up, Killy fights back when Zaid comes for the Key, and is the first of the Seven to fall. Mottom, meanwhile, has either absconded with her matrimonial murdertree, or switched to another immortality method she's been working on for the last few centuries and lets Hastet die along with Killy. She sets up shop in some obscure corner of the multiverse and plans to outlive the new king just like she did the old one.
Well, nice try Nadia.
Phenomenal cosmic power, shit reflexes.
Killy doesn't appear to have aged all the way back up yet, but she's big enough to give one hell of a bitch slap, and Nadia seems to be very much of the "squishy wizard" persuasion. I'm kind of surprised she hasn't auged herself with magic subdermal armor or some bullshit like that. Although, given the way her immortality method works, she might have trouble making body modifications less divinely sturdy than her implanted Key stick through the repeated de-agings.
As she writhes on the floor in stunned disbelief at receiving what's most likely her first bitch slap in the nine hundred years since Hastet could swing his arm, Killy really drives the payback home and does some philosophical rambling of her own. To add insult to injury, it's even much better philosophical rambling!
Nadia might have correctly identified herself as a foil to Killy in some ways. They were both plucked from their innocent, ignorant planetbound lives when a powerful man marked them as his own. They both found themselves thrust into a world of cosmopolitics they weren't psychologically or mentally equipped for. What makes them different, though, is that Mottom adapted to this by learning to care for nothing but her own survival. Killy, meanwhile, adapted by charging back into hell just a few hours after escaping it to save the life of someone she doesn't even care much about. And that is why Killy is The Hero while Mottom is a disc one boss with delusions of protagonism. She's everything that Mottom knows she could have been and should have been, come back to literally smack her in the face. And, now that she knows what giving in to the fear and self-pity that's started to haunt her in this volume could turn her into, Killy can look at Mottom with not just hatred, nor the pity Mottom was cynically fishing for, but contempt.
Killy grabs a burning brazier from the edge of Hastet's courtyard and advances toward the hideous mutant, but realizes that he's too big and damp to be hurt by that little fire. Fortunately, a ghostly figure she's seen twice before appears beside the trunk and gives her some much needed advice and encouragement.
Zoss is definitely acting as an author mouthpiece in his description of Mottom, heh.
He tells her that power is only worth anything if you have the will to use it, unlike certain histrionic hat mummies that shall remain unnamed. Killy must have untempered resolve, pure want, in order to use the Masterkey. Want, ironically, being something that the unnamed hat mummy has critically deprived herself of.
Killy fires up the Masterkey, and wraps the brazier in a layer of dimensional rift before hurling it at the abomination. Either that portal-coating leads to somewhere very intensely hot, or the Masterkey has some offensive firepower of its own that she can deploy through it.
Hastet's mouth appears to have opened wider, and his head tilted back in a silent scream of pain as he dies his final death. I wonder how conscious he was, in this form? Well, it's no longer a relevant question. As the alt text for this page puts it, "1/6,000,000,000."
Hmm. Well, put that way, the question of Hastet's sentience actually is relevant. Has Killy just committed her first human-equivalent-being killing? Not that it wouldn't have been justified, of course. It's just a heavy moment in a previously innocent character's development.
Mottom, who had just gotten back to her feet, collapses back to the floor in shock. She declared, her voice a horrified, disbelieving whisper, that she's going to die now. Killy's response as she flees the shrine is brief, but still more words than I think Nadia's statement deserves.
What a fucking Chad.
Killy runs out into the hallways and tries to find her way out. Some of those World War I looking guards start chasing her, and she books it, trying to stay around corners to deny them a line of fire. Unfortunately, she finds herself stumbling into a wide open room that looks like a dance hall or something with only some scattered bits of furniture or loot crates for cover. Fortunately, Potentially Meti is here, and intending to help.
She names herself as "Mathangi Ten Meti," but she also mentions having a crazy sword-hobo mistress who trained her. Which sounds a lot like how Meti described herself in the book she wrote. It may be that the "Ten Meti" suffix means something like "disciple of Meti," which would fit the backstory tidbit she just shared. She's one of her firsthand students.
Also, we know she's on Killy's side, because the Seven are at least kinda sorta fashy, and "Murder the Gods and Topple Their Thrones" is as antifa as a nickname can be.
The soldiers open fire, but Mathangi jumps in front and does something extremely rapid. The aftermath of which reveals that Mathangi isn't just a master swordswoman.
She's an anime master swordswoman.
While Killy and the soldiers are WTFing over what Mathangi just did, Mathangi tries to engage the former in a philosophical discussion. Asking her how she feels about death and cutting things and stuff. However, a large number of new arrivals cut the pleasantries short.
The other uninvited ball guests have taken advantage of Mottom's paralysis and closed in. The chapter ends with what looks a lot like a three way battle between the guards, the bounty hunters, and Killy + Mathangi pending. I suspect that one or both of the angels currently aboard will arrive in time to participate as well.
At some point before doing the final chapter of this volume, I'm going to do another prose post. There was a bonus story for the pages where Mottom was bringing Killy to Hastet that I'd like to analyze. And a couple of shorter ones from earlier in the volume that provide some needed context for it.
