Kill Six Billion Demons III: "Seeker of Thrones" (part ten)

Where we left off, Killy was in the central vault of Yre, surrounded by Mammon's worshippers and - more importantly - being faced down by the titanic Black King himself. Roaring in fury, the dragon god of greed accuses her of having come to steal from him, and demands that she beg his forgiveness at once.

Exhausted, covered in re-opened wounds, dazed from exorcising Incubus from her body, and trembling with fear and regret for abandoning Cio in the rubble, Killy is in no condition to flee, let alone fight. Even if she could muster the willpower to use the Masterkey, Yre's inner sanctum is protected by dimensional folding, so she wouldn't be able to teleport away. All she can do is fall to her knees, become merely Allison Ruth from Los Angeles again, and pitifully beg Mammon's forgiveness as commanded.

Which prompts Mammon to say the most unexpected thing in this entire comic so far.

...what.

Mammon then tells her that if she needs anything, she can feel free to ask. This is all his, as are many other worlds, though sadly he can't for the life of him remember exactly how many. Any more than he can remember how many coins there are in this vault. Which reminds him, it's time to get back to the count! He instructs the priests to remind him where they were with that, again.

Oh.

Well. I see, then.

Kindsies keep growing as they age. Eventually they must hit some kind of limiter, since there don't seem to be any others this large; I previously suspected that they might be like lobsters, eventually becoming too massive to support their own weight or circulate blood through their bulks. Mammon used his demiurgic magic to remove these physiological limits, allowing him to continue living and growing indefinitely.

Senility isn't normally an issue for his species, as their bodies grow too large to live before their brains can ever start wearing out. So, unlike the other Black Kings, he didn't devise any measures against it. He thought immortality would be simpler to manage for a kindsy than it is for a human, and he was mostly right. Mostly. He probably didn't even realize what was happening until he was too far gone to understand it anyway.

Mammon's been built up to be a composite of Jeff Bezos, John D. Rockefeller, Robert Peel, and King Leopold II in the body of Smaug and with the magic power of a god. To be fair, as recently as a few centuries ago he might have been exactly that. Nowadays though...

As Killy drops to the gold-covered floor, exhausted and confused, Mammon notices the sword she just discarded. He wonders aloud if she'd been planning to assassinate him, and then - in response to her awkward silence as she remembers the tomfoolery Succubus thought she was up to - plops his immense body down onto the gold in front of her and tells her to go for it. He certainly deserves to be killed, he knows.

Huh, so he's not completely lost in the mist, then. He remembers at least some of the things he did back when he was an active player in the multiverse, and - perhaps more surprisingly - he seems to regret them. Or, if not regret exactly, at least recognize that he was wrong to do them.

I wonder. Earlier, I mused that the repeated artistic depictions of Mammon murdering his clan and the reverent treatment of their bodies felt wrong for the Mammon we'd been told about. It might be right for THIS Mammon, then. It seems that he really did care about his family after all, at least after the fact. His great regret? Memorializing them and putting up reminders of his guilt everywhere, as a kind of atonement? Maybe. That definitely feels closer to the mark, now that we've seen the state the dragon is actually in these days.

Well, maybe I spoke a little too soon, or at least a little too strongly. Mammon might have regrets, but his invitation for her to kill him was at least mostly facetious.

No weapon that wasn't custom-built by Jagganath for that specific purpose is going to get through Mammon's hide. Many have already failed. He just leaves them sticking out of his skin like an extra set of scales, or artistic piercings.

Needless to say, Killy doesn't make the attempt. She probably couldn't even push the sword in passed his outer scale layer in her current state. As she tries to process what she's seeing and hearing, Mammon goes on to explain that many would-be thieves and assassins who managed to make it this far ended up discarding their agendas and joining the Priests of the Count. Several of those present, in fact, are former invaders.

...hmm. The man-eating door ensures that only the most ruthless are able to penetrate to the inner complex. I doubt sympathy for the Alzheimer's Kaiju alone is what swayed them, and I doubt seeing him in his condition was enough to make them rethink their life's goals and decide that sacrificing companions for wealth isn't worth it. Then again, as he himself pointed out, staying in the vault has got to be much easier than fighting their way back out again. And, to those who came here lured by riches, well...here they get to live among riches forever. There's nothing to spend them on, and no one to impress with them, but for a certain kind of myopic treasure-seeker that might not register at least until well after the fact.

Which, heh, kind of has them repeating Mammon's own arc themselves. That's his situation as well. Counting his money for all eternity, even though he can't even think of anything to spend it on and he never meets anyone who he cares about impressing anymore. You could call it a fate worse than death, but then, all he has to do to end it is stop obsessing over his fucking gold. He'd still be senile, but he could at least have some more varied and rewarding experiences while being senile.

Continuing on from the topic of him deserving death, Mammon mentions that he had brothers, once. Many of them. He told them that he didn't need them anymore, but now he just wishes he could remember their names. It seems like he's gotten himself onto a distressing train of thought now, perhaps near to tears. Seeing this, a woman who appears to be his high priestess approaches and sooths him.

This seems practiced. In a way that suggests that interrupting the count almost invariably leads Mammon to sink into depression as he thinks about the only other thing his mind can recall. So, the count must continue.

...damn, I was closer to the mark than I expected when I compared Mammon's backstory to Citizen Kane earlier. This scene is basically him whispering "rosebud."

As Mammon picks himself back up and is encouraged by the other priests to get back to counting the gold, the priestess - identified by the bottom text as the Reverend Mother of the order, as I'd inferred - turns to Killy and gives her a very stern ultimatum.

Stern, but also rather telling. I'm starting to have a new suspicion about what's really going on here.

Anyway, this is probably the same speech she gives to every thief or assassin who makes it to the inner vault. Beg to be allowed to join the Priests of the Count and convince her that they won't try shit. If she isn't satisfied with their answer, she leads the entire order in an overwhelming attack and/or goads Mammon into obliterating the interviewee with a demiurge laser. And, Killy does a fairly good job of seeming as harmless and pathetic as a person whose just fought their way through Yre can. She assures the priestess that she doesn't mean any harm, anymore. The part of her that meant ill is gone now (kind of a hard case to make, but it's literally true if she can just get the Reverend Mother to believe it!). She'll leave; she just wanted to rescue someone who's being held prisoner here. Not to take any money or kill anyone.

Unfortunately, before the conversation can continue, something leaps out of nowhere and tackles Killy to the ground. As the Reverand Mother steps back and watches this new development, Killy rolls around onto her back and looks up at her attacker.

Well, the good news is that Cio is alive and managed to free herself from that rubble after she regained consciousness. The bad news is that I'm not sure if she'd still answer to Ciocie Cioelle Estrella von Maximus the Third anymore. She still only has four limbs, so she hasn't completely reverted to Yabalchoath in body (also, I'm still not sure if it's possible for a devil to jump multiple colours at once, so fully reconstituting her old self might take a few more steps of metamorphosis).

Actually, speaking of colour changes...the tier above blue is red. Cio normally fights using her paper magic, but now she's charging into melee with blade in hand. That's essentially the difference between blue and red devils in a nutshell; blues are sorcerers, reds are soldiers. We're given a better look at Cio's mask in some of the panels following the above screenshot, and it's still blue, but I think she might be on the brink of turning red. I guess the behavior can change before the mask does, at least in some cases.

Killy tries to apologize and beg forgiveness from the devil that is currently somewhere between Cio and Yabalchoath. Realizing, finally, how much Cio has done from her from the very beginning, how wrong she was to brush her off even before she fell under Incubus' influence when she was still fully culpable.

Unfortunately, the two of them are passed the point where their relationship can be mended by words.

Holy shit did Killy just lose an eye there? I think she might have.

Clawing her face open isn't enough for Ciochoath though. It's time for an anime punch to top it off.

Yeah, Cio has never been that physically strong before. Either she planted a piece of paper on Killy and used that to propel her across the room just now, or she really is changing into a fundamentally different type of devil. Red most likely. Jump-cutting straight to black is improbable, but given the unique circumstances of how she stopped being Yabalchoath in the first place...perhaps not completely impossible? I don't know. Either way, that's the kind of feat I'd expect from White Chain, not Cio.

There's some irony for you. We spent the whole volume gearing up for a big fight against Mammon. In the end it turns out that Mammon is a borderline vegetable, and the real final boss of book three was in the adventuring party this whole time.

From all around the space, Priests of the Count and their probably-not-yet-ordained children watch, while others disinterestedly lead Mammon onward with the count. Killy picks herself up from the base of the column she was just flung against, only to see Ciochoath xenomorph-crawling toward her with a knife clutched in her mouth. Killy just barely has time to stand up again before she's upon her, and delivers what looks a hell of a lot like a final blow.

Killy falls, Ciochoath on top of her. Seeing her laying there, covered in blood, dying, and not fighting back, seems to reawaken something in the devil. Slowly, her extended limbs shrink back to something closer to their usual proportions, and her hair and tail shorten as her body's Gigeresque look reverts somewhat toward impish blue girl. Cio whispers Killy's name, apologizing over and over again, stunned and seemingly begging her to not be dead. Finally, she breaks down and begins sobbing over Killy's body. It's not clear if she realizes that Killy wasn't in her right mind for most of this volume yet, but she does regret letting herself slip as well.

Then, Killy tells her to stop crying. There's only room for one crybaby in the party. Also, she's been carrying the rucksack that contains the gigantic notebook Cio discarded after their meeting with Himself this whole time. It's a really, really heavy, iron-bound book. She held said rucksack in front of her torso when Ciochoath stabbed her, so the knifepoint didn't get more than a centimeter or two into her body.

Looks like they both snapped out of it. Like Mammon, they realized after the fact that the people they cared about were more important than the empty quest for power. Killy found the determination she needed to get free of Incubus when she saw Cio being left under the rubble. Cio was able to slip out of the Yabalchoath behavior when she realized that she was killing Killy, just like she got nearly all her old friends killed back in the day. Unlike Mammon, there was still time for them to take it back and pull themselves from the brink.

They try to apologize to each other, accuse each other, stammer inarticulately back and forth. Killy covered in her own blood from the old wounds from Mottom that have reopened and the new ones Cio gave her. Cio still ridden with biomechanoid tumors and ebon deformities, even if they're better than they were a few seconds ago. They're not at their most visually or tactilely appealing just now. But, nonetheless,

The little bits of plantlife growing through the gold around them suddenly blooming into a giant mass of wildflowers could just be an artistic embellishment that doesn't exist within the world of the story. It could also be that Cio (or Killy using some weird cantrip built into the Masterkey) is subconsciously making it happen via sheer emotional catharsis. However, I choose to believe that Mammon started paying attention to them again just in time to see this, and - for the first time in centuries - is using his demiurgic magic with conscious intent, and my opinion, as always, is canon.

After pulling apart again, they stammer at each other a bit more, trying to figure out what just happened. Well, we know Cio wanted to smash since at least the beginning of volume 2 so the concept itself isn't surprising to her, but the timing probably is. Killy...might not have even known she was into women until just now.

They'll probably need to get Killy healed up a bit before she's down for smashing, though. And also, they need to talk things over a bit so that Killy can explain what happened with Incubus. Also also, and more urgently, the Reverend Mother has decided that it's time to pick back up where she left off. Also, she seems to recognize Cio's Yabalchoath-y appearance, because she's changed her MO just a tad bit and also taught us a new fun fact about herself.

Halo. Conjured energy weapon. Pinprick of light glowing from under her headdress. Looks like I was wrong about Mammon not being willing to part with his Keys to create any vatras. He's created at least one. This lady is serious business.

Sure enough, she recognizes Cio. Whispering Yabalchoath's name with coldly burning contempt, she presses her energy-axe against the devil's shoulder. Fortunately for Cio, Mammon is still paying attention, and he's managed to remember that he just summoned a romantic flowery backdrop for this couple and thus it would be a shame if the Reverand Mother ruined the moment.

God, her expressions in those last two panels. Perfect. Especially if I'm correct in my suspicions about who's pulling the strings around here and why.

That's a question that will probably be answered in the next update. We're at a pretty good stopping point. I suspect the next K6BD post will be the last of this volume.