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

This should bring us to the end of the book. My understanding is that the author initially planned for there to be five volumes in total, but that he recently started the sixth. The way he's going, and the way he's built up seven as a big arc number for the story, well...there's probably going to be seven books by the end.

Or maybe only six after all. I guess we'll find out when he gets to it.

Anyway, let's finish this tournament arc up. There was a lot to like about it, but frankly it's overstayed its welcome by this point. White Chain has somehow turned herself into something that looks and feels human, possibly using Solomon David's DNA sampled from his blood when she fire-punched his cheek.

There may or may not actually be blood spilled, but frankly...if Solomon tried to use that to wiggle out of this, I'd have called bullshit even without Gog-Agog cackling about spectacle over substance. The spirit of the challenge "spill one drop of the Emperor's blood" is pretty obviously interpretable as "inflict visible bodily harm on the Emperor." At least, that's how I interpreted it all along. Maybe Solomon intended the phrasing to be ambiguous so that he could bullshit his way out of admitting defeat in most circumstances, idk. But anyway. White Chain got Solomon to play the heel and then dramatically do something that could be reasonably interpreted as losing amid on unprecedented transformational event by his opponent. Even Solomon isn't *quite* narcissistic enough to convince himself that he won.

So. White Chain gets a wish. It may or may not end up having to do with anything that Killy is hoping to accomplish, but she's already admitted that she doesn't even know what she's fighting for anymore and would rather White Chain call the shots herself. So, she's made peace with this possibility.


After miserably raising White Chain's fleshy new arm in congratulation and then turning away with an almost childlike frown, Solomon sees White Chain's friends trying to press through the guards into the arena and even more miserably orders them to be allowed through. It takes everyone a moment to understand that the naked lady actually is White Chain rather than someone else who Solomon teleported in as part of a weird stunt. They're as clueless as I am about how this could have happened, though; even Lamassu with all of his angelic lore and millennia of experience watching them reform themselves in the void has got nothing.

White Chain, perhaps surprisingly, gets used to it before anyone else does.

The markings on her face bear a resemblance to the design of her old helmet/headdress combo. Which in turn likely has some kind of meaning in Concordant Knight symbology. Wonder what having those outlines as part of your actual body would signify, for White Chain? On one hand, it's a link to the system she's become disillusioned with. On the other hand, Lamassu's big speech earlier definitely made it seem like this was more a matter of the Concordants failing to live up to their stated principles than it was with those principles as written, so the symbols may still be good.

Once again, as with the story of Prim's jeweled comb, I feel like there's a particular bit of real life sociology that's being parabled here. Something something all men are created equal but also three fifths, something something universal right to life liberty and pursuit of happiness but also right to unlimited private property in a world of limited resources. You know, something like that.

Unsurprisingly, Killy with her less deeply ingrained preconceptions is the next to accept and embrace what happened. Literally embrace it, in fact. Very enthusiastically. Oh boy, are we going for the interspecies daisy chain ending? Vanilla Kola? Eighty-Two Billion Cokes? We'll figure that out when they're actually bashing all three of their vaginas together, for now it's just a happy reunion after the estrangement and battles. Killy notices that White Chain's new body seems oddly cold to the touch, and it doesn't seem to be because of their surroundings. White Chain insists that she doesn't feel cold, and then this happens:

Hmm. Seems like she does still have her spirit body after all, then. At least partially. The transformation she underwent was less radical than it seemed at first. She created a replacement avatar, though she might be more deeply integrated with it than angels usually are with their stone and metal synths. The coldness is probably a reflection of the white atum that she still possesses; she's still of the cold white flame of Un, rather than the warm black fire of Yis like an actual human.

We know devils can make avatars out of biological tissues, including actual human bodies, so an angel doing something similar seems reasonable enough. The question is just where this body came from and why.

...actually, devils also seem to have a more integrated relationship with their sleeves like this too. So yeah, all things considered, White Chain may have turned into something more like a devil than a human, aside from the looks.

Killy and White Chain apologize to each other for being assholes throughout this volume. And also acknowledge that the ability to learn new things, to be inexperienced and need to improvise, can open up new opportunities that mastering a subject doesn't allow you to do. Hence, White Chain decided to be the student rather than the teacher when confronted with an enemy her skills couldn't handle, and acted the way Killy usually acts. And it worked. Somehow. For some reason. I get the message and themes, but I'd really like something crunchier than just that for how White Chain got her new body.

This admission by White Chain leads into a little speech by Killy that...hmm. It feels like the author is talking directly to the reader here, but I'm not sure that what he's saying really fits the story.

Teamwork and cooperation haven't been themes of "King of Swords." If anything, it's been actively hostile to active coordination, with the only examples of it (the Killy-Cio fusion, the rescue plan, etc) all being counterproductive failures in the end, and also the recurring distaste for teachers and mentors. If anything, the message has been that sometimes you need to back off and let someone else handle everything by themselves instead of expecting them to back off so that you can. It's...not the same thing.

Well, once those two have made up, it's time for Killy to notice that Zaid has made his way down from the VIP box while Solomon and the guards were all distracted. They see each other for the first time in over a year. Probably longer than they even knew each other for to begin with. He's grown a beard, developed some fashion sense, and fastened his face in place. She's changed her hair color, put on 100 lb of muscle, and become a demigod. Nonetheless, they have little trouble recognizing each other. For Killy, Zaid is a symbol, though she might not be sure of what anymore. For Zaid, Killy is simply the first person he's met from his homeworld since the Thorn Knights took him.

They don't have anything really enlightening to say, from the reader's perspective. But still. They're a relief to each other, and it shows. Payoff to the initial setup, all the way back in the beginning of volume one.

What is Killy going to work toward, now? "Overthrow the Black Kings" is a very longterm objective, and she doesn't exactly know how to start working toward it aside from "keep grinding street thugs for XP."

...

Hmm. I don't think the story is going to go this route, at this point. But I think if I were Killy, I'd bring Zaid home and stay there for a while. Bring the whole party, if they feel like coming. There's no masquerade that needs preserving here. Earth is better off knowing about the multiverse than not knowing about it. Start teaching people magic. Recruit scientists and engineers, and see if there's a way to combine magic with advanced technology to create something the demiurgi haven't encountered yet. There's never going to be a successful military uprising against the Seven, of course, and attempting one would invite planetary genocide, but even just inventing a few surprising tricks to use later as part of a different sort of plan might be worth it.

Earth's got resources and manpower, and for the time being it's conveniently out of sight. We don't know that any contacted worlds had reached the same technological heights before being stomped down by the demiurgi, but we also don't know if they hadn't, so there's a chance we might be able to provide the basis for a monkey wrench. She might as well use that while she still can.

It's not that kind of story, I know. But it's fun to think about.

...heh. If you don't mind indulging me on a tangent within a tangent: what if it turns out that Earth *does* have a masquerade, and Killy and her friends only learned of this after breaking it into a million pieces? Killy's homeworld was actually an urban fantasy setting with a secret underworld of mage clans and vampires and such, and suddenly all of these Ersatz World of Darkness factions have to decide whether or not to come clean to her and/or to the general public. Some of said factions may know a little bit about the multiverse, some may even know more than a little.

Enough crackfic prompts for now, though, back to the comic.

...

Killy and Zaid start catching up, and also are both happy to be able to speak their native tongue for the first time in a long time. Blue devil liquor lets you speak all languages, but it doesn't magically translate your spoken words, so actually using English is refreshing for them. The party linguist is not impressed.

Devils can speak all languages, but it seems that that doesn't mean they like all languages.~

On a sensory note, the way Cio enunciates "In-ge-lish" might be our first hint about how Universal Metaconstant actually sounds (assuming Cio's accent comes from that rather than a more obscure diabolical regionalism). The contracted "gl" sound seems to not exist in UMC, and from the way its transliterated it seems to favor "ih" over "eh" vowels. No trouble ending on soft consonants like "ish," though, so it's not like eg Japanese in that way. Interesting little background detail.

Meanwhile, Princess apparently never got a chance to interact with Lamassu until just now. I guess he was being kept with Zaid. He liked what he saw in the arena, apparently.

Heh, well. Red devils who have the patience for martial arts tend to become pretty badass, as we learned earlier this volume, so this could be an asset to the party.

...speaking of that, where the fuck is Killboss? I was half expecting him to be in the tournament, but if so then I guess he got eliminated early on. He's going to show up again at some point, right? I demand more Killboss.

Eventually, everyone's attention is called away from the pleasantries by one of Solomon's prince-attendant-people. The Emperor wants to get this painful obligation over with; the victor must make their wish before she leaves the arena.

I like the wording there. "Exceeding caution." Not care, caution. As in "if you push your luck and make this more humiliating for him than it already is, Solomon will find a way to fuck your shit up without violating the terms of your wish, so let's all avoid that."

White Chain has already thought this through, fortunately, so there's no need for a meditation session or a group huddle. She steps forward, and begins to speak. Solomon David, she says, thinks of himself as the most just and righteous of the seven reigning gods. In this, he is probably correct. His people live well, relatively speaking. However, as long as they depend on him for everything, all of their order and security and infrastructure, they are doomed; Solomon has just shown himself to be fallible, and one day, sooner or later, they will need to survive without him. Solomon knows this. He has long known this in secret, even before today. And yet, he has refused to allow the Celestial Empire to grow beyond him or develop the ability to function without his brand of "law."

So, with that in mind, her wish.

It's not what Solomon expected to hear. Most likely he was either expecting something more ideologically angelic, or something more in line with how his fellow despots see the world. He looks more thoughtful than he ever has onscreen before now.

If she'd wished for his throne and Keys, he could probably take that in some kind of stride. He wouldn't be happy. He'd probably try to undermine the new Empress' rule sooner or later. But, at least for the moment, he'd accept it. It would be a wish spoken in the language he understands.

This is different, though. Denying the need for a king in the first place, acknowledging viable alternatives to control and rule of force, that's not just a loss of his empire. That's a loss of his identity. The fiction that the Good King must sit the throne, that the throne ever should have existed in the first place. That's been at the core of his identity for so long that he doesn't have much else left in there. If he loses that, what will he even be anymore? WHO will he be? What would he do?

It's the same personal growth that White Chain herself just underwent. She was always told, and always repeated, that angels like herself were living embodiments of the Old Law. That they had no existence without it. Like Solomon David, her mind papered over the contradictions even when they were obvious. Living in a shared fiction with the other angels, who chose to ignore the same obvious contradictions. But, she managed to get out of it, and she's still alive and has plenty to live for.

Solomon David is many things. Emperor, martial arts master, sorcerer, demiurge, immortal. Before he was anything else, though, he was a human. Whatever beliefs he was raised with, whatever the values of Old Rayuba that produced him were, they could not have been anywhere near as deeply ingrained and absolute as the angelic creed. White Chain cannot remember a time when she wasn't of the Old Law, but Solomon can remember a time before he was a king. He was once a little boy to whom the title "citizen soldier" was just a thing grown-ups said about themselves sometimes. He remembers that. If she can do this, he definitely can.

It's the moment of truth for Solomon David. He's always spoken of law, honor, justice. He's always wanted to see himself as a force for good in the multiverse, even if he had to make hard decisions and commit regrettable atrocities along the way. He believes that he serves something greater than himself; that there's a mayor he's running the city for. Is that belief of his stronger than his attachment to power and control? If the reign of the Good King must end, then which part of him will survive that ending; the good, or the king?

In some ways, you could see this as his big chance. His ultimate performance. He can signal his virtue today in a way that no one - not Mottom, not Incubus, not any of those fucking snakes he's been forced to share the multiverse with - will ever be able to scoff at again. He'd show them all. He'd be remembered as a great man forever more, without so much as needing to threaten anyone with death to ensure it.

But he'd need to give up that power. That control. That identity. He'd have to be a little boy again, and trust he can grow into something new from there.

Can he do that? Is he strong enough to do that? Is he truly diamond, or is he common glass that shatters under pressure? So many people believe in him so strongly. He only needs to agree with them, and believe in himself to be stronger than mere powers.

YOU LITTLE BITCH.

He gets saved by the bell. Sort of. Really, it ends up being more of a karmic punishment. There's a flash of blue light, and an unexpected visitor appears.

She's spent whatever effort it takes her to teleport here, still inside her crystalline prison, completely under her own power. It's very taxing for her to do things on her own in this state, let alone plane shift into such an assuredly warded place as Solomon's capital city but something has motivated her. She struggles to move her lips, but there's no need; the look in her eyes is enough to tell Solomon what's happening.

Solomon's expression turns to one of abject panic as he jumps up from his throne and calls for the city to be evacuated at once. It's too late though. A glowing red mote appears in the air over the arena. For just a moment, the tip of a blazing sword is visible through it, cutting through the barriers between worlds. Then, through that cut in the world, an explosion.

The people on the furthest rows of the amphitheater fare the best. They're reduced to half-melted skeletons. Those closer to the pit leave only Hiroshima shadows. The building which took only minor damage from all the high-powered attacks going off inside it until now is cracked open and reduced to a circle of flaming rubble.

Solomon survives. C.S. Lewis' Goffick Waifu survives. Killy's party and a few other people right behind them survive, thanks to a portal-shield she erected at the last moment. Gog-Agog is alive elsewhere. Other than that, no living organism remains on the island.

Either he cut his attack portal open with the force of a nuclear bomb, or he detonated an actual nuclear bomb and pumped the blast through it. The little glimpses we've seen of his war machine showed much more advanced technology than what the other Black Kings allow, so it's possible he's got those.

Amid the firestorm and heavy cloud of ash, the assailant cuts the portal wider and steps through onto Rayuba. It's a beautiful day, he says.

He is THE JAGGANATH BITCH, and he's mightily disappointed that everyone's been wasting time on petty theatre and politicking when they knew he'd be coming for them.


End of Volume Four.