I thought the same thing. And I can sympathize. I was in amazing shape: doing swim team, football, and karate; made serious strides in my lifting; was down to nearly 6% body fat; and BOOM! hospitalized by a driver high on pills. I was in the hospital for 11 days and missed a month of school. All of that hard work, gone just like that. Super demoralizing, especially when one moment you feel amazing and what feels like the next second you feel like shit.
I was never all that impressive, but still, the difference after two months on pain management when I couldn’t keep up my routine was… disheartening. Almost felt like I was melting.
I hope you’re doing better. I wouldn’t minimize how awful that must’ve been, but I also recognize that that’s kinda what life is like, yeah? Lightning strikes, we cry, we rebuild. Hopefully, with the help of others.
Reach heaven, my friend. Through a certain kind of violence. When lightning comes again, it will find us here, smiling.
Similar thing happened to a sibling of mine, however in their case it was the manifestation of an undiagnosed dietary disease that destroyed a year of progress practically overnight. Poor guy went from hitting the gym daily to a stick-figure subsisting off protein supplements just to maintain a bare minimum of body mass.
Add being 66 to all that, I couldn’t get to the gym during lock-down and I gave myself a hernia messing about with a skipping rope and the operation hasn’t been much of a success, but hey when look at the state Alison was in I can still feel some optimism although I’d prefer not to have a leg amputated and all that.
Jadis is out of her box, perhaps, because she’s given up her immortality and will die after a normal, human lifetime. (If nobody else takes her out first, that is.) She’s getting her wish.
Gundhram the Reader, Belligerent Knight and Amateur Historian
Hmmm, the wounds resulting from trying to do a thing that blinded an Actual God don’t sound like the sort of thing that can be fixed that casually.
It seems wise to remember that Jadis is a sorceress of utmost power, one who has spent thousands of years entombed in Glass. I have no trouble believing that what we see before us is a reflection of her mind, spirit or self image conjured for the specific purpose of dealing with shit that Jadis actually cares about.
One thing that occurred to me that I thought was interesting is the theory that rather than having been, I don’t know, “lashed by eldritch energies” or something, Jadis’s “injuries”/ the “damage” she suffered after seeing the shape of the universe were spiritual and mental; that is, she looks desiccated and near-dead because she’s spent ?thousands of years? as barely functional having been rendered basically inert by what she saw, and didn’t have the motivation to eat, drink, move, or do anything necessary to sustain her physical life. Against that, however, is the blinding of Aesma, which if I recall correctly resulted from the same thing Jadis experienced.
I don’t actually think this is Jadis. There’s no halo, and as you said she can’t leave her ice-cube. I think this is more likely Jadis’ second-in-command, or dragon. Sort of like 00001 for Motom, or the “first consort” we met back in chapter whatever for Incubus.
Guess I’m sort of confused as to why everyone is confused about Jadis being out of her box? Seems as likely to me as not that it was destroyed by Jagg’s final war form strike.
That wasn’t a prison (well, maybe kinda sorta); I was under the impression that the “ice cube” was keeping Jadis alive after the (is this a spoiler? I don’t even know any more) attempted to look at the shape of the universe and got burned. It’s a very Icarus-like tale in some of the supplemental material, or something. I don’t even know where I read it any more but that’s Abba’s official explanation AFAIK.
Given how she just kinda hung out tanking all the shit he was throwing around before that attack, I doubt it was smashed by those attacks, no matter how many of them there were.
New theory: Jadis isn’t out of her box because this complex — maybe just this one room — _is_ the box and Jadis never leaves it, Not Going Out being her thing. The glass cuboid seen previously is some kind of projection of The Box cobbled together by the priests for the few occasions when the drag her out to a meeting.
In the real box, as here, Jadis has been healed of her physical wounds from seeing the Shape ages ago. In the projection, we see her near-death form immediately after the Shape incident. Jadis never got around to updating it. Not getting around to things is also her thing.
A withered remnant _trapped_ in a tiny box is a great visual metaphor for somebody wasting their immortality, omniscience and near-omnipotence _as seen by those who want to go out and do stuff_. Jadis doesn’t; she just wants to stay home and wait for the end. And she’d like Allison to wait with her.
Jadis became paralyzed by her knowledge of The Shape. We’ve been told that this is a unique turn of the Cycle though. The conflict between Alison, Zade and the Demiurges has never played out this way before.
Perhaps the Shape has changed, and she’s free from it’s knowledge now.
You must be able to tear down the impenetrable tower once you’re done. Not so easy when said tower is formed destructively rather than constructively.
That’s what makes it a tower and not a dungeon you dig for yourself.
Looks like they accidentally let a spoiler slip through. If you sign up for the patreon for $2 a month, you can get pages a few days early. Just be careful in the comments, Damascus Blade!
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
It is also possible that Damascus Blade works in some medical capacity on whatever world they call home, and that the reference is not to Alison, but to other individuals bedridden for extended periods.
Comas are neither all that uncommon, nor all that conducive to physical fitness.
Although, comas are often better than the alternative…
Three to five years years was also my personal estimate based on her new hair length. *Assuming* this is real and not a hallucination, simulation, etc.
thats gotta be rough for allison,, she went through all that hard work of loving and respecting herself throughout everything shes been through and the proof of that was suddenly taken away from her :((
But… what if it is only in this “machine” upon her seat of power that these injuries remain healed and forgotten? What if, the cost of leaving this place is to regain all those injuries and face all the pain and loss outside?
If this is true, than future Allison comes from a different timeline (or is going to get injured in exactly the same ways), which is going to create all sorts of temporal headaches – Zoss has been turning back the wheel and choosing someone different each time, but this would require Zoss to have picked Allison twice, or future Allison is turning back the wheel, and that leads to the question of how many times she might have done so.
Such a disappointing turn of events, I reallly hoped it would be some mind talk than actual cure all outcome.
Such outcome basically making whole story and earned scars during it pointless seeing all of them being taken away from Allison along with her muscular build she trained hard to get.
Lets see how this will turn out cause for now it looks she was changed against her will to be again the weak Allison when she started this story, ironically this also makes chapter cover false.
Some oddness going on here, for sure. The URL ends with boi4-126, while the previous page was breaker-of-infinites-4-126. Might just be a mistake on Abbadon’s part, or their web admin. In-story, the wounds and scars we saw on page 124 match the cover. On this page Alison’s focus on her right hand seems a little odd when you consider she only had a few minutes of consciousness after her arm was struck off. ISTM more likely she’d be looking at herself all over, taking in the healing of the wounds from Jagganoth but also the lack of the scars she’s been carrying for quite a while now. Yes, probably a simulation, but how odd then that Alison’s so much thinner (which signals limitations on how much Jadis and her minions could accomplish despite regrowing two limbs and an eye) and has such long hair (signalling a lot(?) of time since she was brought here). Are these just meant to make the simulation more convincing? My speculation: This could be a simulation of what Jadis & co. are able to do eventually. In reality, Alison’s still on the elevated table/bed, broken and scarred. Jadis will offer to bring her to her simulated condition, but Alison will refuse. She’ll keep her scars, accept prostheses, and set out to take revenge for the loss of White Chain and Cio.
That sounds very likely. If Allison has really been unconscious for three whole years (Which sounds like a minimum if she grew back her hair that long after being shaved bald) then what the heck happened to the rest of the multiverse? Did Maya and Incubus kill each other or have they been playing cards or something, waiting for Allison to get back on her feet? And if it’s really been three years, I guess Jagganoth really was killed, because otherwise he’d have been banging on Jadis’ front door long before this.
No, I think this really is some VR-like mindscape.
I don’t think that Jagganoth is dead, but he might have been put away for quite some time indeed. Long enough for a new balance of power to emerge. I do think that it hasn’t actually been three years yet and this situation is a lie, but I’m still very curious how the multiverse would shake out left between the 2-3 surviving demiurges.
I must say though, I doubt that the Rising King will drink from that river. She seems too unnerved by the loss of forward motion and the fruit thereof…
Then again, she is skilled in the art of making Bad Decisions, and at this point even I would be hard-pressed to deny her rest.
Exactly what I was going to post. Or, to be precise, not Incubus as he is now, but Incuboy in the days of yore, back when he first shown up near Maya and Meti.
Alison getting swole, breaking, and then reforming leaner and meaner mirrors exactly what Meti went through. Meti said she had a body like a steel edifice, but when she was faced with an opponent who she couldn’t beat, she realized that she trained far too broadly. She had a grand revelation, and became the strongest fighter in existence as of that moment. Her transformation didn’t have to do with her body; when she was broken by the Colossus, she was still Meti. She still had all that training and discipline in her head. Allison fought a dude who was pretty close to being the very concept of violence itself, and was broken by him. She may have lost her sense of self now,, but she didn’t stop being Allison. She’s still the same person who went through all that personal growth, and who still has a very long way to go to become the Rising King.
Gundhram the Reader, Belligerent Knight and Amateur Historian
On a different note… An interesting mention of mirrors in the alt text. One that goes a fair length to imply what kind of magics she relies on to run her empire.
Friend knight, I understand why you think she has ulterior motives.
Yet she might also be the rarest of rare specimens of this world – an earnest, kind soul. The smile might be of pride at the toil needed to nurse Allison back to health.
Not too often, no. But also not never.
What we heard is that she killed her father before the war of demiurges – and that she stood amongst the seven victorious.
We have not heard why she killed her father. We have not heard how she rules her domain.
We do all know that she later witnessed the shape of the truth, which broke her body – we heard nothing of what it did to her mind.
We’ve had to amputate all the swole.
Can’t have a girlboss win that easily, huh.
Time to hit The Gym And Regain the Gains!
Losing the Swole just means you can reconstruct the GAINS better than before! To be in a continuous cycle of refinement, one becomes more.
oh oh . That’s the truth. Your comment is very good
They removed the facial scars too
OH NO NOT THE GAINS
I thought the same thing. And I can sympathize. I was in amazing shape: doing swim team, football, and karate; made serious strides in my lifting; was down to nearly 6% body fat; and BOOM! hospitalized by a driver high on pills. I was in the hospital for 11 days and missed a month of school. All of that hard work, gone just like that. Super demoralizing, especially when one moment you feel amazing and what feels like the next second you feel like shit.
I was never all that impressive, but still, the difference after two months on pain management when I couldn’t keep up my routine was… disheartening. Almost felt like I was melting.
I hope you’re doing better. I wouldn’t minimize how awful that must’ve been, but I also recognize that that’s kinda what life is like, yeah? Lightning strikes, we cry, we rebuild. Hopefully, with the help of others.
Reach heaven, my friend. Through a certain kind of violence. When lightning comes again, it will find us here, smiling.
Similar thing happened to a sibling of mine, however in their case it was the manifestation of an undiagnosed dietary disease that destroyed a year of progress practically overnight. Poor guy went from hitting the gym daily to a stick-figure subsisting off protein supplements just to maintain a bare minimum of body mass.
Add being 66 to all that, I couldn’t get to the gym during lock-down and I gave myself a hernia messing about with a skipping rope and the operation hasn’t been much of a success, but hey when look at the state Alison was in I can still feel some optimism although I’d prefer not to have a leg amputated and all that.
Atrophy from lack of movement during a prolonged recovery?
Did you know that there is a song about this series? And it was turned into a ringtone.
That’s a great solution
Great, that’s a good idea. I give you full marks
I don’t trust this scenario….why is Jadis out of her cube….what about the COVER ART?????
Given the glimpse had of her highly damaged state, I am guessing this is all in her head. Or perhaps in Jadis’.
Jadis is out of her box, perhaps, because she’s given up her immortality and will die after a normal, human lifetime. (If nobody else takes her out first, that is.) She’s getting her wish.
Hmmm, the wounds resulting from trying to do a thing that blinded an Actual God don’t sound like the sort of thing that can be fixed that casually.
It seems wise to remember that Jadis is a sorceress of utmost power, one who has spent thousands of years entombed in Glass. I have no trouble believing that what we see before us is a reflection of her mind, spirit or self image conjured for the specific purpose of dealing with shit that Jadis actually cares about.
One thing that occurred to me that I thought was interesting is the theory that rather than having been, I don’t know, “lashed by eldritch energies” or something, Jadis’s “injuries”/ the “damage” she suffered after seeing the shape of the universe were spiritual and mental; that is, she looks desiccated and near-dead because she’s spent ?thousands of years? as barely functional having been rendered basically inert by what she saw, and didn’t have the motivation to eat, drink, move, or do anything necessary to sustain her physical life. Against that, however, is the blinding of Aesma, which if I recall correctly resulted from the same thing Jadis experienced.
In the chapter splash page, we also see this version of Jadis and another, black silhouette version which does not look quite so kind.
ye no nuthin’s creepy about this whole settin is’ jus’ hospital sure sure sure yeeees sir
I don’t actually think this is Jadis. There’s no halo, and as you said she can’t leave her ice-cube. I think this is more likely Jadis’ second-in-command, or dragon. Sort of like 00001 for Motom, or the “first consort” we met back in chapter whatever for Incubus.
Exactly, I suspect Allison is out of her head right now and in someone else’s head space. Probably being felt out for control or influence capacity…
Guess I’m sort of confused as to why everyone is confused about Jadis being out of her box? Seems as likely to me as not that it was destroyed by Jagg’s final war form strike.
That wasn’t a prison (well, maybe kinda sorta); I was under the impression that the “ice cube” was keeping Jadis alive after the (is this a spoiler? I don’t even know any more) attempted to look at the shape of the universe and got burned. It’s a very Icarus-like tale in some of the supplemental material, or something. I don’t even know where I read it any more but that’s Abba’s official explanation AFAIK.
Given how she just kinda hung out tanking all the shit he was throwing around before that attack, I doubt it was smashed by those attacks, no matter how many of them there were.
Cosigned.
New theory: Jadis isn’t out of her box because this complex — maybe just this one room — _is_ the box and Jadis never leaves it, Not Going Out being her thing. The glass cuboid seen previously is some kind of projection of The Box cobbled together by the priests for the few occasions when the drag her out to a meeting.
In the real box, as here, Jadis has been healed of her physical wounds from seeing the Shape ages ago. In the projection, we see her near-death form immediately after the Shape incident. Jadis never got around to updating it. Not getting around to things is also her thing.
A withered remnant _trapped_ in a tiny box is a great visual metaphor for somebody wasting their immortality, omniscience and near-omnipotence _as seen by those who want to go out and do stuff_. Jadis doesn’t; she just wants to stay home and wait for the end. And she’d like Allison to wait with her.
Jadis became paralyzed by her knowledge of The Shape. We’ve been told that this is a unique turn of the Cycle though. The conflict between Alison, Zade and the Demiurges has never played out this way before.
Perhaps the Shape has changed, and she’s free from it’s knowledge now.
Goodness her gangly body makes me so worried…
Jadis looks so fresh and lively compared to the desiccated corpse we first saw her as. Something you’re not telling us, Cube Lady?
I don’t trust it
Jadis stealing all the gains
If you cut away all the weakness, what remains will be strong. Strong, but too brittle.
You must be able to tear down the impenetrable tower once you’re done. Not so easy when said tower is formed destructively rather than constructively.
That’s what makes it a tower and not a dungeon you dig for yourself.
The inverse is also true. If you cut away all the strength, what remains will be weakness. Weak, but supple.
Damn, she’s even smaller than when she started.
Three years stuck in a bed will do that to a person. I saw it more times that I’d like to.
what? how did you know it’s been three years?
Looks like they accidentally let a spoiler slip through. If you sign up for the patreon for $2 a month, you can get pages a few days early. Just be careful in the comments, Damascus Blade!
There is also Word of Abbadon spoken on Discord, apparently.
It is also possible that Damascus Blade works in some medical capacity on whatever world they call home, and that the reference is not to Alison, but to other individuals bedridden for extended periods.
Comas are neither all that uncommon, nor all that conducive to physical fitness.
Although, comas are often better than the alternative…
Three to five years years was also my personal estimate based on her new hair length. *Assuming* this is real and not a hallucination, simulation, etc.
Sadistic in a way. Healing by reversion, by taking away what has become part of the whole. Medicine or torture?
Body horror but backwards and right side out.
For me, it’s about it being outside your control.
Halfway and shared between medicine and torture, really.
Ah, But Those Scars Were Honor-Earned…
But they weren’t *enough*.
🙁
thats gotta be rough for allison,, she went through all that hard work of loving and respecting herself throughout everything shes been through and the proof of that was suddenly taken away from her :((
She is like the ship of Theseus
But… what if it is only in this “machine” upon her seat of power that these injuries remain healed and forgotten? What if, the cost of leaving this place is to regain all those injuries and face all the pain and loss outside?
Hmm the caption feels a hint that this may be some manner of deception or trick.
Drink deep, and descend…
it still hurts here in my meow meow
Ah yeah this is totes a simulation.
she needed a whole new everything
If this is true, than future Allison comes from a different timeline (or is going to get injured in exactly the same ways), which is going to create all sorts of temporal headaches – Zoss has been turning back the wheel and choosing someone different each time, but this would require Zoss to have picked Allison twice, or future Allison is turning back the wheel, and that leads to the question of how many times she might have done so.
… and how far back the wheel gets turned.
Where is White Chain??
She’s working on becoming 83 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil/
Indeed.
Such a disappointing turn of events, I reallly hoped it would be some mind talk than actual cure all outcome.
Such outcome basically making whole story and earned scars during it pointless seeing all of them being taken away from Allison along with her muscular build she trained hard to get.
Lets see how this will turn out cause for now it looks she was changed against her will to be again the weak Allison when she started this story, ironically this also makes chapter cover false.
I personally still believe that it’s still a psychic vision, don’t think we can trust Jadis on her word.
Yeah, remember when Incubus fixed Allison up? But then as soon as she booted him to the curb, all her old wounds came back.
I’m more likely to believe the truth of a book cover than the word of a demiurge.
Or perhaps it is the tyranny of Zoss’s wheel.
Author no longer needs to draw all those scars. Victory!
The mouse-over text must be Jadis’ thoughts.. So too, presumably, that on the previous page. So it’s Jadis feeling bleak and accepting.
Some oddness going on here, for sure. The URL ends with boi4-126, while the previous page was breaker-of-infinites-4-126. Might just be a mistake on Abbadon’s part, or their web admin. In-story, the wounds and scars we saw on page 124 match the cover. On this page Alison’s focus on her right hand seems a little odd when you consider she only had a few minutes of consciousness after her arm was struck off. ISTM more likely she’d be looking at herself all over, taking in the healing of the wounds from Jagganoth but also the lack of the scars she’s been carrying for quite a while now. Yes, probably a simulation, but how odd then that Alison’s so much thinner (which signals limitations on how much Jadis and her minions could accomplish despite regrowing two limbs and an eye) and has such long hair (signalling a lot(?) of time since she was brought here). Are these just meant to make the simulation more convincing? My speculation: This could be a simulation of what Jadis & co. are able to do eventually. In reality, Alison’s still on the elevated table/bed, broken and scarred. Jadis will offer to bring her to her simulated condition, but Alison will refuse. She’ll keep her scars, accept prostheses, and set out to take revenge for the loss of White Chain and Cio.
That sounds very likely. If Allison has really been unconscious for three whole years (Which sounds like a minimum if she grew back her hair that long after being shaved bald) then what the heck happened to the rest of the multiverse? Did Maya and Incubus kill each other or have they been playing cards or something, waiting for Allison to get back on her feet? And if it’s really been three years, I guess Jagganoth really was killed, because otherwise he’d have been banging on Jadis’ front door long before this.
No, I think this really is some VR-like mindscape.
I don’t think that Jagganoth is dead, but he might have been put away for quite some time indeed. Long enough for a new balance of power to emerge. I do think that it hasn’t actually been three years yet and this situation is a lie, but I’m still very curious how the multiverse would shake out left between the 2-3 surviving demiurges.
To be fair, the multiverse of the past was also a lie.
The doctor with the cabinet:
expressions influence the set
and nightmares, walking to forget
To be clear: it’s atrophy cabinet.
This is axiomatic
We can rebuild her. We have the technology.
Thank you!
Imagine you wake up and every trace of your personal growth and relationships are gone.
Except the silver hair. But that saga started with Incubus, so one might rather forget…
People being like “This is disappointing” and not like “Hey, she’s gonna earn all that back again but better this time and it’s gonna be awesome!”
DON’T WEAR IT OUT has gotta come from somewhere.
I think her loosing the muscles is the point, It’s already been proven that martial ability is not the way here
The temptation of The Wheel. The dream of erasing failures, of forgetting.
Ahh, that gentle poison, thick with sweet decay…
I must say though, I doubt that the Rising King will drink from that river. She seems too unnerved by the loss of forward motion and the fruit thereof…
Then again, she is skilled in the art of making Bad Decisions, and at this point even I would be hard-pressed to deny her rest.
She looks too much as Incubus on this panels
Exactly what I was going to post. Or, to be precise, not Incubus as he is now, but Incuboy in the days of yore, back when he first shown up near Maya and Meti.
Alison getting swole, breaking, and then reforming leaner and meaner mirrors exactly what Meti went through. Meti said she had a body like a steel edifice, but when she was faced with an opponent who she couldn’t beat, she realized that she trained far too broadly. She had a grand revelation, and became the strongest fighter in existence as of that moment. Her transformation didn’t have to do with her body; when she was broken by the Colossus, she was still Meti. She still had all that training and discipline in her head. Allison fought a dude who was pretty close to being the very concept of violence itself, and was broken by him. She may have lost her sense of self now,, but she didn’t stop being Allison. She’s still the same person who went through all that personal growth, and who still has a very long way to go to become the Rising King.
I DO NOT LIKE THE WAY SHE IS SMILING.
On a different note… An interesting mention of mirrors in the alt text. One that goes a fair length to imply what kind of magics she relies on to run her empire.
Friend knight, I understand why you think she has ulterior motives.
Yet she might also be the rarest of rare specimens of this world – an earnest, kind soul. The smile might be of pride at the toil needed to nurse Allison back to health.
Do earnest, kind souls often become cosmic demiurges of 100,000 planes?
Not too often, no. But also not never.
What we heard is that she killed her father before the war of demiurges – and that she stood amongst the seven victorious.
We have not heard why she killed her father. We have not heard how she rules her domain.
We do all know that she later witnessed the shape of the truth, which broke her body – we heard nothing of what it did to her mind.