BREAKER OF INFINITIES 2-46
Chapter: 2
“The king that holds the chains of the world must make his peace with them, link by link. They are heavier than any man, and they will not hesitate to break his bones.”
-Au Vam, Pankrator of the Yellow City
Kill Six Billion Demons
BREAKER OF INFINITIES
Zoss has the same arm as we see in the foreshadow-page
….
Okay, first- heavy.
Second- That’s not how you convince people to help you Jaggoth. I’m up for some god-slaying, as one should be, but seriously- doing it this way does not work. If you KNOW you keep fighting the same fight, winning, then get sent back, maybe you should do something DIFFERENT rather than the same thing over and over?
Just a thought.
The red god of war and Omnicide did try to parlay with Allison. He just, uh, that’s just not exactly his strong suit. But for a guy who likes to use nuclear blasts as his primary means of taking a stroll through town, 30 seconds of civil conversation is “trying something different”.
This is the paradox of victory. You get so used to it, to defeating your opponents in whatever form they come, body and mind, so soundly that they could never hope to oppose you again, that you eventually forget that sometimes, your enemy isn’t your enemy, and you lose against your most important opponent. Victory is a state of mind, and eternal. Jagganoth has failed to reach heaven by/through violence.
I may clarify by saying that i do not know yet what this demiurge will do, so let that be said. However, i do know that they think that they know what will happen, and that because of this, reality may end up bucking against them, because that’s how reality works, if he wasn’t so blinded by themselves and their choice.
E/N: by *theirself; if he *was. Also, The Jaggy-Crag is an idiot. Don’t tell him i said that. Or do.
You’ve outdone yourself, Abby.
That’s some Dark Souls inspiration right there . . . . or a shared inspiration between K6BD and Dark Souls. And Matrix, I suppose. Regardless, hell of a reveal. One ruler of one seventh of all creation is not like the others.
Well you know when the evil vilian monologys it means its just about to end spectacular in the minute its taking , also i think jagg hasnt thought that maybe, just mabye Allison is supposed to be the one break everything because if zaid was to get the key it would just repeat all over again..which leads me believe zoss knew that every knew it was to be a male,so he pretends to go after zaid and they take him, but zoss wants break this chain and end this cycle so he kidnaps allison so now the cycle that heir was to be male is broken….
How many times must a man get stabbed
Before he is finally dead?
And how many heirs must ascend the Throne
Before it can finally end?
And how many times must I clean this world
Before I can put it to bed?
The answer my friend, is killin’ as the red
The answer is killin’ as the red.
So, when does the wheel get reset to? The choosing of the heir seems too soon. Zoss’ acquisition of the the names of god from Metatron seems most likely. If that’s the case, how true to the first iteration does each reset run? Is it always the same, save for the choosing of the heir? Or are there only a handful of constants – Zoss, Jagganoth, Metatron and the ranks of angels the pre-existed the storming of heaven – and the rest is contingent?
I keep catching myself thinking of this as a conversation between Allison and Jagganoth, and it’s not! It’s a conversation between Jagganoth and Aspected Chaos, who has all of the knowledge of White Chain and Cio rolled into one. It’s not nearly the one-sided contest that I keep thinking it is: a demiurge with power, yes, but knowledge and experience and ages of old age and treachery squaring off against a twentysomething barista. Aspected Chaos is additionally two beings who have been around for…well, we don’t know, but a very long time indeed. It maybe possible that in the contest of youth and skill versus old age and treachery, Jagganoth may actually be the one representing youth and skill, and he doesn’t even realize it. After all, he’s been in this mindset of ‘I’m going to take on a boy with more courage than sense’, but that’s not what this is anymore.
Neither White Chain nor Cio are in full possession of their own entire histories, having each been broken and remade a time or two, but even just their latest incarnations may be older than Jagganoth.
I do have to wonder what the likelihood is that any of the previous heirs ever performed such a fusion, even if they were still flanked by an angel and a devil.
Right, and of course it might not matter. It’s…Jagganoth. He is also left-handed, has spent the last few years developing an immunity to iocaine powder, and otherwise has a plan or three up his sleeve for any contingency you might throw at him. In which case Abbadon is going to throw us something even more weird and unexpected.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
Different theory: You’re crazyinsane and making shit up and Imma gonna punch you in your non-existent dick, now.
The Wheel of Time has never before seemed so apt as here.
Al Lan Mandragoran …
To kill six billions demons, you must first slay doubt. But to slay it without examination will spawn as many demons as you must slay.
Ah. So Big Red is a Dark Souls boss who just hasn’t been beat yet and he’s getting tired of people dying and coming back with a new build.
It seems reasonable (not inevitable) that Zoss needs the master key to reset time. In that case, he needs to show up materially, not just in Allison’s head, and take it back. Or else, have the heirs been doing the resets?
Zoss made the key, and purportedly all he got from Metatron was the names of God. He has achieved mastery over the wheel, and exists outside causality. I don’t think there are many physical limits to what he can do, only philosophical ones.
In short, I don’t think he needs the key. The purpose of the key was to share that knowledge and power with others who had not achieved his level of mastery.
I embroider upon my previous thesis.
Metatron isn’t just *mean*
Metatron is Just Straight Up An Asshole.
Just, wow! There is a twisted dickish perfection in this coda that I am having trouble framing succinctly. But basically:
The Reason They Cannot Find the Forest is Because There Are All Those Trees in the Way
Reality as a repeating motif: making Zoss the eternal warden of his own recursive time is one thing. But specifically choosing supporting players that are fundamentally incapable of seeing outside their own role is just rude!
Feel it? Jaggs isn’t made for peace, doesn’t know peace, can’t deal with peace, so even in his apparent rebellion he cannot brew a scheme not founded by rout and predictable violence.
Feel it? Zoss has chosen how many heirs, looking for a more accomplished version of his own self and ending up right back unsatisfied and taking it from the top, too strong and too sure of his own strength to see that power is easy, and violence is effortless, but living is hard!
Zoss has maybe finally spotted the thread, hence choosing an anime-loving crybaby barista whom draws strength from those around her as opposed to another yet stock shonen boy wants to play with swords.
I think this is my favorite take.
Jaggy obviously understands the cycle he’s caught in, and that he needs to change something to have a hope or escape, but the best he can come up with is “kill harder”, “kill sooner”, and “demand capitulation without explanation”.
I’m not even sure that Zoss actually broke his own chains, either. His body may have been on autopilot when he gave Allison the Key. In that case, he saw the potential after the fact – a happy accident, but one that could shake the foundations of reality.
And keeping with the theme, Juggernaut Star is the next most-aware time loop pawn. She is so consumed with hate and despair that the only rebellion she can imagine is denying Zoss any decorum when choosing an heir, literally killing him while he’s in the process.
As for 2 Michael, he’s set in his ways and utterly devout to the old order, with Metatron calling shots until a King can be restored. Even if he knew of the loop, even if he loathed it, I doubt he’d fight it.
I like this.
Lemme go find a text:
“There is a war, and its name is existence. There are two ways to fight—one is the sword, and one is the bomb.
By the sword, I mean the way to fight that is tempered and solid. The way that is made from old things and that triumphs by the reduction to simplicity. This way is known to those who study the cosmos. Take any part of it at any time, and you will see an edge and say, “This is a weapon.”
By the bomb, I mean that way of being that is complex and schematic and that must attain a criticality to attack. The way that is made from new things and that triumphs by the arrangement of intricacy. This way is known to those who study themselves. Take any component of the bomb in isolation, and you will say, “What is this? I cannot understand its purpose.” Yet in it is the possibility of a fire.”
Zoss is making a bomb. 🙂
No one gets why the fuck Allison, of all the people, could possibly be who matters…
…but her whole ‘maybe that’s not strength at all’ scene before the fight with Salami Dave situation is Pretty Choice. Zoss was an exemplary blade in a blade-loving cosmos, doing the thing that you do when you’re part of samsara… but he figured out that to bust loose, he’s gonna need a bomb.
Other people. What we make together. A great machine.
One popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expect a different outcome. By that (admittedly simplistic) definition, both Jagganoth and Zoss are quite mad.
* Despite Jagganoth’s assertions of inevitable victory, you are filled with DETERMINATION.
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
what was will be what will be was
Aspected Chaos is about to tell Jagganoth about an anime called Evangelion and a sad sad boy named Shinji Ikari. Doesn’t he seem like you Yaun?
*Platform reaches outer space*
FLY ME TO THE MOON AND LET ME PLAY AMONG THE STARS
Next Page: Aspected Chaos wins by flying McJaggy into a blackhole.
This must be one of those dragon ball z “minutes”
Or it’s stronger than Jaggy first thought and it’s taking longer than he expected…
Or he’s taking the opportunity to expound on the situation as he sees it, and is just using the ‘binding’ as an excuse to why he isn’t acting right now.
You have to empathize with Jagg for at least a moment, his entire life has been a parade of nightmarish suffering and its only compounded by the fact the he knows he has to relive it over and over again.
He could fix it all by just not fighting.
That’s the thing about free will: it’s the other face of the coin, opposite predestination. They’re the same thing, one relies on the other.
The paths Jagg observes are the ones he chooses to; this is predicated not only on the outcomes of the world around him (wildly infinite variables that they may be), but also on the fact that *this is happening to Jagg*.
If he -could- not fight, he would not fight.
Knowing what the future holds doesn’t meant you won’t arrive there. Being able to observe something farther along than your current point of observation in your timeline *fundamentally does not free you* from the reality of that experience, which *is* coming, and which you will bring about for all your efforts or avoidance.
What you have for dinner tomorrow is just as fixed in your timeline as what you had for breakfast yesterday. If you could, perfectly, indelibly *see* what you would have?… you can’t change it. That’s a whole ‘nother higher-dimensional ball-game, jumping from one track to another.
I -think- that’s what Zoss does, or rather, it’s what he *has* done; cartwheeled across an infinity of worldtracks, knowing that no matter how infinitesimal his chances, infinity means ‘I win’.
If I were Jagg in such a situation, I’d be pretty fucking jazzed: seeing something unfamiliar after an unfathomable litany of failures-in-suffering and languishing in a prison-reality is probably a red-letter day for the big fella, I just don’t think he’s got any real capacity to deal with red-letter days after all he’s been through.
“La la la…” So the way you reset is to threaten the world with endless exposition until it all finally gives up and says “kill me. Please!”
Villains man. “It’s my job!” They all the same.
Given that the reason he remembers anything of the previous cycles is his closeness to Metatron, and the sheer repetition of events, I think perhaps the reason Jagganoth does not remember what happens after the heir takes the throne might be that each actually meets a fate which is in some way particular to that heir.
Without a singular path of events between then and the end of his cleanup to cleanly carve a valley in the landscape of his mind, details would be vague to him, as they are.
That said, I wonder how aware Zoss is of Jagganoth’s capacity to remember. Was he expecting Jaggy to carry out the same motivations he had at the start of the cycle, or taking his growing awareness into account? Is it an even more crucial element to his plan than the selection of heirs?
And as for Metatron’s own motivations: As Kverlob noted last page, this arrangement brings to mind Micheal’s vision of “The circle, pure, infertile.”, but rather than a circle of a new YISUN ruling over a multiverse that lacks the fertility to fill Throne with unruly devils and humans, it’s a circle of Zoss being infertile in the sense that his search for an heir is seemingly futile.
Thanks for taking the time to discuss that, I feel strongly about this and so really like getting to know more on this kind of field. Do you mind updating your blog post with additional insight? It should be really useful for all of us.