BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-145
After wandering further, Prim came across a crater many miles across. The edges were smooth, like glass, and curved inwards, down into a steadily increasing darkness, where at the bottom Prim could barely see a hole. The hole was extremely unpleasant to look at. Not a single mote of light touched it. As she took in this unsettling sight, Prim was shocked to see the distant figures of people, crawling up the edge of the crater, and steadily but inevitably sliding into the massive hole, where they were swallowed.
A croaking cough emerged a short distance away from Prim, and she beheld an unbelievably filthy and emaciated old man, who was clothed only in a ragged sheet draped over his head and body. He had a staff, like a shepherd, and it was broken at the tip.
“What is this place?” said Prim, trying to hide her disgust.
The man wet his dry lips, and said, “This is the end of the road. Or one of its ends anyway.” He motioned to the hole.
“The hole?” said Prim.
“If you go into the hole,” said the man, “you will very definitely die. Your entire existence will be permanently obliterated, almost instantly. It is very painful and causes tremendous scarring. The filth from your obliterated corpse will spread into the air like ash and sicken people for years.”
“It’s not the cleanest way to reach the end,” he said, hacking out a dry cough, “but its very easy.” He leered at Prim with a brown-toothed smile, as if expecting her to agree.
Prim left immediately.
A pyramid inside a pyramid inside a pyramid. Interesting living arrangements.
.”….And I can teach these skills even to you, Clodpool. I have heard the heartbeat of the universe. I know the answers to many questions. Ask me.'”
The apprentice gave him a bleary look. It was too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning. That was the only thing that he currently knew for sure.
‘Er . . . what does master want for breakfast?’ he said.
Wen looked down from their camp and across the snowfields and purple mountains to the golden daylight creating the world, and mused upon certain aspects of humanity.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘One of the difficult ones.’
– from the collected works of Clodpool, first Disciple of Wen the Eternally Surprised
so..what do you all think of this arc until now?
I genuinely am impressed by how blunt and indomitably right Jadis seems. It’s one thing to face enemies who are blatantly corrupt, or prideful, or who present a (mostly) physical threat like all of the other Demiurges up to this point. But Jadis…
She’s probably coming the closest to ‘defeating’ Allison, and she’s yet to even be overtly antagonistic! Jadis is the closest thing to objective truth in this universe, and that’s…terrifying in a way none of the others have been, to me, that she genuinely represents just…finality itself. Jadis reminds me of why some people are terrified of hospitals- even if they’re meant to help, they just…remind everyone of the end.
You can’t exactly just deny utter, soul-crushing nihilism and death itself away. Though…given the premise of this story, something tells me that Allison may teach us a thing or two about how to do that. Royalty’s a fool’s path after all.
I’ve never been more engrossed in seeing how Abbadon will resolve something in this comic.
Pretty low opinion. I get the mind-breaking idea of omniscience but the end result is a non-character who is in function a “just because” from the author. I’d love to be pleasantly surprised with another option, but the only way for Jadis to be an actual character and not a really poorly written arc with no actual story is for her to be wrong or overcome.
The demiurge just described our heroine’s thwarted deflowering in the first three panels …
We would like to remind you that causality is a myth, reality is negotiable-at-best, and Royalty is best obtained through perfect ignorance and not Absolute Knowledge.
Eat off of Jadis’ plate, Allison. See if she sees THAT shit coming.
Jadis has seen the Shape of the Universe, and thus knows everything that ever was, will, and is.
Jadis is literally omniscient – this is the Word of God.
So, why does Jadis ask such questions? She already knows the answers. She already knows the possibilities. She knows the why, the how, and the end.
So, why does Jadis still ask Allison why she chooses suffering? Why does the only omniscient being in the Wheel ask the Fool, Kill Six Billion Demons, why she chose to do anything?
Was it because she saw herself do it, and so she does, fulfilling the chain of causality trapped in amber that she saw in the Shape of the Universe?
Was it because she wanted to tear apart Al-Yisun, to drive the Heiress of the Conquering King towards the path of Sloth?
Was it because of some sort of gambit, a desperate ploy to break the amber, to inspire a Lie that would break apart the amber that trapped her for so long?
Or perhaps, there was a much simpler reason.
Why does anyone ask another a question?
Because they wanted to know the answer.
~Ah…
The former Mind who has seen the Shape of the Universe still has something they want to know.
For the Omniscient One to find something they still do not know – that is quite the prize, no?
Enough of one to finally force one back into action, to break away from the amber and face the inevitability of Jagganoth once more.
Like most ancient riddles and nihilist koans, this one is most easily solved by ignoring the premise and doing whatever you want.
And THAT is the shape of ROYALTY.
Since nothing matters, I will have one black bagel with Everything on it, please.
“You tell me”
BREAKFASTER OF INFINITIES
Ohh so it’s like, she wants Allison to break the future she has already seen? By choosing breakfast, going against fate? Maybe?
Choose breakfast.
Choose healthy.
Choose the egg white omelette, with the yolk tossed in the trash.
Choose the half grapefruit, with the other half lost forever in the back of the fridge.
Choose decaf coffee with soy milk and artificial sweetener, to give the illusion of drinkability.
Choose the bottle of water with the cucumber slice for your morning jog, draining the energy gained from the previous night’s sleep.
Choose a healthy breakfast.
But why would I want to do that?
I choose not to choose healthy.
I choose something else.
I choose bacon.
People are forgetting that the title of this book is more than just a title, it always has been.
Why does the assumption that all things end lead to so much pain ? Is the tree that has roots and leaves the reason for despair because one, standing in front of the tree, looks at the blue sky and realizes that there is sky that the tree does not fill? Likewise, when one looks forward and backwards in time, there will be a time where the tree wasn’t and will not be. That does not make the tree less beautiful … Thank you for the comic, for your time and effort. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to think about those things.
Why can’t I shake the feeling that this is an incredibly important decision Allison is about to make?
Is Jadis Omnicicent? Or is she trapped in a quantum puzzle that Jadis has fixed because she has observed it. All the possible waves of uncertainty have collapsed into the time line she has viewed. She can do nothing that she doesn’t do in her vision.
The only escape from this would be to eliminate the viewer and allow time to change. Jadis seeking death to escape her fate would be in character for the Demiurges Allison has met so far.
To take this one piece at a time:
Whether evil is fated to lose or not does not seem particularly related to whether we choose to suffer. We could go on a tangent of what evil means and what it means for evil to lose, and whether that is the same as good winning, but that seems to be beside the point, so I’ll just let this be to get built on.
Time ending sounds more like evil winning than evil losing, though. End-of-day public trumpeting could be alright though, especially if the trumpeters are well practiced in jazz or ska.
Judgement is a form of want, of will. Thus it is very much capable of smiting, but whatever form judgement takes, one could pose it the question of why it persists in the absence of a stronger judgement on a swifter horse that has already done the work.
The premise, however, is enough to answer the question: The work having been left undone is exactly why it is being done, and it is no reason to continue not doing it.
it was in a man, and they ate him.
Existence is suffering, non-existence is suffering. Without suffering there is no existence and I’ll have a medium-rare cape buffalo steak, cassowary egg over easy, couple of ricochet biscuits, pot of coffee blacker than the back side of your heart and a kiss. Oh and do we have and clotted creme for the biscuits?
Is spooky nihilist lady actually crying in that last panel?
she fuckin gets it
Whelp all the “Mommy” comments may not have been far off judging by that last line *bemused rueful laughter*