King of Swords 1-5
Chapter: 1
Grab the reins, you awesome puppeteer, you conductor of chains
Redeemer. Unbreakable strings. Damnation leashes
Remote cords extend, the trusses they run
They stretch all the way behind the sun.
-Meshuggah, “Behind the Sun”
Praise the Sun.
Praise the Praise the Sun.
At least of the suns, it is known they burn brightly and one should be cautious when exposing oneself.
An elegant intertwining of curiosity, sparked from a world unlike many others, and stirring of revelations to come.
Darn, there goes my theory that Zaid was disassembled by Mammon and his parts kept in Jars like Akira…
Ok, Solomon is actually pretty badass. Taunting his sons about not being strong enough to fight him didn’t impress me too much, but dropping that you can fling sons around in conversation like that is
HE’S BEING INDOCTRINATED IN TO THE BEARD HIERARCHY
HELP THIS POOR BOI
NEVER! LET THE BOI BEARD! IT’S THE ONLY WAY!
So we’re in the universe he originates from.
I was RIGHT! There ARE two suns!
If my memory serves, this is the first we’ve seen of Zaid since Book 1.
Well, that explains the shadows.
Any fool can destroy a star. It takes a crafty fool to create one.
Solomon David didn’t say he made the suns. He said he *put them there*. As far as we know, he simply moved two existing stars there. It’s not like your average universe is lacking in them.
My personal guess here is that Solomon actually believes in the prophecy a lot more than he let on. It’s just that, after so many years building everything he can imagine (structures, societies, laws, SUNS), he can’t find anything worthy of building.
So he’s decided that he’s going to build his own chosen usurper. Because as he is now, the only person he feels is worthy of scheming against is himself.
It’s very possible He simply took the suns from other systems instead of making them. Wouldn’t be the first time, or the last.
I just realized something about the tournament, & sibling rivalry dynamic, at the risk of identifying my username to my real life brother, who also reads this comic.
*It’s time for some sibling rivalry! Who’s ready to rumble!*
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VLex3JVbCTs
Solomon never lets his bad-ass meter drop below 11.
Unless there was a timeskip, the prodigal douchebag’s hair grew a lot in the past four days.
…there probably was a timeskip.
I get the feeling that Solomon will be projecting a bit on Our “Pal” (I Dislike This Man) Zaid for this book wrt his supposed once and future god-king-iness
Moving stars around is actually not that difficult and can be done without magic using today’s technology. Look up “Shkadov thrusters” AKA stellar engines.
There’s a good chance that Solomon David expects Zaid to one day draw blood from him in that tournament… or maybe even kill him.
Solomon is probably the sort to go, “Ugh, the prophecy of my destruction is never going to come true without my help. Typical. I even have to arrange my own doom, just to make sure it’s done properly.”
Bet in actuality Solomon didn’t put them there, but rather hired two teams of professional sun movers to do it for him, but then he thinks that’s kind of the same as moving the suns himself, and he always brags about it when he has guests over.
Something is (of course) off with Solomon. There are apparently sons shoehorned into every nook and cranny of the palace and no women are visible. Something terrible is behind this.
It would seem that Paternum Solomon David is mistaken: binary star systems are NOT rare at all. Up to 85% of all stars in our universe are part of binary star systems.
Then again, this universe depicted above (it sure as hell doesn’t look like Throne) is a different universe in a Multiverse of 777,777 universes, so it could very well be that most stars in most of the universes (or at least in the universe depicted above) are single stars as Solomon David says. Our universe seems to be highly unusual in at least two ways: 1) it has many more stellar systems with multiple stars that the average universe and 2) remains unconquered by the Seven (even if it is in Mottom’s fief).
From Multiplicity to Duality to Singularity. All of these are the lies of YISUN’s very being, for there is no separation that is not also a deception, and most preciously, a self-deception.
I remember some comments from the last page about there being two different light sources. Did… did he position the suns so the shadows in his palace would be symmetrical?
Really, Zaid has some of the same sort of WTF look in his eyes when she arrived in Throne – the ‘I’m overloading on this shit and I’m just keeping it together’.
I like that the first words he’s said are basically his name and ‘Let me outta here’.
I’m confused. Why is this young man not terrified? I WOULD BE TERRIFIED.