KING OF SWORDS 10-157
Chapter: 10
“The most magnificent of weapons is one that is offered out of self love. Grasp the nonshape. Make the mirror strike.
Would you take another’s weapon as your own? First answer: would you take another’s heart as your own?
The sword that cleaves the horizon must be swung from the center of your chest.”
-Prim’s Way of Gentleness, scroll 44
It’s just an ash wound.
What’re you gonna do? Bleed on me?
“I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.”
As I sit in what I am calling my summer palatial residence and what others might call the hollowed skull of a Giant king who I have recently slain I wonder just how much practice White Chain has put into the ancient art of philosophical curbstomping. Is embarrassing this particular Demiurge enough to shatter Diamond?
O death,where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
Death is not the end. It’s not even a defeat. Just a brief rest between rounds.
She’s got this.
’tis but a scratch!
Gawd damn it Salami.
I know we’re meant to hate you, but seriously;
Even if Solomon isn’t needed *in general*, the red god is gearing up for war.
Solomon *is* needed now. His point of “Oh well, until a better age I suppose” is kind of bang on. In a better age, Salami could withdraw. Today… probably not.
And he even says “Yo, Angel, you can quit now. Lets sit down and diplomacy or whatever.” He gives WC another out.
All he had to do to NOT be the villian was avoid killing hundreds of dudes in the Arena yesterday afternoon. That was ALL he had to do.
Why you be so reasonable, and so bad at this.
Why has Solomon willed it such that he has sons and no daughters? So he cannot fail his daughters again.
Solomon seeks perfection. He has become so inured in this pursuit that he cannot in any way allow himself to be -im-perfect long enough to improve. Solomon David, among his peers, is a finely polished diamond. But a diamond can only ever be so finely polished. The little cracks in his virtue will never heal, so all that has been left for them to do is spread.
It is still more terrible than that, for he fails his daughters with every breath he takes. All the blood spilled, all the treachery, all the art he employed to secure revenge for his world and the strength to protect now what he could not then has only served to transform him into a conquering king, whose armies go out and subdue entire worlds for their master’s empire.
Solomon David has become the man who killed his family, and he has eternity to contemplate it. Under that crushing weight, what else could he do but turn to diamond? Just like Zoss, just like Juggernaut Star, he has mastered the Wheel only to find himself broken on it with every turn.
Some things that need be remembered:
1-He forced no one. Everyone who died was a willing participant of the tournament and since it’s televised, justifiably aware of the stakes. Not only that, they were given many outs before the splattering. (There is even an alt text or comment, can’t remember which, that states that contestants in the ring of power are negligent at best when it comes to understanding what the centuries of Solomon’s undefeated streak mean)
2-Solomon is old as fuck. Hundreds or even thousands of years old. Even in a normal human lifetime, the value of certain things…erodes. Imagine what happens over millennia. I’m not saying that to justify him, but to understand why the killing of hundreds of people might not bother him much, especially when considering the first point.
In my opinion, he is only a villain when we consider him human, and I don’t think he has been for a while.
He’s at minimum 1,100 years old since it’s been a bit over a thousand years since the Universal War reached it’s current stalemate. I don’t think it was ever said how long the Universal War lasted between its beginning and the stalemate that was reached, but it likely lasted many decades, if not a few centuries. Maya and Incubus started their training just as the war was beginning, possibly shortly before the spark that started the whole thing. Solomon began his Ki Rata training at some point after the war began, just when isn’t indicated.
How is he a villain for killing others in a deadly contest of skill that they willingly entered, having been given multiple chances to bow out of it and be richly rewarded?
In the same way that Lebron James is the villain if he plays seriously after challenging a naive new player to a game of hoops.
The others cannot see the void between them and Solomon, they are young and naive, especially beside one of the 7 kings of the universe.
What we saw in the arena was not a contest. That much should be readily apparent to you, and it was readily apparent to Solomon.
Is it not villainous to kill that which could never harm you?
just phase change. a gift beyond value
If it is weak either ignore it or kill it. Anything else honers it.
-MTG
He is a Villian because it was unnecessary death, necessary suffering.
He COULD have defeated every single one of them non-lethally, demonstrating his overwhelming might *WITHOUT* murdering people. The fact that he choose murder when he didn’t need to is what makes him a villain. The fact that they knew the rules doesn’t mean anything.
To be fair, this universe is a dystopian hellscape with Chainsaw Nunchucks, so like… he ain’t exactly out of the norms for THIS universe.
Killing people so bloodthirsty as to try even after you offer them their lives and wealth are likely a future public safety hazard.
White Chain should be renamed Black Knight.
Except that Salami Dave is the one guarding the bridge, so to speak.
And, suddenly, the tune changes…
~Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge/I’m trying not to lose my head/It’s like a jungle sometimes/It makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under~
You’re directing, nice.
When angels, screaming, fall from the sky,
They rarely ever truly die.
For them in defeat is victory true,
An immortal’s heady, well wrought brew.
But mortals, as ever, should feel strong fear,
An end is signaled to what they hold dear.
White Chain, my sister-in-spirit, my heart breaks for thee as it does for myself.
I don’t think White Chain is trying to beat Solomon David at all now, she’s trying to prove something to herself, and herself alone. Salami Dave barely factors in, and that is actually the big twist.
Or I’m completely wrong and we’re about to see the “Nakama powerup” moment.
Improbable solution #3: Juggernaut’s wheel bursts from beneath the stage and gives Solomon a serious case of road rash.
The greatest insult to ol’ Salami, one which he can not even begin to think may be the case: in this battle, he doesn’t matter at all.
Ah. This happens sometimes. When you fight a Hero.
It is always surprising when you realize you are fighting someone who has a very different, and much easier, win condition than you.
Us Villains, when we commit Violence, do so in pursuit of an objective. To win, we must accomplish it, and the violence is but a tool to do that job. Wealth, power, finding a worthy heir…we don’t win by winning the fight. Solomon David has realized now that he has lost: this violence will not find him the heir and the freedom from the yoke of responsibility he seeks.
Heroes, though, dislike our tool and stoop to violence only to uphold righteous principles. Any conclusion in which they upheld and did not betray those principles is a victory in their eyes! Even if you kill them!
It’s like they’re cheating, and we think it’s super unfair!
Stone coated in angel blood,
Downpour falls like rising flood.
King stands tall o’er beaten foe,
Foe demands another go.
I…cry…when Angels deserve to
Consider this perhaps artful (and thus untrustworthy) interpretation of Solomon’s role in the tournament:
All who enter the tournament have shown that they have strength of will. All have shown cunning. All have shown imagination…For how else could they hope to win? But in the final moment, a single razor slices: those who will put aside their own aspirations to accept a comfortable and yet responsible position in the empire’s hierarchy, and those who are too mad, too power-ravenous, or too audaciously unreformable to know doom.
It’s a culling. It nets him a corps of formidable bureaucrats in a bureaucracy which clearly worships strength. It destroys those who will not yield to reason.
And it ensures that anyone even close to the terrible ambition of the demiurges is annihilated, and grows no stronger. You may be cowed, or you may be dead. No successor can rise, here.
The best part is that, after a certain point, clever little scumbags are going to start fighting in the contest NOT to fight Solomon, but specifically to impress him and gain that cushy bureaucratic position with an expensive desk and comfortable cushioned seat. Such people will not only have no upward mobility of their own, but ALSO the willingness to defend their current position to the death, since that is what they risked to get there.
Such bureaucrats are pathetic, but I suppose Solomon is right to favor them. The ravenous, power-hungry bureaucrats, who petition merely for the sake of petitioning…well, those are what some might call “kingdom-breakers”. The general principle of which White Chain is about to prove, I think.
White Chain here doesn’t act, she only is.
Her existence is an act of defiance and rebellion
against the concordance and the Demiurges.
White Chain merely persists, and having no will other than existing she is born of emptiness. And without the shell of an ego, she may return (without her body?) to subdue evil.
Honey-sweet, the smoke you suck.
Darken, come out, run amok.
My love for you is like a truck.
Is that the Ballad of the Berserker?
Achilleus, dressed, grieves,
lacks the virtue of retreat.
Strength by sheer ferocity.
In some more excentric circles angel blood is a sought after commodity but only the truly foolhardy will actually try to drink it.
You only compare Solomon’s world with those built by the rest of the Seven. What of the other, gentler world, that might have come to pass if it weren’t for the Seven’s existence and endless pursuit of power? Perhaps, compared to a world without universal war, Solomon’s utopia would seem hollow?
Of course, we will never know, for the fate of the cosmos has been stolen by those with power. And for what?
Power is a funny thing. The more you have the more you want and the more you’ll fight against others who want to take it from you.
Not many people know how to just let it go.
“Is that true? I wasn’t aware that was something a person could do.”
If it happened I would be perplexed.
It bears remembering that we know precious little of his worlds, except that they have strict laws, with harsh punishments. That on itself is not a bad thing, if the laws themselves are fair, and Solomon does not strike me as someone who would penalize sexuality for example. I really don’t think the celestial empire is the terrible yoke a lot of you are making it out to be.
That said “the other, gentler world that might have come to pass”? Look around! We have plenty of examples of civilizations gone to shit and none required conceited demigods to get there. Even if the war had not been universal, there would have been one, with the usual fallout.
The fate of the cosmos has been stolen? If it came to pass, then that WAS it’s fate. It’s human nature.
Yeah! Human nature is shit! Why, I’m murdering a child as I type this, he’s bleeding out. Because all is dark and bad ‘n stuff.
Seriously, Australia is pretty nice. Lots of countries are. And not all through economic oppression of weaker states like the USA and China do.
Now join me in singing Bhutan’s national anthem…
Ps: Look up Vattu if you want a good tale of empire from a conquered people’s perspective.
Bring that “There is no I in Defeat” juice, White Chain!
White Chain is now a Cadbury Cream Egg
We will celebrate the consumption of 1 Cadbury Cream Egg and when the time comes welcome back 2 Cadbury Cream Egg with open arms and mouths.
She can’t deal with losing to Salami Dave and she has lost her will to live, so she’s basically committing a suicide by cop.
Pretty pathetic if you ask me.
Can I say that I’m sincerely impressed by how spectacularly you managed to miss the point of what is happening here?
Dude, I can smell her butthurt all the way over here.
I had heard that ignorance, when fashioned appropriately, could make a mighty shield for one’s emotions, and even the physical form.
Bravo preem tronn, never before have I seen such a master of this art!
I…I mean, I GUESS that’s technically a valid interpretation up until this point?! Like, she says ‘it’s for me’ and it’s actually referring to her not-previously-seen suicidal tendencies?! Awfully depressing, though, and very much NOT what the author is trying to imply here. You’ll note Abbadon’s comment here (or rather “Prim’s way of Gentleness, scroll 44”), which is all about self-love, not suicide.
Lest we forget, White Chain had an epiphany 10 pages ago – last night in story terms. She said “The system that destroys the young and foolish, the hopeful and aspirational… […] *I am that system Allison*. […] If I don’t fight it now with every fibre of my being… I may never atone for my sins.”
So no, it’s not loss of will, it’s not pique at losing and it explicitly isn’t about SD.
So with this I wonder, can Solomon David actually comprehend this? Like truly conceive of such a thing? A fight that isn’t about him?
He and Gog-Agog have this thing in common: a thing that is not ultimately about them and their pain is an utterly alien conceit.
Well yeah, Solomon embodies Pride and Gog Agog embodies Envy, both of which revolve around them.
Though to be somewhat fair, it’s natural for Solomon to assume the win/lose is about him since that’s what the whole tournament is about and he doesn’t know White Chain in the same way Allison, Cio, and us readers do. Assuming while not knowing WC’s point is one thing, and assuming while knowing WC’s point is another thing entirely.
Of course not. He IS Pride, after all.
He cannot, which is why he failed the second he entered the ring.
Prim’s been watching Utena I see
I didn’t hear no bell.