King of Swords 10-170
Intra took the stone, and his terribly damaged sword, and began to set to work by the side of the fire. Using the edge of the sword, he slowly chipped at the rock, flattening its shape. As the rock was of a reasonably large size, this took quite some time.
Once he was satisfied with his tool, he took off his kafeyen and traveling cape, so he was clad only in his underclothes, then found a good spot in the barren and muddy town square and began to dig.
Even the people in the square who had filtered in to see the Sword Saint and had some hope he might yet prove their savior felt their resolve sag at the sight of his starved body, laboring and sweating as he toiled in the muck and filth. The cruel master of the vale laughed and had a tent set up to shade him as he watched Intra’s struggles. “If you are done with your farce, I will happily geld you and make you my jester, lord Intra,” said he. Intra said nothing, but kept digging, only emerging to feed his fire. As the day dragged on and his fire burned to coals, he had quite a sizable amount of clay, which piece by piece he molded into bricks and let dry by the light of the sun and the heat of the fire.”Behold the earth,” said Intra.
As the sun began to creep lower towards the horizon, his craft quickly became apparent. Exhausted, and muscles quivering, he emerged from his hole and began to stack his bricks into a sturdily made bread oven. Then he asked for a vessel, and went down into his pit, emerging with it filled to the brim with muddy water, as he had dug deep enough to coax it from the dry earth.
“Behold the water,” said Intra, and set it to boil clean over the fire. He began to shovel coals into the oven, to prepare it and set it.
At this sight, more people began to gather at the square. They could sense that something was afoot. Yem Yeddo would have beaten them back into their homes, but he too was transfixed by the strange spectacle that was unfolding.
“Clever,” said Yem Yeddo, with the slightest tinge of anxiety in his voice, as all tyrants are wont to have when confronted with an honest man. “Do you mean to bake bread for the people? That will not work despite your powers of transfiguration, as I have all the grain.” His thugs, like the loyal dogs they were, sensed their master’s discomfort, and gripped the hilts of their weapons.
“I tire of this,” said Yem Yeddo, without realizing the gravity of his own situation. “Break his limbs.”
“Next,” said Intra, “I will turn this rock into air.”
English is indeed a bastard language. Anglo Saxon was a perfectly good Germanic language, but then some fucking idiot decided to take French, Norman, Latin, six different Gaelic languages, and several lesser Norman dialects and inject them directly into it, before feeding the resultant monstrosity some Spanish for good measure.
We will add your linguistic distinctness to our own. Resistance is futile.
ALL YOUR LANGUAGE ARE BELONG TO US
We lick all your tongues !
Omnia enim lingua lambere !
Wir lecken alle deine Zungen !
Lamimos todas tus lenguas !
On lèche toutes tes langues !
Vi slickar alla dina tungor !
* This was just too funny to pass up.
( Thanks Google Translate ! )
Goddammit Google, why do you turn an obvious present tense (we lick) into a present simple form in Spanish (lamimos, instead of lamemos) xD
Also I’m pretty sure that Google didn’t bother to conjugate the Latin verb xd
This is why we still need human translators, and why we should keep investing in language teaching…
English has words from many many other languages within it. It has been noted by great sages as being not the sort of language that just borrows from other, more staid languages, but which actively pursues other tongues down dark alleys to hit them over the head and turn out their pockets.
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” – James Nicoll
Then, as a final insult, it was spread across the globe by ruthless, foolish colonizers, scraped thin and uneven, as one does with the last half portion of butter on a burnt piece of toast. As it settled into a hundred dialects, the speakers of each came to resent the source of their tongue, and those who spoke it differently.
Not all colonisation was “ruthless” and “foolish”; such sweeping generalisations are merely facile. Needless to say, some of the places colonised, had they not been so, would to this day be undeveloped dusty pits with no infrastructure. No gratitude, that’s the problem…
Ahaha! Good one. Almost had me for a moment
Not sure if you’re joking, but like India was actually starting to industrialize when the English showed up, and they basically wrecked it.
It’s this synthesis that makes English so wonderfully versatile, of course, on a level that few other languages are.
A day to learn, a lifetime to master.
And then we go change the rules again because SVO construction and tense and number conjugations so the last millennium are.
For some reason, this page fills me with dreadful hope that 10 Vigilant Gaze will fall in love with dear Princess. I shall ship them now.
ill join you in this new sidepair, BuffBro’s for life
Everything is going so well.
I AM FILLED WITH UTMOST DREAD
This is an interesting juxtaposition of text (the story of Intra and Yem Yedda) and “main” story. All of this celebration, reunion, happy tears… I can’t help feeling that something is afoot, and soon the craft will be apparent…
Isn’t Vigilant Gaze’s martial art almost exclusively defensive? Not something I would imagine most devils would find interesting. But Princess is not most devils, she has a black seed still in there somewhere, perhaps she is able to play the long game.
We saw an angel gain flesh, maybe a devil can learn discipline. In fact I’m willing to bet on it, there is a fire that’s growing stronger with each person it passes through. Break the limiting paradigms and Reach Heaven Through Violence.
what Princess did see was Vigilant Gaze absolutely wrecking another angel with a single energy punch, that’s all that matters.
An important lesson: All languages are inherently recombinations and bastardizations of older forms of communication. I recall a skirmish I once witnessed between a pair of Australopithecus, started over one’s insistence on describing a red fruit as ‘blood tree food’. I believe actual blood was drawn over that one.
In my case, it took some time to figure out any form of spoken communication, due to my inherent lack of vocal cords (or lungs, for that matter).
Spoken language is a terribly complex thing made by and for people that have little to no will to understand its intricacy. I find myself often impressed that we were even able to stumble our way into upgrading verbal communication to entire linguistic systems with ever-changing variations.
Still, without it I would have a much harder time trying to practice my trade of being terribly and fundamentally wrong about everything I say, so I am perhaps biased towards the written and spoken languages.
Oh my now everyone can go home!
Including myself, if I could only find it..
Princess reacts to meeting 10 Vigilant the way I would. What a good angel.
It’s been said that English is not a language, but rather three languages stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat.
There’s real joy on this page, and it feels awesome!
Yes buff as fuck lady I bet you are a top what’s your number
I was under the impression that devils had the gift of tongues.
Morale, hand on shoulder.
His smile enough to hold her
in place. His face does smoulder.
You really dedicated. I think you were in about every comment section so far? Never quitting. Never missing page. Tireless, relentless as if you really not affected by need to sleep , eat , tiredness , aging ..I know your secret ! You must be undead SKULL !
*HONK*
Just a skull of moulded wax:
Parafin and tallow fats
Not living so undead, p’rhaps?
A sudden thought for you various guys overhead. Cio says she can’t _speak_ it, not that she doesn’t _understansd_ .D Contemplate it.
And yeah, just cannot resist the temptation: “You teach me now, square angel” sounds pretty much like “А теперь покатай меня, большая чепепаха!”
As for Endlish, however mongrel it is, it still sounds better than the totality of contemporary Roman languages, which are corroded and barbarised Latin with detestable phonetics.
Two narrative paths lead forward. In one, Cio doesn’t understand English, and reads way too much into Allison and Zaid’s opaque conversation. In the other, Cio does understand English and it happens that Allison and Zaid say some indiscreet things.
However, both these threads develop major tension, and don’t belong at the end of a book, given that the last three books all end at a time of relative peace.
While the events in the comic are obviously amazing, the real treasure in these last few updates is the tale of Intra and the stone.
Intra going “Primirive Technology” YT channel route. Next he gonna film it , post on youtube , monetize channel and use that money to get food for villagers. Yep. Totally how it gonna work.
Can a male stone angel be sent back to the void… from snu snu?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
snu snu… had to look that one up! I don’t think that even Princess could sex VG back to the void, though I’m sure they’d enjoy trying
English isn’t just a horrible bastard language. It’s three languages in a trench coat, and it likes to lurk in dark alleys and mug unsuspecting dialects for their spare vocabulary.
Bold of you to assume English wasn’t the one getting mugged.
We are all of us Thirsty Princess
We are all of us Grumpy Cio
We are all of us Exhilarated Nyave
We are all of us Best-Self White Chain
Are all of us Buxom Demiurge too?
“It is not measured in finger-lengths” -Lord Intra
This Intra story reminds me of the one about the blue city, which I always wanted to see continued… does it continue? or does it end with “Intra was very drunk. So everyone died”?
I need a training montage with Vigilant teaching Princess Fierce Horse Soul.
Not want. Need.
Allison’s probably having a bit of trouble adjusting back to speaking English after an entire year without it.
several years without English, isn’t it? like since her brief return L.A.?
Now that Cio has gotten a chance to dunk on In-Ge-Lish, surely THIS is the last page
“SQUARE ANGEL YOU TEACH ME NOW” is a power play of an introduction.
I honestly completely forgot how Allison understands everyone else’s language, and I suspect I”m not the only one. To save everyone else an archive binge: when Allison first stumbled into Throne, she ran around swearing in English & couldn’t understand what anyone was saying (chapter 1 page 13), but then after she passed out White Chain took care of her and fed her a steady diet of Blue Devil liquor for three days (chapter 2, page 26). Thus, after she woke up…well, ok, it’s a little unclear who’s speaking & understanding what language (chapter 2, page 2), but I suppose that Allison just began speaking & understanding the language of Throne right away, hence White Chain’s lack of familiarity with English now.
I completely forgot the fact that they were not actually speaking English but we had it translated for us through the magic of storytelling.
Also looks like Vigilante Gaze has made his first fan. Can´t blame her, that giant energy blast punch was the second raddest thing to happen in this tournament.
For some reason, I read Princess’ speech in the voice of the Final Pam.
And thus it is. One defies any authority to contradict.
Following morning and the rest of the stadium is demolished, one of the Suns is missing, and all of Solomon’s beard-cages are strewn about the palace, great burning letters read:
“NEXT TIME YOU INVITE PRINCESS”