King of Swords 6-51
Chapter: 6
“Everyone could feel war coming. The famine washed over the land first. The dogs disappeared. The sky grew dark as the sun turned away, as if it knew what was going to happen.”
– Account from the Yellow City, circa second conquest
WHOA.
WHOA, I SAY.
For someone who has been studying the way of the sword, she sure has guns!
meti’s manual, part 5:
building your house
gives rise to large guns
she’s been studying the bench press lmao
I’d say pull ups given those shoulders.
Meti telling maya to cut the locks is a given, isn’t it.
It goes without saying.
One can’t help but wonder, though, as to whether or not Maya is wearing a wig made from what was once her hair.
Could be. How long would it take to grow back that much hair? Many years, I would have guessed.
Around 3 to 7 years for a full growth cycle if that is the maximum length her hair can reach naturally, otherwise less time is needed.
Funnily enough this is the answer no matter how long or how short someone’s maximum hair length is.
Not necessarily. One of the first things she was told was to cut her hair. But if we remember, in some cultures, cutting hair was akin to a new beginning. So if anything, it is more likely that the hair she has now was grown out since that time. And no one has managed to harm it, and perhaps her.
So for Meti, they could be beautiful for that reason.
That is not to say she won’t cut it herself, such is the way she teaches.
I think there is a sword fighting dicipline that starts with agabond priests. I think this is a look back in history moment.
Now way? Yes, whey.
maybe she’s born with it. maybe it’s noodleine.
Maya has been eating a lot of protein lately, and maybe working out with her roommate. The results are quite spectacular.
Also, I love that just like Diogenes, Meti lives in a barrel in the market place.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking about Diogenese when I see Meti in her barrel.
No, that was my first reaction too.
Yup.
Diogenes wouldn’t be smoking a fag. Not that I’m in any position to criticise.
I don’t know, but I suspect as long as it was someone else’s pack of smokes he wouldn’t have a problem lighting one up.
“Nature exists to be enjoyed. Now pass me some of those magic mushrooms.”
-Diogenes basically
Hm. On one hand, Diogenes once observed a dog lapping water and threw away his wooden bowl in response, realising that such things were unnecessary contrivances of society; this would make me agree that he’d perhaps be against smoking.
On the other, man jacked off in public like it was going out of style. If that’s not indulging a vice, what is?
Houses and clothes are just unnecessary consumption, which is a vice.
Toking and wanking in public are just, like, living in harmony with nature man.
Ma-ya! Ma-ya!
Also, is it generally customary for sword gods to end up as gutter drunks?
It’s been claimed, as with wild animals, that Divinity (our world sort here) only comes upon you when you stop thinking so much.
Oh, one can easily use one’s mastery of sword law to carve one’s name across the universe, and force all its inhabitants to yield before your glory.
The question of “why” distinguishes Royalty from the aspirants thereunto.
And so the time draws near. A blade must always remain sharp, and nothing sharpens more than experience
If you can have anything you want in life by the sword, but everything you want in life comes at sword point, what is left but to drink and await death?
A subject worthy of lengthy contemplation.
Become a noodle merchant.
War, while entertaining, is never profitable. At least unless you win of course, though that is never certain. It’s much safer and all around more amusing to convince others to fight your war for you. Just don’t call it your war, that would be messy and if we are anything we are not messy.
War is the redistribution of assets. It’s profitable for the clever.
War is hugely profitable, ask any half decent weaponsmith.
On Cyprus they made this error, at the end of the Bronze Age.
War hungers for weapons and it will feed on them, even if it must consume the smiths with them.
The profits of war are usually earned by those who have no investments in a particular side.
I thought she would say thighs.
BRO, DO YOU EVEN
Meti had a barrel in the marketplace
Maya was a swinger of a sword
Meti said to Maya hey I “like” your braids
Next day Maya’s locks are hanging from a board
Abadi, Abadon, life goes on, bruh!
La la here comes Al-Ys-Un
Rusty razor time!
Diogenes also lived in a barrel.
M
E
THE DESTROYER
I
It is notable that The Destroyer lies between “Me” and “I”.
Lady, you only said she had to cut it the one time
you never said that she had to commit to the look
Heh, so many comments I wish I could upvote today.
I too, have considered raising pleasing comments to higher prestige.
Crush this desire where it grows. Upvoting is a pastime for swine, and it breeds fascism.
And lo, see the art of cutting pass from master to student.
I’ll be honest I was kind of hoping for an update on whatever Zaid has been doing the past year with Solomon.
I feel we’ll get that revelation when Allison finally catches up with him.
Or when Solomon winds him up to use as a weapon.
Ah. And now we gaze upon the rise and fall of the Sword Master?
To see a Demiurge fall is a rare thing, even for those of us of the Flame… but it never fails to be a spectacle.
The flame burns admirably bright in some. Even if they are only human. In the end, of course, all will be extinguished. It is to be regretted.
Why is Maya standing with her feet splayed at 90 degrees? That’s very bad form.
Still, I suppose she’s only learning.
That’s definitely a thing, isn’t it? Martial artists and dancers stand with their feet forward, always, unless in a deliberate stance. Not ’cause standing foot-splayed is likely to cause any problem, or because we’re all hoighty-toighty about it, it’s just an observable characteristic.
Is it not obvious? There is a bowl of noodles in the way of having the feet straight forward.
Correct stance is for the beginning student. Natural stance is for the advanced.
Sitting, leaning or crouching is all one to the master.
Wise-sounding but false; practically this comic’s leitmotif.
Few are those who have a passing familiarity with the Twenty Precepts of the Poet; those who are incapable of aught but sneering at the works of their betters are legion.
But pretty, I ought to have added!
Thus is concordance reached.
Maybe she had a serious injury in the past, which later caused her to push for learning swordsmanship.
Pots and baskets, bowls of stone
Reverberating pedal tone
sleeping through the sunny drone
Wow, suddenly my brain exploded with long and short term memory connectivity, and from the eyes an eargasm burst with the celebration of synapses.
— Maya, get rid of those sideburns
— What sideburns?
— You heard me, hippie.
THIS PATHETIC KNIGHT ARE NO MATCH FOR MY ROBOTIC MERCENARIES
AHAHAHAHA
Maybe she needs the chopsticks to learn how to pick a really big lock.
A basic test of skill, it is, to instantly and with one stroke shave your head clean with a rusted blade.
Depending on how much of Meti’s teaching’s Maya has absorbed by this stage, it’s possible that she could do it with a sword that has no blade at all.
I got to get the name of her hairdresser.
What a charming little neighborhood! All those market stalls – ripe soil for the seed of commerce to flourish in. But where are the customers? If I were still a wealthy man, I would go shopping there right away, and buy whatever it is they’re selling, and adorn it upon my mantle as a trophy of my generosity!
Alas, I no longer have a single Guilder to my name. While I’ve earned the trust of this tower’s inhabitants by not stealing for a while, there is no demand for a banker here. They already have accounts with more august institutions, such as my own former employer the Bank of the Grand Dragon, and even though I have a steel-trap memory and the ability to calculate complex financial transactions in my head, I don’t have a vault. I can only hide coins and bills under my disgusting invertebrate flesh.
Maybe if I still had a skeleton, I’d be able to leave this elevator and set up shop elsewhere. So that’s why I’m selling stock in my new company, the Bank of the Degraded Thief. The stock ticker is BDT on the Throne Stock Exchange.
Alas, the Yellow City is no more, what once orbited Throne as a moon of artifice was shattered and cast into the void in the Universal War. Last I heard, Preem Jagganoth has strip mined the fragments for ghost ore.
I take back my promise to buy a skeleton with my money. Before that, I will buy an effigy of the esteemed Preem Jagganoth to place in a shrine, so that I may spit on it and then light the shrine on fire.
Curse that red abomination, whose oversized butt cheeks fill one of the seats that should be claimed by Lord Mammon! If I become wealthy again, I shall erect an entire new neighborhood in memorial of the Yellow City, so that it may be a living shrine to capitalism, and to Mammon, whose justice is strong and gentle!
In the outskirts of broken Yre, the begging dead could provide you with a suit of bones suitable to your flesh.
Furthermore, with the glut of gold that has afflicted that region, they’re quite willing to accept alternate forms of payment.
Excellent idea, individual of redacted identity! I shall send out feelers to the community of the mendicant deceased, and I shall walk from this elevator at the bottom floor! But it shall not be the final time, for I will one day return as this building’s owner!
I just looked back at Meti’s previous appearance. (Seeker 3-17) The market used to be much more crowded and vibrant. What fate is coming here?
War is coming
this is axiomatic
Oh shiz. Meti said not to come back until her head was shaved by that sword but, I think Maya is about to shave right in front of her.
The female-by-defaultness of this comic didn’t strike me until I saw you do this trope. Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate it. Gives me life.
You know, I’d been thinking about it between spans of pants-shitting terror… Speaking of students. Where’s young Zaid in all of this? Protected on Rayuba I imagine, but doing What?
A couple of thoughts here, and stop me if I sound mad… but perhaps his plan has a few facets. We know he may or may not be seeking an heir to his power, but we also see the concern for him being the chosen of Zoss. Perhaps he intends to have Both? Maybe Zaid has become the first student of Ki Rata in a very very very long time. So that regardless of what happens with Zoss’ key, if Zaid gets it, the King of Kings would be HIS. Seems pretty prideful. Train your own successor then make him the God of Gods.
Or I’m reading too much into this, who knows. I never claimed to be smart of wise.
Solomon, I mean. Solomon teaching him, etc etc.
Has there been a Solomon, Son of David, in any universe of the wheel who was not concerned with his legacy?
Even the most humble among them choose to be the Wisest Man in History, and yet others have made darker requests when offered the Boon of Divinity.
Also, Maya’s interest in Alice suggests that there will be two students of Ki Rata in this generation.
Her status as a (former?) demiurge raises questions as to whether she might survive the cataclysm.
The Beast has seven heads, so perhaps she will outlive the Seven Black Emperors.
100 PUSH UPS
100 SIT UPS
100 SQUATS
AND A 10 KM RUN
EVERY
SINGLE
DAY
Are we really to believe that Mother Meti would smoke anything with a filter on it?
“Legends were born regarding mysterious lights
seen in the sky
I just lit a fag and then took my leave
in the blink of an eye”
Also, one wonders if smoked fags are particularly PC at the moment?
I think it’s more likely she DIDN’T cut her hair and is coming back now that the Yellow City is about to be besieged.