King of Swords 9-126
Chapter: 9
THE SHAPE OF ROYALTY
- The very tip of a swallow’s wing as it cuts the air.
- The sword that splits the plum, pit and all.
These are said to resemble Royalty. It is not curved in the slightest. Turn the wheel on its side and you will see its shape. Cut the wheel in half and you will see its shape between the two halves. This is its purest expression, in the non-space. Observe how it extends forever, and look how it glitters!
And lo, the hammer drops.
This is going to hurt.
Knock knock open up the door, it’s real
with the non-stop pop-pop of stainless steel
Go hard, getting busy with it
we can make a realigion out of this
No don’t.
Z O S S G O N G I V E I T T O Y A
Pulled the ol’ Eternal Sunshine on us did ye?
Juggernaut Star has grown angry with the world’s cycle, blaming Zoss for what was, is, and will be. I can understand the frustration, but is the source truly so clear?
I mean, it’s literally Zoss’ fault. No one is forcing him to do this Groundhog Day loop. It’s literally all on Zoss.
Terminal depression ain’t all that eager nor easy to suss out.
Groundhog Day? Am I missing something ?
@Skelter: Zoss and Juggernaut have both previously hinted at time being cyclical, although the history we know of the Wheel seems to be linear. Abaddon says somewhere that Juggernaut and Metatron know a secret about Zoss’ dominion over the universe that no other being is “capable” of knowing. I guess that this page is soft confirmation that time is indeed cycling, at Zoss’ behest, until he “gets things right”, and that Metatron and Juggernaut are the only ones besides Zoss who retain their memories of the previous cycles. It’s been foreshadowed, kind of.
Looping such that AL YISUN grows weary of individuality and starts the cycle anew. Is it Zoss, or our very own protagonist?
“When you come into your power, spare a thought for the poor old devil.”
Allison is going to break the cycle – that is the final revelation! The ultimate triumph of espresso over the cosmic all.
Is it not the nature of wheels to turn in cycles? Yugas and Kalpas may pass, but even the greatest cycles must repeat themselves in time.
Speaking of Yugas, many belive the current one is ending, drop by the shrine for a paper talisman if you fear the changes to come.
Midnight is a mortal construct, barely fit for witches.
Gods concern themselves with dawns.
Zoss has also told Allison that no one is bound to fate provided they aren’t fearful of it, so regardless of the nature of previous cycles, this being the one we get to read is probably different in a significant way
Aye, all un else thinksome Zaid thon babby King, cozza thums andronormativesome preconceptins, but Zoss be tryin summat new, choes Alice, an thum be wantsome elsewise endup thisn cycle.
–Or they thinksome that because it was so in previous cycles.
A curious thing about a split wheel: The two halves are not quite identical, and they can roll in different directions.
What if you split a perfectly symmetric wheel perfectly symmetrically down to the atomic level and its rolling along a perfectly flat (also down to the atomic level) surface?
That said though, there’s really only one plane you can slice the wheel on and still have it roll, who says the wheel split has to be along its rim, if you split it in half along the axis, it’s not going to roll very far.
Show me a wheel that is symmetric to the atomic level, and I shall split it perfectly for you.
And with one continuous cutting motion they cleaved the wheel in twain; and so they continued on cutting in this way again and again until they found that inside the wheel was all of creation, and inside all of creation were molecules, and inside the molecules were atoms, and inside the atoms were explosions.
Don’t forget to define “flat”. Especially if you live on a perfect sphere.
Juggernaut Star is Sans the skeleton
you know where the door is, now get out.
The beginning of the end, perhaps.
Things are definitely coming to a middle.
To be an angel is a horrid and unknowable thing! We are closer to Pree Aesma!! Praise to YSUN for my inability to know, for I fear it would break me if my burden were understanding all that I have seen.
Zoss ruled for but a brief era, did he not?
You assume that Zoss was always the conquering king
He is. Zaid is Zoss.
I had not considered the possibility of Zaid = Zoss! Makes a weird kind of sense.
With many interesting creatures at his side.
One may ask: How did Juggernaut Star get that halo, again? An interesting question, if one knows the answer.
It was a gift.
Yes, yes, a gift. But from whom, and what their relationship was, is what makes the question interesting.
Crowns are not made for angels, much less gifted to them.
It’s a curse.
He’s a man who sees no problem or difficulty in hanging around and doing things very much after he’s dead, because causality doesn’t really matter to him. Time is meaningless.
Star-forged fist
Fist of the North Star.
“well, fuck”
-Sage words for a situation such as this
Juggernaut Star passed by today, seeming to ride a great hellcycle whose wheels featured a most charming innovation of skeletons being broken bypon it. This was a charming farce, a cute ploy to fool the maya-dreamers who know not the truth and feign dare not seek it.
Here is a paving stone for the road – carry it upon your back and thereby become the path you seek, or placeit on the earth so others can tread it to oblivion and liberate you from the burden of the Wheel: Juggernaut Star wears the wheel. Juggernaut Star needs the wheel. Juggernaut Star is the wheel.
And that she is broken upon it just as Koss once and never broke her upon herself – like all her bretheren..
And lo! Above her head burns a firey crown in one of the many-and-none shapes of the world, a wheel, but not – for it is broken.
As one studies the greater mysteries of the ungenerated creation, of the undeclared Mu of Exist, such fractally self-similar conceptual schema become more and more apparent. It is rather like becoming mad – but fear not.
The world is mad. It was always, for it isn’t. This is the first canto of the song of maybe – BEHOLD: You- seeker – are becoming sane.
Now grasp the breaking-truth and with it casts the skies asunder: HERE itself and NOW this when is a blueprint of the zeroth syllable of Royalty.
Speak it, and by thine will alone go forth –
and shatter the firmament.
—————————————–
*Meanwhile, Old Zoss sits in the void, meditating the Aeons away. Catching a fragment of an idiot child’s pretentions to gnosis. Their, in the eternal silence of that forgotten corner of the ash-heap of history, he chuckled – just a little – in a manner both grim and good-natured such as could only befit a Conquering King.
“Oh child,” he murmurs. “Don’t you understand? They’re all the zeroth syllable, each and every, one and none.”*
Thank you. I shall not meditate upon this lesson.
So Juggy wears the broken wheel and is the broken wheel, which is how she can be in so many places at once.
Fascinating conjecture.
A man said to his doctor, “I think you are a demon, sent to trick me and cast me into perdition.”
The doctor replied, “Of course I’m not.”
Ah, I think I see.
…Said the blind man and he pissed into the wind. “it all comes back to me now.”
But joking aside, What have you learned oh observer? Do the waves reveal the secrets they hold in the shifting sands of their watery depths?
I wear the mask with the curious expression and make with my hand the sign of the supplicant.
Surely, Mask’d One, you have been taught better. The oceans’ depths offer no true insight. It is a shifty and slippery thing, and it would say anything to pull you in to its grasp.
That’s what makes wind surfing the maelstrom of understanding so exhilarating!
A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea. Accepting of all things that are, and may be.
You can learn nothing from the infinite, and yet it holds all wisdom.
We have learned before that the speaker of thorns hates Zoss with a raging passion. Here we have been informed why. Zoss mentioned to Alison that he “thought this cycle might go differently”. Judging from what Juggernaut Star says here, that’s a literal time loop. All this has happened before, and will happen again, all for whatever purpose the ruling king has set. For whatever reason, the thorn angel is aware of this where nobody else we’ve talked to seems to be. Perhaps Metaton told them.
Reading between the lines, I think that Juggernaut might also be suppressing their more human and/or female nature for the sake of fighting this cycle. When in an earlier book we saw her true face and she said “I am tired”, she was probably referring to weariness over this eternal cycle that she’s trapped in.
This may also be specifically what “the cycle, pure, infertile means”, gives some neat symbolism to Juggernaut riding around in/on a wheel, and one could maybe make some kind of comparison to a weary but powerful skeleton man from a beloved indie videogame.
An intriguing comparison, actually. Our tale here shares a midwife with that beloved indie videogame, as it were, and that midwife happens to have an infamous inevitability habit. Always chain-smoking time loops and being already there and so forth. I wonder if that was an influence?
I believe that the Ocean has come to the same conclusion as The Prana-Ghost of Some Damn Demiurge that History Forgot After Gog-Agog Ate Her Face.
Yes! a good number of interesting thoughts have been provoked by both. This speaking house is well worth the entry fee and two drink minimum.
Not sure if JuggerKnight is hinting at something, or just bonkers. Maybe both?
The utmost mystery, oh smallest of fathers.
You break it, you buy it.
And the Wheel has bought Six Juggernaut Star Scours the universe at no low price.
On the tumblr Abaddon said regarding 6 Juggernaut Star that “He is one of the only beings in creation (Metatron being the other) that is able to hold the knowledge of the true nature of Zoss’ power and dominion”. 6JS is saying something pretty cryptic but I feel like this may be in reference to that.
Suddenly Kill Six Billion Demons showing up in the void right under the Demiurges noses is starting to make more sense.
Break the cycle Alison, free them all!
ROYALTY CAN ONLY BE OBSERVED IN ITS WZA-Y’EI
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
My deepest bow to thee, Oh well-lerned Dogie. Despite my utmost distrast to the canine tribe, I cannot but feel respect to the fellow Aklo scholar.
And dost not thee think that Juggernaut Star is clerly implying that there’s YR NHHNGR?
‘Readied action, GO!’ Is pretty much what I think of the last panel.
And it all comes back to the divine suicide.
Yisun, ultimate master of of royalty, creates division of self. The Wheel is born.
Yisun is the Wheel and within it at once. Paradox.
The Wheel cut in twain reveals true royalty.
The circle with the line through it, the symbol of the Conquering King, is the description of Royalty.
The Conquering King and all the children of the wheel are Yisun.
Exercising Royalty is Yisun The Wheel dividing Yisun The Wheel.
Division of self. Destroy the Grand Enemy I
The divine Suicide.
Destroy what you are to create the reality of the possibility of what you could be.
Cut yourself into a grander form, as a sculptor cuts away stone.
Cut away the timelines that lead back to their beginning, so that only the future remains.
Cut away what is impossible, until only the Truth can endure your fury.
With each new cut I become grander and smaller until I become the ultimate nothing. Foolishness.
The handbook of Meti contains this truth:
You must never make ‘multiple’ cuts. Each must be singular in its beauty, no matter how many precede it.
True Royalty is one continuous cutting motion. – Intra
Indeed, the only freedom that matters, the only enemy that matters, is the Grand enemy known as I.
Did not Yisun say there should be no genesis?
Did not Yisun tire of their cyclical existance?
Is not the very name of Yisun I?
Why then should the eternal nature of the wheel baffle you oh students of the divine.
Turn the sword of royalty not upon those you see as your enemies but your true foe. Only when you have defeated the great enemy will you be free.
That’s metal, Juggernaut Star. That’s metal as hell.
“As hell”?
I warn thee not to insult our righteous angelic brethren so–even our fallen kin, strewn among the Thorns.
Bah!
That’s metaler than 90% of the Hells in Throne.
That’s because the devils there prefer to build their structures out of the bleached bones and petrified entrails of their flesh-slaves, not “metal” or “wood.”
Imma deck you in the schnoz!
It’s gonna leave a mark
So the true shape of the universe is unveiled, not only wheel by shape but wheel by nature, forever turning and grinding those upon its surface unto dust with nothing in sight to slow its revolution.
If all this has come before and come again, a question arises. Is Allison merely the latest in a long line of conquering kings and queens? Or was the key being thrust upon her by literal blind chance the first sign that the wheel is starting to wobble?
The Occurrence of Allison is not blind chance, it is the deep plan of someone devastatingly powerful and supremely patient.
Soooooo… not Gog Agog?
Do not judge the hive my a single handful of maggots.
There is a KETER in her MALKUTH, I wager.
Well, then. This is an interesting turn of events.
Alas, if only I could see what epic fight must have happened in the void! But alas, I am human and don’t particularly feel like exposing a projection of my soul to the void to watch. Regardless: The diskheaded angel’s blow certainly seems like it’s about to hurt.
An alternative, that is not an alternative, is not an alternative.
Famous non-angel saying popularized by angels.
The Pain Train has no brakes.
PREPARE FOR HEADPATS
The pinion feather catches light
and shine’s it on the baron’s wife.
Will she crash her coach tonight?
As a mighty warrior of tremendous speed once said: FALCON PUNCH!
As they say, a well timed rest may shatter the wheel.
All right. This is the second time Juggernaut Star mentions a cyclical, recurring universe (the first time being Book 2, chapter 2) And it’s fascinating, but it’s giving me a headache: first, because everything else in the story seems to suggest a single, linear timeline (YISUN created the Omniverse, the Gods created Throne and died in turn, Zoss breached the Heavens and established a new order, etc, etc) Secondly, because it raises SO many questions:
-Is this eternal recurrence true? Does Juggernaut Star know it for a fact, from first hand experience? Or is it just something she believes, and that belief is turning her mad?
-Is this eternal recurrence the same “cycle” that Michael mentions in Book 2, chapter 3, and Zoss in Book 3, chapter 9? Or is that a different cycle?
-If this is truly the nature of the Omniverse, why is it that only Michael and Juggernaut Star seem to be aware of it? Did they gain that knowledge from Metatron? Or have they seen it with their own eyes? And if they have seen it, why can’t the other angels see it? Why can’t the Demiurges see it?
-If all this is true, how can Zoss be outside the cycle, as JS seems to imply on this page? Is that the true nature of Royalty?
-And more importantly, what does the old bastard want from Allison? Is he really hoping for her to break the cycle somehow (again, Book 3 chapter 9), and if so, why can’t he do the job himself if he’s so goddamn powerful that he exists outside the wheel? Or is he just pulling an Utena on Allison, using her to restore his own power?
The questions keep popping up, and the headache keeps getting stronger…
> Why can’t the Demiurges see it?
Well, probably Jadis did? That seems pretty logical, being omniscient and crushed with the understanding of the true nature of things and everything,
I continue to maintain my bet that somehow, Juggernaut Star and Jadis are one and the same. If these suppositions are correct, it only makes it more likely. Perhaps, in beholding the Truth, Jadis allowed her consciousness to partially persist between individual turnings of the Wheel – it is not ‘this’ Jadis, the one entombed in ice, that rides as the Speaker for Thorns, but rather the essence of a previous cycle’s Jadis.
(This is a longshot, but such unlikely bets are a time-honored tradition on my own world of origin, where we call them Weasel Twins’ Wagers after the two brilliant vatra who first popularized the practice. Placing one is a mark of aspiration to Royalty, and also is never to be done with someone else’s money.)
I kinda clocked the resemblance between Jadis and Juggernaut Star way back when we saw her true face. It might go some way to explain why JS has a halo too.
Cyclic time raises some ugly questions about free will. Religions based on free-will-but-do-what-we-priests-say-anyway tend to avoid the topic … and the full-colour cosmogonies in the story have been the conventional, religious ones. Our narrators are most unreliable.
My headcanon: yes, there’s a great cycle. Royalty is about being deeply aware of the cycle without getting shredded by the knowledge, and free of the cycle without destroying it; to be outside something that something must still be. Zoss is central to the cycle, so he can’t leave it until he finds a replacement … and that’s what he wants of Allison. Mottom and Solomon understand this (respectively emotionally and intellectually) and want similar, on a smaller scale.
Finally, I suspect that the end of the story will be the transition to the next cycle, and it will consume Allison, Cio and White Chain in apotheosis; they will live forever in song, but will be not. The art and the legend will be utterly glorious. And I shall cry for a month.
For completeness, I would say that I desperately and pathetically want the *other* ending, where Allison walks away from royalty and goes off to live an ordinary and happy life with Cio. I want the very last panel of the comic to be Allison walking into her parents’ house and saying “Mom, Dad, there’s somebody I want you to meet”.
I guess we’re not going there as it throws away so much awesomeness.
But … I do wonder if Abbadon could write and draw both endings: books 6a and 6b. It seems selfish to ask for more when Abbadon has already given so much of his life to this story, but perhaps it would only be the last two chapters of the story that need to fork.
Even then, it would be the actions of a King.
Walking away, leaving the cosmos to burn, while pursuing her own happiness. Destroying the Wheel, through inaction. Truly, to sublime the act of cosmic genocide.
Both endings at once would be a lovely Al-Yisun level paradox. I would trust no one else to pull it off.
Probably it’s true. The tumbler post /post/144258194970/6-juggernaut-seems-like-a-pretty-loose-cannon explicitly states that, yes, Juggernaut has special knowledge that others don’t.
Zoss, I think, was referring to this same cycle. Michael’s “Circle” sounds like it might be a different concept. I don’t think he’s aware of the cycle, at least not directly like Juggernaut is. Metatron is “outside causality”, and Juggernaut probably got the ability to perceive the cycle from Metatron.
And I would guess it’s not that Zoss wants Allison to break the cycle, but that he’s forcing the cycle to repeat again and again until things turn out the way he wants them to.
So one has to ask: how would 2 Micheal react when he finds out about the grand cycle?
He seems to be entirely comfortable with the idea of resetting the universe and hoping that YISUN self divides in the same fashion again.
It appeals to his need for someone further up the chain of command to make his decisions for him, as well as his personal hatred of his personal emotions.
Dude has problems.
That leads to the question: What if Allison decides she doesn’t want to be Zoss’ tool?
Behold! Royalty! Man has always found a way to ruin one another’s grandest schemes, in that we see the facet of Royalty known as VIOLENCE.
Then she has learned the lesson of Yis-Prim and attained royalty.
Maybe it only appears linear to those unaware of the cycle? It reminds me a bit of the Accursed Dragon storyline where there’s been a timeloop (though not an eternal one) and some figure keeps trying to alter things each time. Though the loop here would be far longer, on the order of hundreds of thousands of years, maybe longer.
The main difference between that and this comic is that the timeloop has been part of the plot from the start of Accursed Dragon and was slowly revealed throughout. While here, we haven’t gotten much of an indication of an eternally looping universe.
Edit: Or maybe it’s on the order of tens of thousands of years, all we have to go on for timescale is that it’s been about a thousand years since the Universial War ended with the seven, however long the Universial War took, however long Zoss’s ‘Golden Age’ lasted, and the fact that the Primes had Throne to themselves for ‘an eon’ or otherwise a very, very, very, very long time.
These are fair questions. I wonder on them myself. If Zoss’s will endures beyond time, beyond death, surely he could make any particular change to the flow of history he wanted.
Meti has told us repeatedly that the only moral action upon attaining Royalty is to abandon it, to bury one’s sword and become a farmer. The current state of this continuum can be laid squarely at the feet of the demiurges. I wonder; is Zoss’s goal is to kill Royalty Itself? To spin the wheel enough times that he finds a set of variables in which power is not concentrated in the brows of individual kings, and men are truly the masters of their own fates?
PRAISE TO YE !
PRAISE BE TO ABBADON !
Juggler of Paradoxical Origins.
Skillful plotter of Destinies.
Adept Weaver, interspacing Action with Vivid Characters.
Manifesting Intoxicating Worlds for we readers.
Godmaker, Spinner of the Spinners of the Wheel of Creation.
“Canst Thou follow the Thread ? Canst Thou ?”
Me thinks I hear golden laughter as we readers
Strive to follow the thread, the origin, the cycles
Not the Skele-cycle, Nor the Mega-Cycle,
but rather the King Cycle.
Ah – it’s like watching a juggler
creating patterns from reflections of whirling spheres.
Whoops, missed a detail, gotta go back to ponder it.
Like my peers here, I too wish to know,
The Origins of This, and the conclusion of That.
Oh – I shall trust that such shall be revealed – in TIME.
PRAISE TO YE ABBADON !
At least one demiurge knows the TRUTH, for Jadis has seen the wheel’s true nature and it broke her; she wishes for nothing but death. Perhaps she is wrong to wish for that. A return to unknowing and ignorance and delight at the simple things of life might suit her more?
It is not surprising that knowledge of the TRUTH broke Jadis. After all, it also scourged Most Holy YS-Aesma. I do wonder how Allison will react.
Patience, patience. Our beloved scribe moves at his own pace, and must sometimes make offerings to Holy Poseidon and Bezos the Dark One. An existence of two kalpa is a teacher of patience, if nothing else. And then suddenly history all happens at once. Most troubling.
Universe(s) and religions of K6BD, one way or the other, seem to be quite inspired by Hindu… Stuff. Hindu units of time were mentioned more, than once, Kalpas in particular. And, according to Hindu, time IS, in fact, cyclical, so there’s that.
HO THERE! I CAST FIST!
turning a big wheel taht says “Fate” on it and constantly looking back at the conquering King for approval like a contestant on the price is right
Juggernaut Star is not having her best day.
Although she’s strong, so maybe she can deflect that reckoning.
I hate it when someone falls over before I complete the prayer.
They almost always get up again after a short while and I feel like I should start again from the beginning.
This one would like you to consider the following: this one doesn’t recall either of us promising to fight fairly, and this one has never considered a fight to be over once one combatant falls down.
Vigilant Gaze is certainly honorable enough to not destroy an opponents armor when they’re not occupying it (or it took them that long to get there), but is also wise enough to be ready with an attack once the armor is re-occupied.
Dunno bout that, bravo.
Seems that the fist was already descending when she got back to her armor.
Or the timing is such that we are seeing the fist arrive at that position at the last panel. As I said, VG is also wise enough to have an attack ready by the time JS gets back into the shell, and certainly knows it won’t be long before JS got back.
This one wonders, just how many times has King Zoss tried to fix his mistakes?
This one wonders, furthermore, if Zoss was ever one to simply accept failure.
It seems unlikely that true Royalty accepts anything foe what it is. But, can Royalty learn from their mistakes?
It’s not known for that ability…
True Royalty makes no mistakes. If they were thought to be mistakes beforehand, afterwards all come to see that the Act of Cutting was inevitable and thus not a mistake.
My barber loves to remind me of this whenever he demands payment.
As a royal, who exists accross multiple temporal dimensions simultaneously, I assure you that we can, but we also recognize that the mistake is part of the learning process.
It is the hammer, whereby we chisel ourselves into yet greater kings.
Kaon: If I alter my past to undo a mistake, how then did I learn it was a mistake? I can be done, but with some difficulty.
How many symbols follow the decimal point in pi?
Ten? If using the Hindu–Arabic numeral system and base10. Apologies.
Argly- Please be okay Vigilant Gaze.
Juggers may have only just woke up, but Juggers is also *fricken terrifying*.
Nowhere to run now. Time for the last punch
Weep for Juggernaut Star. She is so blinded by hatred of her enemy that she sees not that she herself could break the cycle: reject the lie imposed on her, be who she really is…but no. She is weed-choked. Root-bound. She cannot grow but thornier.
Weep for Juggernaut Star, and yourselves, for she will spread her pain across the wheel.
The cycle may be ignored, or accepted, but never broken. Unlike us, she can see it; cant *not*. I can’t blame her for the effect it’s had.
I seem to recall that it was the wheel, not the figure, that was Juggernaut Star’s “real” body.
And the last time someone broke Juggernaut Star’s body (Meti sliced it with her sword), it caused a large explosion.
Yeah, we saw the wheel in the background on the previous page and unoccupied atm, probably stashed somewhere safe nearby.
I wonder if the shape of Juggernaut’s body is a deliberate reference to the shape of the world?
Also: isn’t the wheel part of Juggernaut’s shell, and the orange figure her real body?
The orange figure is Juggernaut Star’s True Shape, that is, their real form. Though they can switch to the spiky skullface mask at will, not unlike White Chain changing their arms to arms+hands or wings at will.
The wheel is somehow both their shell and their body at the same time because they do have a wheel shell in the material world, but are able to carry it around in the void. No idea how that works.
wielder-of-names-6-112, is where Meti slices Juggernaut Star’s humanoid shell. Turns out this was a MISTAKE, as Juggs herself said. Cue LARGE EXPLOSION.
seeker-of-thrones-3-21, is where Juggs says that the humanoid shell isn’t her “real body”.
So, when Vigilant Gaze’s FIST connects, I’m rather expecting another MISTAKE/LARGE EXPLOSION to occur.
But… if the wheel is their real shell, then…. who is the other wheel in the skele-cycle ?
An explosion might not happen, as we saw in the previous fight, angel shells can lose quite a bit of integrity and still be able to support an angel (plus WC has removed her helmet safely many times). What happened in WoN 6 112 is that Juggernaut’s shell was completely sliced in half, all integrity lost.
There is an unknown though in that we don’t know if there’s any difference between liquid and igneous angels as far as shell integrity goes.
As for the other wheel of the skele-cycle, no idea, could be conjured in the same way as the skeletons were.
Imagine being the rear wheel of a skele-cycle.
A bit like being the butt end of a pantomime horse. The front has all the best lines.
And yet, what is a pantomime horse without its butt ?
Or, what if the other wheel is Juggernaut Star’s (evil) twin ?
One believes Juggernaut Star has been seen inhabiting all three at once. Just as the war of the teacups – what a sad name – was starting, an inhabited wheel almost crushed Allison, then my sibling in his Thorn vessel jumped into the hall carrying the other wheel, also inhabited.
Devils do have their liquor in the Void, amongst other things, and Juggernaut had a tea set, are those material things and brought from your plane of existence? One wants for nought in the Void onesself, so have never thought to try.
That’s certainly possible that she uses two wheels and is able to inhabit all three at once. Though the distance is likely limited as they are never far from the wheels.
Here though and on the previous page, she isn’t inhabiting the wheel, likely either because she can’t inhabit both things on different planes of existence at once, or because she wanted to have full focus on the thorn shell.
Goat!
Where ?!
I don’t know why, but these last character design remind me a lot of Kill La Kill
It seems unlikely that true Royalty accepts anything foe what it is. But, can Royalty learn from their mistakes?
Breaking the cycle seems easy, until you realize you have been a part of it all along, and this is not the first attempt to shatter the wheel
So many of our problems in this current day could be far better settled by sitting down, talking for half an hour calmly, and giving out a few hugs each.
All would be wiser, all would be stronger, issues would not linger and cause harm, and the works of YISUN would be preserved all the better.
Praise be to those that pray for such a solution to their own problems.
Praise be.
May one’s sibling’s seeds of wisdom find fertile soil and germinate in high number.
The wheel of fate is hard to break when you are crushed under it.
Hmmm… If past and future all are one that’s why Jadis is never wrong, having seen the shape of the Wheel, she can tell what is to come because to her _it already happened._
Except Royalty, being a free-flapping bird and a wheel cleaving sword, really doesn’t care for what anyone wants of it. Not even the shape of time itself.
It also gives the keys a possible arc. Originally, there were one master key and 77,777 for each name. Then there were seven. But of course, one could easily envision those seven further being condensed back down to just one and existing alongside the “other” master key for a time.
What’s to say our narrator’s are unreliable, and Zoss didn’t assemble the master key in the future, that is to say _now,_ and so have it with him when he arrived?
Interesting… there may still be truth in the ‘Zaid is Zoss’ theory then.
Angels really aren’t very good at that whole “Learn from your mistakes, move on, and stop doing what didn’t work the last thousand times” thing, are they?
They are made to be unchanging protectors. I, for one, wouldn’t want my guard dogs deciding that they, actually, want to pursue theatre and song, rather than guard my garden.
How do you feel about doing it in their spare time?
Holding them back will only breed resentment.
Such persistence is admirable!
What exactly did Juggernaut just do? Retrieve her armor, or build a new set? I recall that when Meti destroyed her old armor, Jugs was back in harness a short time later. An angel who is able to generate new armor at will would be frighteningly formidable.
Juggernaut Star got yanked out of her armor by White Chain but has now re-entered it.
Juggernaut being able to overcome banishment by sheer force of will is presumably a big deal. It remains unseen where White Chain stranded herself in the Void.
They weren’t banished, just pulled out of their shell in a similar way as to when Juggernaut Star pulled White Chain out of their shell earlier in the book when they needed to talk to WC discreetly.
Edit: Wtf recaptcha, why did I need to verify like 5 times?
Tha’s plainsome un dodgy geezer.
Likes us, gives us un tick straightsome.
Are you a Robot In Disguise!? tm
I’m here to pray and kick ass and I’m all out of verses.
Damn it I can’t find the upvote button
How hard do you have to whale on on angel for them to learn something? Seems like the only way to have a message hit home, pun intended.
Handing them a comb also works.
Juggernaut, no! You were a total qt.
It is a little known fact that Juggernaut Star’s human name is Evangeline.
Evangeline, Evangeline
Curses the name of the Rising Queen
Who stole her true love away
What a lovely face! I should like to know what cruel thing has broken it so.
Vibe check incoming
If time is a circle, surely JuggerKnight would have seen this coming?
Ah….hm. This humble Bureaucrat seems to have been put in the awkward position of fully agreeing with what dear Juggernaut Star is saying, but simply not understanding why she’s so damn UPSET about the whole thing.
Is it not wonderful, to be vermin in the eyes of the King? To scrabble about, beneath and between the spokes of the wheel, miraculously moving great distances while always coming back to the same place? Does not the Wheel have many exciting nooks and crannies for us to explore, before our inevitable crushing doom? Are we not blessed by this simple career, which lasts us for all eternity?
The Wheel of Fate turns.
It carries us along with it.
We die. The Wheel turns.
*shrugs* I don’t know. Perhaps it is because I am mortal, and Juggernaut does not have the benefit of that perspective. I hope she finds it eventually, though.
I am wondering how many times has Zoss tried to perfect the cycle if Juggernaut is this bitter about it.
That kind of feels like life in general
Allison herself being the heir is probably the unexpected thing that will break the cycle of time.
If Zaid is Zoss that makes a wacky kind of sense.
Haldis!! Ye blackish poxy tit!! See’s us nae tha’s shineys ae thus spinnerly spikerish bits do no be set or sit wae crossedly en thus arena! Aer ne do be they in the void au wi, but aer do be nae here! Pays tha!
(Haldis! You Ebon son of a gun! Looks like you lost the bet that Spikeyarse brought their wheel to the battle! Even though it’s technically not far since it’s in the void right there, but it’s not in the arena so it doesn’t count! Pay me!)
While you were out, I finished the prayer for forgiveness…
The blow of an angel is a blow that can shatter a world. It shall be interesting to see the result of this act.
“AS HE SPINS THE WHEEL, AND LAUGHS AT GOD!”
meanwhile, GOD just looks on, bored, and makes a mental note to commit amnesia AND suicide next time, so as to forget the punchline.
through blinking eyes, GOD watches the wheel spin, and sees
OIIIOIII OIIOOOOI OIIOIOII OIIOOIOI OOIOOOOO OIIIOIOI OIIIOOOO OOIOIIOO OOIOOOOO OIOOIIIO OIIOOIOI OIIOIIII
1=0=∞
The wheel is the tower is infinite
Okay, so now Zoss is giving me crazy Rhea vibes.
He’s not going to come back, try to rip Allison’s heart out, and turn into a dragon… Right?
Would that make Zaid Edelgard….
I say this, for our prickly Associate will be Momentarily departed from breath and tongue and all things integral to speech:
Oh Dear.