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!
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