Seeker of Thrones 5-54
Chapter: 5
“Kassardis, for his part, could do little but flee to the canyon, carrying the old swordmaster’s weapon and clad in near-rags. Once there, he hid himself among the reeds in a low pool in the bottom of the canyon. It was cool, and shady there, and the coming evening began to wash over the land, and Kassardis felt, for the first time in days, peace enter his heart.
It was with dread then, that he heard the footfalls of his three wives entering the canyon not an hour later, and knew that his time had run out.”
– Tales of the Silver Prince
Well of COURSE the Devil loves wagers.
Especially ones that you didn’t realize were wagers when you made them.
So, umm, what constitutes failure?
When you cannot claim without opposition that you have succeeded.
Good question. What if Princeling is simply not there? Would that count as failure?
Ohhhh, Himself. This is embarrassment.
You could have asked for a cut and the Rising King would have accepted! THIS is what I meant about a lack of demonic imagination! Never you mind that you have all you could want in your “prison”, YOU COULD HAVE MORE.
What point is there in godhood, if not to turn the screws on mortality?
The Rising King’s cuts are incredibly dangerous. I would not want one either.
H I M S E L F actually made a pretty good deal for H I M S E L F and a pretty bad deal for Al-YISUN. She’s essentially conceded to writing him what is called a “Blank Check”, which is something that people are instructed to never do these days.
Spoken like a merchant, not a god.
This is why the gods died. No sense of opportunity.
Indeed, but which has lasted longer? The mighty deities of yore, or the business men who reside within their corpses?
Never trust a wager made by a devil. He will not make a possibility for himself to lose.
Spare a thought is a Chekhov’s gun, even if I don’t know for what, exactly
Call me paranoid if it pleases you, but I feel that these stakes would be on the table whether or not the wager had been made.
A formality, then.
I KNOW, RIGHT?
A dungeon master’s skill
is knowing not to kill
A player against their will
Maybe not. She’ll have to turn Cio loose now if she fails. Before the wager, that wasn’t mandatory. On the other hand, HIMSELF will have to let Cio go if she succeeds. Before the wager, that wasn’t mandatory.
The real paranoia comes from his reward for her success: being spared a thought. How powerful is the key if a spared thought is all he wants from Allison?
I suppose it would depend on the thought, wouldn’t it? Think big, Allison.
I’m not sure how I feel about Himself.
Maybe it’s too much to ask for, but I really want to see what Himself is capable of, beyond “letting things happen”. A saying goes, “If you want something done right, you do it yourself,” and I really want to see Himself DO something, rather than so little or so much commanding, allowing, unleashing, et cetera, of others.
Maybe it’s unwise on my part. Maybe Himself acting would punch a hole in Throne. Maybe Himself doesn’t act for the same reason the Demiurges don’t act, because there is a cold war power struggle and Himself is part of it, and Himself acting would be the same as any of the Demiurges acting.
Largely, though, the latter portion of this page’s conversation is academic in nature. Allison Ruth will not, in the large scale of things, fail to the point that Himself would be given to action. Or if he does, it would be because the devils Himself had sent failed; either intentionally as part of the game, or by incompetence. In either of those situations, anyone with eyes and the nerve to do so would call foul. Allison Ruth, at such time, would both have the nerve, and also the power to do something about it.
Probably.
The alternative is that a friend of mine is going to be down a very steep tab on a bar bet, and not to me.
Done nothing? I am astonished, honestly, that He has stooped to interfere in this cesspit as far as He already has, by attempting to shape the thoughts of the Rising King.
Why would he need to?
The best workmen use the fewest tools, and the death of a flea can cause the end of an empire one hundred years later. If one can see the innermost thoughts of everyone one speaks to, one knows exactly what to say in order to get them to do what one wishes. And if one controls the actions of a single person, one controls the whole of the future.
I once saw a puppet show performed by an old man winding a crank. The crank turned an array of thousands of meticulously crafted gears, all rotating at calculated speeds and disengaging at incomprehensible intervals. As convoluted motion of the cogs wound around through the clockwork, the wooden figures danced upon the stage, in random, nonsensical motion. The tinker nudged a control lever infinitesimally clockwise, and suddenly the mad caper of the puppets became a famous scene from a local opera. The flailing limbs were now poised and controlled; the once-writhing bodies aloft and expressive. Indeed, as the tinker confided to me later, his puppets could do anything — it was just a matter of inching closer and closer to the desired configuration.
@Arkwright, I would disagree.
AL-YS-UN herself could well create failure despite the best efforts of Himself’s minions…She has Incubus’ hooks in her, after all, and she was impetuous even before that, else she would never have picked up the sword, gone back after her (quite believably extinct at the time) boyfriend, and placed her feet on the flagstones that lead to the throne of Throne.
And in fact, I do believe exactly that will happen. I believe that AL-YS-UN will find her words and choices dangling Ciocie over the Pit (in a way, they already have, but I mean more literally), and that what happens then between AL-YS-UN and Himself will be more than slightly epic.
We know our greatest heroes not by their triumphs, but by how they conduct themselves in defeat. We measure them by the villains who oppose them. I predict Himself will prove more than worthy of handing AL-YS-UN a situation in which she must make difficult and terrible choices.
Pity I’m not an Oracle, isn’t it?
A wager with the King of All Devils? This shall end splendidly I am sure. Our dear Allison is looking a little shaken.
There is a 1.7% chance she is about the receive the Ur-father of all devil’s kisses.
Twisted words wind past the bars of the cage. If only it had been built soundproof.
Indeed, though soundproofing that would be a task even the mightiest would hesitate to attempt. Nevertheless, soundproof boxes would be an improvement when applied to Himself – and a great many other devils.
If no one wanted an audience soundproofing would not be needed. those who want an audience would defeat any soundproofing from the outside. The real problem is not the devil but the desires of men.
She would die anyway if they failed. What is there to lose?
Pride.
All things considered, that is a rather fair deal. Harsh, but Allison is dealing with literal devil’s. How deep will these ladies’ hubris dig them?
Given the view of those bars from the inside, it’s obvious that Himself spends a LOT of his time chewing the scenery.
Other than this page, I mean.
Aye, I wonder what makes That One angry.
Or may be That One just misbehaves when nobody is around.
Love the comic, only here to point out the typo at the end of the tale of the silver prince. Guessing it’s supposed to say later not layer there at the end. But seriously. Love this. Love Cio. Love u
Is one truly a gambler should they place a wager where all outcomes are beneficial?
Has anyone noticed how Himself doesnt reflent on the floor? Like back in those past two pages, everything reflects except his cage????? Is Himself even there?!?!
Some scholars say that a sufficiently advanced mind could not be contained. Even lacking any physical might, it could simply argue or cajole its way out of any prison.
I wonder, could such a mind also convince us that we were the ones on the outside?
Its a curious phenomenon, to be sure. I’m not sure what may come of it.
Good catch!
Far too consistent to be an accident.
Also possible: Himself is the only thing that is there, with everything else, including the liquid floor, being illusory.
..or Himself is indeed not there, and this manifestation is a Lie to speak though. After all, His containment is merely a formality.
So. The state her hubris rendedered her. Is that an ebon devil, or an unbound devil?
Her ambition caused her to become Ebon, her hubris caused her to be shattered.
Himself refers to that state to which Yabalchoath was condemned, from which Ciocie Cioelle arose: A shattered mask. Nonbeing as such. As your ebon highness might say, death.
A question:
From a broken mask, can you make two devils? That is, if a mask is split in twain, can it contain two lesser or none at all?
One has to wonder of any cage: Are the locks on the inside? And isn’t it the truth of the most insidious of cages that all the locks are right there in front of us, we just lack the understanding to know them for what they are?
But for “Myself”, I think perhaps he delights in the paradox that the most terrible of lies are built of truths, and would imprison the unwise and the unwary with such subtle bars that they never see the prison for what it is.
Himself seems to have an eye for talent. Perhaps it takes royalty to know royalty?
Setting death as the price is often
threatening a pillow with a chance to soften.
People walk around but their insides are rotten.
In SEEKER-OF-THRONES-2-9 I thought this guy was the chandelier…
…whose darkness shed an unpleasant gloom upon the entire room.
“No pressure.”
That sounds like… a pretty good deal, actually? Especially considering that if they fail they’re dead or worse anyway. So… where’s the catch?
Verily, shit just gotteth *real-er*.
no problem
when cio dies
just grant her
a new mask
a new name
and rejoice
The words of Himself coil around the bars of his cage pike the coils of a serpent.
What happens when the snake itself is the charmer? Nothing good, I bet.
So we have the only two choices: Ascend or Perish.
*Steeples Fingers* E X C E L L E N T
So this doesn’t really change the stakes at all.
Time is an illusion and it has only just begun; There were only ever two things to do, live or die. Kassardis has yet to choose along with our dear Allison.
What a fair wager. I wonder if Himself knows the outcome already?
How convenient cio
Oh noooo. OH NOOOOOO.
Failure, Failure, watch it die
Watch it fall, and sputter, and cry
Struggle or do not, such is the LAW
Lest ye perish within a Devil’s jaw.
Snatch the jewel from Mammom’s grip
Screw him over ‘fore you’re stripped
So heed the LAW, it’s fly-or-fall
Win the draw or lose it all.
Never trust a deal with beings like this, even if they ask nothing from you.
There will come a time when it collects what it sought, whether it was known, or naught.
It’s much easier to take Cio seriously without her glasses and hat.
Unrelated, but take a look at the character used when David Bo… I mean, Myself refers to itself as I. It’s got a little middle line. While it may just be ornamentation, it also makes it similar to the kanji characters used for words like King, Emperor, and Lord.
“Destroy the Enemy called ‘I'”
“I Am Myself” is sometimes used as an alternative translation of the Tetragrammaton, the 4 Hebrew letters more more widely translated as “I Am,” “YHWH” or “JHWH.”
I strongly doubt that this detail has escaped Abbadon’s notice, in his research.
So, is the person in the box Zoss, or Alice? I think we can rule out Yisun, probably.
Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste…
“Spare a thought for someone who claimed to be me? That’s as easy as thinking of myself.”
Exactly.
It’d be funny if the chronicler died here.
T’would be strange to discover you were reading something published by a ghost.
Chroniclers can be replaced. Ask Faust.
stranger still to find yourself enjoying it.
For a true King, there is no chance of failure in such a wager, only a choice of which enemies to destroy first.
Got a typo in your tales text ” time hard run out.” should be had. Unless you have OTHER meanings to be had…
Remember the Cthaeh. Omniscient malevolence is impossible to fully seal.
😀 Someone else reads the name of the wind, I see.
Ahh, so some among us may know what I meant by the story of the tinker, when I responded to Arkwright (above).
I am glad to see another pilgrim follower of the warrior bard.
I wonder what a Happy Mask Salesman sort of character would be like in this story.
You would think them a jovial sort, but this is a lie. That happiness is just a mask.
Truly, they are not a happy sort. Never confuse the product with the peddler.
Any half-sensible entity will be quick to inform you that a devil asking for something minor is more suspicious and dangerous than asking for the world.
Any fully-sensible entity will be quicker to inform you that the moment you heard the name “Himself”, you should have run, screaming quietly, in the other direction and not stopped until you expired of old age.
Huh. Seems fair.
It appears those speech bubbles are really murder on the bars.
Nothing risked nothing gained?
There is a legend of a man. A man who knows all legends. A man that knew HIMSELF.
As he knew all this, and indeed knew more, he was the first human to find hell. In his delirium of tricking HIM he took seven things
The first one was a cloak, made with black feathers of birds that never were. With it, he slipped through guards and hounds of hell.
The second was a mask, made of silver and lies. With it, he convinced the council he was kin. A demon.
The third one was a want, to trick and to destroy. With it, he banished fear from his mind and convinced the guards to let him through the gate.
The fourth one was madness, one that never ended. With it, the words of the demon king could not drive him further to insanity.
The fifth one was a candle, one made simple, plain. With it, he saw things only seen in candle light or under the moon’s eye.
The sixth one was violence, one that boiled deep within. With it, he completed a plan only mad man could accomplish, to destroy the king of hell.
The seventh one was a mirror, one broken in the travel. With it, he showed the king what he was, what he became after so long.
There is a legend of a man. A man who knows all legends. A man who got to know HIMSELF.
In doing so he was blessed, destroyed and reborn.
There is a legend of a thing. A thing who knows all things. A thing that was created and blessed by HIMSELF.
A proven Ride Or Die is a terrible resource to waste thoughtlessly, coming-King Allison.
But then again, what is a King if not a waster of resources.
Just binged the comic in one go, and have to say this is the most original webcomic i have ever read, and i am loving the art and characters, will be checking this comic every single day twice daily from now on (i know it doesn’t update every single day but that’s how much i like it!)
By Ciocie Cioelle will be no more, it means that they kill her, right? not they turn her back into Y A B A L C H O A T H, and she returns into the PIT
Cio is nervous. She still delude herself that she will have a yuri future with Alice-Un?
This page initially was very impactful until I remembered that he was spelling out C-O-C-A C-O-L-A.
suddenly a scene from “the Venetian Market” comes to my mind. “a liber of flesh. that is what you own me”.
“Spare a thought” becomes a lot more dangerous when one remembers what Al-YISUN’s thoughts will someday be capable of.
A thought? But what kind of thought? What will be attached to it? What emotion will taint that thought in the end? Gratitude? Anger? Exasperation? Disdain? Disgust? Pity?
What could one with the mantle of godhood upon their brow bequeath to a benefactor of such unmitigated cruelty and subterfuge?
The freedom of Mortality mayhaps?
When the priest went forth again and set his face homeward, the cold had grown more intense and yet was somehow intoxicating. The trees stood up like silver candelabra of some incredible cold candlemas of purification. It was a piercing cold, like that silver sword of pure pain that once pierced the very he of purity. But it was not a killing cold, save in the sense of seeming to kill all the mortal obstructions to our immortal and immeasurable vitality. The pale green sky of twilight, with one star like the star of Bethlehem, seemed by some strange contradiction to be a cavern of clarity. It was as if there could be a green furnace of cold which wakened all things to life like warmth, and that the deeper they went into those cold crystalline colours the more were they light like winged creatures and clear like coloured glass! It tingled with truth and it divided truth from error with a blade like ice; but all that was left had never felt so much alive. It was as if all joy were a jewel in the heart of an iceberg. The priest hardly understood his own mood as he advanced deeper and, deeper into the green gloaming, drinking deeper and deeper draughts of that virginal vivacity of the air. Some forgotten muddle and morbidity seemed to be left behind, or wiped out as the snow had painted out the footprints of the man of blood. As he shuffled homewards through the snow, he muttered to himself: ‘And yet he is right enough about there being a white magic, if he only knows where to look for it.’
– G.K. Chesterton
Are the typos on purpose?
They are due to the time-skips. Pay them no heed.
Immortal, killing time, could hang about for eternity just to gloat for a moment.
Love the artwork, just something special.
Is it just me, or does the voice of Myself remind one of Achewood? I cannot help but call to mind a certain Roast Beef Kazenzakis.
The intertextual effect disturbs me greatly.
That damage to His cell, are his very words caustic?
Apt.
What exactly is Himself?
A very human-like eye peering out of a very human-sized box, that’s all we know. . .
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