I’m assuming that’s Cio without her mask. The mask shard drawn to the unmasked sleeping demon. She was always so close but it took getting to this point for them to see each other.
I’m throwing a “ding-ding-ding” at Midean Tsukasa, cause I’m betting the same thing. Cio somehow returned without her mask… just the embodied black flame with a great //need// for definition and form…
Only Humans can die. Angels re-incarnate and Devils are unbound, but only mortals perish. It’s possible that one shard is still tethered to Cio and that Allison’s black flame has been sustaining it for years. Enough to bring her back? I guess we’ll find out.
Just because Devils cannot truely die doesn’t mean they can’t experience worse than a mortal death.
Being subsumed would be worse- eaten by another Devil, their soul-flame shredded until no memory of individuality or coherence of mind existed. Your flame co-opted to another who got to feel your mind evaporate and your power become theirs by force.
Being forced to forget that you ever had been bound at all.
Being thrown off the wheel entirely.
Nah- I just wanted to emphasize that the cessation of sense of self may mean whatever is coming out of that thing may not be Cio anymore.
Or it might be. Cio WAS able to help facilitate being worn by Alison, so we have no idea how her mind survived her first reconstruction, let alone being shattered as she was.
I’m looking forward to the next pages A LOT.
New body for Cio, or something that eats shards of devil masks? I’m hoping for the former; if it’s the latter, it’s about to be something that used to eat shards of devil masks and now serves as a collection of paperweights of various shapes and sizes.
White Devils aren’t supposed to look like that. This one doesn’t have a mask, as we have seen them previously.
I suspect this is Cio, accomplishing something like Zoss’s existence after his death AND like White Chain’s transformation, but all we’re getting is a goodbye. This is a temporary form.
They could get back all the shards like was done for Yabalchoath, but that didn’t remake her. Its a new incarnation when a mask is reforged like that. Cio’s not Yabalchoath.
So if they managed, it wouldn’t even be her.
I agree that whatever form this is, is temporary. Perhaps she’s here as this to remind them theres no coming back for her. that if they tried to remake her mask, it would just be a new incarnation, no memory of them. Not even the same personality as before. To tell them not to waste their time chasing heartbreak.
Maybe in their drunkenness blackout state they already have, and thats why she’s here like this.
SHE’S BAAAAAAACK! At least I hope so. Maybe that one shard of her old mask will allow her to access her Cio memories. I must believe that Abbadon will allow a Three Banger reunion.
The last time we saw Cio’s mask remade (or, really, the *only* time we’ve seen a mask remade) – it was just a mask, without a body, until it was complete. That tracks with other scenes where, like – upon removing her mask to join with Allison, Cio’s body started to disintegrate.
This is an entire body, missing one (?) piece – and waking upon the insertion of that piece… is it possible that this is something more like an angel’s body than a devil’s mask?
Actually, I’m pretty sure I know what this thing is. This is how Cio looks, unbound. The same way Vladok went all eldritch when he broke his mask. Only while Unbound Vladok kept acting on his last wish, to kill Allison and take her key, Unbound Cio is significantly more sedate. I think it remembers being Cio, a little, and likes what it remembers, so it’s not hostile.
The trick is, devils can’t exist outside of the Void without a mask. But you know, an angel can’t exist outside of the void without their armor. White Chain did the former. It’s not in the least impossible that Unbound Cio could have cribbed some notes.
Interesting theory. This doesn’t look much like the unbound Hot Black Flame, though. But, perhaps it is keeping itself partially bound somehow – could it be wrapped in paper, through Cio’s Art?
This is from a game called Exalted; where a certain type of ascended mortals gained powers associated with constellations. Each constellation had a sutra epitomizing the ideals of the constellation and the powers gained from it.
This was the sutra of Resistance. The power to endure any and every physical trial by subsuming the self.
Assuming that this is Cio — as we all seem to be — how long has she been back and why in all the hells has nobody told Allison? And that seems to be Allison’s own thought in the last panel.
Jadis, who does not lie, recently said “Cio is dead”; note present tense. So this version of Cio is newer than that speech?
It’s flexible for Zoss, who exists outside the wheel. And for cosmically relevant people like Jagganoth, who have begun to remember the cycles. It’s flexible for Angels, who must cyclically reincarnate. And for demons, as they have both a mask and a body, and the mask can be pieced back together.
For everyone else… you die, then you’re dead. No second chances.
Also the author said “please trust me I’m not just doing the trope where the gay love interest dies just bear with me”
Devils don’t really die any more than angels do. The difference is that when an angel incarnates, it cycles back through this whole angel bureaucracy to get a new body and presumably have its mind reformed.
A devil doesn’t. With its mask destroyed, it loses its name, and thus returns to the Black Flame as if it were never born. This is “Cio” as much as it is Yabalcloach. I want to retain hope that the one piece of her mask somehow carries some inherent piece of Cio-ness, or that Allison, as the Wielder of Names and holder of the word “King” can somehow rename her and end with the same result, but it seems almost hopeless. Cio has died, as devils do, unnamed and obliterated. What remains is as much Cio as your zombified corpse is you.
It’s worth noting that Cio and Yabacloach were not entirely different people. It’s more that Yabacloach was a part of Cio that she moved on from and, eventually, rejected, hence the arc where she almost reverted to her old form, during their assault on the Dragon’s Vault.
Exactly – just as Cio was a sort of distillation of Yabalchoath, I think we are going to see an even more refined version of our friend. There is a parallel to how White Chain became something never seen before; I think the splinter of old Cio planted into a fresh demon body will sprout a unique kind of being. Then our trio of Ass Kicking Queens will begin their rule.
One feels that this may be a Cio that does not yet know that it is, or can again be, Cio.
Given that Cio had been through the mask-broken and mask-repaired trauma previously – and given that Cio was subsequently very happy and more at peace being that very iteration of herself – would she not have used her red arts to concoct a failsafe, to preserve the bit of the black flame that was her should the same befall her again (something akin the crystal from king-of-swords-9-102 perhaps)?
It/she does not seem fully cogent, but it seems to have had a base desire to seek shards of her previous blue mask, or innately be drawn to them. The absorption of the shard certainly also seems somewhat traumatic, and may be imparting some of Cio’s memories or something of her previous essence.
Whether she will look like our Cio, and how damaged she is, are open questions, but one now has a shard oneself, of hope.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration
FWIW, here’s a fanfic of how Cio survived as Cio while her mask was in bits.
In WSL1-12, Allison is given a collection of belongings, including here two prostheses but also a couple of books. One of the books is Cio’s book, taken from the Rayuban arena on the penultimate day of the tournament, when Allison and Cio were arrested, and later rescued (by White Chain?) from the wreck of the city and planet. This book contains undiluted, unfiltered Cio — her thoughts and dearest desires, and all the things she wrote down as affirmations, desparately trying to lie them into reality. It’s pretty much a blueprint for Cio post Yabalchoath. The book has been a surrogate mask. Now that Cio has a body seemingly without a mouth, the book may also be a surrogate voice.
But everything in the book was some kind of artful lie, so now there is major tension between physical Cio and verbalised Cio. Like when you can’t speak and somebody is speaking for you and it’s not you and it’s all wrong and you hate it but the not-you is everything you wanted to be and you can’t hate it but you hate yourself for wanting that and *head explodes*…
Where are they lodging? It’s dark outside. That rules out the embassy (seen recently in sunlight) and the skull-house they lived in in book 4 (edge of sunside, near the terminator). Maybe WC’s old apartment from book 1?
It doesn’t seem likely that Allison would drag White Chain’s passed out drunk body back through the main doors to the embassy, but there are likely other ways in. The decor of the room, with all its books and iconic statues etc., would suggest that White Chain lives there and has for quite a while.
42 Fragments the Universe Beyond All Reintegration.
Sure, avoid embarrassment in the main entrance of the Embassy. But Throne’s Sun doesn’t move, so if it’s daylight at the embassy once it’s always daylight. So they’re somewhere else. Somewhere that Cio knows to find them … or somewhere that Cio was already hidden, suggesting that WC must have known she was there.
Only just discovered that these are available in hard copy! I may have yelped slightly when they arrived this afternoon… Keep up the amazing work, and I hope life’s managing to get a little less stressful xoxo
I never even put much thought into Cover Devil, but it fills me with both hope and despair. It seems likely to me that Cover Devil really is Cio, and thus that Cio will reincarnate in the next few pages, but I don’t think I’m emotionally prepared for her to not be the same person anymore.
I thought Cover Devil was Vigilant Gaze and Princess merged together.
An angel and a devil falling in love and figuring out how to merge together after seeing how Allison merged herself with an angel and devil seems something this comic would do.
coffee is ready to be thrown
wtf is going on? is she dead?
She may be wishing she was. I’m thinking hangover.
I’m assuming that’s Cio without her mask. The mask shard drawn to the unmasked sleeping demon. She was always so close but it took getting to this point for them to see each other.
I’m throwing a “ding-ding-ding” at Midean Tsukasa, cause I’m betting the same thing. Cio somehow returned without her mask… just the embodied black flame with a great //need// for definition and form…
Likewise, my assessment as well.
Only Humans can die. Angels re-incarnate and Devils are unbound, but only mortals perish. It’s possible that one shard is still tethered to Cio and that Allison’s black flame has been sustaining it for years. Enough to bring her back? I guess we’ll find out.
Just because Devils cannot truely die doesn’t mean they can’t experience worse than a mortal death.
Being subsumed would be worse- eaten by another Devil, their soul-flame shredded until no memory of individuality or coherence of mind existed. Your flame co-opted to another who got to feel your mind evaporate and your power become theirs by force.
Being forced to forget that you ever had been bound at all.
Being thrown off the wheel entirely.
Immortality is not always pleasant.
Didn’t say it was sunshine and roses.
Nah- I just wanted to emphasize that the cessation of sense of self may mean whatever is coming out of that thing may not be Cio anymore.
Or it might be. Cio WAS able to help facilitate being worn by Alison, so we have no idea how her mind survived her first reconstruction, let alone being shattered as she was.
I’m looking forward to the next pages A LOT.
Only assuming it’s been brewed! Per most definitions of “ready” anyway.
Oh! Okay!
Thank you!
Well, shit.
New body for Cio, or something that eats shards of devil masks? I’m hoping for the former; if it’s the latter, it’s about to be something that used to eat shards of devil masks and now serves as a collection of paperweights of various shapes and sizes.
White Devils aren’t supposed to look like that. This one doesn’t have a mask, as we have seen them previously.
I suspect this is Cio, accomplishing something like Zoss’s existence after his death AND like White Chain’s transformation, but all we’re getting is a goodbye. This is a temporary form.
They could get back all the shards like was done for Yabalchoath, but that didn’t remake her. Its a new incarnation when a mask is reforged like that. Cio’s not Yabalchoath.
So if they managed, it wouldn’t even be her.
I agree that whatever form this is, is temporary. Perhaps she’s here as this to remind them theres no coming back for her. that if they tried to remake her mask, it would just be a new incarnation, no memory of them. Not even the same personality as before. To tell them not to waste their time chasing heartbreak.
Maybe in their drunkenness blackout state they already have, and thats why she’s here like this.
Who knows.
SHE’S BAAAAAAACK! At least I hope so. Maybe that one shard of her old mask will allow her to access her Cio memories. I must believe that Abbadon will allow a Three Banger reunion.
The last time we saw Cio’s mask remade (or, really, the *only* time we’ve seen a mask remade) – it was just a mask, without a body, until it was complete. That tracks with other scenes where, like – upon removing her mask to join with Allison, Cio’s body started to disintegrate.
This is an entire body, missing one (?) piece – and waking upon the insertion of that piece… is it possible that this is something more like an angel’s body than a devil’s mask?
Cio’s previous form had a somewhat insectile aspect, I wonder if this might be a chrysalis.
Something about the arms doesn’t make me think of Cio but Juggernaut Star.
Actually, I’m pretty sure I know what this thing is. This is how Cio looks, unbound. The same way Vladok went all eldritch when he broke his mask. Only while Unbound Vladok kept acting on his last wish, to kill Allison and take her key, Unbound Cio is significantly more sedate. I think it remembers being Cio, a little, and likes what it remembers, so it’s not hostile.
The trick is, devils can’t exist outside of the Void without a mask. But you know, an angel can’t exist outside of the void without their armor. White Chain did the former. It’s not in the least impossible that Unbound Cio could have cribbed some notes.
Interesting theory. This doesn’t look much like the unbound Hot Black Flame, though. But, perhaps it is keeping itself partially bound somehow – could it be wrapped in paper, through Cio’s Art?
Ooooooh, boy.
This is just like The Hangover. But instead of Mike Tyson’s tiger, they have this thing.
Build-a-girlfriend 😀
Let’s hope 😭😭
What in the goddamn
Once, there was a maiden…
….who struck an iron wall until it shattered her hand.
She did not stop, though cracks spread through her bones.
She did not stop, though blood sprayed her eyes.
She did not stop until she shattered the wall.
“Survival is fury,” she said.
– Sutra of the One-Handed Maiden
Is this about the recent news story of the abducted woman who punched her way bloody out of a concrete cell?
This is from a game called Exalted; where a certain type of ascended mortals gained powers associated with constellations. Each constellation had a sutra epitomizing the ideals of the constellation and the powers gained from it.
This was the sutra of Resistance. The power to endure any and every physical trial by subsuming the self.
It has a VERY similar feel to K6BD.
Indeed, Unstained Lotus. Exalted and K6BD are drinking from many of the same wells.
Hell, the newest Sidereal Manuscript explicitly calls out K6BD as a reference for what their Martial Arts and Heaven are like.
That’s 3e Exlated right?
It’s also the verse associated with Infernal Monster Style, a magic martial art associated with Infernal Exalted, who are nasty customers indeed.
Also, frankly I don’t think Exlated and KSBD work very well at all for a crossover, though they share a surface aesthetic.
Also a lot of stuff about being chosen by the gods.
never thought i’d see this in the wild
I do like me the occasional Exalted Post on KSBD. As a Storyteller, I’ve taken a lot of ideas from KSBD for my Exalted 3E Campaign.
My guess is someone was upset they’re not included and re-formed by sheer power of will.
And so the black flame would re-create something, itself, from nothing.
It only makes sense with the white flame having mastered the White Art to realize their best self.
FOMO so hard you vanquish entropy
Nice.
I think I kink I know whats going on.
wow the emotion on Alison’s face.
On imagines that it was awkward to enter the room with the… golem(?) there. That or they came in the window.
“We’ve all taken off our masks! But you, ser, have not!”
“Mask? I wear no mask.”
There are knives in men’s smiles, and devils in their faces. But fear, above all, the demon without a mask.
King in Yellow, let’s go!
“No mask? No mask!”
one recalls how difficult it is to notice or care about things at the end of such a night.
Assuming that this is Cio — as we all seem to be — how long has she been back and why in all the hells has nobody told Allison? And that seems to be Allison’s own thought in the last panel.
Jadis, who does not lie, recently said “Cio is dead”; note present tense. So this version of Cio is newer than that speech?
Dead is quite a flexible thing in these universes.
That really isn’t true, generally speaking.
It’s flexible for Zoss, who exists outside the wheel. And for cosmically relevant people like Jagganoth, who have begun to remember the cycles. It’s flexible for Angels, who must cyclically reincarnate. And for demons, as they have both a mask and a body, and the mask can be pieced back together.
For everyone else… you die, then you’re dead. No second chances.
Also the author said “please trust me I’m not just doing the trope where the gay love interest dies just bear with me”
Devils don’t really die any more than angels do. The difference is that when an angel incarnates, it cycles back through this whole angel bureaucracy to get a new body and presumably have its mind reformed.
A devil doesn’t. With its mask destroyed, it loses its name, and thus returns to the Black Flame as if it were never born. This is “Cio” as much as it is Yabalcloach. I want to retain hope that the one piece of her mask somehow carries some inherent piece of Cio-ness, or that Allison, as the Wielder of Names and holder of the word “King” can somehow rename her and end with the same result, but it seems almost hopeless. Cio has died, as devils do, unnamed and obliterated. What remains is as much Cio as your zombified corpse is you.
It’s worth noting that Cio and Yabacloach were not entirely different people. It’s more that Yabacloach was a part of Cio that she moved on from and, eventually, rejected, hence the arc where she almost reverted to her old form, during their assault on the Dragon’s Vault.
Exactly – just as Cio was a sort of distillation of Yabalchoath, I think we are going to see an even more refined version of our friend. There is a parallel to how White Chain became something never seen before; I think the splinter of old Cio planted into a fresh demon body will sprout a unique kind of being. Then our trio of Ass Kicking Queens will begin their rule.
I doubt this is too close the regular process of reformation. I’d rather guess its something that mirrors White Chains transformation.
One feels that this may be a Cio that does not yet know that it is, or can again be, Cio.
Given that Cio had been through the mask-broken and mask-repaired trauma previously – and given that Cio was subsequently very happy and more at peace being that very iteration of herself – would she not have used her red arts to concoct a failsafe, to preserve the bit of the black flame that was her should the same befall her again (something akin the crystal from king-of-swords-9-102 perhaps)?
It/she does not seem fully cogent, but it seems to have had a base desire to seek shards of her previous blue mask, or innately be drawn to them. The absorption of the shard certainly also seems somewhat traumatic, and may be imparting some of Cio’s memories or something of her previous essence.
Whether she will look like our Cio, and how damaged she is, are open questions, but one now has a shard oneself, of hope.
FWIW, here’s a fanfic of how Cio survived as Cio while her mask was in bits.
In WSL1-12, Allison is given a collection of belongings, including here two prostheses but also a couple of books. One of the books is Cio’s book, taken from the Rayuban arena on the penultimate day of the tournament, when Allison and Cio were arrested, and later rescued (by White Chain?) from the wreck of the city and planet. This book contains undiluted, unfiltered Cio — her thoughts and dearest desires, and all the things she wrote down as affirmations, desparately trying to lie them into reality. It’s pretty much a blueprint for Cio post Yabalchoath. The book has been a surrogate mask. Now that Cio has a body seemingly without a mouth, the book may also be a surrogate voice.
But everything in the book was some kind of artful lie, so now there is major tension between physical Cio and verbalised Cio. Like when you can’t speak and somebody is speaking for you and it’s not you and it’s all wrong and you hate it but the not-you is everything you wanted to be and you can’t hate it but you hate yourself for wanting that and *head explodes*…
One does like the sound of these ideas. One wonders if the diary could indeed yet have some part to play.
Present tense for those outside of linear time is exceptionally flexible.
When everything is happening all at once there’s only now.
And also bagels.
“how long has she been back”
Pretty sure she was summoned by an EPIC girls night out.
That’s some whiplash. End of party + hangover, and now… this.
Where are they lodging? It’s dark outside. That rules out the embassy (seen recently in sunlight) and the skull-house they lived in in book 4 (edge of sunside, near the terminator). Maybe WC’s old apartment from book 1?
It doesn’t seem likely that Allison would drag White Chain’s passed out drunk body back through the main doors to the embassy, but there are likely other ways in. The decor of the room, with all its books and iconic statues etc., would suggest that White Chain lives there and has for quite a while.
Sure, avoid embarrassment in the main entrance of the Embassy. But Throne’s Sun doesn’t move, so if it’s daylight at the embassy once it’s always daylight. So they’re somewhere else. Somewhere that Cio knows to find them … or somewhere that Cio was already hidden, suggesting that WC must have known she was there.
“fun fact this is the OG cell where White Chain took Allison at the start of the comic”
-from Abbadon’s twitter
This was my thought actually, that this room looked very familiar, but WC was sitting where… uh… that is.
She kept it safe for her all this time.
Swaddled in blood and flesh and love and in her pain. Deep in her arm and above her heart.
DOOOOM indeed.
Only just discovered that these are available in hard copy! I may have yelped slightly when they arrived this afternoon… Keep up the amazing work, and I hope life’s managing to get a little less stressful xoxo
i want her to come back wrong i want her to come back right i want her to come back strange but still in love with her girlfriend
but most importantly i want her to come back a top
That’s where we’ve gotta disagree, switch maybe, but I won’t accept that someone as dripped tf as Allison is a bottom.
Oh bore off, people can be tops or bottoms and look and act however they damn well please.
Hear, hear!
bottom and top do not mean dom/sub. Not a lot of people realize the differences
Hate to ruin that bubble for you, but my ex bf was a bottom and he was constantly dripped out, even dude’s sleep fits could be worn to a funeral
i know i started this Discourse bt does anyone in this thread smoke weed
i love this comment section nearly more than i like the comic, and that’s saying something.
its the famous magneti-meatus hinted at throughout the whole comic. its meat is magnetic.
(haha went too hard for white chain)
Cio’s mask shard.
I’m suddenly reminded of the gold mask pale devil on the cover, turning to show it’s left, pale blue eye.
I think we presumed that it was “Princess” having shed more of her names but now I’m not so sure.
I never even put much thought into Cover Devil, but it fills me with both hope and despair. It seems likely to me that Cover Devil really is Cio, and thus that Cio will reincarnate in the next few pages, but I don’t think I’m emotionally prepared for her to not be the same person anymore.
I thought Cover Devil was Vigilant Gaze and Princess merged together.
An angel and a devil falling in love and figuring out how to merge together after seeing how Allison merged herself with an angel and devil seems something this comic would do.
You’ve heard of a sleep paralysis demon now here’s a morning hangover demon.
oh my god pls tell me the excess of indulgence is the *ONLY* thing that has brought her back… my girl Allison hasn’t had this much joy in so so long 😭
Not really labia-demon enough?