We are all speculating on the past and the future, like fools. Yet this one lives in the present, remembering nothing, anticipating nothing. Teach us, master!
So, what of Allison? What potential does she see when she looks at an especially sharp rock?
Perhaps she sees nothing more than what it is. A rock.
The rock is what is.
The potential is what may yet be.
When it comes to demiurges, it is less about starting points, and more about ending points: the Blade of Want is about change. What comes next? And how will our protagonist bring that into existence?
The point of that wasn’t that Meti wanted to be fed to the dogs, but that she didn’t care what happened to her body because she didn’t think of death. Whilst Incubus was always able to see the Literal instructions, he never actualy understood the core of the philosophy. That’s why he’s a terrible swordsman.
So he was following a letter of teachings, while ignoring or not seeing its spirit/meaning or whatever lesson she imparted into it, if there was any.
Had he thought about changing profession to a lawyer?
He might be an effective lawyer, but just as terrible a lawyer as he is a swordsman. There is a spirit to the law (often not a good spirit, but still), and someone who only knows the letter is going to get it wrong a lot.
Besides that, a good lawyer knows the law, but a great lawyer knows the judge (“knows” meaning both “has a collegial relationship with” and absolutely “understands”).
No, it was pretty clearly continuing the Diogenes reference. It wasn’t a matter of “not thinking about death”. It was a matter of “why should I care about that thing? I’ll be dead. Might as well make myself useful to the only respectable ones here: the dogs”
She made an off-hand comment about it once, and Incubus made sure to remember it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Maya had no idea why he did what he did with Meti’s body, because she dismissed it as the flippant comment it was. But Incubus never questioned Meti’s words, and Meti was a terrible person who used him as a teaching aid for her real student.
We should note that Incubus had to track down Maya after she ran off. She killed his surrogate mother and abandoned him.
How much of his emnity is about her walking away from everything, how much is the murder of Meti, and how much is it that she didn’t take him with her?
Could he have shadowed her in the life of a farmer, and found the belonging always craved? We will never know.
You are disregarding her love of dogs. They deserve compassion in this sick and rotten world; the dogs outside the walls of the cities are discarded tools and the descendants of such. They deserve food as much as anyone. Why not make use of the corpse of a fool? Incubus was right to follow his masters wishes in this instance, even if he didn’t care for any deeper motivations on his master’s part or the benefits to the dogs
I’d argue that it actually makes Meti a poor teacher for creating a curriculum that punishes a student for trusting her and the teachings she gave them. If a student can only learn the intended lesson by disregarding their teacher then they were taught by a fool. She seemed to think her job was to be yet another trial in their path instead of the one who prepared them to face the trials of life.
I disagree, the lesson was not to disregard her words but to seek the deeper meaning of them. Maya saw the comment wasn’t actually about Meti’s wishes for her corpse, but a remark on how pointless such a wish would be. Incubus only saw it for the literal, and thus failed to seek deeper meaning.
Eh, I could see her genuinely approving of that particular part. She probably liked the local dogs, or at least begrudged they’d deserve the meal if they outlived her.
How perplexing. Surely they both can’t be lying, even with all of the cosmic re-sets because Maya and Incubus are contemporaries. Maybe it’s irony that the awesome, melancholy, penitent swordswoman who is so formidable has a real crime up the sleeve of her kimono. Could it be that Maya, after confronting and ( let’s say ) slaying her master, then gave up an empire, gave up the sword, retreated from the world and then Incubus came to rip the power from her after killing her family ? For me, that feels emotionally true as Maya’s revenge motivation. Seeking vengeance for her long-dead family, not for Meti.
The other part of Maya’s penitent journey is also compelling. She admitted adopting the role of oppressor and used cruelty and violence to maintain power as a Sword Rule for a time. Maya’s agonized question to Allison lurks at the heart of the epic. “If the world rewards violence, are we forever doomed to be ruled by the brutal and cruel ?”
Meti’s answer was to give up power and live humbly as a beggar amongst the common folk instead of being a Sword Ruler. Maya is penitent, yet admits she doesn’t have a solution to Meti’s Question. That devastating question underlies so much of the K.S.B.D. epic and is tied to yet another question.
Who will break the cycle, and how ?
“The Sword is evil” spoke the teacher. “Today we will learn Sword Truths of that evil.”
“The Sword destroys all that is not the Sword” the teacher said.
“This is true” replied the students.
“That which is not Sword cannot repel the Sword” the teacher said.
“This is true” replied the students.
“If the Sword were destroyed from all existence, existence would again create the Sword” the teacher said.
“This is the truth of the Sword evil” replied the students.
“What is thus the one way to stop the evil of Sword from destroying all good that is not sword?” asked the Teacher.
The students were silent.
“Make everything of all things everywhere into Sword”, spake the fool from the window.
When Maya met Meti, Meti had given up any power and empire to live as a drunk in a barrel. She relied on Maya’s family to feed her. Why was Meti there? Was that a lesson she had not taught Maya? What had Meti done to drive this lesson home.
Maya encountered Meti to tell her how she had faired, and Meti laughed at her. It all meant nothing. (Was this when Maya killed her?) Then Maya fled eschewing the sword, starting a family and learning to live. Incubus came after Maya’s power and killed the family. Maya at first thought she needed a worthy sword, for vengence. Maya had come to the place we find Incubus in during the fight with Jaggy. Later Maya went further and found the Maybe sword. But for a long time she has lived as Meti did. Drinking and begging for food. Waiting paitiently for her cut at Incubus’s neck.
Was Meti just waiting paitiently for a worthy student to give her last lesson too?
I imagine none of Maya’s words were lies, save omission. I think the paneling itself might not even be a lie except in the implication of it’s order. Meti called her out, and asked her the question. Maya left out was that when she gave argument it was not merely with words. I think perhaps Meti started laughing when her head was still attached to her body, and that was the image in Maya’s head as she turned in horror because the sight of the present was too much for her to bear. And she was certainly still laughing when Maya fled in horror as she began to understand. No lies were spoken. Plenty of lie in the silence though.
Look back to Wheel Smashing Lord 1-15 to 1-17, after Meti asks Maya the Question. In the panel where Maya turns to flee, she also casts aside her sword, its tip visibly bloody, when it was sheathed in the panel prior. “All she did was laugh, and laugh, and laugh. That sound will follow me to Hell.”
Incubus, who was present, seems …displeased, and later pursues her to her happy home life and shoddily fails to kill her. With no motive explained! We didn’t question it, then, because it’s Incubus.
Gundhram the Reader, Belligerent Knight and Amateur Historian
I took a glance at both panels friend, and the sword that I know you’re talking about is still in its scabbard. Both blades were tossed aside in their sheaths, it’s just that the katana clad in ivory was a bit too far from the camera for it to focus on the decorations at the tip. Thus the confusion between the jeweled cladding being a blood stain.
And remember, even if we are dealing with a pair of unreliable narrators, Maya was always focused on winning the argument whenever she clashed with her master. Proving herself better by being Right, not by being Stronger.
Go look at the start of that scene, we can see the tip of it clearly on page 1-15 prior to her yeeting it on a later page. There are no traces of any sort of red decoration on the tip.
Why would Incubus hate Meti? She talked to him and taught him the sword. Perhaps he even flattered himself and thought he was the rat Meti wanted Maya to protect.
i think considering how many others she must’ve killed on the way, and the way her philosophy is, she just didn’t care to mention the death of one other old, miserable murderer. just another head lopped off by her sword, and all it’s good for.
So Maya’s bitter claim, “Incubus killed my master and fed her body to the dogs,” which was already misleading, because Met specifically asked that her corpse be fed to dogs, was actually just straight up a lie. It was Maya who killed her master, and insofar as it’s likely true that Incubus fed her body to the dogs, the way Maya said it accuses of Incubus of desecrating Meti’s corpse, when it is in fact Maya who failed to honour Meti as she wished.
As someone else pointed out, the panel after Meti asked the question, where Maya casts her blade aside, shows the sword visibly bloody and unsheathed, whereas before it was still in its scabbard.
Also, that Maya was literal. What did Incubus throw to the dogs? The dead meat? Or the living lessons? Who knows. Here at the end of all things it likely does not matter. Let these two old killers kill one another. Who will mourn for them? Everyone who ever loved them is dead. Who will cheer for their passing? Every one of their enemies is dead. Whatever Meti intended to make of them, that was countless lifetimes and ten times ten million corpses ago. And still it has come to this; Two idiots flailing at each other with swords while the world burns above them.
He wouldn’t really have any reason to lie here, would he? I don’t doubt that he would lie freely about that kind of thing, but in this situation it looks like he’s only talking to one other person who would also know the truth.
Did she… rekka kick all those arrows away? Jesus christ, auntie. After something like that I don’t care if you pissed in YISUN’s eye, you’re the coolest person ever
Well, can’t say that’s too surprising in the end. Blood swords are neat though. But in the end he’s just proving his master right with them, seeing insofar as he’s using his power to manifest them when you could accomplish much the same with an especially sharp rock.
Honestly I can’t say I’m exceptionally surprised. Power has never reacted well to having its authority questioned, and Maya was at the absolute apex (or so she felt) at the time. To strike out in violence at someone who dared to consider her the exact same as she was back when she was still just helping out at her parent’s noodle shop almost felt like a plot hole until now.
“The hardest lessons are carved in stone, etched with metal, and inked in blood. However, they are only preserved with careful intent. If you learn nothing, you may gain nothing.”
– Rolf De’Marquis, mason and pilgrim.
Two disciples who absorbed well the poison that their master taught them. And yet each is convinced that the other has learned nothing. That head is laughing still.
I’ll give it to you Abbadon, that’s the one twist I wasn’t expecting.and yet it makes awful sense. it makes so much sense.
Incubus wouldn’t have had a reason to kill Meti. He’s a bit of a psycopath, but he got all he needed from her. he’d moved on.
Maya didn’t. Meti’s words stuck with her. They festered. They’re what made her into the woman she was, and they’re what torments her still, and led her into her exile from all she learned.
Out of the two of them, which would be the most scorned? Which would draw a blade in anger?
The terrible student, who doesn’t know how he’s the fool?
Or the scorned student, who knows every failure her master’s led her to make.
This is going to be so fucking cool.
We are all speculating on the past and the future, like fools. Yet this one lives in the present, remembering nothing, anticipating nothing. Teach us, master!
LIAR!
Exactly.
I see he’s learned how to not be unarmed again.
Loser still needs a sword
and still using the power of a demiurge like one might use an especially sharp rock…
The sharper minds would use an especially sharp rock to draw, or even to write.
Zoss seems to be writing. And writing. And rewriting.
Incubus, not so much.
So, what of Allison? What potential does she see when she looks at an especially sharp rock?
Perhaps she sees nothing more than what it is. A rock.
The rock is what is.
The potential is what may yet be.
When it comes to demiurges, it is less about starting points, and more about ending points: the Blade of Want is about change. What comes next? And how will our protagonist bring that into existence?
Well, it’s a really cool rock.
Once this comic is complete I’m buying the full book set.
That is a man in some very tight pants. David would be proud.
Maya reaches for something in her robes and Incubus is immediately panicking. What a perfect coward he is.
in a different comic she absolutely would have taken out a gun but i sense the flask is a more powerful weapon in the hands of maya
Incubus watched Ralph Bakshi’s “Wizards”, and it traumatized his coward ass.
Let me show you some sword play Meti gave me while you were away.
That was my exact thought at first LOL gotta love wizards. Okay they’re throwing me into the pit of blood now. Bye guys. I love you
Also if anyone hasn’t seen Bakshi’s Wizards is shows how you deal with a Big Bad.
There’s the drop. And I’m not talking about Incubus’ blood pressure. That’s actually through the roof right now.
RIP Meti! She’s drinking in hell…
It seems Incubus learned from that time and decided he would never again be without a sword.
auntie about to whoop a twunk
Who would win? Maximum Wine Aunt or God’s Most Useless Fucboi? About to find out, stay tuned!
Incubus: It’s dangerously close to go time.
Ah, blood-swords cool. I’m more of a bone-swords guy myself but hey, if it works it works.
I think Metis would forgive him for feeding the dogs her decapitated body, if he had run away with Maya to live the more respectable life of a farmer.
She told him to do it. It was explicitly her wish for what would be done with her body. He was always the student who obeyed, not Maya.
The point of that wasn’t that Meti wanted to be fed to the dogs, but that she didn’t care what happened to her body because she didn’t think of death. Whilst Incubus was always able to see the Literal instructions, he never actualy understood the core of the philosophy. That’s why he’s a terrible swordsman.
So he was following a letter of teachings, while ignoring or not seeing its spirit/meaning or whatever lesson she imparted into it, if there was any.
Had he thought about changing profession to a lawyer?
A student’s final lesson; To escape your master’s teachings.
He might be an effective lawyer, but just as terrible a lawyer as he is a swordsman. There is a spirit to the law (often not a good spirit, but still), and someone who only knows the letter is going to get it wrong a lot.
Besides that, a good lawyer knows the law, but a great lawyer knows the judge (“knows” meaning both “has a collegial relationship with” and absolutely “understands”).
Destroying the spirit of the law with the body of the law is a great and respectable endeavour.
No, it was pretty clearly continuing the Diogenes reference. It wasn’t a matter of “not thinking about death”. It was a matter of “why should I care about that thing? I’ll be dead. Might as well make myself useful to the only respectable ones here: the dogs”
She made an off-hand comment about it once, and Incubus made sure to remember it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Maya had no idea why he did what he did with Meti’s body, because she dismissed it as the flippant comment it was. But Incubus never questioned Meti’s words, and Meti was a terrible person who used him as a teaching aid for her real student.
We should note that Incubus had to track down Maya after she ran off. She killed his surrogate mother and abandoned him.
How much of his emnity is about her walking away from everything, how much is the murder of Meti, and how much is it that she didn’t take him with her?
Could he have shadowed her in the life of a farmer, and found the belonging always craved? We will never know.
3 Ponderous is observant.
Yes. Though I think he could have forgiven her for Meti if she’d done something (by his reckoning of something) afterwards.
You are disregarding her love of dogs. They deserve compassion in this sick and rotten world; the dogs outside the walls of the cities are discarded tools and the descendants of such. They deserve food as much as anyone. Why not make use of the corpse of a fool? Incubus was right to follow his masters wishes in this instance, even if he didn’t care for any deeper motivations on his master’s part or the benefits to the dogs
I’d argue that it actually makes Meti a poor teacher for creating a curriculum that punishes a student for trusting her and the teachings she gave them. If a student can only learn the intended lesson by disregarding their teacher then they were taught by a fool. She seemed to think her job was to be yet another trial in their path instead of the one who prepared them to face the trials of life.
I think she would agree that they were, in fact, taught by a fool.
True, she’d probably agree their teacher was a fool.
Even through it all, which of them learned that their fool was also a teacher?
I disagree, the lesson was not to disregard her words but to seek the deeper meaning of them. Maya saw the comment wasn’t actually about Meti’s wishes for her corpse, but a remark on how pointless such a wish would be. Incubus only saw it for the literal, and thus failed to seek deeper meaning.
Though I agree they were both taught by a fool
Eh, I could see her genuinely approving of that particular part. She probably liked the local dogs, or at least begrudged they’d deserve the meal if they outlived her.
Maya had one last shame, it seems. Unless, surprise! Incubus has fooled himself into believing his own lies.
How perplexing. Surely they both can’t be lying, even with all of the cosmic re-sets because Maya and Incubus are contemporaries. Maybe it’s irony that the awesome, melancholy, penitent swordswoman who is so formidable has a real crime up the sleeve of her kimono. Could it be that Maya, after confronting and ( let’s say ) slaying her master, then gave up an empire, gave up the sword, retreated from the world and then Incubus came to rip the power from her after killing her family ? For me, that feels emotionally true as Maya’s revenge motivation. Seeking vengeance for her long-dead family, not for Meti.
The other part of Maya’s penitent journey is also compelling. She admitted adopting the role of oppressor and used cruelty and violence to maintain power as a Sword Rule for a time. Maya’s agonized question to Allison lurks at the heart of the epic. “If the world rewards violence, are we forever doomed to be ruled by the brutal and cruel ?”
Meti’s answer was to give up power and live humbly as a beggar amongst the common folk instead of being a Sword Ruler. Maya is penitent, yet admits she doesn’t have a solution to Meti’s Question. That devastating question underlies so much of the K.S.B.D. epic and is tied to yet another question.
Who will break the cycle, and how ?
“The Sword is evil” spoke the teacher. “Today we will learn Sword Truths of that evil.”
“The Sword destroys all that is not the Sword” the teacher said.
“This is true” replied the students.
“That which is not Sword cannot repel the Sword” the teacher said.
“This is true” replied the students.
“If the Sword were destroyed from all existence, existence would again create the Sword” the teacher said.
“This is the truth of the Sword evil” replied the students.
“What is thus the one way to stop the evil of Sword from destroying all good that is not sword?” asked the Teacher.
The students were silent.
“Make everything of all things everywhere into Sword”, spake the fool from the window.
And thus Swordscomic was born.
When Maya met Meti, Meti had given up any power and empire to live as a drunk in a barrel. She relied on Maya’s family to feed her. Why was Meti there? Was that a lesson she had not taught Maya? What had Meti done to drive this lesson home.
Maya encountered Meti to tell her how she had faired, and Meti laughed at her. It all meant nothing. (Was this when Maya killed her?) Then Maya fled eschewing the sword, starting a family and learning to live. Incubus came after Maya’s power and killed the family. Maya at first thought she needed a worthy sword, for vengence. Maya had come to the place we find Incubus in during the fight with Jaggy. Later Maya went further and found the Maybe sword. But for a long time she has lived as Meti did. Drinking and begging for food. Waiting paitiently for her cut at Incubus’s neck.
Was Meti just waiting paitiently for a worthy student to give her last lesson too?
I imagine none of Maya’s words were lies, save omission. I think the paneling itself might not even be a lie except in the implication of it’s order. Meti called her out, and asked her the question. Maya left out was that when she gave argument it was not merely with words. I think perhaps Meti started laughing when her head was still attached to her body, and that was the image in Maya’s head as she turned in horror because the sight of the present was too much for her to bear. And she was certainly still laughing when Maya fled in horror as she began to understand. No lies were spoken. Plenty of lie in the silence though.
Look back to Wheel Smashing Lord 1-15 to 1-17, after Meti asks Maya the Question. In the panel where Maya turns to flee, she also casts aside her sword, its tip visibly bloody, when it was sheathed in the panel prior. “All she did was laugh, and laugh, and laugh. That sound will follow me to Hell.”
Incubus, who was present, seems …displeased, and later pursues her to her happy home life and shoddily fails to kill her. With no motive explained! We didn’t question it, then, because it’s Incubus.
I took a glance at both panels friend, and the sword that I know you’re talking about is still in its scabbard. Both blades were tossed aside in their sheaths, it’s just that the katana clad in ivory was a bit too far from the camera for it to focus on the decorations at the tip. Thus the confusion between the jeweled cladding being a blood stain.
And remember, even if we are dealing with a pair of unreliable narrators, Maya was always focused on winning the argument whenever she clashed with her master. Proving herself better by being Right, not by being Stronger.
Go look at the start of that scene, we can see the tip of it clearly on page 1-15 prior to her yeeting it on a later page. There are no traces of any sort of red decoration on the tip.
It is not specified *why* Meti called her pathetic. I suspect that is relevant.
Anyway, given the nature of these two, the literal truth and the meaning of that truth may be wildly different.
Why would Incubus hate Meti? She talked to him and taught him the sword. Perhaps he even flattered himself and thought he was the rat Meti wanted Maya to protect.
i think considering how many others she must’ve killed on the way, and the way her philosophy is, she just didn’t care to mention the death of one other old, miserable murderer. just another head lopped off by her sword, and all it’s good for.
Still waiting on Alison having her head chopped off and reattached.
If Incubus has time to wonder when exactly it was he lost this fight:
Panel 5.
So Maya’s bitter claim, “Incubus killed my master and fed her body to the dogs,” which was already misleading, because Met specifically asked that her corpse be fed to dogs, was actually just straight up a lie. It was Maya who killed her master, and insofar as it’s likely true that Incubus fed her body to the dogs, the way Maya said it accuses of Incubus of desecrating Meti’s corpse, when it is in fact Maya who failed to honour Meti as she wished.
Ah, but this assumes Incubus is truthful.
As someone else pointed out, the panel after Meti asked the question, where Maya casts her blade aside, shows the sword visibly bloody and unsheathed, whereas before it was still in its scabbard.
At the highest levels of the skill, the sword moves on it’s own.
Also, that Maya was literal. What did Incubus throw to the dogs? The dead meat? Or the living lessons? Who knows. Here at the end of all things it likely does not matter. Let these two old killers kill one another. Who will mourn for them? Everyone who ever loved them is dead. Who will cheer for their passing? Every one of their enemies is dead. Whatever Meti intended to make of them, that was countless lifetimes and ten times ten million corpses ago. And still it has come to this; Two idiots flailing at each other with swords while the world burns above them.
He wouldn’t really have any reason to lie here, would he? I don’t doubt that he would lie freely about that kind of thing, but in this situation it looks like he’s only talking to one other person who would also know the truth.
Incubus is talking to Maya. They don’t have an audience, and they were both there when it happened. Why would he need to lie?
Did she… rekka kick all those arrows away? Jesus christ, auntie. After something like that I don’t care if you pissed in YISUN’s eye, you’re the coolest person ever
Well, can’t say that’s too surprising in the end. Blood swords are neat though. But in the end he’s just proving his master right with them, seeing insofar as he’s using his power to manifest them when you could accomplish much the same with an especially sharp rock.
these pages are sick, all the breaking of the edge of the panels!
Honestly I can’t say I’m exceptionally surprised. Power has never reacted well to having its authority questioned, and Maya was at the absolute apex (or so she felt) at the time. To strike out in violence at someone who dared to consider her the exact same as she was back when she was still just helping out at her parent’s noodle shop almost felt like a plot hole until now.
No, she was considered LESS now. Idiot had made herself a sword when she was previously a promising assistant noodle vendor.
“The hardest lessons are carved in stone, etched with metal, and inked in blood. However, they are only preserved with careful intent. If you learn nothing, you may gain nothing.”
– Rolf De’Marquis, mason and pilgrim.
Blessed Yisun, I ask only this; That I may tread the weary road to death and learn nothing
Genius is knowing you know nothing.
Two disciples who absorbed well the poison that their master taught them. And yet each is convinced that the other has learned nothing. That head is laughing still.
oh yeah , ” wheel-smashing-lord-1-15-to-1-17 ” , you can see blood on the blade
To the surprise of absolutely nobody we found out the true killer of the master, which we already knew
This man is unbelievably mogged up, is that his power?
Kill six billion unreliable narrators
Comment Of The Week!
That’s….
…
I’ll give it to you Abbadon, that’s the one twist I wasn’t expecting.and yet it makes awful sense. it makes so much sense.
Incubus wouldn’t have had a reason to kill Meti. He’s a bit of a psycopath, but he got all he needed from her. he’d moved on.
Maya didn’t. Meti’s words stuck with her. They festered. They’re what made her into the woman she was, and they’re what torments her still, and led her into her exile from all she learned.
Out of the two of them, which would be the most scorned? Which would draw a blade in anger?
The terrible student, who doesn’t know how he’s the fool?
Or the scorned student, who knows every failure her master’s led her to make.