Pyrrhic victories for the win!

When Iratu plays Fire Emblem no one survives but the lords

... I'm really tempted to start over from the beginning to see where they were with greater context, but I'm not sure that more context won't just make the death of Sakido so much worse to re-read.

That is an unfortunately side effect of learning more about a character after you already know what ultimately happens to them u_u
But I'm hoping that the end of this current chapter, which would also be the end of the current book, will really feel like a lot of things have come full circle! It'll be a great time for an archive binge.

That does sound like it would be the best time to look back on things.

Pensive Sahne and Lakritz is a good touch

Okay.

And then what?

That's literally the point they refuse to see.

gosh love these last few pages a lot

Honestly I'm reminded of a anime intro song this part of the lyrics specifically 'you think you can win only if I lose, let's let destiny choose'

'I can hear you breathing, I can hear you coming, I can feel the wind it's blowing me around.'
I love Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's

I mean, when a literal goddess has it out for your entire species it makes extreme actions seem a fair bit more reasonable. And contextualizing it as "the world would be perfect without chaos" DOES seem to push Gaia into the more toxic section of Lawful....but how much of this is true, given that shrine we saw with them together?

Also SAKIDO LOOK OUT IRATU KNOWS ROCK THROW

Even more SMT comparisons

a bit reasonable? well.. Seems like there is no other option for them.

It's good to question how much is actually true of what the Angels and Demons know!
As for the shrine (called the Temple of Reconciliation [I forgot to actually put that name in the comic but it's in the tags now]): Gaia and Syndel are accepted to be the creator gods of Medius by everyone, and The Great War involves them fighting each other for a long time. We haven't seen anything to contest those two facts.

The Medians built the temple to pray for peace between the two gods. ...in other words, it's a shrine to the Medians' (problematic?) OTP :3

Ahh, fair, so it's aspirational rather than based on the reality they know. Entirely fair. Basically the Medians built a temple to enshrine their fan fiction.

The "what's actually true" point does lead me to wonder exactly how long the war has been going on without the presence of either deity and what motivations and goals have been distorted in that time. "Exterminate the enemy" could have grown out of the absence of proper leadership shortly after the war's beginning when in reality Gaia was just mad Syndel took her salad out of the divine break room fridge.

iratu cosplaying as Ice Wolf in opposite day