The Angel of the Bat emerged from the room opposite Sadie, katana strapped to her back, her white armor practically illuminating the hallway. She and Sadie shared a nod to one another, then to their two guards. With that, the four headed for the stairs.

Sadie asked, "What's the plan then?"

"The hope is the intruder is neutralized," Beat said. "But until he is, we're going to the gardens to meet with Father Day."

"Gardens?" Sadie's quick pace made her puff out short breaths. "Are we going back to the underground? Is that really the most secure spot?"

For a few moments, Beat remained quiet. Eventually, he said, "Hopefully we can just fend off the enemy. But if we must act tonight, better to face the wrath of God for a botched ritual than let the icon slip into their hands."

Sadie wasn't sure whether to be annoyed that the risky option was apparently always on the table, or be terrified at what the old priest considered a worthy alternative.

Another blast of gunfire tore through the night, and screams followed right after. Maybe fifty tourists still walked the streets, and every one within sight ran toward the city's boarder. In the dark and past the gate it was impossible to make out many details, but from the direction of the gunshot stood one of the Gendarmerie, and a figure dressed all in black opposite him. A moment after, the form in darkness rushed and thrust a hand forward. The Gendarmerie officer shrieked and fell to the ground. Even from that distance, Angel saw the orange flame he held in his hand.

Angel slowed her pace to keep close to Sadie and asked, "Was that him back there?"

"Didn't see." Sadie panted as she spoke. "Too far and too dark."

As the women and Swiss guards ran through the gardens, a contingent of Gendarmerie rushed out from somewhere beyond the basilica and formed a line on the opposite side of the path. Angel took a look behind her again in time to see the figure in black run and leap toward the gatehouse attached to the basilica. Seconds after he emerged atop the small walkway over the gate, rushed, and leapt ten feet down onto the other side. A long, pointed object of some kind was clenched in one hand, it seemed that was how he pulled himself upward. Without a moment to react to the drop, he ran further in. Angel didn't know if he'd identified them yet, it was impossible to see where he was looking, but his swift, implacable movements made her grab Sadie's wrist and rush on faster. At least until he stepped into the path of the Gendarmerie.

The officer at the center of the group stepped forward. With the carbine strapped across his chest raised, he shouted, "Altola!"

A moment after one of his companions translated with a shout of his own, "Stop there, terrorist!"

The intruder paid them no mind and continued into the garden. Though she knew it was all wrong, Angel came to a stuttered stop as she looked back.

Sadie slipped free of Angel's grip. After a confused moment, she turned back. "Cassie—Cassie, what are you doing?"

Weapons all raised, the five Gendarmerie faced down the intruder as their leader called out, "Altola!" The sight of the weaponry on its own made Angel's stomach turn, but its presence in a holy place— even one she struggled to find value in— made her feel even worse.

The lone figure didn't slow as the commander continued to shout orders in Italian. Angel swallowed her fear, cupped her hands together over her mouth, and shouted, "Stop! It's not worth it! You're only human here!"

He turned his head. For a split second, Angel felt sure their eyes met.

"Fuoco a volontà!"

A hail of fire erupted from the Gendarmerie's weaponry. After the initial instant of metallic roars, Angel screamed, "Stop!" The intruding figure was forced backwards by the barrage of bullets, blasts tore through his clothing and dark streaks of blood flew out from his back. The Gendarmerie with handguns lowered them to reload, but their commander with the carbine kept squeezing the trigger. It took seconds that felt like hours for the deafening screams to cease.

And yet, despite being forced a few steps backwards, the intruder never even fell. One of the Gendarmerie's jaws dropped, another in a shocked whisper uttered, "Mio Dio," to himself. The flame sprang to life in the stranger's hand again, and as the gunshots resumed, he rushed toward the officers. Angel saw no more as Sadie took ahold of her and dragged her toward one of the hedge mazes, but she heard the screams of the officers moments after.

A few seconds and a shake of her head later, Angel said, "He just took all those shots. Here. He's supposed to just be human here."

"I don't get it either, but I had a bad feeling," Sadie said. "Right now, we need to keep moving."

Angel couldn't help but feel a little pride at Sadie's control over the situation, and followed into the maze at her side. Beat looked down at his herald as he led the way through a twisting path still familiar to the two women. As they reached the center of the maze and the effigy to Saint Benedict, the screams outside the maze faded first to last whimpers, then to nothing.

"If I can hold him off any longer I will," Beat said as Angel dropped down and moved the effigy. "God willing, he doesn't know about the passageway and will keep searching."

"Thank you, Beat," Sadie said. "Keep yourself safe."

"You do likewise," he said. "God be with you."

Sadie hesitated a moment for how to respond. In the brief absence, Angel perked up to say, "And with your spirit."

"Yeah." Sadie swallowed. "And with your spirit."

Then the two slipped down the ladder. Within their first steps, Beat sealed off the entrance and surrounded them with darkness. At the bottom, the two joined hands again and ran.

"Is Day even down here yet?" Sadie said. "What if he isn't? What if we can't get into the room?"

"Don't know," Angel said. "But should keep quiet when we get there. Can't help our feet, but our voices will carry."

Sadie gave that a grim nod. Then, when she remembered the total darkness they stood in, whispered, "Okay."

With her free hand outstretched, Angel felt the metal door that marked the end of the hallway when they reached it. The two skidded to a stop, Angel pressed her fingers against the door, but it may as well have been a solid wall for all the give or creases she felt. The scanner Father Day used was somewhere to their right, but it didn't have any of their biometrics or the like. There was nothing to do but wait and hope the priest would soon be on the other side to let them in.

Three minutes that may as well have been an hour passed as the two women stood as still as they could in the all-encompassing dark. The consuming nothing was eventually broken by a distant thump, followed by the faint echoes of footsteps. Sadie hardly dared to breathe, Angel slipped past her and squinted her eyes in search of a shape in the black.

Out from the shadows came high, almost soothing voice. "Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris. Quia non est alius. Qui pugnet pro nobis. Nisi tu Deus noster."

The footsteps grew closer, Angel gripped her sword tight, Sadie pressed herself hard against the door as if she could will herself to slip through it.

"I know you're there. I can hear the racing of your hearts."

Angel and Sadie both flinched. Both tinged by a British accent and higher than any either ever heard a man speak with, for a moment each wondered if it was a man at all. Angel knew well the cackling upper-register maniacs like the Joker sometimes slipped into, this was something eerily separate from that. For Sadie's part, she'd heard Kedar's voice in her dreams and knew it was a little higher than standard, but not nearly this much. Something was wrong, something had to be throwing them off.

"My niece told me to search for you here," The high-pitched voice grew louder and, very possibly, closer. "I'm not your enemy. Please, let me take this burden away from you."

The steps came to a stop and the tunnel returned to silence again. After a few seconds, the intruder said, "I know you're there." And started to tap his feet. For a few seconds like odd and erratic tap tap taps, until Sadie unfroze long enough to hold two fingers to her neck. His taps perfectly emulated the racing of her heart.

With a hard swallow, she whispered, "He wasn't joking. He can hear my pulse."

"I can hear both of your pulses," the voice in the shadows said. "And, unless this is an exemplary misdirect, I know one of you has the icon. I don't want to hurt either of you. Give it to me and we will be finished."

After a few seconds of quiet contemplation, Sadie called out, "You know it's part of me now, right? If you rip it out, I'm going to die."

Angel reached back and placed a hand on her shoulder to quiet her.

The intruder responded without a moment's consideration. "No, you won't. The spear I carry can extract it from your being and leave you whole afterwards."

Sadie flinched at the response. Angel's firm hand still on her shoulder suggested she should keep quiet. But if there was anything she'd observed in the last few days, it was that these enemies liked to talk. If nothing else, maybe she could keep him busy until the door slid open. "And what will you do when you have this thing then? I can tell you, it hasn't done much for me."

Angel hissed, "Sadie."

She whispered back, "Trust me, please."

"The true power within is locked away," the voice in the darkness said. "I have the means to set it free. Once that power is in my hands, I will use it to save this world."

Even shaded, Sadie tried her best to stand tall and sound indignant. "Who ever said I wanted to live in your version of a saved world?"

"You don't want to live in my world? Which part scares you?" As the shadow spoke, Sadie couldn't tell if it was mocking her or not. "The part where would-be murderers are too sick to their stomachs to feed their thrills? You're an American, right? Racial tensions are flaring, hatred is coming back out of the woodwork. Wouldn't you like to know every racist is being punished for the evil going through their minds?"

Sadie double took at the response. After a second to collect herself, she asked, "What? So, what, you're going to Clockwork Orange the entire planet or something?"

"Not the worst comparison you could come up with," he said.

Sadie had to look away and swallowed hard. "Yeah, well, what about people who need abortions, huh? You gonna torture them too?"

"No one seeking that operation to preserve their life is committing a sin, they will not be punished. No one else needs it." He drew out the word "need" for emphasis. Sadie opened her mouth to object, but he pressed on. "When the initial wave of anguish has passed and reconciliation has been sought, all will be forgiven. And with that power in my hands, I'll punish every pathetic thought of rape on this planet until it is extinguished entirely." His voice hardened into something angrier for a moment. "Do you think so little of me that I wouldn't make them suffer too?"

Sadie opened her mouth, but it went too dry. The madman was oversimplifying, she knew that, and she wasn't under any delusion his answer would make abortion irrelevant. But in the same breath he said he intended to bring an end to rape. How could she argue that part was a bad thing?

Angel reached back, grasped Sadie's hand, and finally spoke up, "And what about people like us? Did she tell you about us?"

"She did." The intruder let a long breath out through his nose. "Those sick with their attraction to children would try to wring the same answer out of me. Insist it was how they were born, that it isn't their fault. Do you think I should make an exception for them as well?"

The indignation rose up in Sadie's voice again. "It's always the same—we always get grouped in with the pedophiles. Screw you, man, that isn't right. We're adults, we're not hurting anyone."

Again, Angel tightened her grip to try and calm Sadie.

"You're hurting yourselves." The voice in the dark slipped into something just a little lower, and a tinge of melancholy rose as he did. "I know that all too well."

Sadie started to react, but she was cut off when the door behind her slid open. She lost her balance and slipped backward into the metal, book-filled chamber adjacent to the hallway, Father Day stood in the room's center, the Sword of Salvation and one of the dagger-sized Swords of Sin beside him on the altar.

Angel leapt inside after Sadie and said, "Hurry, shut it, he's close."

Day beat commands into a number pad on the other side of the room. "Working on it, working on it!" As he spoke, the steel door started to slide shut.

A calloused, gnarled hand rushed through the dissipating opening. With a clench of fingers, the hand caught the door as it slid, dented the steel with a clutch, and threw the entryway wide open. The intruder in the shadows stepped forward into the light.

Angel and Day faced him without a change in demeanor, Sadie looked on, confused. According to all the context clues, this was the man from her prophetic dreams. But he stood far shorter than she anticipated—probably no taller than her or Stephanie. As a result of his lowered height, his muscular frame was compacted into something more barrel chested. And that face, Sadie wasn't sure why, but it put her off. His tanned skin looked smooth and boyish, but a weariness brought down his blue eyes. All of this—along with that voice—seemed so much less threatening than in her dreams.

A bemused smirk crossed that youthful face. "Oh, were you extracting the icon then, Father? Please, don't mind me. Proceed." As he spoke, he reached around and Sadie got a first good look at the spear latched to his back as he took ahold of its handle. "Or shall I?"

The priest verified everything with a snarl of, "Kedar." He turned to Angel and said, "Keep her protected."

"I'm a better fighter than you," Angel said.

"Maybe so. But you're not approved to use this." The priest rushed forward, grabbed the Sword of Salvation tight in his hands and raised it toward Kedar. "You will not take that power, it wasn't meant for the likes of you."

"You still refuse to see." Kedar drew a blazing red knife from a sheath on his belt. "There has never been anyone more meant to wield it than me. And that defective blade will not stop me from claiming my destiny."

The priest cast a last, troubled look to Angel and Sadie. Whatever he felt about them and the rest of this situation, he looked prepared to lay down his life for their sake. "We'll see how defective it is."

The two held their stance for a moment before Kedar rushed forward. Father Day, caught off-guard, took a step backwards and swung a poorly balanced slash. When Kedar raised his knife to counter, the blue and orange fires met in a clash.

Sadie screamed, lost her balance fell to the ground, and gripped her stigmata hand. Angel, wide eyed and unable to contain her fear, dropped to one knee beside her.

"You all right?" Angel said. "Hurts, I see that."

"Like it's burning." Sadie grit her teeth and held tight onto her hand. "Like— like I'm burning. Like the rock's healing is wearing off."

Father Day tried for a thrust, Kedar pushed the stab out of the way with a parry from his dagger. Sadie shrieked again, and, for just an instant, Angel saw a flash of how she was that night, with her skin and hair engulfed in scars and flames. She turned and shouted, "Stop! Hurting her— both of you, stop!"

The priest turned his head just a little too far. Knowing him, it was probably to castigate her for missing that he couldn't stop and telling Sadie to push through. But whatever it was didn't matter, the moment he took his eyes off Kedar, the enemy buried his flaming dagger up to its hilt in his chest.

With his eyes wide and his lips moving silently, Father Day looked to choke for a moment before he collapsed to the floor, convulsions overwhelming his body like a seizure. Angel held Sadie close and looked upward as Kedar stepped up to his fallen body.

"I'm sorry, child. For all the pain this must be causing," he said. "It's like surgery, you know. The same scalpel that cuts free a lesion can just as easily slash the heart to pieces."

With a grind of her teeth, Sadie silently, bitterly wondered to herself if the two read the same playbook.

Kedar slipped the spear from his back and pointed toward her. "Please, put out your hand. Let me take the yoke from your shoulders."

Sadie turned away from him and pulled herself close to Angel's ear. For a moment, Angel just held her. Then realized something there was a secondary motive when Sadie leaned close to her ear.

"Stop him, no matter what you have to do," Sadie said in a whisper. "If I cry, scream, beg, whatever, ignore me and beat him anyway."

Angel pulled away and stared. "But—but you—"

"This is bigger than me now."

Kedar took another step forward and declared, "Time's up."

Angel wrapped her arms tight around Sadie for just a moment and said, "So sorry for this." She released the hug and rushed at Kedar. The Eldest Nephilim shifted his spear to his other hand and swung at her with the dagger, Angel caught the slash with her katana. With a jerk of her arms, she threw his dagger hand aside, leapt past him, grabbed the Sword of Salvation off the floor, and swung it up at Kedar. The enemy, too surprised by her speed, couldn't bring his dagger up quick enough, and the brilliant azure flames cut straight across his chest.

For a moment, Kedar stood, frozen. And a moment after that, he roared in pain, his whole body went stiff as if he was about to topple.

Then he took a slash downward, Angel caught his knife in a blade lock with the Sword of Salvation. The effect of the strike sent a metaphysical ripple all through the Vatican and, again, Sadie bit back a cry of pain.

"Is it true what my niece told me?" Kedar said. "Are you really Gotham's guardian Angel?"

Angel broke the lock and swung at him again. Kedar slipped backwards, out of her reach, and shifted from his calm, confident state into a battle stance. The two studied one another, blades gripped tight in their hands, and waited for the other to act. Against an enemy who sustained a barrage of bullets earlier, Angel didn't think her katana could do much, so she sheathed it and gripped the Sword of Salvation with both hands.

Kedar moved first, quick on his feet he feinted right, leapt left, and took a swing with his dagger. Angel slipped to his left and thrust forward with the holy blade. A tiny blue-white flame off the sword bit into Kedar's side, but he slipped from its hold, closed the distance between them, and took a downward thrust toward Angel's chest. With her sword arm, Angel blocked and shoved his blade hand out of the way, stepped in closer, and beat a trio of two-fingered strikes into Kedar's opposite shoulder. With another shout, the Eldest Nephilim dodged out of her range and stared, wide-eyed, down at his left arm.

"What the— what did you do?"

Angel switched her grip hand and zeroed in on his opposite side. As she raised her fingers for another pressure point strike, Kedar stepped forward and raised his dagger. Angel realized his game a moment too late as he held the dagger in her path and slit through her hand and up her arm.

The furious echoes of the Sin blade rushed back to her all at once this time. Angel lost focus and her strike setup as the whispering voices returned.

"You will never be forgiven."

"You can't even admit the wrong you've done."

"Unworthy."

"Less than nothing."

"Dyke."

"You shouldn't have killed me."

In the time her faculties were lost to her, Angel disassociated from the fight. Kedar raised a foot upward and delivered a front-snap kick to her face. She only marginally returned to herself as she hit the floor and Sadie screamed, "Cassie!"

Kedar shook out his bad arm and, after some flexing, it looked as if feeling had returned. "A few strikes is admirable, little Angel." He dropped to one knee and raised the dagger for another thrust.

"Cassie come on— get up!"

Sadie's cry cut through the echoes in Angel's mind. She pushed herself upward and took an awkward chop toward Kedar's knife hand. Without the force to hold a blade lock, the two weapons crashed and reverberated off one another like cymbals. Again, a cry of pain slipped through Sadie's gnashed teeth as she clung to her hand, as if the stigmata within threatened to escape.

Angel's voice was weak, she wasn't sure Sadie could hear her, but she spoke anyway. "Keep screaming." It gave her something to fight for.

Kedar took another swing toward her leg. This time, Angel didn't stop him.

The voices picked up again, this time in a quick, stacotto chant. "Worthless, dyke, murderer. Worthless, dyke, murderer. Worthless—"

With the dagger already in her, Kedar had nothing to protect himself with as Angel pushed through the pain and thrust the Sword of Salvation through his chest. Though she needed too much focus elsewhere to say it, for a moment it crossed her mind, There. Now we're both fighting something.

After an instant to process, Kedar howled and yanked himself off of the sword. With hands on his head so tight his fingers dug into the flesh, he uttered something guttural that clashed with his high voice over and over until it started to take form. "Getoutofmyhead, getoutofmyhead, getout ofmyhead, get out of my head!"

Angel fumbled around for the knife in her leg until the pain passed all at once. She looked over as Sadie pulled it free and gave her the most reassuring half-smile she could muster.

Then the bladed head of a spear ran through Sadie's stigmata hand.

To Sadie, the strangest part was that she didn't feel any pain. Not from the stab wound, and not from any of the phantom manifestations she'd felt before. What she did feel, enough to fill her entire being, was dread.

A voice—or at least that was the most human comparison that could be made—erupted out from the icon in Sadie's flesh. The sound spoke in multiple contrasting octaves at once, and though it shook nothing physical, everyone in the room who understood its words felt as though their very being trembled. "Kedar, son of Naila, and son of Geoffery. Why have you dared to call me forth?"

The countless books on the shelves blurred and shifted as if the demand bent the boundaries of reality itself. Sadie stared, nailed against the ground and frozen in shock at the sounds from the stigmata. Angel felt trapped where she stood at the power the voice exuded.

A shudder ran through Kedar as he stared down at the place his spear pierced, but he spoke, undeterred. "You know my thoughts and you know my heart, so you know what I seek. It is a fraction of your power that has sustained me all these years, and now it is time I claim the might that providence has led to me."

"And you believe you are worthy of that power?"

Angel shook her head hard and shoved herself off the floor. With the Sword of Salvation gripped in her hands, she ran toward Kedar. The Eldest of the Nephilim turned to her a moment too late to respond properly. Angel thrust the blade into his belly and just kept running. Kedar roared and stumbled backwards as she pushed on, the spear slipped from his grip.

With enough squinting of her eyes, Sadie brought reality back into her personal focus as Angel slammed Kedar against one of the opposing bookcases. But a moment after she started to hold him there, the eldest of the Nephilim got his hands around her throat. Angel released the sword and tried to fight his grip, but the enemy didn't yield at the first of her strikes.

Still delirious, still terrified, Sadie fumbled around until she got a hand on the discarded spear. The head of the weapon slipped out of her stigmata with one quick pull. Still, the power within lingered all around her, like blood that seeped from a wound and pooled on the floor.

Sadie hadn't realized the power within the wound was alive, at least she didn't think so. But in that moment, still driven by fear and confusion above all else, it seemed best to speak to it. "Please. Get us out of here. Get us out of here. Please."

Power stopped leaking from the icon, but the force that slipped out began to reform and coalesce. The green stigmata shimmered as the all-powerful voice within said, "Thy will be done."

Kedar jerked his head to the side to get a better look as Sadie's body started to blur. With his eyes wide and voice tinged with fury, he shouted, "No!" and threw Angel in the opposite direction. But the obstruction in reality did not yield, it sped toward Angel as she fell to the floor, the Sword of Salvation still tight in her grip. The Eldest of the Nephilim raised his flaming dagger high and swung toward where Sadie laid.

By the time he hit the ground, she and Angel had vanished. Kedar stood alone save for Father Day still struggling in one corner and the spear he'd wielded laid beside the altar.

-000-

Swept away by the power within the stigmata, Sadie fell through reality. The unknowable environment that surrounded her flashed in sparks of black and white at a rapid clip, alternated every few cycles by a quick smear of the icon's same strange veridian. Sadie couldn't see anything besides the instants of colors flying past her. With a struggle she reached out with one hand and make desperate swimming motions with her hands and feet. She opened her mouth and tried to call out, but the blinking void she struggled in was a vacuum. For an instant, she wondered if she'd chosen an even worse fate.

Then she fell forward, her hands and knees hit sand, and breath reentered her lungs. For a few moments down on all fours she hyperventilated in shock and confusion, then threw up. Her whole body stung, and the stigmata that held the icon throbbed.

"What—the—hell?" she spoke through heavy breaths and heaves. " Cassie, you doing all right?"

She turned and saw Cassandra's body laid face down in the sand. Still unsteady, Sadie stumbled over to her and rolled her over. Sand clung to Cassandra's hair and slipped into her half open mouth.

"Hey, hey, Cassie, hey." Sadie shook the lifeless body, stable at first, then increasingly frantic. "Hey, I don't know what just got us here either, but it's going to be okay." As she spoke, her voice went harsh with pain. "Cassie? Come on, you gotta wake up. Cassie, I don't know how to do CPR— I— I can't save you if— if—" Sadie swallowed the words, tried her best to lay Cassandra down flat, then leaned an ear down to her mouth. Cassandra's breaths were long and labored, but that least they were there.

Sadie collapsed backwards, one hand on one of Cassandra's, as she stared out at an ocean at their sides she only just caught sight of. "How did we get here again? Wherever here is?" She said with some struggle. "Different year, different side of the planet, different religious cult, and I'm here, freezing on the beach with you again" She squeezed Cassandra's hand tight.

After a short wait with all silent save for the cries of gulls and the sound of waves, Sadie continued. "Stuff like this, feeling this scared— I almost wish our lives could be normal. Almost." She went quiet again before the next words spilled out. "But that would never happen, would it? If you weren't punching bad guys, you'd probably have us out protesting oil rigs or going to sit ins against injustice or something. Fighting evil is who you are, and you wouldn't be you if you didn't do it." Sadie raised the hand to her lips and pressed a sandy kiss to it as tears started to flow again. "Come back. Please come back."

A shout in a language Sadie couldn't understand reverberated from down the beach. She rose and turned to it. Someone a little taller than her, dressed in black vestments, approached. Sadie swallowed hard and wondered if this would be yet another unfortunate run in with the clergy. But with no other choice on her mind, she stood up straight, waved one arm, and called, "Hey! Over here!"

Sadie wasn't sure what to make of the figure as the distance was closed. She'd seen enough clerical clothing in the last week to recognize it on sight, but she felt confident it was a woman's dark face that looked back at her.

The figure looked back and forth between her and Cassandra a moment before they asked, "Your companion needs help?" in some kind of African-accented English.

"Y-y-yeah," Sadie said. "Her breathing's steady but— I don't even know how we got here, we— we—" she didn't mean for the next part to come out, but it did. "Who are you?"

"I am Father Zein, and you have arrived just outside the settlement I oversee." The priest then dropped to a kneel and felt at Cassandra's neck.

Sadie's eyes widened. "Fa—Father Zein?" She hesitated a moment before she lowered her head. "I'm— thank you, sir."

"The pulse is there, but it's moving fast." The priest raised a hand to Cassandra's mouth to confirm her breathing. "And Father is an old, honorific title, that's all."

"Um, okay." Sadie grasped for a second before she tried, "Thank you, ma'am?"

Father Zein gave a little smile. "Just Zein is fine. Sirs and ma'ams, hes and shes, they don't fit me well."

"Huh... all right then."

"Something else is wrong though, I can feel it. Bend down here."

Sadie did as she was instructed, Father Zein pulled up Cassandra's top layer of white armor and motioned for Sadie to roll up the black layer underneath. As soon as Sadie pushed an inch up Cassandra's stomach, red wet her hands. A little further up the wound went a deep, dark brown.

Her heart skipped. "Oh God, what happened?"

"Could be many things. Not important now. Let me get that."

As Sadie's mind raced for a possible answer, be it an actual stab from Kedar or that she'd unknowingly screwed up the teleportation somehow, Father Zein reached out a hand toward the ocean. When one wave fell, a line of water did not recede with the tide and slowly rose from the sand like a tentacle until it wrapped around Father Zein's hand.

Sadie gawked at this, too exasperated and stunned to audibly question that waterbending was apparently real now too. The water wrapped around Zein's hand shimmered as they pressed it against Cassandra's wound. After a few seconds of that glow, the deep, violent color settled, if only a little.

"Not as bad as it looked. I've heard of whole chunks being left behind in botched teleportation," Zein said. "That did not happen here. It hurts the mind as well, if unprepared, she may just be recovering from that." They easily scooped Cassandra out of the sand, as she rose the Sword of Salvation slipped from her fingers and onto the ground. Stooped, Sadie grabbed the blade as Zein began a walk back the way they'd come.

Sadie needed to pick up her pace to keep up with the thin priest's quick stride. "Thank you," she said. "We've heard about you. Sort of. We knew Abraham Arlington. Sort of. He—"

"Don't further exhaust yourself now," the priest said. "One thing at a time. Recovery first."

"All… all right." Sadie followed as best she was able as they moved uphill. "Where is… here, anyway?"

"Qurac," Zein said.

"What the—I'm sorry, Qurac?" Sadie spoke with a stutter and then froze. When the priest didn't stop for her, she pressed on. "I'm sorry, I know this is gonna sound really white and American but—but I've studied this place in school. Terrorists pissing off the Justice League, wasn't there nuclear fallout at some point? I didn't even know people still lived around here."

"The people here have suffered greatly," Zein said. "And after such war and destruction many sought refuge elsewhere. But still others arrived to rebuild refuge for those who remained."

Sadie and Father Zein crested the top of the hill by the sea. Below them stood a town built of simple, square houses of mudbrick. Nearly every roof was colored by vegetation grown on its top. The combined words of dozens, or maybe a hundred, people, sheep, horses, and chickens below carried into indistinct noise atop the hill.

A bit like the Vatican, Sadie felt she was looking back in time. She hesitated before she went any further. "Um, I don't really know the culture around here or anything. Should I have a headscarf or something or—"

"The women wear headscarves if they want to, Christian or Muslim. But no one does if they don't care to." Father Zein showed her a tired smirk. "Perhaps you didn't notice, but certain customs are of less importance here. Like people born with ovaries serving as priests."

Sadie let out a little laugh that was both uncomfortable and a break from the tension. "Really now?"

"This is Sanctuary," Zein said. "And to all who seek it, that is what will be provided."