The following are the collected annotation notes I wrote when I uploaded this story to AO3. This was the easiest way to add them for your viewing interest here.
Chapter 1:
It felt wrong to belabor the point at the start, so I'll just explain a bit of it here- the writing of this one was a shit show. The earliest version of Da Pacem Domine released in October of 2018. Some of the details from that first edition stuck around clear to the final version, a lot of them did not. Just reflecting here- there was a loooot going on in al those years.
This opener here stands in contrast to the, "Set up all the pieces" one I did back in Times of Heresy. Things are going a little slower, but, among other reasons, it's because the romance is more significant this time around. We'll be getting into the action shortly, but there was a purposeful move to adjust focus on this one a bit. Like I said before, this one is more fantastical than the others, but it also became a story far more concerned with romance.
Fun facts- The Simone Room is obviously named for Gail Simone herself, Dean, the owner, is the name of a cartoonist friend of mine. Sadie's eyes being green has come up a few times in the reuploads, but never did in the original writings, it was something I only decided while I was having that lovely artwork up top commissioned. But since she has an Irish surname, I decided it fit. At some point in the revision process, I realized I never gave Sadie any tattoos, and she absolutely seems the sort. I think she has more than the one, but haven't decided where or what yet. The semicolon, for those unaware, is a symbol of perseverance in the face of mental health struggle. Sadie lost a brother to suicide, remember.
Chapter 2:
Because of the nature of the bad guys in this entry, I knew most of the action scenes were going to be fights. The villains are a bit more morally complex this time around, so they go out of their way to avoid collateral damage when possible. So it felt like I should put in a purely rescue-based action scene to get things started.
In the original release of this chapter, Sadie just kinda ran in and looked for something she could do, like a bit of a moron, in hindsight. Running in without any solid plan is STILL acting like a bit of a moron, to be clear, but the fact that she does actually rescue two kids and their pets makes her look a little better, at the very least.
I still don't know how successfully I did or did not pull off the rubble crashing into Sadie here. I was going for, "So sudden, so jarring, what the actual fuck?!" when you get to that part. It either had that effect, or it's so fast and huge that it reads as comical. Which is always a risk I run, because my sensibilities do tend to lean more comedic even when I don't want to. It's probably pretty evident that I wasn't going to kill her off right at the start of this story, but my gamble was the big moment comes and hits so fast the reader's brain buys it for a second. There was never any freaking way Nintendo was going to show me Mario getting impaled, but it's unbelievably impressive that, in that Smash reveal for Sephiroth, they fooled me for just the tiniest, quickest second.
Chapter 3:
Very little of the failed attempts to write this story were retained into this edition, but that opening set an indeterminate time in the past did stick around. Which was nice, because this is pretty easily the longest singular story I've ever written, anywhere I could give myself some extra help was important.
In the earliest version of this story, Sadie spent most of the plot offscreen. At some point, I realized if I wanted to sell the readers her and Cassandra heading for a happily ever after, she'd obviously need to be on the page far more. That brought its own challenges, since I had to come up with an excuse for her to be participating in this extremely dangerous plot. I think that challenge bore fruit, when all was said and done.
In the earliest versions of this story, the Order of Saint Dumas and the idea of Azrael were all significant players in the plot. Over time, their importance started to decline and I started to feel like they were overcomplicating things. Elements of the 2009 run of Azrael were retained, hence why Arlington is here, but much of the backstory and finer details were stripped away.
I've never been a fan of the "Red Robin" title, and since this is my universe, I decided I should have Tim reclaim Robin for himself. My headcanon is that Tim subtlety convinced Damian to take up a new title. He's operating as Talon currently (the Court of Owls Talon doesn't exist in this timeline.) That also allows for a super roundabout reference to one of Damian's noncanon alternate selves, Tallant Wayne.
Snowball actually made it to the page this time around, hooray.
Chapter 4:
You can read about what Batman's got going on over in the concurrent Justice League Storyline, "Justice League: Black Merciless"*
(*- You can't, of course, because that story doesn't exist. But it's always been my intention to write these stories as though other comic titles are occurring in other books)
I requested the beaded bracelet on the art of Sadie, but on later reflection thought it might clash with her style a little bit. I included it along with a little reminiscing on a past Pride in this rewrite to justify it a little better. That probably would have been a cute one shot or something, happy to at least allude to it. The upper arm palette tattoo was a later addition as well, tossed in because it felt like it fit her character.
I felt like I should do more to justify "Sadie the artist" in this entry, so we get stuff like her selling art in the opening and taking inspiration from Cassie getting into uniform. It was an element I kinda picked at random back in Times of Heresy, but I think it all came together nicely by the time this story is over.
One of the nice things about Sadie being deeper in the plot is that she can voice the frustrations Cassie maybe wouldn't. Cassie's content enough with her continued don't ask, don't tell treatment at the cathedral, but Sadie can be frustrated in her place. As I reflected in the closing of Times of Heresy, I kinda just kept hoping the Catholic church was on the edge of a big paradigm shift and I wouldn't need to come up with a different answer myself. I've pretty much lost my faith in that at this point, though as I said before, I eventually drew a different conclusion. More on that when we get there.
Chapter 5:
Nijah has a couple of her own songs I associate with her, but I think they reveal too much of her character, so I won't be stating what those are just yet. But the Order of Nephilim as a whole have the theme song, "Army of the Night" by Powerwolf, a song of which had at least some hand in their creation.
I've always enjoyed doing the quick, hallucinogenic segments and the like, so having the villains be able to actively weaponize that was a lot of fun. Revisiting Epiphany not so long ago in the first story was a good time, but this feels like it allows things to get a lot more fun and crazy. And in spite of having shit like that at the ready, Nijah's still waaaaaaay more amiable than the villains who came before her. Go figure. Not a lot to say, I liked this fight, and it makes for a helpful taste of what's to come later.
Chapter 6:
I've shouted out some of my favorite comic writers and artists before, referenced a couple of my favorite fantasy authors like Sanderson and Butcher playing a part in this text, but there's one more prose writer who had a big impact on this story: Hirohiko Araki.
As early back as the time I was wrapping up Times of Heresy, I was planning for this one of have a road trip-like edge to it. That we'd be getting out of Gotham pretty quickly (some of the abandoned drafts actually started in France), and bouncing around Europe. I'd always wanted to do a story like that, but I never felt like they came together. In the back half of 2023, when I was hammering out this story's finer details, I was reading the third volume of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Stardust Crusaders. I can't say for sure why that manga left so much of an impression, I know a lot of readers disliked the "villain of the week" flavor in the first half. But the way the team got repeatedly derailed, had to keep switching forms of transportation, and kept getting messed with in new and unexpected ways, really clicked with me. More on that when we fight the enemy stand user next chapter- err, I mean, something like that, anyway.
Chapter 7:
Okay, not a stand user. A vampire. Less Stardust, more Phantom Blood.
Jo-joking aside, Benjie was supposed to represent another big, radical shift for the story. The icon is already here as a fantastical element, but just having a blatant bloodsucker here after I waited through the whole first story to do anything supernatural feels like a bit of a leap. Which was fun for me.
Chapter 8:
Relatively quiet chapter here, so it seems like as good a place as any to mention- for the longest time, Steph and Tim were gonna be relegated to short appearances at the start and/or end of the story, at maximum. For all of the drafts before this one, Renee Montoya (as the Question) and John Constantine were the girls' traveling companions. I thought it would be a nice contrast to put them in with a more conspiracy centric character like Montoya and wanted Constantine for his occult magic and connections and the like, but no matter how hard I tried, it just never felt like it clicked. Renee and Constantine are such wonderful characters when they're done right, but I just didn't feel like I was doing them justice. I'm certain there's a version of that scenario where everything came together beautifully. But with everything that was so different for this entry, I think reverting the focus back to the friendship of these four we're already familiar with was a comfort that helped get me through.
Chapter 9:
One shots are back, coming up earlier than they ever did before and with some new functionality. The one shots were always my way of exploring the non-main characters and the bad guys have always gotten some focus, but this time they're actually integrated directly into what's going on with Sadie's reverse-prophecy dreams.
In the earliest version of this story, the main villain had a legion of nameless underlings doing his bidding, kinda like the Seraphim back in the first story. Big swaths of generic henchpeople obviously can make for some fun fights, but at some point I realized I just didn't like the prospect this time. The Order of Nephilim draw more from Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants than anything else: they're an evil organization, but they're also a family. They do, honestly, have history and care for one another. It's something I thought went a ways in making them different from the zealots from the first story.
You know how else Kedar gets things more right than the Seraphim ever did and my shifting sensibilities on the matter? Recall that, "The Seraphim" is grammatically incorrect, he should have always been called, "The Seraph." Kedar is always, "a/the Nephil" or, "Eldest of the Nephilim." It gives him a more sizeable title, but Kedar's the kind of guy who would get the grammar right.
Chapter 10:
Even with efforts to give each of the bad guys their own characterization, I knew we'd only get so much of the ones besides Nijah and Kedar, so I'm happy we get at least a few moments of annoyed humanizing in for Gedeyon. That he's the team's biggest, most monstrous enforcer, but also a movie snob felt like a quick, fun little character moment. Steph is a documented Kevin Smith fan, by the way. She has a Jay and Silent Bob poster up in her one and only appearance in an old Young Justice comic, I assure you. I'm a Smith fan myself, Dogma is one of my favorite movies, but having it trash talked was fun for me. As are these little moments of Sadie getting a peek behind the camera and hearing about Batman and the job, here and there.
Chapter 11:
This whole struggle with Gedeyon feels like more of that Jojo influence I was alluding to earlier. In that I was channeling, "Team gets to new source of transportation, we get derailed, now we need a clever solution to beat this overwhelming force." The dagger ends up being a bit of a cheat code, but now they don't have it anymore.
I'll talk a bit more about Gedeyon and some of the choices around him when we get to his one shot, but I'll mention here the bulgu is the least documented of the monsters I featured in this story, lacking even a Wikipedia page. I knew I wanted to feature folklore creatures from a wide variety of settings, so an African monster needed in as well. The real legends around bulgu are pretty unequivocally horrific, so Gedeyon is a less sinister take.
Had a good time writing Cassandra's little chicken game with Nijah here too, but, understandably, it really gets under Sadie's skin. More on that later.
Chapter 12:
Really had a good time doing the comedy in this chapter, particularly how much Sadie gets to sass these pious a-holes. And that Stephanie is, frankly, preternaturally prepared to join in. Cassandra's still accustomed to keeping quiet and keeping to the dark about some of this nastiness, sadly, but it's something she will get bolder on (that I should probably clean up on the rewrite, because I don't think it ever quite got where I wanted it.)
I considered doing a gag on the rewrite where Sadie would have snarked about the sleeping situation, "You gonna lock me in a chastity belt too? Or can I still play with myself?" It felt like maaaaaaaybe a bit too much. But if you'd like to picture her making a masturbation joke there, by all means.
Chapter 13:
I misspelled the creatures name, "Belgu" so many damn times. Apparently there's still at least one misspelling somewhere in the full text I downloaded from the original upload.
I ended up pulling from a few Ethiopian myths for Gedeyon's background here. The bulgu itself is just kind of an inexplicable abomination, killing one boy by a river, threatening to kill his sister if she exposed its existence, and sniffing her out to kill her too after she does so. The appearance as a giant, axe faced creature with a notable sense of smell came from there. But since that only have me so much to work with, I added in some traits of the werehyena, who, as the name suggests, are body shifters. Werehyena are traditionally tied with metalworking, which, as I understand it, does have some unfortunate ties to antisemitism. I chose kind of a loose interpretation of "metalworking" to involve a modern day slaver digging for gold, and invoked some of Italy's historical exploitation of Ethiopia in the process. All of these are tied to the idea of the evil eye, which is a pretty archetypal example of committing evil acts in exchange for power. We go from the bulgu "merely" killing children in the old myth to full on pedophilic nastiness in this alternate take. But from that we get a child who has the bulgu's powers without needing to do evil.
The creature from Benjie's chapter was, ultimately, more animal than thinking human or monster, so whatever the revelry, I think she still can elicit some sympathy. Rossi on the other hand is a complete, unrepentant scumbag. The closest thing to nuance he gets is being intrigued to learn he has a son, and even then he's ready to kill him shortly thereafter. Whatever he does later in life, whatever control he loses that leads to death here, I think Gedeyon, for a couple paragraphs, is unequivocally the good guy.
By the time the flashbacks are over, it is pretty unquestionable when the earliest two chronologically are, but the next several are more open to interpretation. Based on something said later though, I think Gedeyon has been serving longer than both Benjie and Nijah. This scene was probably set in the 1980's or 1990's or so, relative to the 2012 this story is set in.
If there's any curiosity about why an Ethiopian folklore creature, the long answer is I wanted Kedar to have a variety of underlings with a variety of powers from a variety of places. Ideally, those places would have sizable recent Catholic activity who Kedar could draw information from, and the individual villages he went to would be still developing, so he could take a child without being noticed. If his cadre is highly diversified and international, it suggests Kedar is traveling the world, fighting monsters and picking up loyal servants.
Ethiopia's Catholic population is actually pretty small, upon further research, but I rolled with it anyway. Why? Mostly because I really enjoy Ethiopian restaurants and used that in my decision making. That sounds kinda goofy, I'm sure. But I assure you lots of random decisions in storytelling have goofy stories tied to them.
Chapter 14:
Overall, Cassandra and Sadie's relationship doesn't go through a whole lot of drama in this entry, but I did have a pretty clear point where the honeymoon period of Sadie unequivocally loving Cassie's superhero side ended. They still love each other, Sadie still supports her, but she still feels betrayed that Cassie took the threat on her life so casually. Cassandra apologizing for it here is a first step to mending things, but it's gonna continue for a little longer, but I like the resolution it came to.
It's still not exactly the most groundbreaking contribution, but I am happy that Tim gets to be more active in this entry after not doing a whole lot in Times of Heresy. Him doing his best as the team leader and the way he and Sadie play off each other are all little things that are a bit different for this story. Little more on that latter point in the next chapter.
Chapter 15:
Few more of those Sadie-Tim interactions I mentioned last chapter. I think at least some of this might be a bit of a response to a much beloved Batman Fanfiction facebook group I'm a member of, where Tim is often jokingly depicted as a sad sap coffee addict barely keeping it together who is wholly reliant on others for support. I know it's a joke, but I never liked that the same kinds of jokes still made Dick out to still be really smooth or Jason really cool. This is a Tim who can effectively channel some of Dick's charisma, been an effective Teen Titans and Young Justice leader, and, as Ra's al Ghul has said, has the potential to be Bruce's truest heir. In this case, some of that involves being a good sibling surrogate to Sadie.
Speaking of her, obviously I gotta talk about her portion of the chapter. It was once a really fun, cathartic ride to write, but also one of the most frustrating parts of the whole story. Because Sadie really does go in there are try to be cooperative about the whole thing, but those monks are making it impossible. That little bit of power she holds over the situation and the way she snaps back felt essential, because I find Dom and Alex too insufferable to have written otherwise. I based them off the idea of the "condescending, supposedly rational thinking conservative podcaster," which is maybe the single most annoying character trope on the planet to me. As she points out, even their good cop routine is awful. Leave it to that character type to be faced with, "Oh shit, this woman's sexuality didn't break her blessing," and still decide, "Needs more research, and we'll keep being asshats in the meantime.
I have a friend from Rome with the surname Faltelli, I have a history of naming Italian restaurants in my stories after him. I'm so sorry I gave your name to an a-hole this time, bud.
Chapter 16:
I reflected earlier that I wanted to have more quiet, human moments among the villains in this one. Nijah asking for Cassandra's help to keep the door shut so she can pull off her hijab for a couple minutes fit the bill as something nice and understandable. I probably drew a little influence from the very funny, "Yes I Am Hot In This," by Huda Fahmy when I wrote that. I think some people (or at least me) tend to think that others are so used to their own cultural practices as to be invincible from their effects. But Huda's simple proclamation, "Yes, I value my hijab, even I do sometimes find it uncomfortable," always felt like such a human thing to me. Per my research, the word hijab is pretty specifically Muslim, so maybe it's debatable if Nijah's covering should be called that. I'm gonna stick with it though. She herself implies she's wearing it the sane as her mother did. She's a Catholic convert who still wears a Muslim hijab, even if she no longer believes it's a requirement.
Brother Carlos only appears in two scenes, but I liked the additional flavor he brought to the Saint Christopher. Every monk is still a complete human being, at the end of the day, and can be pulled away from their convictions if you ask the right way. Brother Dom sucks, Brother Alex sucks, but I think Carlos is all right.
I've considered myself whether or not I think Nijah has some suppressed sapphic tendencies and it's informing her opinion of Cassandra. Whether it makes Cassie/Angel extra cool because Nijah is quietly attracted to her or whether her mounting frustration is the result of suppressed emotions. Personally, I think Nijah is sex-repulsed and didn't write her with attraction to Cassie in mind, but readers can make of it what they will.
Chapter 17:
This chapter and the next one are maybe the purest examples of Brandon Sanderson's influence in this story. Because observing that you have a passive supernatural ability and trying to figure out the rules of it to force it to be an active one just felt right out of his playbook. As did an enemy having the ability to exploit it, but more on that in the next chapter.
I do think the backstory chapters of the Order of Nephilim are important, I think it lends them all additional intrigue and context. But they are all kinda the same. "Terrible childhood, Kedar shows up to allow a chance for revenge, loyalty is earned in the process." So I knew I'd have to do a quick rug pull right as soon as the reader was getting too comfortable with them. Joaquin's flashback is set up like the others aside from the fact we haven't seen him yet. But then Nijah shows up and throws the whole thing out of whack. That's a writer's trick it's good to master- teach the reader what to expect so you can trick them when they think they already know what's coming.
I think Joaquin's name was just chosen as a relatively common Chilean name, but there is a chance that I used it as a little something extra since we got a Joaquin playing the Joker.
Chapter 18:
This was one of those chapters I kinda remember losing myself in. There are a couple fights throughout this entry where reality gets a little bendable, and that's just too much fun to write. I also really liked getting to write Sadie trying to stand up for herself, even if it did prove pretty ineffective.
Sadie's background, history of abuse, and all that were always just touched on before, but this is the one glimpse of it the reader ever gets from an ultra close perspective. Some of it was left open-ended, but you get a pretty clear picture of some stuff right here. Although it's only vaguely alluded to and I was never sure how to work it in organically, I'll confirm here- Sadie was conceived via IVF, that's why her mother went off on, "What it cost to conceive you." Later in life, after middle school alongside Steph and presumably after her parents' divorce, Sadie ended up in a private school for a while and was threatened with suspension for her lesbianism. Considering what a loathsome character I always suggested Joanne Leach is (that's her mother, she hadn't been named yet when I wrote this), Sadie might have only been in a private school so she could squeeze some extra child support money out of her ex husband.
If you wanna craft some religious falling out narrative for Sadie's parents, I suppose the pieces are there. There are still faiths where IVF is, ridiculously, rejected, and I could see some homophobia carrying over even after switching to secular life while raising Sadie. I never wanted to be that specific, I think some things are more interesting if left open to interpretation, but the pieces are there if anyone wants to organize them that way.
Getting spat on with pineapple soda by a bunch of bitches was almost certainly me homaging Worm by Wildbow, which I was reading while I was figuring this chapter out. It's such a simple, gross act of cruelty that felt like it could, indeed, be a teenager's breaking point. She would have been, like, 14 and a freshman when that happened. She kinda got tossed into the deep end for a while after that, since she mentions dating and having sex with some male classmates at some point thereafter, and some other dating blues before she and Cassie meet on what would be her senior year of high school (which she wasn't attending.) All of that, and THEN being captured by the Seraphim is, unquestionably a lot. I I think it's a testament to how good Cassandra, the Bat fam, and her cousin's family were to getting her back in a comfortable place.
For a couple light, amusing bits- In seventh grade I actually had a friend with that, "My parents said I could be anything, so I became a lesbian" pin on her backpack. My dumb ass thought it was a joke because my brain didn't connect that queer people our age could possibly exist. Additionally, in the original upload, the girl Sadie kissed was referred to as, "Renee." She was actually named for a character in some original writings I do, BUT that character was named for Renee Montoya. As TV Tropes tells us, better to limit some kinds of character names to one. It was switched to Karolina in tribute to Karolina Dean from Runaways, a different comic lesbian from my favorite Marvel comic.
Chapter 19:
Mostly a quiet transition chapter between big scenes here. Banter's fine, Brother Carlos continuing to be surprisingly decent is fine, even Dominique manages a little bit of a sacrifice. But this is mostly just getting from one plot point to the next. I do know my family has dealt with some unscrupulous cabbies while we've been on vacation, so the driver's less than savory behavior certainly bleeds into that. I remember when I was younger, living a privileged youth that I kinda reflected onto Tim, that my parents complained about how aggressive the roads were in Rome. We'll get some more of that in the next chapter...
No idea if having one of my characters piss herself actually accomplished anything for the story. I meant for it to be a moment of showing just how out of her depth Sadie is on everything here and that she reacted to those nightmares really badly, but it might just come off as weird. I dunno, fics are where I do my experimenting, may as well try having a weird moment here.
Chapter 20:
I should find an excuse to do more vehicular chaos chapters, because I had a great time rereading the one back in Times of Heresy, and I think this one's a lot of fun as well. This was one of the big chapters that kept me going when I was earlier in the process. Just repeating to myself, "This many more chapters and then you get to do undead car chase through Rome" really got my ass in gear completing some of the earlier chapters when I felt my energy running low. I set out to give all the members of the Order of Nephilim interesting traits and powers that would set their fights apart and could serve a clear purpose in Kedar's recruiting. The idea of, "singular entity that can command servants I can use for canmon fodder" was a lot harder to find in old folklore than I would have thought. I don't remember how I found kalku and anchimayen initially, but the thought I could feature a bad guy with creepy, child zombie cannon fodder excited me greatly.
Joaquin manages to achieve what none of his other companions could here- he breaks up the fellowship, at least for the next while. Really loved writing the four of them together, but it was inevitable a group split would be forced. We'll catch up with both sides later as things go on.
Chapter 21:
I got the chance to visit the Vatican a few years ago. I wish I could say it had a great impact on me, but to be totally honest, not really, no. I'll get into that more in the next chapter or two, as Cassandra reflects some of my own feelings.
It's inevitable that my main characters end up reflecting elements of my own life when I write them. Cassandra gets my strongest religious convictions, Tim is a reflection of my own history growing up in wealth and privilege and trying to do something good with that, Stephanie gets some of my own tendencies as someone who is sometimes written off as a goof who feels strongly about friendships and loved ones. Since this entry upgraded Sadie to the main ensemble, she took on some of my traits as well, naturally more of my artistic side, both as creator and enjoyer. That's how we get Sadie really drinking in the artistry around Vatican City even if she doesn't care about it spiritually, and how I feel a Terry Brooks reference feels natural enough coming from her.
Chapter 22:
All right, Vatican thing first, because I think it's less interesting- A lot like Cassandra, I didn't really feel anything particularly special when I toured the Vatican. The art and statuework within is all impressive, the Sistine Chapel and the central chamber with the huge pipe organ is worth seeing, but at the end of the day, it was a big museum I felt shuffled through. Not so different from the other museums in Italy I'd seen. Which, to be clear, house some of history's finest works, but they are also static. Homages to ancient history and folklore, all of which should be valued, but which did not speak to my soul. Not like seeing people being cared for does. Hell, not like a really good story does. And how much treasure does the Vatican needlessly hold while people still go hungry? I got at some of these feelings when I wrote "Silent Knight, Holy Knight," and they remain true here. The experience happened, some admiration was granted, but my soul felt very little by the time it was over.
Onward- As soon as I decided Sadie was going to have a more substantial role this time around, I knew I was going to have to write this scene. It took on a few different incarnations in my head, but it always boiled down to, "The girls are alone, there's some tension there. Cassandra says, 'You wouldn't understand,' and Sadie says, 'Then help me understand.'" In some versions I wrote out Cassie's dialogue so we could tell exactly what she said, I thought it would be nice to be close to the action like that. But then I decided, "No, the only person this is new information to is Sadie. We don't need to know the specific words Cassie used." So I wrote it a bit more like narration to a storybook. Some of Sadie's questions do suggest Cassandra wandered away from the central topics here and there, lol.
From the start, I wanted to avoid some of the common tropes of the superhero coming unmasked to their love interest. Sadie felt like the kind of character who would be 100% down with dating a hero... on paper. Obviously she starts feeling more mixed about it as she has to face danger head on alongside Cassandra and very quickly realizes she feels unsafe when Cassie's moral code plays chicken with Nijah. But once they have their conversation here and she better appreciates the context, she can accept what's happened- though Cassandra has also acknowledged her own wrongdoing as well. The reiteration that Sadie already knew the parts of Cassandra that mattered most feels like a natural, pure way to reaffirm their closeness in the midst of all this.
Thanks to the re-edits and reuploads of the original story and Times of Heresy, I got to build out a quiet little arc that gets settled here that I just wasn't in the right headspace for in the past. Namely, that Cassie's never really been comfortable with any of the labels unknowingly put on her sexuality. She was never thrilled with the idea of being called gay or a lesbian because she didn't think her attraction to women was necessarily exclusive. She didn't jump at bisexual because she didn't actively feel anything for any men she was interacting with. As the writer, I called her pansexual a couple times in my author's notes, but always figured the characters in the time period wouldn't know/use that word (I've since pulled back on that. Just because I didn't know a word at that age/year doesn't mean others wouldn't have. Sadie knew the term.) But I eventually learned demisexual was actually the term I was looking for when I was calling her pan, so I decided to finally canonize it in-universe. And, after two past stories where this has been a quiet struggle, Cassandra finds a label she actually thinks fits. Not that she or anyone else need a label if they don't want one, to be clear. But, in her case, upon being offered one that seems like it fits, she accepts it happily.
Chapter 23:
Technically this scene is still a flashback, but the difference in time is de minims- this right here is Kedar's first scene in the modern day. I knew I wanted him to come out with something of a guns a blazing feel to him, so I set out to make a strong impression. Singlehandedly taking out the Saint Christopher and revealing he (through Gallagher) has kaiju-sized sea serpents at his disposal felt like they went a long way for that. I was actually struggling right until the chapter went up for, "How exactly does he board the ship?" The tannin were VERY last minute editions when I tried to figure out something gigantic and ridiculous. Although in many stories they are inherently chaotic and destructive, Hebrew mythology suggests they were created by God on the fifth day, like the rest of the non bird and fish animals. The idea that they are mythological but part of the old traditions, along with the fae in Gallagher's background (more on that later) were enough for me to justify that they will obey him if he makes an agreeable deal. It's big, bombastic, and fun to include.
I enjoyed writing Nijah as a bit of an underdog here, in that she actually gets to stand up for her beliefs against a totally unlikeable jerk like Brother Alexander. Seeing him take a beating was a good time too. Inversely, the small character moment of Beat being totally open and unbothered by Cassandra and Sadie being girlfriends was a nice, quick moment for him too. We don't see him again, but I think it was good for the girls to feel like he really was in their corner.
Chapter 24:
Although the page count may be skewed somewhat, this chapter's the equivalent of the the Adoration chapter back in the first story and the Odmience's escape in part two: a halfway point that marks a major shift we'll be reckoning with all the way to the end. We see a bold display of Kedar's power when he tanks a barrage of bullets (and get the twist that his powers work on holy ground), we get him engaging in an ideological duel, followed by a proper fight without a definitive winner. And, after all that, the spirit within Sadie's stigmata gets involved, if only for a moment.
It was always the intention that Kedar invite comparisons to the Seraphim, and I think some of his actions here exemplify what a different beast he is. I feel like the Seraphim was pretty cartoonish, looking back. A ranting, rambling pastiche of everything I find repugnant in modern right wing Christianity plus explosives... or, you know, more explosives. Kedar, in turn, does not relish battle, is calm, quiet, and collected, and he at least has a few noble aspirations mixed in with his more vile ones. Rapists and racism earn his ire, he hates war, and he wants to accomplish his goal bloodlessly... but, as Sadie rightfully points out, he's out to brainwash the planet, he groups homosexuals in with pedophiles, and his view of abortion is willfully oversimplified. Therein lies the contradiction I wrote into Kedar- on one level, his ideals are the most understandable and least openly hateful in the trilogy... aaaaaaaaaaand his endgame is the most destructive of anyone. Welp.
By the end we get to actually put a character to the name of Father Zein, who ended up being a real favorite character of mine relative to their limited number of appearances on the page. More on them next time.
Chapter 25:
The plot only spends a little time in Sanctuary, but I strived to make it a sufficiently engaging step on the journey. Comic books have their share of technologically advanced utopias that find themselves on the brink of battle like Wakanda and Genosha, Sanctuary is kinda the opposite. It is low tech, pastoral, and exists as the result of war and the breakdown of the government. But figures like Father Zein are there to give it order and heal the afflicted. Zein hints there's some tension around, but it is still people of different backgrounds, largely abandoned, bringing themselves together to push through horrific circumstances.
Sadie's inching closer to a bit of a breaking point here, this story bullies her pretty bad. Part of the problem with writing the three entries in the trilogy individually without overarching plans was I wanted to be satisfied with where the individual stories left her, so she only changes in smaller, subtler ways throughout the three entries. She hasn't seen a huge character shift, she's always been good at heart, if sometimes rough at the edges. As she acknowledged, different year, different cult, still on the beach trying to keep Cassie in one piece. But we have gone from, "Holy crap, my girlfriend is a superhero, this is so cool" to, "Holy shit, what is happening anymore?! And Cassie, what is wrong with you?!" to, "This is bigger than me now." Not that that's an easy jump to make, not that she isn't freaking out about it inside again here. But it is change. Incidentally, I don't use any "four letter words" when I write these to keep in the comic book style. But I assure you if I was writing this all on my own, Sadie would say, "Holy shit" a lot, lol.
Anne, who is elderly and grumpy while still proving helpful and good, was named after my grandmother. No particular need to read any further than that.
Chapter 26:
There's not really anything else in the trilogy like this chapter. It's told almost entirely in first person (which, by the way, is usually my preferred way to write for my original material), we get one of the Order of Nephilim chapters directly from one of its would-be members, and we get a follow up on Gedeyon's seemingly standalone chapter.
Zein fills a similar function to those that Joshua Leibowitz and Lupe played before- they're someone with a different life experience from everyone else in the story so far who brings a different perspective and their own wisdom to the events going on and ends up being a sign of hope and change. In a way that mirrors how Kedar is the trilogy's only Catholic big bad, Zein is the first truly subversive practicing Catholic of the trilogy besides Cassandra herself. And I am still calling Cassandra a subversive here, even if she's managed to keep her romantic and church lives separate, because she still knows the rules and is still defying them. My faith's ostracization of our queer and non gender confirming siblings, the refusal of women and the non conforming to enter the priesthood, and much else remains degrading and embarrassing, and yet I still refuse to leave, because I continue to believe we can be better. And that people willing to fight for that need to be on the inside to do so... and that people braver than me need to keep demanding change, and the quiet, timid people like me need to get off our damn keyboards and do more for change in our own communities.
Father Zein is named for an old high school/college friend of mine named Zaynaba. In hindsight it was a bit of a funny choice, as the name is Arabic and the friend was Muslim, but as Zein was a child their parents clearly didn't exactly linger on too much, I don't think it's unbelievable they just picked a name they thought was pretty. Zein's two names are both there within the Zaynaba name, just under different spellings and written as a non-binary character. Zaynaba was always someone cool to be around in school, and was another queer friend who I ended up giving a shout out to.
Chapter 27:
I've been alluding to this chapter in closing notes in both the first and second reuploads now, so I guess it's finally time to break it down. I said I thought I figured out a better answer than just waiting for the Catholic Church to get better, and, ultimately, it's a lot simpler, yet a lot harder than I was ever willing to accept. As Father Zein says, "Stop trying to convince yourself your religion is so special." Something the excellent episode of Bluey, Library (yes, really) finally helped me figure out the finer details of.
This was kind of a rough truth for me to finally face about myself and my beliefs. Catholicism is the oldest in Christianity, Catholicism is branch is the one my ancestors followed, Catholicism insists that there is this great, divine poetry to the universe that I've always jammed with, and still do. But while I maintain my faith in God, I view Catholicism as something increasingly wordly. And no matter its age and no matter its history, it's still a belief system that only exists today because individual people believe it does. I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but I don't believe God takes a special interest in holding onto the threads keeping Catholicism together, or at least no more than for the rest of the religions we as people came up with.
I think I've already said what that means in practice, but to reiterate: my beliefs are my own. Everyone's beliefs are their own. Me and a lot of other people just collectively call our belief Catholicism. But the Catholicism that matters to me most isn't the church of old, it's what we're doing now to live out God's vision. These old ideals of what the faith must be only exist as long as they continue to be given power, and I, as one Catholic living in this moment, say it's time to move on from the worst of our history. It's time to welcome our LGBTQ siblings, it's time to be pragmatic about birth control, it's time to allow those beyond a single portion of the gender-identifying populace into the priesthood. And if we cannot feel at home with these beliefs in our churches, then it's time to go elsewhere. The centralized church would have you believe they are the only true Catholicism, but I just don't buy that anymore. They can try and call others heretics and threaten them, maybe even us, at this point, with excommunication. I am at a point in my life I will not accept such ideas being suppressed anymore.
Just as I've been writing this, I've begun accepting zoom links to begin doing mass with a parish run by a womanpriest, because it just feels like it falls more in line with my own values as a Catholic. I am going to continue attending mass in person as well, I do still enjoy my sense of community there, but I'm branching out. I'm defying dogma because it just doesn't fit with my ideals. It's a small step, I acknowledge, but I hope it leads to more from me. I need to demand more, more of my faith, and more of myself.
Catholicism by itself is just another religion, it isn't special. But it's special to me. And as one of the countless living Catholics I have little doubt feels tired of our past failures holding us back from how much more we could be, I demand better.
Chapter 28:
I had a really good time doing a classic, crazy elevated DC World War II story here, complete with vile scientists and weird ass magical powers. A lot of this was to fit in with the lore around the Spear of Destiny, but a nice fringe benefit was, "You know, I feel really kinda bad about featuring a bunch of villains from backgrounds and folklore not my own... let me do a little something to even things out by making characters from my national ancestries, German and Scandinavian, into the worst bastards possible." Gerulf Hróðvitnisson is totally original outside of the fact that the implication is he is the son of the mythological Hati Hróðvitnisson, which would make him grandson to Fenrir and great grandson to Loki. As the Spear suggests, he's a wolf that can take on the appearance of a man, not the other way around. Siegmund Krieger is an extremely tertiary preexisting DC character, the father of supervillain Captain Nazi who basically made the food of the gods he took. I think he's appeared in, like, less than 10 panels total in all of DC. There is a definite possibility I have written more content for the character Siegmund Krieger than anyone else who has ever lived. That amuses me. I was totally open to using another Nazi Scientist for the purpose, but pickings were slimmer than I thought they'd be when I was doing my research. And there are so many original characters in play already, I thought it'd be nice to feature someone more who is actually a DC character, no matter how minor.
It's at this point I need to acknowledge a certain change in my storytelling tactics that, if we have any bigger DC history buffs in the audience than me, probably deserves an explanation. It's pretty hard to reconcile what we see and know of Kedar right here with the history of the Spear of Destiny. I just didn't do my due diligence on the research, I admit it. I always just assumed the Spear of Destiny was a plot device introduced in All Star Squadron that was reclaimed from Nazi Germany after World War II, but a more thought deep dive into the more comprehensive DC wikis indicate its history is a lot more thorough and well documented. than I gave it credit for. The fact that I didn't build out a super great explanation for how Kedar came about it is probably going to need at least a minor fix when I get to an upcoming chapter.
By the time I wrote this version of the story, I'd been trying to complete some version of Da Pacem Domine for something like five to six years. I didn't want getting bogged down in continuity to slow the momentum I was keeping up, even though I've really loved to keep true to continuity in the past. So, in this case, things get played a little fast and loose. I admit it. I hope you enjoy the story anyway.
Chapter 29:
This chapter's title and and its companion later on, "One Shot: Batgirl and Robin" are, to some extent, written as a gag. Across lots of big comic events, it's not uncommon for tie-in issues to have annoyingly similar names and confiding chronology. Luckily for the readers here, I keep everything in the right order.
Over the course of writing this one and that one, these chapters kinda turned into my farewell to writing Tim and Stephanie. They remain in this story's plot until the end, but this is the last time in the trilogy the chapters are written from their POVs. I kinda wanted to make up to Tim for how he got sidelined back in Times of Heresy, so he got more to do in this one, even if him having more to do sometimes meant he got beat up a bit worse, ha ha.
We'll get more of them in that aforementioned chapter later, but they get a few paragraphs to talk as a soon-to-be-married couple at one point here, which felt important to me. The fact that the characters get to actually age and move on to new parts of their lives was always a feature of this trilogy I enjoyed working with. I have my own fond memories of laying around with my wife while we were in our engagement phase and talking about what all was and wasn't going to be different when we finally got married, and I had a good time picturing that possibly challenging conversation ultimately going well for the both of them.
I still think we're eventually going to see Steph and Tim give their romance another shot in the comics (even if they gotta split Tim into two characters or something so they can keep Tim and Bernard around- wackier stuff has happened), but even if they don't, I take my own joy in their relationship in my own corner of the multiverse.
I am not telling you to go read it now, necessarily, but if you are curious about how Steph's first meeting with her daughter ended up going, I diiiiiid write a piece called "Cool Aunt" that explored it...
Chapter 30:
"Screw it, we're sticking her on a space station until this situation blows over," is probably the most audacious solution to a problem I proposed across this trilogy. I suppose it just goes to show how seriously Batman is treating a potential confrontation against a villain with the Spectre's powers at his disposal.
Chapter 31:
See that title? Can you picture how freaking annoying that has the potential to be when you're at the comic book shop? The thought of it makes me laugh.
As alluded to before, this is the last Steph and Tim POV chapter, and the last 1v1 fight either of them gets. Against one another, no less. Some of this circles back to reflections of stuff from the first Angel story- Steph's final fight in that one was with Jason Todd, so this time she faces off with a different Robin. From the bastardous one to the one she's in love with, to the point it hampers her ability to go all out. The current comics have reiterated time and again the two still care deeply about one another while they remain just friends (points for maturity, by the way, DC), this fight would be tough for any version of them. But the fact that they're doing this when they literally were just talking hours before about their shared future together adds a little something extra, I think.
Stephanie has pretty much always been depicted, including by me, as the scrappiest fighter in the Bat Fam. She's more inclined to rely on gadgets, she's physically less impressive and less well trained than the others, all that. At some point while I was writing this fight scene though, I asked myself, "Does she need to stay that way? Or can she pull out a surprise?" Her whipping out a pressure point barrage feels like a sudden moment, but I think it's perfectly reasonable she asked Cassie to help her beef up her hand to hand combat at some point and learned how to do some of those strikes. They wouldn't have been useful in any of the past fights, but Tim isn't a monster or a corpse, his pressure points are still vulnerable.
I was probably invoking a little of, "The Night Gwen Stacey Died" in that jump off the roof sequence. Tim's conscious brain knows that even if he catches her, they're both going to sustain some serious injury, kinda like how Peter really wasn't in a position to save Gwen in that classic story. But, of course, he doesn't care, he needs to try anyway. And we get the reveal that Steph played him, but saved him in the process. It felt like a very her solution to the problem.
I've meant to highlight it before, but just to mention it a bit now- there were a lot more civilian identity fights in this one compared to the others. Nobody besides Cassandra at the Vatican has had a chance to change into their costumes, a lot of this they're just doing in their street clothes and with whatever bits of equipment they can get out of the bug out bags. I had fun with that, felt like it gave this entry a bit more of its own unique identity.
Chapter 32:
Feels like I only have so many first in my writing career left, and it felt pretty damn substantial to check off another one here. For the first time in my life, I wrote a sex scene that was neither played for laughs nor ruined by the end. Maybe you could say I still chickened out a little by cutting away before things got any more graphic, but I'm gonna say I was allowing the ladies some privacy.
This moment has been hanging over the plot since the failed attempt back in Times of Heresy, and once Sadie got a substantial role in this entry, I knew I wanted to do this scene. I've reflected in the past that I don't think there's anything wrong with mindful sexual abstinence for religious reasons, that I don't think it automatically means unhealthy repression, and that it is a legitimate boundary that should be respected. But along with that- people can change. It's not inevitable, but it's not impossible. Cassandra's religious convictions seemingly reached their final form by the end of the original story, Times of Heresy involved her burying herself in more hateful convictions and then clawing her way back to where she was originally. But here, for the first real time in the series, she makes a different decision for herself. As Steph says back in Times of Heresy when Cassie gets all uppity about why she and Tim had sex, "It's because we wanted to."
I continue to believe sex should be treated seriously and mindfully. Anyone who wants to save themselves for marriage, I respect your decision, and I say follow that as long as it's what your heart is saying. But it might cause problems between you and your partner if they're more open to the possibility than you are- and for the love of all things holy, they're not bad or wrong for feeling that way. And just know that if you do change your convictions, you aren't bad or wrong for doing so. Regardless of what is the most truly ideal way one should go about life or relationships, your soul was not forever stained the time you first uttered a lie or took a few bucks from your parents when they weren't looking. Your soul will not be stained because the first time you had sex you did so out of wedlock, that concept of virginity is overblown and out of control.
I say all this because I so desperately wish someone could have gotten me to believe it when I was younger.
Chapter 33:
I always call these chapters "Ballroom Blitzes" in my notes, because they get willfully chaotic. We have a bunch of different types of monsters all working together simultaneously and, in spite of just how seemingly overwhelmed they should be, Cassie, Zein, and Sadie put up one hell of a fight. The whole, "What if Benjie lost his powers while he was split in half thing," was a moment I was especially pleased to have come up with. But, inevitably, this is about where the, "good guys suffer a major loss" has happened in the other two entries, so it happens again here. Hope the formula never got too tiresome.
Gag I considered including but decided not to to preserve the mood:
(Beginning of chapter, as the girls are cuddling)
SADIE: (Smirking) So, you still hate my tongue ring?
CASSANDRA: (Flustered) Never said that I do.
SADIE: Yeah, but it's your body language. At least it was until I started showing you what it can do.
CASSANDRA: It was—don't know— useful, probably.
(Sadie laughs)
Chapter 34:
It's a small moment, and one could argue it's even opportunistic, but I think the most meaningful moment here is Sadie taking communion. There's a real push and pull to everything going on in her life at this point. The Order of Nephilim are, almost certainly, worse in her eyes than the Voice of God were, even when (or maybe in part because) she's sympathizing with them. Her interaction with the Seraphim's forces back int he first story were traumatic, but they were also over quickly. Kedar's order has now threatened her multiple times and, indeed, they've taken the woman she loves too. Sadie's in a position to move into a fully maltheistic mindset.
And yet, she doesn't. Cassandra and Father Zein's mindsets still prove even more impactful. Maybe not enough to make a committed religious person out of her, but they are enough for her to try putting her faith in something else here. Again, maybe it's opportunistic. Maybe part of her is trying to cut a deal in that moment, that she's willing to fully open herself to belief if it means rescuing Cassie and putting an end to all this. The thing is though, of course, it doesn't really matter. She asked, and she received. Catholicism takes the accepting of the body of Christ as a serious matter requiring great decorum and these various prerequisites... but it's also something that we permit children to do as young as seven. And then they grow up to write Batman fanfics where they get the details wrong upon the first upload and nervously go back to re-edit things Tim said in one chapter so they don't look so dumb doing it... I'm sorry, where was I?
I can't believe something like that, done on a tiny, personal scale, and with the only intention being to get us closer to God, can be wrong, whoever is taking the Eucharist, and whatever the reason. This is why I've reiterated the point, repeatedly, "It isn't a reward, it's nourishment" and "Never deny Communion to anyone, for any reason" over the course of this story.
Not a whole lot else to say about this entry. It's pieces moving around, it's emotions bubbling over, it's all my favorite kinds of moves toward a climax. If you're reading this anyway, you've already accepted the possibility of spoilers down here, but I am gonna give a quick warning about kind of a meta detail. So, avoid it if you prefer. I think this is the first (and maybe only) chapter in the trilogy in which Cassandra doesn't appear at all that still uses the standardized chapter numbering. Hmmmm, does that mean anything? It might...
Chapter 35:
This is kinda the bittersweet follow up to Cassandra's revelation back with Father Zein. Monsignor Ryan and Saint Michael's will always be cherished memories and important steps on her journey, but she's realized she doesn't want to worship in a space that feels like it can't love all of her anymore. Sadie saw all of her and still loved her, Father Zein saw all of her and didn't tell her she was a heretic. She tried to keep these aspects of her life apart, and for a while, she could, but she just doesn't want to anymore. She hasn't lost her belief in God, she hasn't even lost her Catholicism, but she wants to be somewhere that both her and her beliefs will be nurtured rather than repressed. I haven't taken this route yet, personally, for one thing there isn't a congregation of Catholics (excommunicated or otherwise) within easy driving distance of me. There is this church in Minneapolis my wife and I adore when we got there (Saint Joan of Arc) that is an absolutely lovely, welcoming community, if we could go there all the time we would. But regardless, it is something I may well end up doing later in life. And to anyone who feels they need to do likewise, I respect that. I'm not saying we should expect to agree with everyone we go to church with or interact with in our communities, I don't seek an echo chamber. But disqualifying the value and holiness in a human life over ridiculous factors like sexual orientation or place of birth isn't simply disagreement, it's dehumanizing. My beliefs tell me when you say, "All are welcome," then, indeed, all must be welcomed. There's more nuance there, of course, we can't welcome those who would threaten others, but the basic framework in those three words are a fine place to start.
In spite of the failings Times of Heresy and this story bring out, I think Father Ryan proves his ultimate, fundamental decency in his response. Once I knew Cassie and Sadie were going to have sex, I figured we might need to see Father Ryan's response, just as someone from within the church. I lingered for a bit on what that might look like, and ultimately thought it would be both amusing and heartwarming if he was like, "Really? Only just now?" I'm sure some priests clutch their pearls any time they're told such a thing by a teenager or young adult, but Father Ryan's been doing this for quite a while and has always been on the more accepting side of things. Someone who's probably heard plenty of young people bare their souls about premarital relations and then assuring them, "It's all right, you're not going to Hell." His queer relations, I imagine, haven't always been so good, but even when Cassandra and he spoke back in Times of Heresy, he was calm to the point of frustration for Cassie.
As children, we do not always walk the paths our parents imagined for us. The best parents both know when to help put us back on the right track, but also when to accept our way and our dreams are not theirs, and keep on loving us anyway. In spite of all the times the narration calls him the Monsignor, the priest is most often called, "Father Ryan" when he and Cassandra are in the midst of their deepest moments of connection. He's been a sort of parent to her too, in all this, and he sees her spiritual life has grown up in a different direction from what he imagined it. But he still believes the best for her soul, as he's supposed to do.
Chapter 36:
Soundtrack Recommendation: The two aforementioned Within Temptations, A Demon's Fate and Hand of Sorrow still stand. In addition, Truth Beneath the Rose, also by Within Temptation, has been a recurring song I come back to when writing these stories. It feels pertinent here and when Nijah and Angel's fight scene comes up the chapter after this one.
As with the first three flashback chapters, there's only so much about the overarching plot we can learn from Nijah's flashback, so I explored various ways to spice up the formula. The opening is a fun bait and switch, because you're naturally assuming it's Sadie having this vision, only to later learn Nijah is showing the details to Cassandra. Also unlike the others, Nijah's supernatural background has basically nothing to with her childhood trauma. Everything that happened to her was the Taliban's doing, no supernatural terrors for her, just an oppressive regime.
I wrote some of this as early back as one of the previous drafts of Da Pacem Domine when Constantine and Montoya were still involved, but only on this version did I very nearly add a twist— that Rafik also survived the explosion. And that both he and Nijah were brought up by Kedar afterwards, but thar Rafik ultimately rejected the Order and Nijah resented him for it. The problem was that I was pretty late in the process before the thought occurred to me. And I figured if it was true, then hints about it would need to have been built into Nijah's character much earlier. I could have done it for the reupload, but ultimately didn't there either. The idea Nijah had an alternative but chose Kedar anyway would have still been interesting, bur I think it fits a little better to say she lost everything that day, and Kedar became her everything as a result.
Chapter 37:
Apart from the "father to his men" aspect of his character, Kedar was mostly fully formed going back to the earliest drafts. He was always a centuries old immortal crusader, always the product of rape by Geoffrey De Cantonna, and always fixated on purging the world from sin. Some older versions had some more quirks and weirdness attached to him that he picked up over the centuries, like that he was a hardcore Catholic literalist or that he had a truly medieval understanding of the world that would be alien even to the most hardcore Catholic conservatives. Ultimately though, I decided he was more compelling if some his views were more surprisingly modern while others were more stuck in the past. We see hints of genuinely decent moments of history Kedar has been a part of. He previously hinted at his own disdain for racism and sexual assault, he is meant to be kind of a complex man.
Some things did change. In some versions he utterly revered his father, up to those versions also calling him Kedar De Cantonna, but those were versions of the story where Geoff was still Azrael. And his queer moments were something added only in this version. Incidentally, in the crusades, homosexuality was treated with a lot less scorn than it is today. Same-sex relations between men (the thinking at the time was women never had them, because women didn't crave sex, cue huge eyeroll) fell into the category of, "unnatural relations," which also included sex with a woman out of wedlock. It was ultimately still viewed as sinful, but moreso as immature and acknowledged as something soldiers would do while off on crusades while away from their wives. That's still bad and it's still regressive, but I was surprised to learn Kedar's secret relationship would not have risen to the level of an extreme punishment like castration all on its own.
A while after I had all the members of the Order picked out, I kicked myself a little over there not being an alien in the group, I thought it would have been fun to mix one of them in with the folklore creatures. Adding Pius with his White Martian DNA was my next best thing.
I added a little something to this reupload as a, "Make of this what you will" moment-
A half-rotted strzygoń dragged itself across the sea from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to his village and claimed one of Kedar's neighbors killed his brother and very nearly killed him in the Crimean War. Kedar tried his best to reason with, then kill the strzygoń, but it felt like reality bent itself to the creature's bloodlust. Only when his target laid dead did the creature fall and turn to dust.
I said back in the reupload of Times of Heresy that it's possible Victor Lipov was genuinely supernatural. So if you want that explanation, this is what I'm suggesting. Not confirming, just suggesting...
Chapter 38:
I really felt like I was firing on all cylinders when I got to these last couple fight scenes. This one especially I was excited about from the moment I figured I could start setting big moments in dreams. Nijah throws everything she's got at Cassandra here, and I get to invoke that to stick in a bunch of past story cameos and such. The six who get lined up against her could hardly have less in common, some of them actively hate each other, but as phantoms, all that matters to them is making Cassie suffer. Lipov kinda became the ringleader of the attack, mostly because I think Cassandra felt the most hatred and the most unfinished with him. Shiva's always had a submissiveness to her, Cain doesn't even want to be here, Odmience and Seraphim she both defeated and knows are getting better, and Zsasz died by her hand. But Lipov obsessed over her specifically and, even if she saw him die, the fact that it was his own fault leaves something unresolved there, I figure.
We come back to the scene of her first kill yet again, working in elements of that flashback have been a staple across the whole trilogy, and this is the closest POV I ever wrote on it. A friend from my Batman fanfic group once provided the prompt, "What does Cass see when she gets fear gassed?" and my answer was, "Herself, covered in blood, feeling David Cain's hand on her shoulder, telling her how proud he is of her." Much thanks to that friend, because it set me up nicely for how this played out.
Since this is all just psychological warfare in the guise of physical combat, I got be a lot more violent with the imagery, what with Nijah cutting off Cassie's fingers and blinding her and all. That's why the dream aspect proved so fun here. And then, in the darkest moment, Cassie's cavalry arrives, knocks Nijah around, and reduces the shadows in pursuit of her to a non-issue.
The pursuit and fight in Nijah's own dreamscape ends up revealing how much self-loathing she's fighting inside. As much as she tries to deny it when it gets turned on her, Nijah and Cassie really do have a lot in common in terms of hating the people they once were, trying to bury themselves in their faiths, and taking commands from someone else for how to make themselves better people. It was probably inevitable Nijah would be my favorite Nephil, because I gave her the most development and, eventually, moved her toward redemption.
Chapter 39:
This chapter had kind of a funny reverberating effect on the reuploads. I remember struggling for a while on, "What's the Bat fam's X-factor here?" Bruce never goes into a confrontation with all his cards on the table, he or one of his allies can always figure a way to maneuver around a seemingly unbeatable situation, but I remember struggling to come up with a decent strategy. As I struggled with it, I realized I basically set something up for myself by accident- that Sadie and Steph are about the same size, and if carefully arranged, one could stand in for the other. Totally unplanned, but totally fit!
As I said, there was a reverberation as a result. When I did the reupload, I decided I was so happy with the various moments of Steph and Sadie playing off one another that I retconned Sadie into Steph's earlier years. I decided if they feel so much like old friends, I could actually make them old friends.
The flight into the final showdown is the last calm before the storm, and I had fun doing it. But out from the moments of joking about how tight a Batsuit can be, comes the chaos of the climax.
Chapter 40:
This is the second big ballroom blitz, as described earlier. Lots of chaos going on, lots of moving parts, but it was a lot of fun to put together. When I initially wrote this, I kinda just improvised the Sword of Salvation's power spreading out, but I got more into the details this time. I'd totally forgotten that the Spectre healed Cassandra back in chapter two, but when I was rewriting this time, I was reminded and worked it back into the plot as a tiny shred of the angel inside Cassandra's body, better justifying the spreading of the power.
To speak a little on how this chapter ended- In the earliest version, Kedar got his hands on Cassandra and threatened to cut her if the Spectre didn't come out where he could get it. It fits a little better in that the good guys are trying to save one of their own, but it's still the Bat Fam we're talking about here, it's always important they save everyone, and Kedar's betrayal of his own kin would make the Spectre angrier, I figure. I did think, on and off for a while, if I shouldn't write some kind of alternate scenario here. If I shouldn't have Kedar have a sudden, "Oh God, what am I doing?" moment. If anyone wants to picture that alternate scenario, I welcome it, but if I did write it, I feel like I'd need something else to take its place, I'd still want a proper final battle. If I'd been really committed to doing it that way, I'd have introduced another member of the Order or expanded the role of one of the members so they could usurp Kedar at the last moment. A sudden, "Maybe you can't do what's necessary, but I can!" moment. But none of the members felt sufficiently developed for that. So the only real subversion is that when the chips are down, when Kedar has a moment he can choose to do the right thing, he ultimately fails. To the agony of the rest of the world.
Chapter 41:
Soundtrack Recommendations: Maintain My Will Be Done, obviously. But much of the upcoming final battle was written to the sound of Rise Against's The Violence and Full Force Kamehameha off the Dragon Ball Super: Broly soundtrack.
I wanted to cover a lot of the world all at once in this chapter, but there's a lot that goes unsaid. We only really see the superhero perspective from Gotham. I welcome any speculation for what could be going on in Metropolis or Central City or wherever. We don't get any of the Arrow clan in Star City either, I figured it was better to just keep one short scene per location and I really wanted to follow up with Lupe. Ollie is very possibly being criticized for his atheism and Connor and Mia are probably trying to give him reassurance he's still a good man.
New to this upload is a vignette catching up with Cameron Gram for a moment, which I needed to make up an excuse for to get him out of Gotham. Cam is still a pretty loathsome character to me, but back in Times of Heresy, I suggested he was trying to improve himself, and we see that is playing out, along with the fact he's got a pretty nasty case of PTSD.
If you followed some allusions here and in past works, it should be pretty apparent who the man in Fawcett City is, but if it isn't, it'll be confirmed short.
The solution to how Cassandra dodged out Kedar's psychic onslaught has already been set up, but not revealed yet. I wonder how many readers figured it out...
Chapter 42:
This isn't the climax, but it is the final battle of the trilogy. The biggest source of inspiration for this fight was Showcase 61, in which the Spectre did battle with Shathan the Eternal, which is a balls to the wall issue of insanity where the Spectre is throwing planets and chucking the demon back in time to try and trap him in paradoxes and shit like that. Ironically, Cassandra ends up filling the Shathan role here, because Kedar is using the Spectre's power to increasingly ridiculous ends to try and finish the fight, but for reasons beyond him, nothing is working.
The only other thing going on is Sadie trying to rescue Nijah, which inches us toward the end of her character arc. Because as much as she still despises her, the answer to, "What would Cassie do right now?" is, "Save her, if I can." But more on that in the next chapter.
As I alluded to, one of the biggest domino falls was Cassandra's confession a couple chapters ago. The plan for that chapter was for it to serve as a nice little bait and switch. The whole scene is a little like Cassie's recorded video to the family before she walks into the Seraphim fight and her talk after she gets back from Star City in Times of Heresy. It initially appears that it's there to suggest I'm maybe letting Cassie get all her ducks in a row before I kill her off, but by now that trick almost certainly isn't working anymore. So it serves a secondary purpose- by Kedar's own outlook on sin, the Spectre's powers can't work on someone who's just received confession. Cassie has no sins he can exploit, and his attempts to do so end up splitting him off from the angel.
A few chapters ago in one of the notes, I alluded to the fact we had a chapter that only featured Cassandra's voice on a phone call, but still kept the normal chapter numbering. In case it wasn't totally obvious by now, the last words here make it clear- this one was never JUST Cassandra's story. She and Sadie ended up being co-leads.
Chapter 43:
At long last, I can talk about one last major source of inspiration, one that had enough impact that even mentioning it felt like it threatened to reveal everything: The surreal, Brooke Burgess masterwork that is the motion comic Broken Saints. I've been singing this thing's praises for a little longer than I've been writing this trilogy at this point, so you should check it out on your own. But spoilers ahead, I'm gonna be alluding to its ending. Because its ending, simply put, changed me.
Similar to this story, the climax of Broken Saints involves a madman out to save the world by putting the fear of God back into the population. He's masterminded this crazed multi-part scheme culminating in releasing psychic brainwaves across the planet to inflict massive suffering on the populace, under the presumption humanity needs to suffer more to be put on the right track to end war and pollution and whatnot. My grad school buddy referred to this as using a, "Weaponized Empath," a term I always loved. You can see much the same thing going on between that story and Kedar's endgame here, and, like the ending used here, the climax of Broken Saints is a rejection of that idea. The mass-suffering event operates on the assumption that humans are inherently cruel and selfish and it is the fear of retribution that makes us decent. As a typically cynical college student, I had days I took that mindset too. But Broken Saints rejected that by the time the climax was over. Humanity doesn't need frightening into submission, we're a naturally caring, empathetic species. The world was not saved at the end of Broken Saints by fear of the wrath of God, but by a message projected to the world that we need to choose idealism, choose altruism, and choose love.
Sadie's surreal, dreamscape confrontation with the Spectre felt cool and fun to do, of course the center of her being would be painted on canvas. And, in spite of the final battle being over, it's her confrontation with the Spectre that is this story's true climax. Ultimately, she does as I think we should all do: she acknowledges her hate, feels drawn to retribution, but decides it just isn't right. An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind, as the later, revised saying goes. Even what she does to Kedar she does to negate him as a threat and rid the world of the Spectre's influence more than to make him suffer.
I considered a version of this chapter where the Spectre either got an inordinate amount of control or it appeared they did, so Cassandra shared a fight with the spirit to snap Sadie out of it. Ultimately, I decided the final battle felt complete enough, it didn't need anything more, and Sadie confronting the Spectre was enough.
Let it be known- I've had the whole, "Why was it necessary for Jesus to be sacrificed" thing explained to me, I get it in ways Sadie doesn't, and I STILL find it a totally needless, failing to see the forest for the trees explanation. My take is Sadie's take. It's that God was one of us, died for sins that were not committed, and still offered humanity paradise. All of humanity. Not just Christians, not just Jews, not just "good people," all of us. On the grand, cosmic scale, it doesn't make any sense you could do anything in one lifetime to upset a morally good God enough to earn yourself eternal damnation. But it does make sense that an eternally loving, eternally good God could offer eternal salvation to all of their creation, no matter how wayward.
I begin the act of extremely self-indulgent end of story moments here when Cassie accepts Sadie's impromptu wedding proposal, a moment that, fast as it came, made me happy to canonize again. More on self-indulgent epilogues next chapter...
Chapter 44: