Author's Notes
Chapters 18 - 26
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Chapter 18
Technically, Uriel's name translates as "God is my Light" - the term I use here (Light of God) is almost an inverse of that definition, but it does match with some other translations I've seen. This variation fits better with the character and the series, so I went with it.
Okay, I've been a bit enamored by the concept of a Metatron since I first saw "Dogma" and then later read Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Wildly different concepts, both of which bearing only passing resemblance to my research since then, but still, enough to pique my curiosity.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
For all that it sets the stage for some big upcoming moments, there's nothing really in the way of spoilers here.
Okay, I've been a bit enamored by the concept of a Metatron since I first saw "Dogma" and then later read Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Wildly different concepts, both of which bearing only passing resemblance to my research since then, but still, enough to pique my curiosity.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
For all that it sets the stage for some big upcoming moments, there's nothing really in the way of spoilers here.
Chapter 19
"We must have their numbers, and so they must die." No, it never even occurred to Maya to ask. She's just not that aware. And since she is the sole decision-maker and has dominated the will and direction of Heaven, there is no dissension or second-guessing. (It's "groupthink" to a bizarre extreme.) The sole exception is Uriel, who cast off the mantle of Thanatos in protest.
Traditionally, the empyrean (or an empyrean, depending on the source) is the highest place in Heaven and the home of God. I've just adapted it for my use here. The number seven is taken from the "Seven Heavens" concept and lines up with not just the number of Choirs of angels in (my) Heaven, but also the number of virtues in the Prismatic Order. At one point, I thought about making the Pandemonium War series a total of seven books, but I just had too much material to work through, and so three separate trilogies and one final follow-up ended up being the final count (planned as of now... who knows).
When you consider the size of the buildings in Medina (10-30 stories or more), keep in mind the world they're coming from. Architecture in Lokka hasn't progressed to "modern architecture" which requires steel beams. Anything this tall in Lokka is probably carved out of a mountain, but the angels don't have to worry as much about things like "physics" in a realm where reality bends to the will of one with sufficient power.
Guilian. Notice that even among a group as racially at-ease and integrated as Shadow Company, race is still the defining characteristic in discussing someone ("that human woman"), at least when there's a difference involved. Danner is still making a distinction here in the race of the woman because Guilian is a denarae. Had he been talking to another human, he wouldn't have included the word, he'd have said "that maid" or something. Racial difference is subconscious and ingrained, and it's going to take longer than their lifetime before things like that disappear.
The confrontation in the Hall of the Throne went fast. There was every expectation leading into it that they'd be able to confront Maya and defeat her, but by this point she's just too powerful. Even without the added power of the Throne, she probably would have been too much for them the way it played out. With it, she barely bats an eyelash in effort. Her attitude is very much akin to kings in history who have ruled by so-called "divine right" - the fact that they rule is "proof" that God wishes them to rule. ("Could I even sit in His Throne without divine permission?") There's a particular religious and logical fallacy at work here. The absence of God's visible hand isn't a sign that what you're doing is sanctioned. No one ever entered a war thinking that God was on the other guy's side, and I'm guessing hindsight is a real bitch as you try to figure out why you didn't win when God is supposed to be your copilot. (I don't think God's ever been on the losing side of a war unless He wanted to be.)
(Just a note, Rogziel is actually the angel name that translates to "Wrath of God". It has absolutely no bearing on this story, since I don't think I'll ever use his name as a character, but just FYI.)
I wrote the confrontation, specifically Kaelus's description, before I ever saw the movie "Hellboy" but the visual of Hellboy after his horns grow out is almost identical to what I had pictured here for Kaelus. I think I was originally inspired by some of the appearances of Ifrit in the Final Fantasy series, but I always pictured something closer to what Hellboy appeared as. (Speaking of his appearance, the guy's been imprisoned for millions, if not billions of years. It's a good thing his physique is self-imposed, cuz I think he'd have gotten really sick of doing pushups to keep in shape that long.)
Mikal's appearance shifts here as he drops the mantle of Thanatos completely. I drew his description from references I found in Islam to his appearance, which I thought added a different sort of flare than most angels get.
Now, it might occur to you (as it did to me) to ask why God would leave His Throne sitting here if He and Satan have removed themselves from active participation in the world. It holds tremendous power, but nobody's allowed to use it. If you're going to ask that, though, you should probably ask why He made the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. The answer is: Hush, He's God, and He has His reasons. :-)
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
The size of the buildings and narrow spacing actually ends up working against the angels in the end, as you see from the final battle. There's too many buildings and not enough open space, and while that gives the defenders more points of cover to use, it also gives the demons a lot of building material to create their safe pathways through the city.
The confrontation in the Hall established Maya's character fairly well, and little will change with regards to her fundamental belief in the rightness of her actions. Even in her final moments in this book, she is convinced that as an angel, only "good" can come as a result of her actions. She has to be convinced of this, otherwise she'd have to face not only the utter wrongness (even "evil") of her actions, but her own responsibility in failing God.
There's no logical reason, outside their involvement with mortals, why angels should be concerned with modesty. Not only do they reproduce asexually, but they don't have genitals or (that we know of) suffer from sexual lust in any way. (They probably don't have nipples an belly buttons either, come to think of it.) The only definite exception I found to this in research comes from the Book of Enoch (an Apocryphal book not included in the Christian Scriptures), where angels come to Earth and have sex with human women, and they're subsequently cast out. They beget the nephilim, half-angel half-human crossbreeds that are giants among men (think Goliath) who were subsequently wiped out by the Flood. This is actually a major influence on these books, since I think it's where I first really began researching the idea of a half-angel like Danner. If you're familiar with Enoch at all, you might even have recognized a name drop or two, but if not, don't worry. Anything important will come up again in the next trilogy, where I'll really get to dive into these ideas.
Traditionally, the empyrean (or an empyrean, depending on the source) is the highest place in Heaven and the home of God. I've just adapted it for my use here. The number seven is taken from the "Seven Heavens" concept and lines up with not just the number of Choirs of angels in (my) Heaven, but also the number of virtues in the Prismatic Order. At one point, I thought about making the Pandemonium War series a total of seven books, but I just had too much material to work through, and so three separate trilogies and one final follow-up ended up being the final count (planned as of now... who knows).
When you consider the size of the buildings in Medina (10-30 stories or more), keep in mind the world they're coming from. Architecture in Lokka hasn't progressed to "modern architecture" which requires steel beams. Anything this tall in Lokka is probably carved out of a mountain, but the angels don't have to worry as much about things like "physics" in a realm where reality bends to the will of one with sufficient power.
Guilian. Notice that even among a group as racially at-ease and integrated as Shadow Company, race is still the defining characteristic in discussing someone ("that human woman"), at least when there's a difference involved. Danner is still making a distinction here in the race of the woman because Guilian is a denarae. Had he been talking to another human, he wouldn't have included the word, he'd have said "that maid" or something. Racial difference is subconscious and ingrained, and it's going to take longer than their lifetime before things like that disappear.
The confrontation in the Hall of the Throne went fast. There was every expectation leading into it that they'd be able to confront Maya and defeat her, but by this point she's just too powerful. Even without the added power of the Throne, she probably would have been too much for them the way it played out. With it, she barely bats an eyelash in effort. Her attitude is very much akin to kings in history who have ruled by so-called "divine right" - the fact that they rule is "proof" that God wishes them to rule. ("Could I even sit in His Throne without divine permission?") There's a particular religious and logical fallacy at work here. The absence of God's visible hand isn't a sign that what you're doing is sanctioned. No one ever entered a war thinking that God was on the other guy's side, and I'm guessing hindsight is a real bitch as you try to figure out why you didn't win when God is supposed to be your copilot. (I don't think God's ever been on the losing side of a war unless He wanted to be.)
(Just a note, Rogziel is actually the angel name that translates to "Wrath of God". It has absolutely no bearing on this story, since I don't think I'll ever use his name as a character, but just FYI.)
I wrote the confrontation, specifically Kaelus's description, before I ever saw the movie "Hellboy" but the visual of Hellboy after his horns grow out is almost identical to what I had pictured here for Kaelus. I think I was originally inspired by some of the appearances of Ifrit in the Final Fantasy series, but I always pictured something closer to what Hellboy appeared as. (Speaking of his appearance, the guy's been imprisoned for millions, if not billions of years. It's a good thing his physique is self-imposed, cuz I think he'd have gotten really sick of doing pushups to keep in shape that long.)
Mikal's appearance shifts here as he drops the mantle of Thanatos completely. I drew his description from references I found in Islam to his appearance, which I thought added a different sort of flare than most angels get.
Now, it might occur to you (as it did to me) to ask why God would leave His Throne sitting here if He and Satan have removed themselves from active participation in the world. It holds tremendous power, but nobody's allowed to use it. If you're going to ask that, though, you should probably ask why He made the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. The answer is: Hush, He's God, and He has His reasons. :-)
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
The size of the buildings and narrow spacing actually ends up working against the angels in the end, as you see from the final battle. There's too many buildings and not enough open space, and while that gives the defenders more points of cover to use, it also gives the demons a lot of building material to create their safe pathways through the city.
The confrontation in the Hall established Maya's character fairly well, and little will change with regards to her fundamental belief in the rightness of her actions. Even in her final moments in this book, she is convinced that as an angel, only "good" can come as a result of her actions. She has to be convinced of this, otherwise she'd have to face not only the utter wrongness (even "evil") of her actions, but her own responsibility in failing God.
There's no logical reason, outside their involvement with mortals, why angels should be concerned with modesty. Not only do they reproduce asexually, but they don't have genitals or (that we know of) suffer from sexual lust in any way. (They probably don't have nipples an belly buttons either, come to think of it.) The only definite exception I found to this in research comes from the Book of Enoch (an Apocryphal book not included in the Christian Scriptures), where angels come to Earth and have sex with human women, and they're subsequently cast out. They beget the nephilim, half-angel half-human crossbreeds that are giants among men (think Goliath) who were subsequently wiped out by the Flood. This is actually a major influence on these books, since I think it's where I first really began researching the idea of a half-angel like Danner. If you're familiar with Enoch at all, you might even have recognized a name drop or two, but if not, don't worry. Anything important will come up again in the next trilogy, where I'll really get to dive into these ideas.
Chapter 20
I still laugh a little when I picture Maya's moment of triumph broken by a sneeze.
"Isn't it hard to hear when you're talking?" It's a little bit of a gag line, but perhaps more than a grain of seriousness to it. I think many (most?) people who claim to be speaking for God have this problem. There's a trick to being a good listener, and it's called shutting up. Trames is making a very simple, and perhaps not 100% applicable, point here (as he's wont to do) - if you're busy speaking for God, you can't hear Him speaking to you. There is a difference there, I should point out, between speaking for God and merely passing on His message. I'll leave it to experts to differentiate. (Note, I'm pretty sure I first had this idea following the Metatron appearance in "Dogma" which was coincidentally enough the first place I ever heard that term, actually.) Please note, I'm not picking on religious types, priests, prophets, etc, in this comment.
This is, quite simply, Trames's reason for being here. None of the current characters has had the background or development to bring them to his level of awareness (despite his questionable sanity), and for some strange reason, I just didn't have it in me to write a learned old sage accompanying them. I suppose I could have had Mikal develop enough through his experience on Lokka to resist her, but Trames is way more fun.
Think back to Mikal's method of invisibility on Lokka. He exerts his will and convinces people to ignore him. Maya's display of power here is really just a much more advanced version of that. With an effort of will, she overrides the will of each person and convinces their mind it is deaf, dumb, blind, and paralyzed. It's actually Kaelus's own power that's holding him aloft, just as Birch's own muscles are holding him motionless. When you utterly control someone's mind, you can make them do the hard work, all you're doing is directing it. (There's mention of something similar in Book1 when Mephistopheles muses to The Three about the nature of Kaelus's bonds, in that they draw their power from Kaelus himself.) Trames is immune from this sort of control because he's utterly convinced of his own freedom, and no power that relies on overcoming his mind and freewill will ever work on him. Since that is a major factor in how immortals deal with each other and with mortals, he has a tremendous advantage. Of course, as Maya pointed out, someone could just use their fist and cave in his head or rip out his heart, which is probably a greater threat from lesser demons than anything else.
The crux of Birch's (and the others') situation is the word Trames whispers to him: "realize". Birch is free to move, just as he can actually hear, his brain has just been told it can't and it takes Trames to un-trick his brain.
"A country that's saved at the expense of every basic principle of liberty isn't worth living in." It wasn't originally intended to be a key or repeated concept of any sort when I put it in Book1, it was just something to show Danner had a perspective on justice that would one day lend itself toward his Facet. When I got to this scene, though, a big bell went off and it fit in so smoothly I was tempted to think I'd secretly intended it that way all along (which would have been pure BS).
"I don't think it means quite what you think it does." My homage to Inigo Montoya. I couldn't do a direct quote, because Kaelus just doesn't have Inigo's speech patterns.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
Back in Book1, when James's jintaal first met Birch, they made reference to paladins who were kicked out of the Prismatic Order. The author of the chapter quote is one of the only other times in this trilogy I reference that concept. I'm sure I'll have a use for it in a later book, but as of yet, such a character hasn't introduced himself to me.
Trames's resistance to Maya comes from his utter certainty in his own will. As mentioned above, the trick Mikal did of making himself effectively invisible by influencing mortals to ignore his presence would never work on Trames - it's not just that he's self-aware and has freewill, it's that he's aware he's self-aware and has free will at all times. He's so thoroughly absolute in his self-awareness that no one could ever trick him into believing or doing something through force of will. Extreme subtlety might work, but so far nobody's tried that on him, that I know of.
I should point out that Trames has an intrinsic understanding that Satan truly is on par with God. This isn't a conversation he would have had with the main characters during their journey here. He generally seems to understand things that others are only barely beginning to grasp (such as the potential for freewill among immortals), if at all. (Again, Trames is not God - he's just a really, really old man who does too much thinking for his own good and was placed here in the story for a specific purpose.)
By this point in the story, both times Birch has touched the Absolute, his awareness of it is hampered by his mistaken belief that he's feeling God's presence. The second he conceives of it as God, his awareness vanishes. When he reaches again, he finds what he was seeking - he truly finds God's presence, and he senses it's not the same thing, even if he doesn't understand.
"Isn't it hard to hear when you're talking?" It's a little bit of a gag line, but perhaps more than a grain of seriousness to it. I think many (most?) people who claim to be speaking for God have this problem. There's a trick to being a good listener, and it's called shutting up. Trames is making a very simple, and perhaps not 100% applicable, point here (as he's wont to do) - if you're busy speaking for God, you can't hear Him speaking to you. There is a difference there, I should point out, between speaking for God and merely passing on His message. I'll leave it to experts to differentiate. (Note, I'm pretty sure I first had this idea following the Metatron appearance in "Dogma" which was coincidentally enough the first place I ever heard that term, actually.) Please note, I'm not picking on religious types, priests, prophets, etc, in this comment.
This is, quite simply, Trames's reason for being here. None of the current characters has had the background or development to bring them to his level of awareness (despite his questionable sanity), and for some strange reason, I just didn't have it in me to write a learned old sage accompanying them. I suppose I could have had Mikal develop enough through his experience on Lokka to resist her, but Trames is way more fun.
Think back to Mikal's method of invisibility on Lokka. He exerts his will and convinces people to ignore him. Maya's display of power here is really just a much more advanced version of that. With an effort of will, she overrides the will of each person and convinces their mind it is deaf, dumb, blind, and paralyzed. It's actually Kaelus's own power that's holding him aloft, just as Birch's own muscles are holding him motionless. When you utterly control someone's mind, you can make them do the hard work, all you're doing is directing it. (There's mention of something similar in Book1 when Mephistopheles muses to The Three about the nature of Kaelus's bonds, in that they draw their power from Kaelus himself.) Trames is immune from this sort of control because he's utterly convinced of his own freedom, and no power that relies on overcoming his mind and freewill will ever work on him. Since that is a major factor in how immortals deal with each other and with mortals, he has a tremendous advantage. Of course, as Maya pointed out, someone could just use their fist and cave in his head or rip out his heart, which is probably a greater threat from lesser demons than anything else.
The crux of Birch's (and the others') situation is the word Trames whispers to him: "realize". Birch is free to move, just as he can actually hear, his brain has just been told it can't and it takes Trames to un-trick his brain.
"A country that's saved at the expense of every basic principle of liberty isn't worth living in." It wasn't originally intended to be a key or repeated concept of any sort when I put it in Book1, it was just something to show Danner had a perspective on justice that would one day lend itself toward his Facet. When I got to this scene, though, a big bell went off and it fit in so smoothly I was tempted to think I'd secretly intended it that way all along (which would have been pure BS).
"I don't think it means quite what you think it does." My homage to Inigo Montoya. I couldn't do a direct quote, because Kaelus just doesn't have Inigo's speech patterns.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
Back in Book1, when James's jintaal first met Birch, they made reference to paladins who were kicked out of the Prismatic Order. The author of the chapter quote is one of the only other times in this trilogy I reference that concept. I'm sure I'll have a use for it in a later book, but as of yet, such a character hasn't introduced himself to me.
Trames's resistance to Maya comes from his utter certainty in his own will. As mentioned above, the trick Mikal did of making himself effectively invisible by influencing mortals to ignore his presence would never work on Trames - it's not just that he's self-aware and has freewill, it's that he's aware he's self-aware and has free will at all times. He's so thoroughly absolute in his self-awareness that no one could ever trick him into believing or doing something through force of will. Extreme subtlety might work, but so far nobody's tried that on him, that I know of.
I should point out that Trames has an intrinsic understanding that Satan truly is on par with God. This isn't a conversation he would have had with the main characters during their journey here. He generally seems to understand things that others are only barely beginning to grasp (such as the potential for freewill among immortals), if at all. (Again, Trames is not God - he's just a really, really old man who does too much thinking for his own good and was placed here in the story for a specific purpose.)
By this point in the story, both times Birch has touched the Absolute, his awareness of it is hampered by his mistaken belief that he's feeling God's presence. The second he conceives of it as God, his awareness vanishes. When he reaches again, he finds what he was seeking - he truly finds God's presence, and he senses it's not the same thing, even if he doesn't understand.
Chapter 21
Note the similarity between how approaching the Throne of God works versus the Barrier placed on the Merging in Lokka. The more powerful the entity, the more restrictive the force. I like how it pairs nicely with the idea that the weakest may approach the Throne and draw nearer to the seat of God's power than can their more powerful brethren.
Uriel's comment about how "we allowed ourselves" is a confirmation of hints dropped previously that Uriel himself was at one point under Maya's influence. The extent of which, and how he broke free, have yet to be revealed.
As mentioned above, Trames's comment about Kaelus concentrating on floating is flippant, but entirely true, since it was Kaelus's own power being used to suspend himself aloft.
Danner is finally starting to come to mature and master his impulses. It took something as drastic as Trebor's death to force it on him, and if he hadn't had his moment of self-awareness in the tent (kything with Trebor), his friend was going to point out that he needed to.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
"I'm the strongest, so I'm in charge" is really a terrible way to rule in general. Sure, Kaelus pulls it off pretty well I suppose, but in the long run, it just doesn't stand the test of time. It was a useful tool in this first trilogy, and it makes a sense in the limited existence of the immortals (strange as that phrase might sound), but it's something that will need to be addressed in future books.
Uriel's comment about how "we allowed ourselves" is a confirmation of hints dropped previously that Uriel himself was at one point under Maya's influence. The extent of which, and how he broke free, have yet to be revealed.
As mentioned above, Trames's comment about Kaelus concentrating on floating is flippant, but entirely true, since it was Kaelus's own power being used to suspend himself aloft.
Danner is finally starting to come to mature and master his impulses. It took something as drastic as Trebor's death to force it on him, and if he hadn't had his moment of self-awareness in the tent (kything with Trebor), his friend was going to point out that he needed to.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
"I'm the strongest, so I'm in charge" is really a terrible way to rule in general. Sure, Kaelus pulls it off pretty well I suppose, but in the long run, it just doesn't stand the test of time. It was a useful tool in this first trilogy, and it makes a sense in the limited existence of the immortals (strange as that phrase might sound), but it's something that will need to be addressed in future books.
Chapter 22
Regarding the chapter quote, I've been told the same principle holds true with children.
I hate doing it, but this chapter starts an unfortunate feature that will endure for the rest of this book. "In the two weeks since they'd left Medina..." I have to start jumping forward intermittently, sometimes in fairly large doses, driving the pace of the book against the deadline established by the known pregnancies back on Lokka. Time passes as a two-for-one in the immortal realms, so in order to keep the pregnancies a relevant threat, there's twice as much time to get through as would otherwise be the case. I got away with a few days here and there in Book1 and some of the same in Book2 where nothing was going on with a particular character/group during the interim, but that's only sort of the case here. They're in the middle of a war now, and their lives are about to devolve into an ever-present drone of combat, recovery, death, and retreat. Things are happening, and I'll do my best to touch base with the relevant characters often enough to keep you apprised of what's going on throughout Heaven.
Note the difference in terminology. Garnet is saying "our company" while Siran is deliberately needling him with "his company". That word choice is the entire point of Siran's conversation here, as is his use of the past tense. Later, as he switches to "your company" it becomes present tense. His final barb ("where you yield, we yield") is really what drives it home, as he intends. This is probably the longest conversation Siran has ever and will ever have, but what better person to convey this message. Oh, Brican was about to try, but Siran did it better, I think.
Of course, then there's Brican's comment, "Your company is ready to move out anytime, sir." That sneaky little bugger.
Gerard, of course, receives the fruits of Garnet's newfound realization and confidence. It's not often you see into Gerard's head, and honestly, the first time I was in there, I was surprised the walls weren't coated with new and inventive strings of swear words. Though, come to think of it, I have had to get inventive with some of his terms, if only to make sure he doesn't devolve into full-on foul language as we know it in this world. The "F-word" and most other so-called "four letter words" don't exist in Lokka, for example, so to keep Gerard's cursing fresh, he gets the benefit of some odd word couplings to create his more colorful language, at least what you see on the page.
Okay, I'll admit, the bows of the angels were inspired by Hank's bow from the old "Dungeons & Dragons" cartoon. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're probably either too young and/or you should consider your childhood deprived. It was short-lived greatness.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
I had to work to keep Hoil's name in the story. His part is miniscule, in keeping with the fact that he's not a fighter and has very little place being there. Ultimately, I probably could have done without him and used Danner as a catalyst for revealing Uriel's part in Alanna's fate, but that role just felt more natural coming from Hoil, who would give anything to see her again, whereas Danner knows nothing of his mother and feels little or no emotional connection to finding her.
Birch's ill feelings regarding their retreat are some of the first early signs of his thoughts and feelings that lead to his eventual outburst with Perklet. I had to go back and bring more of them out, because while his emotions and reaction later made perfect sense to me, I wasn't convinced it came through strongly enough in the chapters preceding his outburst. Since that scene is a fairly important confrontation between the two, the requisite buildup had to be in-place to make it feel right.
I hate doing it, but this chapter starts an unfortunate feature that will endure for the rest of this book. "In the two weeks since they'd left Medina..." I have to start jumping forward intermittently, sometimes in fairly large doses, driving the pace of the book against the deadline established by the known pregnancies back on Lokka. Time passes as a two-for-one in the immortal realms, so in order to keep the pregnancies a relevant threat, there's twice as much time to get through as would otherwise be the case. I got away with a few days here and there in Book1 and some of the same in Book2 where nothing was going on with a particular character/group during the interim, but that's only sort of the case here. They're in the middle of a war now, and their lives are about to devolve into an ever-present drone of combat, recovery, death, and retreat. Things are happening, and I'll do my best to touch base with the relevant characters often enough to keep you apprised of what's going on throughout Heaven.
Note the difference in terminology. Garnet is saying "our company" while Siran is deliberately needling him with "his company". That word choice is the entire point of Siran's conversation here, as is his use of the past tense. Later, as he switches to "your company" it becomes present tense. His final barb ("where you yield, we yield") is really what drives it home, as he intends. This is probably the longest conversation Siran has ever and will ever have, but what better person to convey this message. Oh, Brican was about to try, but Siran did it better, I think.
Of course, then there's Brican's comment, "Your company is ready to move out anytime, sir." That sneaky little bugger.
Gerard, of course, receives the fruits of Garnet's newfound realization and confidence. It's not often you see into Gerard's head, and honestly, the first time I was in there, I was surprised the walls weren't coated with new and inventive strings of swear words. Though, come to think of it, I have had to get inventive with some of his terms, if only to make sure he doesn't devolve into full-on foul language as we know it in this world. The "F-word" and most other so-called "four letter words" don't exist in Lokka, for example, so to keep Gerard's cursing fresh, he gets the benefit of some odd word couplings to create his more colorful language, at least what you see on the page.
Okay, I'll admit, the bows of the angels were inspired by Hank's bow from the old "Dungeons & Dragons" cartoon. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're probably either too young and/or you should consider your childhood deprived. It was short-lived greatness.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
I had to work to keep Hoil's name in the story. His part is miniscule, in keeping with the fact that he's not a fighter and has very little place being there. Ultimately, I probably could have done without him and used Danner as a catalyst for revealing Uriel's part in Alanna's fate, but that role just felt more natural coming from Hoil, who would give anything to see her again, whereas Danner knows nothing of his mother and feels little or no emotional connection to finding her.
Birch's ill feelings regarding their retreat are some of the first early signs of his thoughts and feelings that lead to his eventual outburst with Perklet. I had to go back and bring more of them out, because while his emotions and reaction later made perfect sense to me, I wasn't convinced it came through strongly enough in the chapters preceding his outburst. Since that scene is a fairly important confrontation between the two, the requisite buildup had to be in-place to make it feel right.
Chapter 23
It's not often you see things from within Malith's perspective. He's obviously not supposed to be likable, but the more I got in there, the more I understood him, at least. He started out a little one-dimensional, then gradually picked up a second dimension to his character, but it wasn't until a chance line I saw somewhere about how authors should improve their villains that I realized there was still more missing from him. You only see the barest signs of this here, but keep your eyes on future moments in his head and you'll begin to understand where his character ends up. In fact here he appears slightly more chauvinistic and racist than he really is, just as a way of antagonizing them, which is really very petty and shows his over-confidence and brashness.
The way Uriel folds his wings about him (two wings stretched down to wrap around his ankles, two like a mantle across his shoulders and chest, two settled behind him) is inspired by descriptions of how Seraphim appear in certain religious texts of our world. The major difference is the wings across the shoulders, rather than covering their eyes (as described, for instance, in the Book of Isaiah) - that sort of thing would have been ridiculous in this context. The descriptions of the angels from our texts are florid and highly symbolic, and some aspects translate into a work such as this much better than others.
Malith lays out a very negative view of the six virtues, and this warped perception tends to underlie the Black Viscia and how those of evil persuasion do not understand the virtues. After all, since the only way to truly understand the virtues is to practice them, that would essentially be an impossibility for any demon (Kaelus is the exception) at this point in the world. It also gives you an idea of how the Black paladins were turned against their former brothers - if you can twist their perceptions about their beliefs, then they're believing a lie and are more susceptible to further corruption.
I find it amusing the depth to which Maya is completely unaware of herself. She's talking to herself, out loud, commenting on how they now use spoken language, a lesser means of communication, to speak to each other, and became more humanlike in appearance (i.e. - more like the imperfect) to demonstrate perfection. Her line, "To break faith with me is to break faith with Him" is appropriated from the movie Ladyhawke. It's such an amazing combination of arrogance, self-righteousness, and religious corruption that I couldn't resist using it for Maya - it's so her!
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
(No spoilers, I guess.)
The way Uriel folds his wings about him (two wings stretched down to wrap around his ankles, two like a mantle across his shoulders and chest, two settled behind him) is inspired by descriptions of how Seraphim appear in certain religious texts of our world. The major difference is the wings across the shoulders, rather than covering their eyes (as described, for instance, in the Book of Isaiah) - that sort of thing would have been ridiculous in this context. The descriptions of the angels from our texts are florid and highly symbolic, and some aspects translate into a work such as this much better than others.
Malith lays out a very negative view of the six virtues, and this warped perception tends to underlie the Black Viscia and how those of evil persuasion do not understand the virtues. After all, since the only way to truly understand the virtues is to practice them, that would essentially be an impossibility for any demon (Kaelus is the exception) at this point in the world. It also gives you an idea of how the Black paladins were turned against their former brothers - if you can twist their perceptions about their beliefs, then they're believing a lie and are more susceptible to further corruption.
I find it amusing the depth to which Maya is completely unaware of herself. She's talking to herself, out loud, commenting on how they now use spoken language, a lesser means of communication, to speak to each other, and became more humanlike in appearance (i.e. - more like the imperfect) to demonstrate perfection. Her line, "To break faith with me is to break faith with Him" is appropriated from the movie Ladyhawke. It's such an amazing combination of arrogance, self-righteousness, and religious corruption that I couldn't resist using it for Maya - it's so her!
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
(No spoilers, I guess.)
Chapter 24
I especially like the quote from Uriel that starts this chapter. I was watching the special features for The Crow many years ago, and there's an excerpt from an interview with Brandon Lee there. In it, he quotes Paul Bowles from The Sheltering Sky. It's a lengthy quote about how we're able to treat life as an "inexhaustible well" because we don't know when we will die. Things that will really only happen a handful of times (sitting and watching the sun rise/set, for example) feel limitless, like we might do them over and over again days, months, years into the future - and yet we never really know if we'll even survive to the end of that same day. Lee, of course, died making that movie, probably not long after recording that interview. This chapter quote was inspired by that feeling he invoked.
I have a lot of sympathy for Brad, probably because my childhood and early adulthood are still pretty fresh in my mind, and I vividly remember several instances where I let my father down. I've felt that burning shame, that moment when you feel about thiiiiiiiiis big, that so many of us have felt. I would rather have cut out my own heart than have my dad tell me he was disappointed in me. And sometimes you try so hard to prove yourself, you end up with the reverse effect and it crushes you. Then you're set straight and shown how to learn from it, given a chance to grow, and ultimately (hopefully) still know that even amidst a moment of disappointment, the love between you is unchanged and unstrained.
Just a thought on Malith. His grandfather was a Red paladin, as we learned in the previous chapter. His mother was a "street madam," his father unknown. That means the daughter of a paladin became a prostitute, and one of some renown or position (the term "madam" implies this uncertain hierarchy), then had a child by some unknown man and remained close enough that at some point, her son Malith was enrolled as a paladin, possibly even under his grandfather's personal tutelage and acknowledgment. There's a lot of potential there for a messed up background on him, all embedded within two throw-away remarks.
I can't really say much about the pacing of the relationship between Flasch and Anolla, since I started to fall in love with my wife at about the same speed. I've given up trying to write a relationship that develops along the speed of what people outside of a Disney movie would consider normal - they develop at the speed they're meant to for the people involved, and they fall apart or stay together under their own weight and inertia.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
I thought about writing a scene where Anolla's mother gives a scarf to Garet, most likely during the moment that Flasch overhears at their farm house, but then I wondered what it said about Garet's fate compared to Flasch's, if they were both presented with tokens of love and protection. The comparison would be inevitable, and it would be an insult to Alessa and Garet's love.
I have a lot of sympathy for Brad, probably because my childhood and early adulthood are still pretty fresh in my mind, and I vividly remember several instances where I let my father down. I've felt that burning shame, that moment when you feel about thiiiiiiiiis big, that so many of us have felt. I would rather have cut out my own heart than have my dad tell me he was disappointed in me. And sometimes you try so hard to prove yourself, you end up with the reverse effect and it crushes you. Then you're set straight and shown how to learn from it, given a chance to grow, and ultimately (hopefully) still know that even amidst a moment of disappointment, the love between you is unchanged and unstrained.
Just a thought on Malith. His grandfather was a Red paladin, as we learned in the previous chapter. His mother was a "street madam," his father unknown. That means the daughter of a paladin became a prostitute, and one of some renown or position (the term "madam" implies this uncertain hierarchy), then had a child by some unknown man and remained close enough that at some point, her son Malith was enrolled as a paladin, possibly even under his grandfather's personal tutelage and acknowledgment. There's a lot of potential there for a messed up background on him, all embedded within two throw-away remarks.
I can't really say much about the pacing of the relationship between Flasch and Anolla, since I started to fall in love with my wife at about the same speed. I've given up trying to write a relationship that develops along the speed of what people outside of a Disney movie would consider normal - they develop at the speed they're meant to for the people involved, and they fall apart or stay together under their own weight and inertia.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
I thought about writing a scene where Anolla's mother gives a scarf to Garet, most likely during the moment that Flasch overhears at their farm house, but then I wondered what it said about Garet's fate compared to Flasch's, if they were both presented with tokens of love and protection. The comparison would be inevitable, and it would be an insult to Alessa and Garet's love.
Chapter 25
Again, sorry about the giant leaps forward in time. This isn't the first and it certainly won't be the last. Some things just take time to happen, like training the dead souls, and I try to skip over the less interesting parts of the process without sacrificing the flavor of what's happening.
I feel I should point out that Uriel is being quite the optimist as he tries to shore up Birch's flagging confidence. When you consider the scope of the forces arrayed against him, no one strategy, no goal, no blow will finish a war of this magnitude. It's not that Uriel doesn't know this - he's too good a tactician to believe everything he's saying to Birch - this is just a motivational speech between two friends.
I thought long and hard about the concept of the Groves and whether I was going to be breaking my own rules by using them. Ultimately, they ended up fitting with the rules quite nicely and even tying a few things together that had been nagging me.
Michael originally recited something entirely different about fear and courage, I think I even called it the Catechism of Courage. When I went back, though, something felt familiar, and I finally realized it was (unintentionally) just too close the Litany Against Fear from the Dune series. So now the phrases Michael utters are no longer a formal chant and now just something he's pulling from training, probably something one of his instructors told them all.
"...there seems to be a surprisingly small number of dwarves and gnomes up here." It's not a major plot point, but it is a significant one in a philosophical sense. If you really think back across a few hints that have been dropped across the entire trilogy, you might have already figured out why this is the case. Otherwise, you'll have to bear with me quite a while. I don't think it's explained outright in this book, but it's significant enough that you can bet it'll come up again and again in the future.
I actually had to go back and take out a lot of Siran's dialogue, or at least edit him down to the terseness being ascribed to him. It was always part of his character, but it slipped by me a few times and he had some relatively lengthy bits of dialogue that had to be pared down. Even his shorter bits were cut back to highlight this verbal trait.
It's funny what we remember from childhood. When my next-oldest brother was in fifth grade (I was in first), he played King Nebuchadnezzar in a school musical entitled "It's Cool in the Furnace" - that was the first time I ever heard the names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Biblical book of Daniel, where they were thrown into a furnace by my evil brother.... er, King Nebuchadnezzar II, I mean. One of the songs from that musical stuck with me, though, and twenty or so years later it just popped into my head when I started writing about Dem as the blacksmith of Heaven. Surely he'd need assistants, and there are three of them, so their names became my little joke. (Ironically, I'm adapting names that were themselves adapted from the original Hebrew into Chaldean versions, although Meshrael comes close to returning to its roots of "Mishael" - the other two are nowhere close.) As a side note, four years later when my class did our fifth grade musical, we did "part 2" of that story, and I played Daniel and was thrown into the lion's den. I didn't steal the show like my brother did, but I still remember just about every word of the solo I got to sing.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
"Man was made out of the stuff of both good and evil, and doing completely without one destroys what he is and the thing that makes him truly great." In that one sentence, Birch nailed the reality of mortal souls in the afterlife - they were never intended to be there.
The Groves of Corruption were the product of a couple different things. One is that I need someplace safe for Birch and the others to reside in the sequel trilogies. Without the Groves in Hell to shelter them, they'd be easy to locate by the reigning demon princes and lords, and they'd be overcome in no time. The second was needing a place where Azazel could begin his instruction under Satan, and I needed a messenger who was not the deity of evil Himself. I had already established in my head that there's often a lingering echo of a powerful angel or demon who's slain because of my conceptualization of Selti. That tied in nicely with the Groves as a source of their creation and solved several problems at once.
The introduction of Samyaza's character is only of passing importance now, but I guarantee his name will come up again in the next trilogy.
Kaelus's "gut feeling" about avoiding the trap is actually a form of programming instilled by Satan. It keeps him where he needs to be when Azazel comes for him. Birch had the same thing happen to him during the war on the Barrier, where he found himself unable to join the fight, keeping him safe and ready to confront Malith. His death and miraculous revival via Kaelus's genesing a demon within him set the circumstances for the climax of the book and gave him the ultimate tool he needed.
"Kaelus was aware as never before that he possessed some of the same gift that previously was thought to exist in mortals. He had free will..." The key word here is "some" of the same gift. Kaelus is still limited in his thinking here, which is what leaves him vulnerable to Mephistopheles later on. If he had the same conviction and level of self-assurance Trames possesses, Mephistopheles wouldn't be able to affect him at all.
Dem's nature will become of tantamount importance in later books. I'm just saying, is all.
I feel I should point out that Uriel is being quite the optimist as he tries to shore up Birch's flagging confidence. When you consider the scope of the forces arrayed against him, no one strategy, no goal, no blow will finish a war of this magnitude. It's not that Uriel doesn't know this - he's too good a tactician to believe everything he's saying to Birch - this is just a motivational speech between two friends.
I thought long and hard about the concept of the Groves and whether I was going to be breaking my own rules by using them. Ultimately, they ended up fitting with the rules quite nicely and even tying a few things together that had been nagging me.
Michael originally recited something entirely different about fear and courage, I think I even called it the Catechism of Courage. When I went back, though, something felt familiar, and I finally realized it was (unintentionally) just too close the Litany Against Fear from the Dune series. So now the phrases Michael utters are no longer a formal chant and now just something he's pulling from training, probably something one of his instructors told them all.
"...there seems to be a surprisingly small number of dwarves and gnomes up here." It's not a major plot point, but it is a significant one in a philosophical sense. If you really think back across a few hints that have been dropped across the entire trilogy, you might have already figured out why this is the case. Otherwise, you'll have to bear with me quite a while. I don't think it's explained outright in this book, but it's significant enough that you can bet it'll come up again and again in the future.
I actually had to go back and take out a lot of Siran's dialogue, or at least edit him down to the terseness being ascribed to him. It was always part of his character, but it slipped by me a few times and he had some relatively lengthy bits of dialogue that had to be pared down. Even his shorter bits were cut back to highlight this verbal trait.
It's funny what we remember from childhood. When my next-oldest brother was in fifth grade (I was in first), he played King Nebuchadnezzar in a school musical entitled "It's Cool in the Furnace" - that was the first time I ever heard the names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Biblical book of Daniel, where they were thrown into a furnace by my evil brother.... er, King Nebuchadnezzar II, I mean. One of the songs from that musical stuck with me, though, and twenty or so years later it just popped into my head when I started writing about Dem as the blacksmith of Heaven. Surely he'd need assistants, and there are three of them, so their names became my little joke. (Ironically, I'm adapting names that were themselves adapted from the original Hebrew into Chaldean versions, although Meshrael comes close to returning to its roots of "Mishael" - the other two are nowhere close.) As a side note, four years later when my class did our fifth grade musical, we did "part 2" of that story, and I played Daniel and was thrown into the lion's den. I didn't steal the show like my brother did, but I still remember just about every word of the solo I got to sing.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
"Man was made out of the stuff of both good and evil, and doing completely without one destroys what he is and the thing that makes him truly great." In that one sentence, Birch nailed the reality of mortal souls in the afterlife - they were never intended to be there.
The Groves of Corruption were the product of a couple different things. One is that I need someplace safe for Birch and the others to reside in the sequel trilogies. Without the Groves in Hell to shelter them, they'd be easy to locate by the reigning demon princes and lords, and they'd be overcome in no time. The second was needing a place where Azazel could begin his instruction under Satan, and I needed a messenger who was not the deity of evil Himself. I had already established in my head that there's often a lingering echo of a powerful angel or demon who's slain because of my conceptualization of Selti. That tied in nicely with the Groves as a source of their creation and solved several problems at once.
The introduction of Samyaza's character is only of passing importance now, but I guarantee his name will come up again in the next trilogy.
Kaelus's "gut feeling" about avoiding the trap is actually a form of programming instilled by Satan. It keeps him where he needs to be when Azazel comes for him. Birch had the same thing happen to him during the war on the Barrier, where he found himself unable to join the fight, keeping him safe and ready to confront Malith. His death and miraculous revival via Kaelus's genesing a demon within him set the circumstances for the climax of the book and gave him the ultimate tool he needed.
"Kaelus was aware as never before that he possessed some of the same gift that previously was thought to exist in mortals. He had free will..." The key word here is "some" of the same gift. Kaelus is still limited in his thinking here, which is what leaves him vulnerable to Mephistopheles later on. If he had the same conviction and level of self-assurance Trames possesses, Mephistopheles wouldn't be able to affect him at all.
Dem's nature will become of tantamount importance in later books. I'm just saying, is all.
Chapter 26
So if you hadn't already guessed, here's Hoil's reason for coming. In Book2, it was briefly discussed that if Hoil did somehow go to Heaven when he died, he'd get to see his wife again, a possibility he was resigned to missing due to his criminal past. Think back to the letter he received from Maran (or rather from "no one") that started him on this particular journey. Maran foresaw the journey to Heaven (don't ask how...yet) and knew Hoil would take the chance if it was presented to him. Had Maran not contacted him, Hoil never would have even known about the journey.
I'll give some credit to Malith, he's clever enough to find a way to adapt a tactic used against him for his own purposes. There's a reason demons hiding in the ground is a new tactic in the war - we just saw Michael and the others do the same thing, just without the necessity of a cursed-soul bubble to hide in. The damned aren't sensitive to the stuff of Heaven like demons are, so that makes this tactic possible for them to emulate. Fortunately, since I already used the word "tokul" in Book1, it made for a nice reference here without absolutely needing to define it.
Just a note - the shell Alanna created when she "died" on Lokka wasn't in any way an angel, it really was just a husk. This is one of those things I was never terribly happy with, but given the circumstances of Danner's birth (which I wasn't going to change), the only other option was for her to somehow feign death (totally possible) and let herself be buried, then sneak out later. That just seemed absurd, though, so I was left with this idea, since something of her had to be left behind - she couldn't just vanish, or Hoil would have spent his life and fortune looking for her.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
When you get down to it, Alanna's execution and the effect it had on Uriel was the reason she came back to Heaven. She knew all along what would happen to her and what the end results would be, including that without Uriel being free from Maya's influence, the war would have been lost. Uriel would have accepted his task as Thanatos and wreaked havoc on Lokka, and he wouldn't have found himself in the situation Mikal did that brought him and Kaelus together, breaking Mikal free in turn. Maya couldn't have been barred from the Hall of the Throne, and thus her power couldn't have been broken so thoroughly, and nothing else that transpires in this book would have been possible. There will be more on Alanna's role in things explained in the next trilogy, but this is something to keep in mind for now.
Of course, it also sets up the final confrontation between Uriel and Camael rather nicely, as he finds himself tasked with meting justice to one of his own yet again.
I'll give some credit to Malith, he's clever enough to find a way to adapt a tactic used against him for his own purposes. There's a reason demons hiding in the ground is a new tactic in the war - we just saw Michael and the others do the same thing, just without the necessity of a cursed-soul bubble to hide in. The damned aren't sensitive to the stuff of Heaven like demons are, so that makes this tactic possible for them to emulate. Fortunately, since I already used the word "tokul" in Book1, it made for a nice reference here without absolutely needing to define it.
Just a note - the shell Alanna created when she "died" on Lokka wasn't in any way an angel, it really was just a husk. This is one of those things I was never terribly happy with, but given the circumstances of Danner's birth (which I wasn't going to change), the only other option was for her to somehow feign death (totally possible) and let herself be buried, then sneak out later. That just seemed absurd, though, so I was left with this idea, since something of her had to be left behind - she couldn't just vanish, or Hoil would have spent his life and fortune looking for her.
Spoiler Section - Only read this if you've finished the book.
When you get down to it, Alanna's execution and the effect it had on Uriel was the reason she came back to Heaven. She knew all along what would happen to her and what the end results would be, including that without Uriel being free from Maya's influence, the war would have been lost. Uriel would have accepted his task as Thanatos and wreaked havoc on Lokka, and he wouldn't have found himself in the situation Mikal did that brought him and Kaelus together, breaking Mikal free in turn. Maya couldn't have been barred from the Hall of the Throne, and thus her power couldn't have been broken so thoroughly, and nothing else that transpires in this book would have been possible. There will be more on Alanna's role in things explained in the next trilogy, but this is something to keep in mind for now.
Of course, it also sets up the final confrontation between Uriel and Camael rather nicely, as he finds himself tasked with meting justice to one of his own yet again.
Chapters 18 - 26
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