InBrightestDay

Thank you for your review! Her big issue at the moment is that what happened to her (well, specific aspects of it) are what Luzurial considers her dark secret. Kevin’s not stupid, mind you, so he knows by this point that if Luzurial went through something horrible and sex-related involving a demon, then she was probably raped, but there are details that Luzurial considers to be her fault that she doesn’t want him to know about. Eventually getting to the point where she can talk to him about it is a big step in their relationship. And no, this first reunion with Eparlegna will not go well. He’s always had a very high level of self-confidence. We see inside his head quite a bit during Whore of Heaven and at no point is he even the slightest bit nervous, so I figured that would carry over here. To some extent, he’s justified; he can literally burn entire armies, but that kind of ability can go to one’s head. The speech of his is also me expanding somewhat on his motivation for coming to Earth during the first story. He simply doesn’t see the value in how Lucifer does things, and he can afford to shit-talk his boss because, hey, it’s not like he’s going to have to answer to him here on Earth. As for his strength, well, impregnating Luzurial gave him a power boost, and after he carved her wings off he absorbed them too, so that’s some more power. Finally, he’s got her sword, which as JayDee explained to me (and will come up in Part Seven) gives him yet more power due to what the sword is. He might not be quite at full power yet, but he’s way stronger than she is at this point. Well, yes and no. He is fairly high up, but his power does have limits. That’s definitely a fair criticism. I didn’t want Sabrina and Kenneth to be blank slates, so I gave each of them a little bit of “why he/she’s working for a demon” similar to Shondra and Molly in Whore of Heaven, and even used the same method to do so (Luzurial reading their minds). However, I did end up mentioning Sabrina earlier on, which probably made her out to be more important than she was. I mentioned this in the author’s note, but I did consider lengthening the action scene, but then I feared we would have had the Neutral Female problem, only with male characters this time. I could have had them pursue the characters inside the building, but there’s some other stuff waiting inside for them (Eparlegna’s “Craft Beings of Vice” power), and I didn’t want to get in the way of that. But yeah, it’s definitely kind of disappointing, and I’m sorry about that.

“Sleazy E” presumably being the name he used when he released his rap album. When dealing with Jude, I liked that she got to be kind of scary, stopping his physical attack, and there’s that funny bit where he tries to slap her and just hurts his hand. Of course, the followup is some frank but understanding moral advice, again demonstrating her learning. As amusing as it would be to see the homophobic guy end up as MPreg, I imagine that’s more him impregnating someone...or something. That sounds pretty cool in general, and the masturbation would allow Lucifer an opportunity for manipulation.

Thank you! I always feel so bad when I make stupid mistakes (and you found another one further down), so I’m happy to know you’re still enjoying the story in spite of my screwups. There are two confrontations in the story, the climactic one in Part Nine and this one. As you might expect, this one isn’t going to go terribly well. While I wasn’t referencing the Judge specifically, you’re not that far off. Eparlegna is highly confident because he was able to overpower just about everyone 75 years earlier (like in the San Francisco footage). Like the Judge, it hasn’t really sunk in how humanity has advanced, and he is being somewhat arrogant. Having said that, he’s not about to get blown up with a rocket launcher. Enchanted bullets can wound him, but they still can’t kill him. Granted, this is a step up, since 75 years earlier they would just have bounced off him, but there are still limits to what human weapons can accomplish. Furthermore, his attack on the App Theo building is not without purpose, which will come up later. Thanks! I really wanted to show what Eparlegna hints at in Whore of Heaven, namely a battle between human forces and, as he describes his new body, “an unstoppable force of Hell”, so we get to see human soldiers trying and failing to damage him with normal ammunition and even missiles, and the destructive power of the dragon’s hellfire breath, almost like a nuclear weapon (slower moving, though). What I was going for here was that the car is mostly coming down toward her, so its momentum is primarily directed through Luzurial and into the ground. In addition, the crumpling of the car’s roof absorbs some of the energy. All in all, she probably slid back about a meter, but not enough that I wanted to really point it out. You know, some day I’m going to put a chapter up and it’s not going to contain a single stupid mistake. BUT TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY! So, there are two reasons for Kevin taking normal ammo in that scene. The first is the out-of-universe reason, namely that those bullets will, at the end of Part Five, be inscribed to be anti-demon rounds, so they needed to be “blank” for that (I suppose you could write over one inscription with another, but that would be a rather messy and difficult process). The second reason, though, the in-universe reason, is that Kevin wasn’t planning to try to shoot Eparlegna with those bullets, but was instead thinking there might be more cultists inside, so he wanted to be able to shoot them. And of course I didn’t make that clear, because in spite of my best efforts, I am a mediocre writer. That mistake will be fixed come morning (with credit to you in the Author’s Note).

It’s a character flaw of his. He’s not completely off base; he trapped, raped, mutilated and tortured an archangel, and he got away with it...for a while. And then, after being bound, he was eventually released by humans. Where he goes wrong is in assuming this is something he can keep getting away with, leading to the other thing you pointed out. While Eparlegna was strong enough to destroy armies 75 years earlier, what you’re saying is exactly the point Hobbs is trying to make. I also love the sarcasm, by the way. Oh, and “subtlety is overrated” is basically Eparlegna summing up his own character. When you’ve built yourself a throne made of human bones, subtlety has officially gone out the window. Or the nutshot, at any rate (Part Six). Yeah, we’ve seen how durable Luzurial is, both here and in the last story, but this is the first example (not related to bite force, anyway) that we really get of how strong she is. And this isn’t even her at full power. This is one of the things I’ve always admired about the character. No matter what happens to her, Luzurial remains dedicated to the protection of human life. Even though she’s nowhere near ready to face Eparlegna again, she’s still going in, because she can’t let Kevin and Abdul take the risk alone; that’s just the person she is. ...Assuming that sentence means what I think it means, I just want you to know that you do not have to keep reading this story if the subject matter is dragging up painful memories. I appreciate the reviews, but it’s not worth upsetting you.

You know, it’s a shame my dad can’t know about this, because he would have appreciated that Hurricane of Puns. That was something I was really trying for when writing Kevin and Luzurial’s developing relationship. Given what she’s been through, I wanted it to remain as clear as possible that he doesn’t expect anything in return for his help; he really does just want to see her get better. I know that was a joke, but aspects of my personality will inevitably make it into characters I write. I tend to write male characters who are somewhat insecure because I’ve always kind of felt that way; I always feel like I should know more about the world than I do. I try to give characters some kind of distinguishing traits, in this case Kevin’s temper (and the fact that my parents are still alive), but they’re all going to kind of resemble me in some aspects. And yes, bringing it back to the remark that started this, I am a fan of breasts. Next chapter: Enter the Charnel Spider. The bit where MacBride gets cut in half, specifically how Eparlegna just does this nonchalant flick of the wrist, was kind of a way of showing both his demonic strength and how insanely sharp the sword is. I actually added that bit after I sent you the rough draft. Originally she was just being reassuring (she said something like “you will not harm me”), but then I realized how silly the idea of him stepping on her foot was after guns didn’t hurt her, so I had her make a joke. Luzurial doesn’t joke often, but it does happen (see her annoyed “Ow” when Chloe shoots her in the head). That’s about it. I wanted an opportunity to see Luzurial go full Wrath of God on someone, and at this power level, this was about the best she could do. Yeah, I kind of have a thing for female action heroes. Much like my somewhat insecure male leads, that’s probably going to pop up in other stories I write.

Part Four is up!

It was definitely something of a back and forth, as the joke “reenactment” suggested. There’s a bit of exposition in Part Four about how two members of the “cult” are working on controlling information, and that would have been a good place to talk about Caulfield’s “vacation.” However, if people are going to notice anyway, I figure it’s best to explain it somewhat earlier. Sorry, I may have given you the wrong impression there (and also messed up what book these guys come from). I wasn’t trying to say that the archangels in question were noncanonical, but rather that their mention in the Book of Enoch was. You are absolutely correct in saying that Michael and Gabriel are mentioned in the Bible. As for the seven archangels, I just discovered that those are from the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, which is presumably what you were referencing (“I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand in the glorious presence of the Lord, ready to serve Him.” Tobit 12:15), with Michael, Gabriel and Raphael specifically being named. Pseudo-Dionysius, this time in the Corpus Areopagiticum, names all seven (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Camael, Jophiel and Zadkiel). My confusion came from the fact that I’m a Protestant (Lutheran, specifically), so I haven’t actually read Tobit. It’s deuterocanonical, which means it’s canon for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, but not for the Protestant denominations; it’s literally not in our bibles. As I said, none of the angelic hierarchies are considered hard canon (I certainly never heard about it in church). It’s mostly just a neat idea from medieval Christianity that works for this story (I’ll explain when we get to Part Seven), so I put it in. Well, yes and no. Michael commands a force of angels, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s in command of everyone. “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” Revelation 12:7-9 (English Standard Version) So Michael commands a force of angels, but not necessarily all of them. In addition, this is an aspect of the story that diverges from its biblical roots. Whore of Heaven mentions that Luzurial is the strongest of the host, except for angels who serve as direct vessels for the Creator’s power. Presumably Michael (and perhaps the other six archangels from Tobit) are vessels, far stronger than any other archangel and thus outside the normal ranking system.

There are two potential reasons they don’t ask about events during the Rupture. The first is that Kevin knows that something bad happened to Luzurial that day, and as he mentioned in the first chapter, he’s never going to push her to explain it. He figures she’ll tell him when she’s ready. The other reason, though, you caught onto in the review. Thank you! I did not think of that, but that is a seriously cool idea! It's actually really cool that you brought this up, and I'm glad to have this discussion thread, since there was no way I was going to be able to discuss this in an Author's Note. So, there are actually several different angelic hierarchies, none of which is terribly canon (the biblical sources are mostly silent on this stuff). The four archangels you mentioned (Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael) show up in multiple sources, but are mentioned together in that specific context in the Book of Enoch, which is considered canonical by Beta Israel/Ethiopian Jewish people, as well as the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches, but is considered noncanonical by other Jewish and Christian groups. There are five different potential Jewish angelic hierarchies, including the version you mentioned from the Maseket Atzilut, all of which contain ten ranks of angels. When I had Luzurial say "ten if you count the Ophanim," that was indeed meant as an allusion to the difference between various angelic hierarchies, not only in Judaism but in Christianity as well. The version of the Celestial Hierarchy I used, however, is the Christian angelic hierarchy, which is based primarily on Pseudo-Dionysius (On the Celestial Hierarchy) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica), who drew on passages from the New Testament (Galatians 3:26-28, Matthew 22:24-33, Ephesians 1:21-23 and Colossians 1:16). Yes, there was in fact a guy called Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. His real name is unknown, but he wrote using "Dionysius" as a pseudonym, hence the "Pseudo" attached to his name. Anyway, the Christian angelic hierarchy features nine ranks of angels, organized into three "spheres". Angels of the First Sphere are the direct attendants of God, while angels of the Second Sphere serve as "governors of creation" (keeping the universe running), and angels of the Third Sphere concern themselves with the affairs of mortals, acting as guides, protectors and messengers. The First Sphere consists of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, while the Second contains the Dominions, Virtues and Powers, and the Third consists of Principalities, Archangels and Angels. I mentioned the Hierarchy more as a military chain of command than anything else because the role of the Second Sphere pretty much has to be different in a modern, scientific cosmology. The Powers, for instance, don't need to keep planets and moons moving around when things like angular momentum and gravity keep everything in place. The idea that Luzurial does not receive orders directly from God is going to become rather important in Part Seven, as is her appearance/anatomy. While I figure she would normally use some minor level of shapeshifting (back when she had wings, she probably made them invisible when she visited Earth), anatomically speaking she's very human, as opposed to something like a seraph, which has six wings and is MADE OF FIRE. Sorry, but it was necessary to write that in all caps because it is freaking METAL. Actually, this makes me wonder about the Slumber-verse and what Kate's reaction must have been when she found out what Kizzy really looks like.

Yeah, I definitely get it now. Good news is that Chapter 6 is up next. Meanwhile the only way I knew of the term was from Warhammer 40,000, where there’s a monster called a Carnifex. Of course, that didn’t tell me what the term meant. I probably would have just made some sort of giant crab monster. That wouldn’t have made any sense in this story, but I wouldn’t have let that stop me!

I think you hit just the right balance. Adara does come across as more sympathetic, but it’s not like she’s been absolved of her infidelity. She’s definitely still been a pretty terrible girlfriend, but she feels human.

This and some of Part Seven anyway. As for Luzurial and PTSD, her mind, while very close to a human one, is quite resilient (it’s the only way she came out of that statue sane), so I didn’t agonize over doing an exact portrayal of PTSD, but I did do some research. Specifically, I found out that there are four symptom groups for PTSD: intrusive thoughts, avoidance, negative thoughts and feelings, and reactive symptoms (often called “arousal symptoms”, but here that might be misread). I decided that Luzurial wouldn’t have the “avoidance” symptoms (where the affected person avoids areas, objects and other things that remind them of the traumatic event), but that she would manifest intrusive memories (the flashbacks), negative thoughts and feelings (such as an overwhelming sense of shame) and to a very slight level the reactive symptoms. Those include having trouble sleeping, which we see on her first night after being freed, but seems to be remedied to a large extent by Kevin sleeping in the room with her. Thanks! Like I said in the author’s note, it’s the first tentacle scene I’ve ever written, so I was nervous about how it was going to go over. And now, a dramatic reenactment. Sunday night, at a bedroom desk somewhere in the United States Me 1: Okay, we’ve polished the Q&A session and the tentacle scene. Is there anything else we need to do so we can post this thing tomorrow morning? Me 2: Well, we did notice that in the rough draft there’s no explanation for why IA doesn’t come looking for Caulfield before the shit really hits the fan. I mean, she’s going to be missed. Me 1: Yeah, we’re going to have to mention that a false paper trail has been created, but where do we put that exposition? Me 2: Well, there’s that line in Part Four about information control; that seems like a natural place for it to go. Me 1: But if we do that, there’s going to be a week where people are going to start to wonder about it. Me 2: We could put the exposition in Part Three and have Hobbs say it, but if we do that, then we’ll have to mess with the dialogue a bit more. Me 1: So you’re suggesting we be lazy? Me 2: Trust me, we can wait until Part Four. No one is going to… Me 2: ...notice. Me 1: Me 2: Well...now we know, and knowing is half the battle! G.I.- Me 1: NO! Sooo I went back and added in the following little explainer in Part Three instead of waiting for Part Four (with credit to you in the Author’s Note):

Funny you should lead with a Hamlet reference, since Eparlegna’s apparently rather fond of those when eating people.

Thank you! The second chapter is always going to be short, but I’m glad to see I was able to address some of your other concerns.

Actually, I think I’m doing alright with regards to reviews so far. I have three chapters up and 9 reviews, so if my luck holds I might have 27 reviews by the time I’m done, only a third of which will be from you. Thank you! And don’t worry about making me feel bad. You wrote what you called a “sexualized horror” story, so aside from the niche audience who would have been enjoying Luzurial’s pain, it was probably supposed to be upsetting. And hey, you’ve enjoyed this story so far, and as I’ve said elsewhere, I wouldn’t have asked to write this if I hadn’t felt so amazingly bad for her. Judging by other reviews, it’s a symphony with a few sections playing off key, but nonetheless I appreciate the compliment! I feel like he can’t really do anything about it. If fictional characters could protest their fates, you’d probably have more to worry about from Luzurial, Lily Flynn, Wonder Woman, Jill Valentine, Private Vasquez, Cassie Cage, Kylie, Pan… You’d have one or two men, and then a long line of badass women waiting to kick your ass. And no, I didn’t actually read any of those, but the summaries and titles are generally enough for me to figure out what’s going to happen. Heh. Also: Ew.

I haven’t felt bored yet. The chapters are fairly short and well-paced, so they’ve never felt like they were dragging. I wouldn’t say I was laughing at the story. There are just some expressions from any given culture that other cultures will find amusing, even when the cultures in question are as similar as the UK and US. As an example of it going to other way, during the DVD commentary for The Mummy (the 1999 one), director Stephen Sommers mentioned that when he was trying to explain to his British crew about how fast a car should be going, they found the phrase “hauling ass” to be unspeakably funny. Apparently that’s a very American thing to say. Dude! You can’t just say that out...oh, right, not what that means. To some extent it’s a purely personal distinction, but I think some of it has to do with how you deal with beings with a psychology radically different from your own. It’s one thing to try to match wits with a demon, because in a lot of fiction they think the same way mortals do, even if they’re smarter and/or have vastly more experience. Ghosts...don’t. Ghosts in fiction are often so distorted mentally that it can be hard to say whether they think at all, which is kind of frightening in its own way.

Part Three is up now, and we have another jumbo-size review. Yeah, I added the bit about them grinning because, well, there’s just something kind of funny about having an angel eating pizza on your couch. It makes me smile thinking about it. Abdul’s actually trying to be a reverse wingman. He knows Kevin’s feeling...well, something for Luzurial, and is trying to head that off, and instead triggers a nasty flashback. The flashback itself was honestly kind of rough for me to write, since in order to do it I had to reread the oral rape from Whore of Heaven and experience all those emotions again. I teared up writing it, particularly the dialogue in that moment just before she throws up. I’ll admit I didn’t quite understand this. You think they’ll be hard-pressed to see it as more than just angst? I mean, it is angst, so that would make sense. Or were you saying you thought it was more than just angst? Luzurial’s happiest memory was one of my favorite things to write in this chapter. I was trying to think of what it would be, and the stereotypical answer would be something from the Bible (Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, the birth of Jesus or something like that), but I always thought that if you could talk to a being older than the universe, that one of the most amazing things he or she would have gotten to see would be the very first stars igniting 200 million years after the Big Bang, and the first galaxies forming about 200 million years after that. I also thought it worked for the characters wanting to feel better, as it was literally about the universe emerging from darkness into light. As for Kevin’s backstory, I wanted him to have something that allowed him to sort of relate to Luzurial. Obviously he can’t really relate to what she’s been through, but he does know what it’s like to make a mistake and see terrible consequences for it. Yeah, she, along with Chloe and her team, are examples of the decent people in the PPD, showing that the organization may have corrupt individuals in it, but that it’s not really an evil organization. That’s kind of amazing. And yes, I wanted Eparlegna’s return to be as intimidating as I could make it. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to show the horrific stuff like you were able to in the first story, so I thought maybe I could still get some level of horror by letting the reader’s imagination do the work. Oh, and for two notes you made in the review: I have enabled anonymous reviews (I didn’t realize they were turned off!) and have removed the “flashback” qualifier from the Rape tag. I think at the time I was thinking that tentacles automatically counted as rape, but then I realized that there is consensual tentacle stuff out there.

Part Three is up!

I’ll send you a PM with the changes I made. It won’t fix all of the things you didn’t like, but it should address at least some of them. That energy is what she calls her inner light. It’s tied to (or is) her willpower and it allows her to do stuff like create creatures from human virtues, blast enemies and burn things. I figure it affects her physical toughness as well, but that the toughness of her skin and muscles is not something she has to concentrate on; it just happens automatically. The other things, like burning things or crafting the virtue creatures, are conscious actions that she has to think about. Well, consistency is something I try for when I can, since this is intended as a sequel. I’d like it to fit with what’s in Whore of Heaven as well as possible. There are some changes, of course, but I try to keep things the same. I understand completely. Trust me though, even if she had been completely immune to the Gungnir, she’s not immune to the stuff Eparlegna does, and as of the end of Part Three, he’ll be back. She is most definitely in danger. The reason I didn’t want to use the word demon was because there are actual demons in the setting (and as I just mentioned, one of them is our villain), and I didn’t want to use the same word for the enhanced humans.

Well, the English name Shannon is apparently derived from the River Shannon, the longest river in Ireland, so MacSomething-or-other does seem like a good idea. As far as I can tell, MacDuff is derived from Scottish Gaelic, though I can’t be sure of this. Kate is an English name, so Wilde does fit (as well as kind of feeling like a werewolf joke). Lupa Lopez is also kind of funny, since (again, from what I can tell) Lopez means “son of Lope” and Lope is apparently a Spanish form of Lupus, the feminine form of which would be...Lupa. Kizzy’s is brilliant, though, since it translates literally from the French as “given by God.” So yeah, I’d say you don’t suck at names. I really like that, because it’s either a Star Trek reference, or it’s her doing a terrible job at blending in with mortals.

I admit I do want to stick with that. Daimonopoiosis would be more accurate (and a cool use of Greek), but it’s a syllable longer than apotheosis, which makes it a bit more awkward to say, and like I said before, it just doesn’t sound as cool. That’s actually a really interesting idea. I don’t want to use “Damned”, because that would apply to basically any soul condemned to Hell, instead of just the empowered humans. “Fallen” sounds a bit too much like a description of an actual demon (since they’re fallen angels), but there is something appealing about “Descended.” I think it’s going to be either apotheosis or descended.

Actually, considering a statement made in Part Three about how nobody’s putting any money on enchanted bullets actually killing an extradimensional creature, it really doesn’t make sense that they’re trying to kill her. I tweaked Chloe’s dialogue somewhat to make it clear that they’re merely attempting to disable her. Hopefully you’re okay with me making that change; I don’t want you to feel like I’m invalidating your reviews. Oh, she definitely takes a lot of injury, to say the least, during the torture scene, but everything that hurts her is magical/demonic in nature. Her wings are cut off with her own sword, which Eparlegna then turns into a whip to shred her back with. This implied to me that she was highly resistant to damage from mundane weapons. In addition, the chains driven through her palms seemed able to do that because of Eparlegna having pulled/cut two of his own claws off and attached them. In other places, her physical toughness is highlighted, for instance with the stone tentacles in Part One. And in Part Three. Given all of this, I figured it wasn’t so much a conscious magical shield-raising as it was the innate resilience of her angelic flesh, and the equal toughness of demonic flesh or some form of magic (like the power of Luzurial’s own weapon) was required to overcome it. However, you did remind me of something. Luzurial’s power appears tied to her will, which is the whole point of torturing and humiliating her in the original story (aside from the fact that Eparlegna just enjoys it): she becomes physically weaker as her mental and emotional state worsens. I followed through on that for Part One of my story (she’s in a very bad state when Kevin finds her, which is why the surgeons are able to suture her wound, as her state allows a metal needle to be pushed through her otherwise way-too-tough skin, and why she regenerates more slowly). I had kind of used that in this part. She’s feeling better (she’s had a good night’s sleep and is receiving emotional support), so she’s tougher now and should be healing faster, though she’s not at full strength yet, which is the reason the bullet stings a little and the anti-tank round bruises her, but I think I’ll go back and add a little more damage. Maybe the Gungnir round will fracture her collarbone in addition to the bruise. This takes place in 2082, so some technology is different, and the new tech is in popular culture courtesy of in-universe movies, TV shows, documentaries, etc. Coilguns/gauss rifles are not terribly well-known now (aside from science nerds), but I thought in 63 years they may be more well-known as the technology becomes more widespread. I don’t really want to use the word “demon” for anything that isn’t really a demon (especially since, as the summary indicated, we’re going to have an actual demon in the story soon). I’d like to keep the term something that indicates that these are enhanced humans; people who have been changed into something more. Do you think “augment” would work? I know that’s a verb, but it’s also used as a noun in Star Trek to describe genetically augmented humans (like Khan). Of course, if I use that, I start to feel like I’m ripping off Trek. “Demi-fiend” also might work. Actually, one last option could use the same wordplay as apotheosis. Check this out: the word apotheosis comes from the Greek “apo” (from) and “theos” (god), which became “apotheoun” (to make a god of) and then apotheosis. Well, “demon” comes from the Greek “daimon” and the Greek way of saying “demonize” would be “daimonopoioun” (similar to apotheoun), so maybe the demonic equivalent would be something like “daimonopoiosis”. Granted, this doesn’t sound as cool as apotheosis...

I don’t think it’s a fault of the author, but rather something that’s inherent to fiction. Whenever I read something, I have to ask myself whether the thing being discussed is common knowledge in the setting or common knowledge in the modern day. I just mistakenly assumed I was supposed to know that, rather than it being common knowledge several centuries in the future. There’s not really any way I can think of that you could have improved on that.

Sweet! Glad this chapter didn’t drive you off in spite of its flaws. That’s a fair criticism. Originally, this was part of a larger segment, along with what is now Part Three. As a result of breaking it off into its own section, this is now the shortest chapter in the story in terms of word count, and is only two scenes long. I think where tension is concerned, the idea was that this might be tense for people who hadn’t read Whore of Heaven. If you don’t know what Luzurial is, then even knowing about her regeneration from the hospital scene, you might expect the Gungnir to really hurt her (and it would have, had the bullets been inscribed properly), and her only getting bruised would be kind of a surprise. The PPD aren’t really the antagonists of the story, and this was more of a misunderstanding and a way to show Chloe’s team in action. Having said that, I’m sorry this wasn’t as fulfilling as it should have been. The good news is that Part Three will be up on Monday and you’ll be able to see what this was originally attached to. Chloe’s dialogue mentioned a gauss rifle (“That gauss rifle cut an apotheosis in half two weeks ago, Gibbs!”), and I figured Kevin knows what that weapon is, but it was definitely somewhat unfair of me to assume that from that, Kevin would have been able to deduce that it was an anti-armor gauss rifle. Sorry about that. As for knowing that it’s the real PPD, that’s ultimately more of a matter of trust than of actually knowing. Of course, they would have known if I had remembered to have Chloe flash a badge. Something tells me that emoticon is going to see a lot more use as people point out mistakes I really should have noticed... Apotheosis means exactly what you described; they’re just not using it to refer to Luzurial. From back in Part One: Hobbs: “and then, of course, there was that hybrid thing two weeks ago.” Chloe: “We call it an apotheosis, actually. Serial killer made a pact with a demon, or an extradimensional hostile if you want to be more technical, resulting in enhanced strength and durability.” So an apotheosis is a human granted preternatural powers by a demon (those two cops in Whore of Heaven, for instance). Granted, they’re infernal powers rather than truly divine powers, but the term was as close as I could get. No one is calling Luzurial an apotheosis, but rather Chloe is saying that if the Gungnir killed an apotheosis, it really should have done something more to her. Again, thank you for the review, and for sticking with the story. Hopefully the next chapter will be less annoying.

You’ve definitely got me invested in the characters here! There is one thing about the story, but it’s not necessarily a criticism. The thing is, I’m in my early thirties, but sometimes reading this story makes me feel like a really old man. When you brought up that Tirsa was demisexual...I had legitimately never heard that term before. I had to Google it. Based on how the characters were talking about it like it was the most natural thing in the world, I felt like I was supposed to know what that was and that I was a grandpa character going “what’s that lingo the hip young kids are using these days?” Again, that’s not anything wrong with the story. I just felt kind of stupid.