Chapter 4 ((NETZACH))

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## Themes

**Netzach** (Hebrew: נצח‎, "victory") is the seventh of the ten Sefirot in the Jewish mystical system Kabbalah. Located beneath Chesed, at the base of the "Pillar of Mercy" also consisting of Chochmah ('wisdom') and Hesed ('loving-kindness'). Netzach generally translates to 'eternity', and in context of Kabbalah refers to 'perpetuity', 'victory', or 'endurance'.

The theme of eternity and overcoming obstacles will be explored in this issue. Related to this theme, in particular, are Maria Salazar's (VENUS CROWN) childhood, and her deployment to South America. Possible direction includes her actually murdering her children at some point along the chapters within the "Pillar of Mercy" arc.

## Featured Characters

Maria Salazar

Jupiter Black

## Script

Open through a camera; gritty, raw camera footage is presented to the viewer, as if through a cheap cam corder. Time, date, power settings are present in the screen. Through this we see simply a leather, upholstered chair, and though the room itself is dim, we can faintly detect that we are seeing a study room. There is motion, shadows pass across the screen, as if moving before a lamp, and appearing larger than ever against the backdrop. A larger man is pushed from off screen by a shiny black glove. He falls into the chair, only to recover for a moment, and look at the entity which has accosted him. It is none other than Dr. Dirac, and this is the hour of his death.

The entity circles from off camera, and moves behind Dirac, so that he may better force his head (and attention) towards the camera, and by proxy, the reader.

JUPITER BLACK: Now... Tell them, what you told me.

DIRAC: I... I...

JUPITER BLACK: Louder.

DIRAC: I'm so fucking sorry.

PANTHEON

"From the Depths... you called me."

PAGE 1

A hand is moving across a cement wall. The wall is pock marked, flaking with age, encrusted with dirt. The hand is carrying what appears to be a piece of charcoal. Its' delicate, bony fingers, manipulate the equally fragile medium in great sweeping motions across the wall. As we zoom out, we begin to discern what the hand is illustrating, and to whom the hand belongs: Maria Salazar. We see her eyes, large, weary, and brown. She is tired, drugged. She is still within the institution in which we saw her earlier, and still dressed in the hospital gown.

[Narrating] I see it. My lord is it glorious, now that I can see it. Everything is flowing together, coalescing. I behold the font.

PAGE 2

She sits with her legs splayed apart, bent at the knees, and forming a sort of M-shape while she slowly, deftly, forms her images on the wall in front of her. The image which she has dedicated herself to, we now see in all its glory: a complete sephirothic tree, with additional notations around each sephirot. Only blue-hued natural light enters her room, and that is only by a fluke of chance and not mercy or design.

[Narrating] History is but a river-- and eternity is the ocean.

PAGE 3

PAGE 25

We return to young Maria, escaping through the desert. She has come across a lone tree, which has survived in the desert thus far. Its gnarled branches reach up into the sky, and curl at strange intervals, forming a distinct similarity to that of the original Tree of Life. Maria beholds the tree and all its glory, she stands in awe at the foot of it.

PAGE 26

Smash cut to Maria, again, drugged in the hospital, scrawling onto the wall hopelessly. In her charcoal imitation, we see a resemblance of the tree she saw all those years ago.