Tia Jackson, the Black criminal defense attorney who becomes The Sentinel, carries four supernatural abilities: Oya’s Insight, Shadow and Fading, Fists of Fury, and self-healing.

Within my fictional Sentinel Universe, these abilities come through her connection to Oya, the Yoruba storm goddess. They help her confront the Iron Talon and the corruption embedded in Metronix City.

Each ability also places demands on the woman carrying it.

Tia has a human body. Entering the crossroads, channeling divine force, and experiencing another person’s suffering have consequences. Even her healing takes time.

Why These Four Abilities?

As the author, I’m still sitting with that question.

When these powers first emerged, they felt right. I could sense that Tia would need them in this dark, corrupt city, even before I could explain every reason.

An attorney can investigate, argue, and expose wrongdoing. But the notorious Iron Talon operates in a world where human institutions and supernatural dangers intersect. Tia needs ways to reach what those institutions conceal—and to survive what she finds.

These abilities felt like remedies for the particular dangers surrounding her.

As I understand them more deeply, I’m also discovering what those remedies ask of her. Giving a human woman access to a goddess’s power means considering what happens to her during the experience and afterward.

Oya’s Insight: Sensing, Reliving, and Knowing

Oya’s Insight doesn’t always reach Tia in the same way.

Sometimes it begins as a sense that something is wrong. She may feel the disturbance before she understands its source.

Other times, she’s drawn into an old memory or a past injustice so completely that it feels like reliving a dream. What happened becomes an experience she has to endure. Someone else’s terror, suffering, or grief can overwhelm her own present moment.

Then there are times when the insight arrives as a full knowing: something has happened, and it has to be addressed.

Oya herself may come through as a command for Tia to act. It isn’t necessarily a conversation, and the directive may arrive whether Tia wants it or not.

Oya can be demanding in that Great Mother way: certain she knows what’s best, even when the woman receiving her instruction would very much like a say in the matter.

Tia can feel the care behind that demand and still resent it. She’s the one who has to act, carry the power, and live through what follows. Being chosen doesn’t mean she welcomes every command or agrees with Oya about what’s best for her.

That makes Insight difficult to carry. Tia may be trying to understand a feeling, recover from reliving someone else’s suffering, or deal with a goddess who has already decided it’s time for her to move.

Shadow and Fading: Passing Through the Veil

When Tia slips into shadows, she moves through the thin veil between the human world and the crossroads.

From the outside, someone might see her disappear into darkness and emerge elsewhere. For Tia, that movement involves crossing a boundary that human beings cannot safely inhabit indefinitely.

Long-term exposure to the crossroads has consequences.

I’m still exploring the full meaning of those consequences, but there is something deathlike about what she does. She slips away from the human world, then returns to it.

That gives Shadow and Fading a danger beyond whether an enemy can find her. The passage itself matters. So does how long she remains exposed to a place her human body cannot endure forever.

Fists of Fury: Divine Power in a Human Body

Tia can blaze with the power of the storm goddess. Through Fists of Fury, her strikes carry deadly supernatural force.

While that power moves through her, she can confront threats that would otherwise overwhelm her.

But eventually the blaze wears off.

Her body faces the consequences of having carried that force. Channeling a goddess through human form places demands on her that can continue after the fight is over.

A moment of devastating strength can be followed by a period when she has to recover. What she could withstand or deliver while the storm moved through her does not mean she can immediately do it again.

The aftermath belongs to the story too.

Self-Healing: Recovery Takes Time

Tia’s supernatural healing helps her recover from injury, but it doesn’t happen immediately.

She can suffer horrific harm and remain vulnerable while her body mends. Healing may be underway while she is still in pain, still in danger, or still unable to gain an advantage over an enemy.

That matters because her other abilities also take a toll.

She may return from the crossroads or come down from channeling Oya’s power with a body that needs time. Her capacity to heal gives her a way toward recovery; she still has to live through that recovery.

The Woman Who Carries the Power

I’m coming to understand Tia’s abilities through what it means for her to live with them.

She can experience an injustice from within. She can pass through a dangerous boundary between worlds. She can carry deadly divine force. And she can heal from damage that would otherwise end her fight.

Those possibilities change her life. So do their consequences.

The city’s dangers don’t pause because she needs to recover. Receiving insight doesn’t guarantee she’s ready for what it reveals. Having access to the storm doesn’t make her body endlessly capable of containing it.

And Oya’s certainty about what must happen can leave Tia struggling to make room for her own needs, judgment, and willingness.

Their relationship carries care, obligation, resistance, and the friction of a Great Mother who believes she knows best. Tia still has to live with what that belief asks of her.

That’s part of what I’m exploring with The Sentinel: a powerful woman learning what she can do, what it costs her, and how to retain a voice in a calling she didn’t ask for.

Explore The Sentinel Universe →

Meet Tia Jackson, discover Metronix City, and find the stories and lore behind Oya’s Champion.