EPISODE 22: Miscalculation
The stakes had never been higher in the summer and fall of 1944. In Europe, on the Western Front, Allied forces pushed into Germany after liberating France. In the East, the Soviets drove the Nazis back step by step. The war was at a turning point, but a shadow of darkness still lingered.
At İzmir, a British Forward Operating Base in Turkey, Veera, Aolani, and Herakles joined Zayne, Roux, and the rest of the Light Brigade. Their mission sounded simple enough: locate someone by the name of Thaer by 1945. The problem? The town referenced with the name Thaer, was Grünau im Almtal, Austria — located deep in the heart of the Nazi stronghold. They couldn’t just walk in and start asking questions. To reach their target they’d need a strategy, secrecy, and a war plan of their own.
Little did they know, the Thaer they sought wasn’t in Austria. He was just across the Aegean, in Athens. Kurt Thaer, an Austrian conscript in the German Wehrmacht, fought bitterly through the Axis occupation of Greece.
Kurt Thaer, 1944 - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
In October 1944, during one of the last firefights near the Acropolis with Allied forces, he prepared to desert, done with war and violence for good. His plan, to shed his uniform, his identity, and vanish. But he was wounded in his battalions retreat.
British medics found him bleeding and raving. In broken English he claimed he had seen a man vanish into thin air as bullets flew around him. Those were his last words before slipping into a coma.
Thaer remained unconsciousness in a British Army hospital in Albania for months. No one knew who he was or what had really happened to him...or that locked deep inside, something sinister was brewing.
In Greece before he was shot, Kurt Thaer, had ducked into an abandoned building and changed out of his uniform, grabbing a bag he’d stashed for the long and treacherous trek back to Austria. But waiting in the shadows for Thaer was the Hellion - Vor. Possessing the AWOL soldier, Vor was meeting an unknown destiny...As hiding dormant inside of Kurt Thaer was the long-hidden essence of Ammit, the Eater of Souls.
Living countless lifetimes in humble obscurity, beginning with the smallest forms of life, and through untold millennia, Ammit’s soul reincarnated over and over. But the darkness couldn’t be completely cleansed or extinguished. It was merely forgotten, slumbering, waiting...And Kurt Thaer would be its final host.
In the chaos of war, with death and destruction all around, the memories of Ammit’s past began to boil to the surface inside of Thaer. The slaughter. The hunger. The power -- a spark, rekindled. His being fought it, feeling the sickness of war and death. But then came an unlikely convergence, when Thaer was wounded, lying in the city of ancient stones, the demon Vor seized his chance, possessing the plain human, not knowing it was Fate.
For months, in the hospital, Thaer remained unresponsive. But he’d awaken to a different world. The war was ending on the European front. And the memory of what happened to him and his circumstances came back. An Axis deserter, he wasn’t safe in the company of the Allies, and under the cover of night he’d flee.
On the road home, something gnawed at him. Wounds healed, but others left hollows that no salve could touch. Refugees and soldiers flooded the roads of Europe. In the crowd, Kurt was just another broken man. But inside, the Hellion Vor, whispered. And Ammit stirred.
The change was subtle at first — a cold stare, sudden violence, unexplained cruelty. But by the time Kurt Thaer reached home, the final phase had begun.
Waiting in Grünau, were soldiers of the Light, Veera and his lot, along with Zayne and Roux. Using his magic, Veera teleported them across borders, posting up beyond the fields near the Thaer farm, located just on the outskirts of town. The group was ready, though they didn’t exactly know what they were looking for.
Watching the Thaer’s at a distance, they seemed an ordinary family. Salt of the earth. Their eldest, Elias, had been killed early in the war. Middle son Noah, returned wounded in 1944. And now, at last, the youngest, Kurt, was home.
The soldiers of the Light kept their distance. Aolani used her powers to hide them from sight. Veera tried to commune with Banerjee in the Abyss, but his voice came faint, fractured. Zayne and Roux had heard nothing from the entity Death, as war had stretched the Reaper thin.
Still outsiders, all the Light could do was surveil from afar. But worries of Orem Black sat in the back of their minds. He knew of a Procession tied to the Eater of Souls, and though he and Joseph Frost had vanished from sight, no one believed them gone. Orem was too powerful and too cunning, not to be lurking.
At first, Grünau was quiet. Days passed without incident. But a darkness could be felt, spreading. A pressure. A pulse. Negative energy coiling tighter around Kurt.
One morning, the cows balked at the road by the Thaer fence, unmilked. The family matriarch, Claudia, wasn’t seen at church. Dogs barked and howled at a smell in the air...Kurt Thaer stalked the shadows. This was still the old world, the villagers noticed. Evil was in their presence. And they knew it was him...
Kurt Thaer stalks the shadows - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
VILLAGER 1: (whisper) His shadow’s wrong. It points the other way.
VILLAGER 2: (hushed) Something in his eyes. Older than stone. It chills me.
The next day, a body at the tree line. Mutilated. Half-devoured. By evening, another. By morning, silence at the Thaer homestead -- no smoke, no voices, no signs of anyone. Except Kurt.
The villagers knew, arming themselves. Rifles, axes, torchlight. They called for him to come out. Kurt emerged, darkness in his eyes. They moved in. Bullets didn’t phase him. Fire guttered on his skin. Wounds healed as fast as they opened. He was something beyond this world. Ammit had awakened. Wearing Kurt Thaer as a mask.
Seeing the horror unfolding, the soldiers of the light made their moved. Using their powers, they trapped Thaer, holding him, unsure what else to do...though Veera felt an old and very powerful life-force coursing through Thaer. It had to be the Eater of Souls.
But from the hedgerows, from the lane and the tree line, other shapes stepped forth -- Orem Black, and a new ragged version of the Knights of the Black Serpent, waiting for this very hour.
Grünau became a battlefield, light versus dark. While at the center of it all, Ammit and Vor combined inside Kurt Thaer’s flesh. Becoming hunger unleashed, fighting and raging against imprisonment.
Ammit and Vor combine inside Kurt Thaer - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
While Zayne, Roux, and their light brigade were able to keep Orem occupied. Veera shouted above the chaos for Aolani’s help. He would draw out the entity and they could banish it somewhere it would never be found.
She joined him, threads of binding light wrapping Kurt’s limbs. For a moment, the body stilled, two souls within it, Vor and Ammit, colliding in their cage of flesh. But Veera couldn’t tell the spirits apart, but he pressed anyway. A desperate blast of psionic energy split the weave — Vor ripped free. Aolani opened a portal to an unknown plane, banishing the Hellion there.
But this was a miscalculation on the part of the Light, as with the binds cracked -- Ammit surged upward, fully filling Kurt’s form, its hunger unmasked, more powerful than before...and with it, chaos unleashed.
Before the soldiers of the Light could strike again, a villager, an old woman, seeing Hell on Earth, fell to her knees. Her hands clasped, her voice trembled, whispering a Hero Prayer...
The sky split. Kharos, the paladin appeared, cloaked in fire of light, a living blade in hand. His gaze fixed on Ammit’s mask of flesh. He saw something that shouldn’t be hiding in Kurt Thaer.
Kharos is called forth - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
One strike. Swift, merciful. The blade cut through body and shadow alike. Kurt Thaer fell. Ammit screamed, torn loose, but this wasn’t a demon he killed...
Death appeared, harvesting the soul...awarding it to Satan. This was the first Procession, ENACTED. A victory for the dark. The cycle was in motion. Six more needed to start the war to end all wars.
Grünau grew quiet once more. But nothing would ever be the same.
TO BE CONTINUED…