Episode 116: Sacrifice

Written By Karl White

The Abyss is a place where logic doesn’t exist. A vast, lightless expanse where nothing can be trusted. 

Those condemned to wander its emptiness discover there’s nothing by which to anchor the mind. There’s no sky, or horizon where orientation can be measured. Without sunrise or sunset, the passage of years becomes unknowable. Memory drifts untethered from sequence until yesterday and a thousand years become nearly indistinguishable. Movement offers little comfort, for every direction appears the same, and any destination seems to retreat as it’s approached, as though the void itself refuses to be crossed.

But there was something more unsettling, as those who endured the Abyss long enough came to sense it changing. The emptiness no longer felt still. It stretched farther than before, boundaries expanding into an umbra without edge. At times, the void gave the uncanny impression of drawing breath, billowing, widening as though preparing itself for something immense. 

Elsewhere in the darkness, a gathering had begun. The broken souls condemned to the void continued to be reshaped into servants of the Dark, while older demons emerged in greater numbers. Their purpose was preparation, assembling for a summons yet to come. Forming an army whose size defied reckoning. 

Hidden beyond their notice, others watched in silence. They moved in secret, keeping every conversation guarded. Knowing the smallest mistake could mean annihilation. They were gathering intel. Waiting patiently within the endless black. Anticipating the moment the void finally exhaled...as that would signal the war they long expected.

(L-R) John Dee, Count of St. Germain, Fulcanelli, and Heinrich Khunrath - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Banerjee concealed the warriors of the Light behind veils of magic. Beside him stood Gérard Roux, Bhekizizwe, and a host of others the Dark had sought to erase from history. Among them were the Elizabethan philosopher John Dee, whose search for divine knowledge led him beyond the boundaries of creation. The mysterious Count of St. Germain, the wandering alchemist who seemed to outlive every age he inhabited. The enigmatic Fulcanelli, whose pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone ended not in immortality, but exile. The Hermetic scholar Heinrich Khunrath, who ventured too deeply into the hidden architecture of the Universe. And American author Ambrose Bierce, whose disappearance into the Mexican wilderness concealed a far stranger fate. History believed these men had simply vanished off the face of the Earth. In truth, each crossed the same terrible frontier and found themselves imprisoned in the place beyond, where forgotten souls quietly awaited the end of all things.

Banerjee discovered each of them while wandering the Abyss and gradually gathered them. Building his own force to oppose the Dark when the time came. Each was powerful in their own right, save Bierce, who had no supernatural ability or knowledge, but served as a topographical engineer during the American Civil War, drafting tactical plans for battles. 

Ambrose Bierce - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

The magic among them was strong, but Banerjee understood numbers alone would never be enough. The Dark regarded the Abyss as secure ground, the place from which legions would pour into creation when the Absolution began. Striking from within the void offered the Light an opportunity no enemy would anticipate. Yet for all their power, Banerjee knew they lacked the punch necessary to make a real dent. Until he could formulate a better plan, patience remained their greatest weapon. 

While the others trained and prepared Gérard Roux and Ambrose Bierce devoted much of their time charting the endless black. Bierce treated the void as though it were any unfamiliar battlefield, measuring distances by pacing them out, sketching rough maps. The work revealed little of consequence, until they stumbled onto something uncanny, even by the standards of the Abyss.

Standing alone in the endless darkness, was light...A modest wooden beach house overlooked an ocean that couldn’t exist. Palm trees swayed beneath an impossible blue sky, while the gentle rhythm of waves carried through the silence.

Roux feared a trap. If the Dark discovered Banerjee's refuge, conjuring a place of comfort would be an elegant means of luring them into the open. Bierce agreed, and the two quietly withdrew, returning to Banerjee with news of the mirage.

A mirage in the Abyss - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Their description stirred an old memory. Long before, Banerjee and his nephew, Veera Sarin, had encountered an identical sanctuary within the Abyss. It belonged to Aolani, whose extraordinary abilities allowed her to shape memory itself into tangible reality. Though the resemblance suggested deception, Banerjee doubted even the cleverest demons could recreate something so deeply personal.

Using his magic, Banerjee concealed himself, watching the aberration from afar. It was a carbon-copy of the past projection, but it shouldn’t have existed, as the original bastion was torn apart when Aolani wove a bridge from the Abyss back to Earth...

Then, the door opened and Aolani stepped onto the porch and paused, listening to waves. Moments later another figure exited behind her, broad shouldered and unmistakable even at a distance...Herakles. Banerjee could scarcely believe what he was seeing. If this was a trick it was so well-formulated. Then a sense overcame Aolani as she felt someone watching.

AOLANI: Banerjee, is that you?

The reunion that followed carried little need for words. Aolani and Herakles told of how they’d found one another after being cast back into the Abyss. They spoke of the shift in the world back on Earth. Veera rebuilding the Order of Wormwood, ready to fight. Of Joseph Frost’s new boundless power. And of how pieces were moving towards the Absolution, despite their best efforts. Aolani confessed Joseph's assault left her greatly diminished. Though much of her power had been stolen, the magic that remained was still formidable.   

Reunited - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

However, to Banerjee, their return marked an answer he’d been waiting for. In his long time alone in the dark, he studied fractures he’d found in the Abyss. Ancient stresses hidden beneath the darkness, where reality felt impossibly thin. Over time, he noticed those places were decaying. Then in a conversation once with Death, the entity revealed the reason… 

DEATH: This place is not merely a prison for broken souls, but the remains of an older creation. Long before my time as Reaper, before mankind, before the Universe took its present form, another world existed. It too became the battlefield for a war between opposing cosmic powers. When that conflict reached its end, creation collapsed. Its shattered remains became the foundation upon which newer worlds were built, each resting upon the ruins of the last.

That revelation was less about the inference and more about physics to Banerjee. Structures, even organic ones, have a breaking point. Energy cannot simply cease to exist, it can only be stored, transferred, or released. If the Abyss truly was the shattered carcass of a previous creation, buried beneath the weight of every new creation that followed...then it remained subject to the same immutable laws. It could be made to fail, and the answer lay within those he’d gathered. 

Magic, was simply another expression of energy. A practitioner gathers that energy, refines it, then releases it as magic. The longer power is restrained, the greater the force is waiting to be unleashed. But if that energy were deliberately held, allowed to build without release, the vessel holding it would eventually fail in a catastrophic eruption. The force created would destroy both the magician and everything surrounding them, like a bomb.

Conjuring magic - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

One magician exhausting the reserve within themselves could devastate part of a battlefield. But a group surrendering every ounce of their power at precisely the same time would trigger something altogether different. The energies would amplify one another into a massive wave of force.

If the soldiers of Light gathered at the weakest point in the void as the Absolution began, and together coordinated a release of unimaginable magical energy, they could crush the Dark hordes before they ever reached the battlefield above.

But none of them would survive. They all understood that. The purpose was never escape. These were their trenches and they were going to do whatever possible to defeat their enemy. It’d buy those left on Earth a fighting chance. A war of this magnitude demanded decisive action. A sacrifice on behalf of life itself. 

And so, within the endless darkness where creation itself once died, the warriors of the Light quietly chose the place where they’d make their final stand.

TO BE CONTINUED…