Jeremy Robinson, Sean Ellis
Blackout
Prologue-Demon
The Kushan Empire, 25 °CE
Vima gazed out at the assembled group-the entire population of the village had turned out to watch him confront the demon-and felt a surge of apprehension. His fear was not for his own life but rather for theirs.
He recognized nearly every face in the assembly. He had broken bread with many of them, particularly since his victory in the games, where he had demonstrated that he was indeed the strongest and bravest of all the warriors in the district. There was no higher honor than to have the chosen one dine at your table, and in the days since the games, he had eaten well. More importantly, he had made friends of people who had previously been only strangers with familiar faces.
His fear was for their safety. The magi had made it very clear to him that if he somehow failed in his task, if Angra Mainyu was displeased with the offering he was to leave upon the evil one’s very doorstep, then he would be only the first to die. Every man, woman and child gathered here to observe would also surely perish.
Vima felt the hands of the magi and their acolytes upon him, prodding and tugging him, and allowed himself to be maneuvered to the front of the throng where the chief magus waited with the sacrificial animal. A low murmur rippled through the crowd, and though Vima could not make out the words, he knew what was being said; it was as if the entire village possessed a single, unified mind.
God has deserted us. Ahura Mazda, the personification of light and wisdom has abandoned his creation to the appetites of chaos.
Vima felt it too. He had heard the revelations of the ancient prophet Zoroaster all his life, but attaining a deep understanding of the mysteries of the universe had never been a priority for him. Nevertheless, he knew enough to recognize that making an offering to appease Angra Mainyu, the source of all darkness, ought to have been unthinkable. Angra Mainyu, the demon of chaos and madness, was the enemy of all Ahura Mazda ’s creations. Vima knew that in some lands people worshipped many deities, some of whom embodied dark forces, but such was not the way of his ancestors. That the magi, the priests who kept the revealed wisdom of the prophet, had proposed making such a sacrifice was ominous indeed.
Vima had heard also of a new religion spreading across the land like a fire in late summer. This faith, it was said, held that there was no God at all, but that the universe and all within it were part of an endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. Many were embracing this new belief, leaving aside the religions of their ancestors. Perhaps the widespread growing disbelief was the very reason Ahura Mazda had abandoned them to the appetites of his enemy.
Vima didn’t know if there really was a God, or many gods as some believed, but the demon was most assuredly real. Of that, he was certain.
The magus thrust a length of rope into Vima’s hand, then raised his arms and spoke an invocation before the assembled crowd. Vima barely heard the desperately hypocritical prayer; no one here believed this act was God’s will, and no one believed that salvation would come from that source.
The prayer concluded and Vima felt the hands of the magi prodding him once more into motion. He gathered his courage and took a step out into the open area where the demon’s presence was a tangible reality.
There was no mistaking the zone of the demon’s influence-a rough half-circle, more than a hundred paces across, where the ground had been scoured down to bare rock by the entity’s appetite. When the demon had first become manifest, only six months earlier, the affected area was only a few paces across, but with each passing day, the demon’s hunger increased and the dead area grew.
After only a few steps, Vima felt the rope in his hands go taut. He glanced back and saw the sacrificial animal, a goat, stubbornly refusing to move. He gave the rope a sharp tug and managed to drag the beast forward, but it continued to resist, planting its hooves squarely on the rocky ground and pushing back with all its might. With a snarl of frustration, Vima reversed course, thrust one arm under the goat’s belly, and lifted it off the ground as he might a wayward child.
Even as he moved, he was acutely aware of the demon’s influence. The air felt thick and moving through it was more like swimming than walking. Yet, when he drew the goat up to his chest, the resistance vanished and he almost stumbled backward into the blighted area. The goat struggled in his embrace and for a moment; it was all he could do to stay on his feet.
A murmur arose from the crowd, but Vima quickly discerned that the disturbance was not related to his difficulties. Rather, the attention of the group was focused on a new arrival, a runner from one of the sentry outposts, bearing urgent news. Vima purposefully ignored this new development and focused all his attention on accomplishing the task at hand. He turned with deliberate care, feeling the inexorable attraction of the demon’s hunger, and faced his goal.
The demon’s cave was a blank spot on the face of the sandstone cliff. Unlike the other caves and depressions that pitted the sheer rock surface, the void was no mere place of deep shadow where the sun’s rays did not reach. Angra Mainyu consumed light just as he consumed everything else, and so looking into his domain was like staring into a hole in the fabric of reality. Vima tore his gaze away from the nothingness, looking instead at the ground directly in front of him, and took a cautious step forward.
Although the ground beneath his feet was flat, he felt as if he was descending a hillside; walking required no exertion at all, and the idea of breaking into a run was strangely seductive. Through a conscientious effort, he resisted the impulse, leaning back, away from the demon’s tempting presence, and slowed his pace even as the sensation intensified with each step forward.
When he reached a point almost exactly halfway between the assembled villagers and the cave, the demon’s powerful attraction was almost too strong to resist. Walking normally was impossible; with every step, he felt as though he might pitch forward, or be snatched off the ground and sucked into the demon’s maw. He turned his body sideways, perpendicular to the cave opening, scooting his feet along the rocky terrain, one leg extended and locked to brace himself against the dark entity’s hunger. After moving ahead a few more paces, he realized that continuing forward would spell certain doom.
Close enough, he thought, preparing to heave the squirming goat in the direction of the cave.
“No!”
The shout from behind him sounded strange, like something from a dream, and in that moment, Vima realized just how quiet the world had become. Aside from the frantic bleating of the sacrificial animal, he hadn’t heard a sound for what seemed an eternity. Curious, he turned to locate the source of the shout and discovered a stranger venturing into the blighted area behind him. The man was tall and broad, and he was clad in a robe of saffron-colored cloth. His olive-skinned visage, framed by a mop of curly hair and a thick beard to match, marked him as a foreign visitor to the land of the Kushans. He was cautiously moving toward Vima, waving his arms with exaggerated slowness and repeating the shouted negative. Vima’s gaze slipped past the approaching stranger and fell upon the gathered crowd of his fellow villagers. They had been joined by a group of men-likewise wearing bright yellow robes, but with shaved heads and facial features more common to inhabitants of the region. Strangely, both the newcomers and the villagers were completely motionless. Vima stared at them for a moment, expecting one of them to move, but the tableau did not change; the men and women were as still as statues.
With astonishing suddenness, the curly-haired stranger reached the place where Vima was standing. His momentum nearly caused a collision, and as Vima recoiled instinctively, he felt the goat slip from his arms.
The animal landed awkwardly and even as it struggled to get to its feet, it began tumbling forward, drawn in by the demon’s irresistible hunger. Vima had half-expected this to happen, but he could not have anticipated what the stranger did next. To Vima’s complete surprise, the big man threw himself onto the rope trailing behind the goat and caught it in his massive hands. He had time to wrap a twist of the line around his wrist before it went taut, snapping rigid as if connected to a team of chariot horses. The stranger’s jaw clenched and the muscles of his upper arms bulged as he began straining to haul the goat back from the demon’s maw.
