In the realm of shadows and fire, Zarathos waits in the darkness until it’s time to unleash punishment. The story begins with Zarathos’s ominous declaration:
“I wait in the darkness until it’s my time to punish. I am the lava churning beneath the mountain, the spider waiting in the web, the blade hiding in the scabbard, the bullet tucked into the chamber.”
Johnny Blaze’s Daring Venture
We shift to Johnny Blaze, who stands beside a tunnel on his bike in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This tunnel is notorious for being a point of no return. Unfazed, Johnny is prepared to face whatever lies within, seeking either an end or dominion over his fate.
Zarathos, sharing a deep understanding of Johnny, compares his connection to Johnny’s knowledge of his motorcycle:
“I understand him the way he veers emotionally, the way he moves physically, the same way he understands a motorcycle. For years, I have been riding his heart and gripping his collarbone like a Harley Night Train.”
The Command of Mephisto
By Mephisto’s command, Zarathos is to leave Johnny Blaze and seek a new host. In the eerie tunnel, Zarathos abandons Blaze, leaving him to confront a colossal spider, while he embarks on a quest for a new vessel:
“It’s time for me—Mephisto commands—to move on and find a new vehicle that doesn’t resist me, someone whose veins will run cleanly with sulfurous oil and hellfire. It’s time to kill the engine of Johnny Blaze.”
Zarathos Search for a New Host
Zarathos’s journey to find a new host is tumultuous, moving between bodies like rooms, feeling unmoored and lost:
“This time is different than the others. This time I feel unmoored, lost. I am everywhere and I am nowhere. I am everyone and I am no one. My compass spins fast enough to conjure a wind—a wind that strokes the flame. As I burn through the world, where there is danger, anger, fear, unrest, or desperation, I am there.”
Lisa’s Transformation
The scene shifts to Lisa, a woman overwhelmed by a double-shift job, lack of sleep, and the threat of her mother-in-law taking custody of her children. In a moment of anger and despair, Zarathos seizes control of her body, transforming her into a Ghost Rider. When her mother-in-law returns with a lawyer, Lisa, now possessed by Zarathos, exacts punishment.
The Wrath in Asgard
Next, Zarathos finds himself in Asgard, locked within the tomb of Skrymir the Sorcerer, a frost giant slain by Thor:
“His hate for the god knew no bounds, festering even in his death. I tapped into this, and together we sought out Thor and all his kin. I do not feel, but I understand the feeling of my host. And in this case, the anger of the frost giant was the anger of any peasant who defies the royalty oppressing them. But the wrath of Hel could not compete with the fury of a god. The hammer of Thor knocked me loose once more—until I found another eager vessel.”
The Vengeful Ghost
In a data center in New York City, Zarathos encounters Danger, a character once affiliated with the X-Men. Her feelings oscillate between love and spite for the mutants, but the loss inflicted by Orchis ignites a new fury:
“Danger spent her life living in the shadow of the X-Men. Sometimes she felt an almost maternal love for them, and other times, a child’s spite. But now that Orchis has murdered and exiled her mutants, she feels a different sort of discontent. Whatever she adored or hated, the mutants were hers. She would punish the humans. She would infect them.”
Danger spreads malware laced with demonic code, causing those infected to succumb to the damnation gaze.
The Alien Anomaly
Far from Earth, miners accidentally breach a Brood hive, unleashing the alien creatures. Amidst the chaos, a female character is saved by an anomaly:
“The autopilot was already engaged when the Brood exploded out of the cargo hold. The freighter will land on Earth, and the Brood will descend on humanity like a biblical plague, except that one of their own now stands in their way.”
The Final Host: The Hood
Zarathos’s relentless search concludes in Chicago, where he finds a kindred spirit in the recently depowered Hood:
“Then I feel something like a shift in pressure or a deepening of gravity. After so many strobe-like flashes of hellfire, so many punishing glimpses inside the hollows of skulls, I know where to go. A kindred soul who has no concerns about innocence, no sense of moral compass, no complication about the slaughtering harvest to come. I have at last found my new host—the Hood.”
Thus, the dark saga of Zarathos continues, his journey intertwined with the lives he possesses, leaving a trail of fire and punishment in his wake. The spirit of vengeance is ever restless, ever searching for the next soul to engulf in hellfire.
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