After Kushala bears witness to the slaughter of her tribe on an Arizona mountain, her rage calls forth a fearsome Spirit of Vengeance. She uses it to enact her vengeance on all those that took her family and friends from her, and learns to live with her newfound inner demon.
Demon Rider
Raised in a tribe of Apache in the United States calvary in the mid-1800s, Kushala learns about the great energies of the world from her people. When the U.S. attacked and slaughtered her tribe, only Kushala survives—that is Kushala and the Spirit of Vengeance who heard her cry of rage. Burning the enemies around her to a crisp, she becomes known as Demon Rider.
Horrified by the power of her own wrath, she spends years trying to rid herself of the vengeance demon. Despite finding no cures, she did come across plenty of magic, and learns to control her inner demon with the help of her teacher Auntie Jessa, a Tongva medicine woman. With her help, she eventually becomes her era’s Sorcerer Supreme. When Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, recruits her to a trans-dimensional team of Sorcerer Supremes to fight the entity The Forgotten, she finds herself stranded in present day.
Spirit of Vengeance
As a host for the Spirit of Vengeance, Kushala experiences a demonic transformation, much like other Ghost Riders. When transformed, she possesses pyrokinesis, an ability to manipulate and control Hellfire, sometimes taking the shape of a horse. With her horse, she can take flight, leaving Hellfire behind her.
Over the years, Kushala learns the mystic arts and becomes Sorcerer Supreme. She has knowledge of Nordic and Earth magics, binding spells, chaos magic, and others. Though she accesses a different kind of astral projection than is typically seen where her physical body and mind can travel the planes of existence—an ability she calls Riding the Spirit.
She is a skilled fighter and hand-to-hand combatant.
Magical Allies
Kushala loses her entire tribe and family in the blink of an eye and bonding with a vengeance demon seems to be her only close connection. That is, until she meets Auntie Jessa, a Tongva medicine woman. From Jessa, she learns how to control her demon.
She allies with the ancient Arthurian wizard Merlin and fights foes alongside several other trans-dimensional Sorcerer Supremes, grows close to the Mindless One, and works with Doctor Strange, whom she helps when he comes calling. After being pulled from her time and stranded in the modern world, she makes close friends, Heather and Tanya.
Vile and Vengeful Enemies
With her Spirit of Vengeance, Kushala faces the soldiers that killed her tribe, The Forgotten, Sir Isaac Newton, the Dark Elf Malekith and his forces during the War of the Realms, and her own inner demon of vengeance, the Rage of a Dead World.
A Time-Tossed History of Vengeance
While Kushala sought a cure, she met Merlin, who invited her to join other Sorcerers Supreme to defeat the Forgotten and in return, he would help her be rid of the Spirit of Vengeance. Though the team was defeated by their own member, Sir Isaac Newton, who removed the Spirit from her so that he could become a god. She helped defeat Newton and with the Spirit of Vengeance restored to her, she accepted her fate to be bonded with it. Wanting to return to her time, Merlin vanished before telling her that her story was unfinished, leaving her stranded in a time not her own.
Over the course of her adventures so far in this new time, she bonded with Mindful One and joined him and Doctor Strange to the Sanctum Sanctorum. When the War of the Realms came to Earth, she joined Laussa Odinsdottir to defend Earth from the threat, Malekith and his Dark Council, by summoning ghosts of powerful warriors. They joined the final battle against Malekith and his forces and the war came to an end.
Afterward, Kushala made friends with Heather and Tanya, became more familiar with the world she now lived in and enjoyed singing. While having breakfast with her friends, Doctor Strange interrupted them asking for Kushala’s help with Johnny Blaze, AKA Ghost Rider. He informed her that Blaze had a demon that had been taking control of him while he sleeps, and that his soul is corrupted at it’s core. He sedated the demon for now, and he believed it was connected to Kushala. Kushala agreed to enter Blaze’s mind which would help them understand this new demon better and root them out. Strange opened a portal to the mountain where Kushala’s family and tribe were murdered in Sedona, Arizona. Before using her unique projection ability, Kushala warned Blaze that she would enter him with her whole body, not just her mind, and made no promises about the pain he may experience as a side effect.
As she explored his life map presented in fragments, she realized how similar they were—they both lost people they love and embraced their lack of control as it related to the demons chasing them. Though Kushala found balance when she discovered the mystic arts where Blaze lived for the chaos. She helped him find the first level of the infection—his pain which is the moment of his dad’s death. The other levels required them to travel through air, fire, and water then to the center of his soul where the demon resides.
When the demon came forth, it engaged Kushala directly, threatening her. Though they escaped and saved Blaze’s representation of innocence in the process, Kushala remained unsure of what they were up against but she thought it a separate consciousness who hungered for power. The next test they found themselves in gave Kushala a bad feeling, which was proven correct when the demon became aware of their presence and separated them. She faced her past, all the calvary that attacked her people and killed them with her rage, just the same as her real life. She relived her mother’s death and then suddenly saw a memory of vengeance, a Leviathan known as the Rage of a Dead World, a god-like being that was once scattered across the multiverse. It gathered itself together again seeking more pain and death, and the last piece was lodged in Blaze’s soul. She used her own vengeance to attack it but it was not enough. She saw an image of her mother and knew what to do. She let go of her vengeance and the demon began to shrink. The demon threatened her that he would grow big again and hunt her down, but she eats it, freeing Blaze of the Leviathan.
Leaving Blaze’s body, she informed Doctor Strange and Blaze that he was free from the Leviathan and requested that she be returned to her time since her reasons for being there was complete—to help her become whole again. He used the fluidity of her spirit to reconnect her to her timeline and it worked. Before stepping through his time portal, she asked him to say goodbye for now to her friends Heather and Tanya. Returning to her time, she knows what the future holds but realized she had become something new, a spirit rider.
When someone comes after Kushala and her ancestral line, all hell breaks loose, but Kushala meets her descendant and paranormal journalist Olivia Obtera who sets out on a hunt for her family’s secrets and end up facing Doctor Doom.
