The story so far…

Three Savage Land races – the croca’dyla, the arachni’adna and the aeria’akah – have been visited by the tragedy of cold-blooded murder. A mysterious man in a green cloak has visited each of the clans and, revealing himself as a blind visionary marked by each tribe’s god in turn, has declared the perpetrator of these crimes to be a female with red hair clad in animal furs… a description obviously fitting Shanna The She-Devil!

Shanna herself is presently acting as a grudging guardian to a man named Benjamin Clements, an outsider to the Savage Land who is having second thoughts about trying to stake a new life in this hostile, tropical wilderness. Now Ben has witnessed an ambush, and an attack on Shanna that has left her seriously wounded…

And now, the adventure continues!

Years ago…

“When I get out of this cage I’m going to pluck every last one of your stinking feathers and stuff them up your bastard birdhole!”

Prince Iliago of the aeria’akah cocked his head and blinked his hawk eyes, his golden wings bristling in the wind that assailed the mountain ledge where he was perched. It was cold at this elevation, even for him; for the human woman imprisoned in the sturdy bamboo cage before him, the chill must have been bitter, as evidence by the pallor and texture of the gooseflesh on her bare arms and legs. He was glad she was otherwise swathed in animal furs, although he wouldn’t have complained if the temperature had frozen her tongue somewhat.

“Please,” Iliago said, his patience wearing thin. “I’ve tried to reason with you. Just say you’ll accept my proposal and—”

“Reason with me? Reason? What planet are you living on?”

The woman in the cage pressed forward against the bars, her expression livid. “You abducted me!” she raged. “You fly me up to the top of a mountain, pen me in like cattle, and then you propose marriage? I’m in love with someone else! Of my own species! I’m not some brood mare you can just claim!”

Iliago grimaced. This wasn’t going well. And it was all so pointless. Why should he adhere to such an archaic law of his people, that an aerian of noble caste should take a human wife so interbreeding couldn’t otherwise corrupt the bloodline of the clan? There was no proof—

“Please. Please. I’m cold. I’m hungry…”

The woman was weeping now, her bravado suddenly crumbling. Iliago was aghast. This was the female the tribe had chosen for him? This was the celebrated Shanna The She-Devil whose recent arrival in the Savage Land had created such a stir? She’d displayed spirit, yes, but she was also a harridan and a weakling. She wasn’t good bride material. This was all some terrible mistake.

Iliago sighed and moved forward, reaching out a taloned hand. “Stop. Don’t… don’t cry. Listen, perhaps we can—”

Shanna’s body language shifted instantly, her ruse discarded the moment Iliago ventured close enough to the cage that she could snake an arm out between the bars and loop it about his throat. She wrenched her captor to the side as she pulled him in, exposing his back, and then stabbed the hooked fingers of her other hand into the narrow gap between his shoulder blades where his magnificent wings took root. Iliago stilled, narrow mouth open but soundless, his eyes wide.

“Nerve cluster, and the crux attachment of wing and spinal cord,” Shanna hissed in Iliago’s ear. “Don’t doubt I haven’t got the strength to tear through your flesh with my bare hands and render you flightless for the rest of your miserable life with one twist. You think I’ve sat idle since relocating here from the outside world? I’m a trained veterinarian and a quick study. I’ve made it my business to know the habits and weak spots of any predator – dinosaur, plant, evolutionary offshoot animal-man-mutate like yourself – else I wouldn’t last long in an environment like this, would I? And I’ve grown strong and swift. More than enough to deal with arrogant thugs like you.

“So make your choice, Iliago of the aeria’akah, and make it fast. Release me from this cage or I’ll release you from the life you know. And know this, O feathered prince… youwill forever rue the day you crossed the path of Shanna The She-Devil!”

Now…

“Death! Death to the flame-haired assassin…!”

Half a dozen croca’dyla – Crocodile People – emerged from the dense undergrowth of the rainforest, armed with clubs and scimitars and hookwhips. They were humanoid beasts but only in the vaguest sense, being that they stood on two hind legs and used adapted forelegs for arms, but otherwise they were wholly reptilian, with elongated backs and long, thick-rooted tails covered in mottled green, black and russet scales and ridges. They had no necks, instead boasting flat, broad heads that emerged from shallow shoulders and swept forward into long, pointed jaws, crammed with razor teeth. Their eyes were black, tinged with a deep red about the rims. They stank of swamp weed and rot. They moved with a swinging gait, but far quicker than would be presumed at first glance considering their squat, oddly balanced bulk.

And, of course, they talked. It was a hissing rasp, but this was human language, and there was a terrible, ruthless intelligence in those onyx eyes.

Benjamin Clements, two weeks a resident in the Savage Land and now wishing fervently that he’d never heard of the place, was in no doubt that he was outmatched as well as outnumbered. It wasn’t the first time he’d found his life imperiled since hatching his stupid idea to attempt to eke out a new life here, in this prehistoric hellhole, but on other occasions he’d been rescued by his beauteous, buxom guardian angel (always the best kind), the lovely Shanna The She-Devil.

It was obviously a shame, then, that Shanna was presently incapacitated – or worse – at Ben’s feet, a steel hook embedded in her midriff and blood coloring darkly in her hair of auburn witchfire, oozing from another brutal wound.

“Kill the human,” hissed Frajk, the newly crowned King of the croca’dyla following the recent murder of his predecessor. He gestured a clawed hand in Ben’s direction, but didn’t even consider him worth looking at; his attention was focused solely upon Shanna. “The assassin is mine,” Frajk snarled. “I’ll sssplit this ssssoftskin from throat to crotch and wear a belt of her shattered spine in honor of our sacred bloodline – the blood she so viciously ssspilled…”

Frajk stepped forward, raising his scimitar as his fellow dyla crowded in upon Ben. Shanna remained unmoving.

Sunlight glittered upon Frajk’s blade…

…and then it fell, with a final and resounding thwack.

In a distant place – a place that was no true physical realm, but somewhere altogether stranger – a whorl of spiritual essence suddenly enlivened, and began to coalesce. A pair of large, dark green eyes opened upon the world that was not a world. A pair of red lips gasped.

Fiery, auburn-red hair began to glow in a sudden blaze of radiance that was not truly light. There was the chink of metal, a rustle of leather. Steel gleamed.

Time again, a voiceless murmur breathed. The wizard schemes once more, and I am called upon to stand against him…

…provided I am not too late.

WAR OF THE CLANS

Part II: Shanna and the Crocodile’s Wrath

By Meriades Rai

Frajk’s blade fell with a final and resounding thwack. Blood filled the dappled air beneath the rainforest canopy…

…but it was greenish-black blood, not red, for it was the blood of a croca’dyla, not a human. Frajk staggered in momentary shock, staring down at the now-snoutless corpse of one of his companion dyla who had fallen across Shanna’s body at the last possible moment. But this had been no intentional sacrifice on the reptile-man’s part; it had been shoved, its broad head angled deliberately beneath Frajk’s blade with a show of remarkable strength.

The human male was cowering away from the advancing dyla rather than defying them, and besides, he could never have displayed such raw power. The dead dyla had been manhandled by a representative of another species entirely…

“You’re a long way from your swamp, marsh-rat,” declared Prince Iliago of the aeria’akah. He was tall and slender to the point of emaciation but deceptively sturdy nonetheless, his flesh a marbled sheen of ivory gold, the same hue as his beautiful, expansive wings that crested from the center of his back like a feathered cloak. There were definite human qualities to his face, morphed only by the narrowing to his nose and mouth and his hawk eyes of a deep, liquid hazel, which were set in a permanent, penetrating stare. Ben found himself mesmerized by the bird-man, as did the milling Crocodylia for a second or two.

Then, as more aerians descended from above, slithering down through the canopy overhead with immaculate grace… all hell broke loose.

The croca’dyla shrieked and attacked as one, slashing with claws and weapons and bludgeoning with tails. The aeria’akah met the assault without hesitation, and with an aggression that belied their strangely fragile appearance, using their powerful wings as shields and then retaliating with incredibly quick, precise thrusts of their spread fingers, which Ben now saw were tipped with razor-prick talons – sharp enough to even slice through ridged dyla hide.

The air misted with blood, scale and feathers.

Benjamin, forgotten by those who’d planned to slaughter him, dropped to Shanna’s side and cradled her head in his heads. He smoothed back her red hair and tried to determine if she was still breathing. Her eyes were closed and her blood was flowing freely. The hook in her side was malicious indeed.

“I’ll take her,” a voice commanded. Ben glanced up to see the leader of the bird-men standing over him, his wings already spread wide to take flight.

“I… I’m a friend of hers. I won’t let you—”

“I mean her no harm,” Prince Iliago said, although there was something noticeable evasive about his expression. “She… is my acquaintance too. Come, human. My warriors will hold off the swamp scum.”

Another aerian stepped forward and collected Ben in his arms, and Ben had no choice but to go limp and trust him. It suddenly occurred to him that if Iliago was lying then he might simply be carried high into the sky and dropped to his death, but by then it was too late; Iliago was ascending with Shanna’s limp body gathered tenderly to his chest, and the second aerian, the one carrying Ben, was following. Below, King Frajk saw the attempted escape and shrieked with icy fury.

“You’ll not have her, hollowbones!” the dyla hissed, snatching a whip from a fallen comrade and unleashing it with a hefty snap! The whip’s lash was a mesh of thinly corded stranglevine and steel, with a metal hook at the end, the same manner of weapon that had been used to wound Shanna in the first instance. This hook sang through the air but missed Iliago’s retreating feet by inches, splintering tree branches instead. Frajk cursed, utterly enraged.

An aerian approached, his finely sculpted body painted with the blood of his own kind as well as the oily pitch of croca’dyla. He was proud, but injured. Frajk’s black eyes narrowed and he brandished his scimitar.

“You’ll tell me why you have an interest in the flame-hair, birdling,” he whispered, as he set about the aerian with a flurry of violent blows. “Even if I have to remove every last one of your featherbones by the bloodied root and feed them to you, you will tell me…!”

“Does anyone feel like telling me what’s going on…?”

Ben sat with his hand at his chest, feeling the comforting weight of his necklace beneath his shirt collar. He was keeping a wary eye on Iliago and the other aerian – Ulivatu, as he’d eventually been introduced – as they tended to Shanna. Iliago glanced up but made no sound, quickly returning his attention to Shanna’s wounds, which he was anointing with the golden-red leaves of a particular plant that grew all about the outcrop where the group were currently stationed.

Ulivatu regarded Ben strangely. “Your guess is as good as mine, human,” the bird-man said, wryly. “As far as I’m concerned, we should have left this woman to the dyla. After all, our remit was to see her dead; nothing was specified that it had to be by our hand. Eh, Iliago…?”

“What?”

Ben stood, a trifle too hastily, and he immediately regretted it. The outcrop where the aeria’akah had brought him and Shanna was far, far above the rainforest – the canopy of which was now indiscernible beneath a thick layer of chalky mist some distance below – and was little more than a narrow jut from the sheer cliff-face of the mountain. Iliago had brought them here not only because of the jujasi leaves he was presently using on Shanna’s wounds but also because this vantage point was beyond anything the croca’dyla could reach.

“What do you mean, you want her dead?” Ben blustered. “What did she ever do to you?”

Iliago looked up again, his narrow face stern and his eyes bright.

“Two days past, Shanna The She-Devil desecrated our aerie temple and murdered our incumbent Shaman’tai – the High Priestess – in particularly brutal fashion,” the aerian Prince snapped. Then, he flicked his head in irritation. “Allegedly,” he added, with a sigh.

“I thought you said she was your acquaintance…?”

Ulivatu cawed in mock delight. “Yes, well. That’s one way of putting it.”

“Hush,” Iliago said, sullenly, then looked back at Ben. “She… is known to me. That’s why she’s not dead, in part at least.”

The aerian stared out into the distant skies, his expression obviously troubled. “A cloaked tjati – a wise man, a soothsayer, whatever you call them in your human culture – he came to our people and said he’d witnessed Shanna’s crime clearly in the mystic runes.”

“And you believed him?”

“He bore the sacred mark of Akah Ma’at upon his face, the blindness that gives second sight. According to scripture such a gift bestows incontestable credence to the veracity of any claim. And yet—”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

Ben flinched, and both Iliago and Ulivatu withdrew warily as Shanna rose in their midst, her hands rising to her head. She groaned, her amber eyes struggling to focus. She breathed deeply, then looked down at her midriff where her recent wound was slowly mending, the hook having been carefully removed without further damaging flesh and muscle. Shanna’s own augmented aptitude for healing, combined with the remarkable curative properties of the jujasi, was taking care of the rest. Even so, the injury still hurt like hell.

Shanna eyed Iliago imperiously, through the curtain of her blood-matted hair. “Thank you, Prince,” she said, tight-lipped. “If you’ve used your people’s consecrated leaves on me that means my health was precarious. Likely I would have died otherwise.”

“You’re welcome.”

Shanna sniffed. “Of course, it would have been more efficient to boil the leaves and add ashes to the medicinal oils, then apply the paste as a poultice, rather than use raw oils direct from the leaf…”

“Yes, well, we were a little strapped for time—”

“And don’t ever think this absolves you for what you did.”

Ben frowned. “He said you were acquaintances.”

“Did he? That’s a funny interpretation of events.”

“That’s what I said,” Ulivatu sighed. Shanna raised an eyebrow at Iliago, who now seemed decidedly ill-at-ease. Embarrassed even.

Shanna cracked her knuckles, then glanced at Ben. “He kidnapped me once,” she said, stridently. “Took me to the top of a mountain and locked me in a bamboo cage. Told me he wanted me for his bride and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Fay Wray to his Kong.”

Ben looked aghast. “Ouch.”

Iliago coughed. “Yes,” he said, slowly. “Those were my exact sentiments… when she was through with me.”

“Your wings healed, then?” Shanna asked, with a sweet smile. Iliago’s mouth twitched.

“I still get twinges. You know, in wintertide.”

“Good. Bastard. Just be glad I showed mercy and didn’t paralyze you like I could have done…”

An uneasy silence settled. Shanna glanced out over the edge of the outcrop, down towards the fog-obscured canopy below. “I didn’t kill your Shaman’tai,” she repeated, eventually. “I killed a priestess recently, one who’d given me a whole lot of grief, but she wasn’t of the aeria’akah. This cloaked stranger, the reader of these mystic runes you were talking about when I regained consciousness… he was lying, or mistaken. I don’t particularly care which. But, whatever, he was wrong.”

“I would insist that’s impossible,” Iliago murmured, “if not for the fact that the stranger’s runic vision described you as wearing a coronet of teeth and swimming upstream along the green river out of the swamp. And that you bit off the Shaman’tai’s wings and left her to bleed to death in the majestic nest… as if you were carrying out the will of the croca’dyla. It seemed unlikely, but I believed it nonetheless – until, tracking you to the jungle, my soldiers and I discovered you surrounded by dyla. We didn’t arrive in time to stop them attacking you, but their actions did convince me that there’s more to this enigma than meets the eye.”

“As in, why would they attack me if I was working for them?”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe they had no further use for you and were tying up loose ends,” Ben offered. Shanna glared at him, then raised an eyebrow and gestured with her head over the edge of the outcrop. Ben paled and swallowed.

“Sorry. Yes. I’ll shut up, shall I…?”

“The marshscum also talked of you being an assassin,” Iliago said. “Have you killed any dyla recently?”

“No, none of them either.”

“You’re sure?”

Shanna scowled. “You think I make such a habit of killing random enemies that I can’t keep track?”

“You do have an awful temper.”

“Only when provoked by winged buffoons,” Shanna said, tartly. “And, oh! Look! Here’s one right in front of me…”

“You’re still angry, aren’t you?”

“You locked me in a cage!”

“You should have seen what he had planned for the Honeymoon,” Ben said. Everyone glared at him.

Shanna rose to her feet, ignoring the ache in her side and also the pain in her head, where raw jujasi had also been used on her fractured skull. “Someone’s setting me up,” she said, coolly. “I don’t like that. And when I find out what in the Nuwali’s name is going on, I’ll—”

Ulivatu exhaled a sudden choking noise, and when everyone looked they saw him staggering backwards towards the edge of the outcrop, scrabbling at his slender throat. There was something there, a looping cord, tight enough to draw blood through his feathers as well as strangle him. In the next moment another strand of cord – far thinner than rope, and glistening with an odd stickiness – shot out of nowhere and tangled about the aerian’s wings, pinning them.

Shanna took a step forward, cursing inwardly that Iliago seemed to have carried her halfway to the summit of a mountain without a weapon to her name, but it was already too late. It wasn’t another croca’dyla attack – Iliago had been correct in thinking that the dyla couldn’t climb to such physical heights – but there was another deadly species of man-beast that wouldn’t baulk for an instant at the prospect of scaling a mountainside to snare their prey…

The creature that scuttled over the edge of the precipice and onto Ulivatu’s back was a truly hideous specimen, far more alien in Ben’s eyes than the dyla or the aerianis. This was an arachni’adna, one of the Spider People, formed of a huge, black, bloated lower abdomen of a gigantic arachnid, complete with six long, multi-jointed legs, and the upper torso of a woman, with two more legs raised as arms. The arachni’s breasts were matted with fine black spider hair and her head was round and flat, dominated by a crest of eight shining black eyes and a maw of dripping mandibles. As the companions looked on in horror, the arachni – whose steely silk had rendered Ulivatu so helpless – darted in and snapped off the bird-man’s head in one venomous bite, misting the crisp mountain air with a sheen of delicate blood and a flutter of golden feathers.

“No!” Iliago roared. “You filthy—”

But the arachni wasn’t alone. A half dozen more came scuttling then, over the edge of the outcrop and also down from the cliff-face above on silvery strands, all wriggling legs and toxic spit and clack. It was an ambush. Iliago instinctively spread his wings to take flight but he was smothered without pause. Ben screamed.

Shanna The She-Devil’s heart leapt, but she gave no cry and stood her ground. She clenched her fists and tensed, hair flaming hair whipping in the wind.

An arachni rose before her, black and terrible, her legs extended to all sides.

“Murderer,” the beast chattered, her eyes wild and hungry. “I am Re’tula of the arachni’adna, chief warrior to Queen Heri’dii, she whose seven children you and your featherblood allies did so pitilessly slay without cause. I have been tasked with your slow and agonizing death, and the tale of your screams in your long, final days shall be woven into the weblore of our people for all time…”

Shanna’s eyes darkened.

“Oh, really?” she breathed. “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me, yes? Well a message, then, for your Queen…”

Shanna thrust out a mighty fist, impaling the rearing Re’tula in her soft underbelly before she could protect herself and taking the beast completely by surprise with both her ferocity and her strength. The arachni were used to their enemies cowering in terror before them, baying for their very lives. But then the spiders had never had cause to go to war with the She-Devil before.

“Weave this,” Shanna said, clasping a fistful of black spider heart and wrenching it free of the beast’s sundered gut, before casting the heart aside and kicking the remains of the wriggling carcass backwards off the ledge in a spiral of thrashing black legs and spools of useless silk.

Shanna then turned to the rest of the arachni’adna, her stance defiant.

“Come then, flycatchers,” she snarled. “But be warned. It’s not even noon yet, and already I’ve had one hell of a rotten day…”

In a distant place, a world that was not truly a world, a pair of dark green eyes narrowed and a pair of red lips smiled in approval. Fiery, auburn-red hair lit bright against the nether-dark, and ringing steel pealed like a bell.

It was almost time.

And this one, this savage beauty, with her hot blood and thunderous heart and a spirit of unyielding metal…

…she would be the chosen one.

To Be Continued…