The story so far…

Kulan Gath, a vile sorcerer heralding from the age of ancient Hyboria, has concocted an insidious scheme to rouse three clans of the Savage Land – the croca’dyla, the arachni’adna and the aeria’akah – to war, intending to cast his rule over whatever’s left when the bloodshed is done. His plan involved inciting these tribes to slaughter Shanna The She-Devil – because Gath was aware that his eternal enemy, the Hyrkanian warrior Red Sonja, might manifest within Shanna’s body just as Gath has unexpectedly manifested in the body of her friend, Benjamin Clements!

These events have come to pass, and now – in the lost valley of the arachni’adna where the three tribes are observing an uneasy standoff – Red Sonja faces Kulan Gath whilst her companions look on in bewilderment. But what has happened to Shanna and Ben, and can the dyla and aerian clans stand against the rage of the arachni?

And now, the adventure concludes!

“Where are we…?”

Shanna couldn’t offer an immediate answer to Ben Clements’ question. For a long time she could only stare across a span of undefined space – a colorless, formless void – in the direction of her acquaintance, fighting back the urge to reach out and separate his head from his shoulders with a sweep of her sword. Except… she didn’t have a sword, not here. Not in this place, wherever this was.

The other She-Devil, she was the one with the weapon. She was the one now in possession of Shanna’s body.

Red Sonja…

“There is great artifice at work here, human. And only you can set things right.”

Shanna looked up at the sound of this disembodied voice. She saw three figures circling above her, not flying as such or even floating, just… existing, on a slightly higher elevation. She’d never set eyes on these gods before but she recognized them all the same: Sobek of the croca’dyla, Omm of the arachni’adna and Akah Ma’at of the aeria’akah. Each god had allegedly branded a mysterious tjati with their sacred mark, verifying the tjati’s visions of Shanna perpetrating crimes of assassination against the three clans. These marks had been exposed as falsehood, the machinations of Kulan Gath. Shanna scowled.

“Showing up a bit late to the party aren’t you?” she snapped. “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting your people…?”

“Kulan Gath’s magicks in the spiritual realm remain strong, even during death,” Omm skittered. “Especially in these modern times when we are weakened.”

“He… usurped usss,” Sobek hissed. “Branded his filthy effigy with our sacred mark, and committed murder through this tjati, to instigate war and provoke hatred against you, to prevent his eternal enemy Sonja of Hyrkania from manifesting in her chosen vessel.”

“To our shame,” Akah Ma’at breathed, “he succeeded.”

“And, let me guess… you’re still powerless to stop him yourselves, right? You’re hoping us regular mortals can pull your holy fat out of the fire. And that, right there, is why I’ve never placed my faith in anything I can’t touch. You godly types, you’re never much use when the going gets tough.”

“You are a bitter woman, She-Devil.”

“Oh, absolutely. Omm, honey, I’m a woman with a fork in a world of soup. But I’m also a realist. And I’m a fighter. It may not have the same ring as worshipper but I’m thinking a fighter is exactly what you need right now…”

Shanna stared back at Ben. The buck-toothed young man was cowed, barely able to meet her gaze. He sported the sapphire-onyx amulet of Kulan Gath – or some spiritual representation of such, at least – around his neck. He’d secretly worn it the whole time he’d been by Shanna’s side in the real world but only now was it visible, with his shirt collar having been torn away.

“I didn’t know,” Ben said, quietly. “I swear to you. I was… I was a motorcycle courier back in Melville. An everyday guy, a nobody. No money, no prospects, couldn’t hold down a girlfriend. One day I’m scouring the thrift shops and I find this necklace. Reckoned my luck was changing, that it might be valuable, you know? I buy it cheap, plan to sell it on for a profit. But I held onto it, and a week later, that’s when I started thinking about coming here. Giving up what little I had and immigrating to the great and mysterious Savage Land. I thought it was my idea, but…”

“He was in your head, guiding you. This Kulan Gath, this ancient wizard… his spirit was in the amulet, and then he was in you.”

Ben grimaced. “I’m a jerk, I know. I didn’t have a clue. It’s like the Wizard of Oz, right? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

“But the curtain’s lifted now,” Shanna murmured. “We’re getting a sense of who and what he is, and what he wants. And what he wants is me dead, and war between the races of the Savage Land, so he can forge a personal army of whatever’s left when all the blood is spilled.”

Ben bowed his head, his shoulders trembling. “God, Shanna. I didn’t know, I swear.”

“I believe you,” Shanna said. “He exerted just enough psychic compulsion to bring you to the Savage Land and to get my attention, to gather me close, but he couldn’t push any further. He said you had ‘irritating resilience’. I already knew the first part. But, thinking about it… up on that mountain outcrop, when Iliago was healing me with the jujasi? You could have stopped him somehow, made it so I never recovered. And then the arachni’adna attacked, and again you saved me, distracting them at the crucial moment. Gath wasn’t in control then, Ben. You were. And you didn’t want to see me dead.”

“No. But now he’s ascendant, right? He’s controlling my body – my physical body – and now I’m the dislocated spirit. Same as you.”

“Unless you take it back.”

Ben frowned. Shanna gestured upward with a nod, her eyebrows raised. “The no-earthly-use-to-anyone god squad up there?” she said, sternly. “Only you can set things right, human, that’s what they said. But they weren’t talking to me, Ben. They were talking to you.”

“Me…?”

“This warrior from some long forgotten time, Red Sonja… she’s manifest in my body, and she’s trying her damnedest to keep Gath at bay. But you’re the only one who can ultimately stop him, Ben.

“And I’m going to help you…”

WAR OF THE CLANS

Part V: Shanna and the She-Devil’s Gambit

By Meriades Rai

Queen Heri’dii of the arachni’adna understood nothing of the personal duel between Kulan Gath and Red Sonja, or of games of gods, and she cared even less. She only knew that Shanna The She-Devil had instigated all-out conflict in her territory between her own clan and the dyla and aerian races, and that Shanna – despite the inexplicable changes in appearance that had come over her in the last few moments – therefore needed to pay the price.

Ignoring the bloody melee erupting all about her, as her spider-women sought to fight back against the combined forces of their foes, Heri’dii lurched forward and swatted Kulan Gath to one side just before his red-haired adversary could run him through with her sword. Red Sonja – the ancient warrior presently occupying Shanna’s body – whirled with a thoroughly unladylike curse, the edge of her weapon glinting in the cast of moonlight that bathed the valley.

“Back, beast of the afterworld!” she snarled. “Back… or face the wrathful blade of Red Sonja, the She-Devil!”

The Queen was unimpressed. “Never, human witch… and your blade shall not serve you when I feast on your murderous bones!”

The statuesque redhead in the scale mail bustiere and skirt stalked forward, ignoring the horde of giant spiders that advanced to surround her and concentrating only on Heri’dii. In the warrior’s wake, those allied to the true Shanna and not this unfathomable usurper of her body – Marty the quagga, King Frajk of the croca’dyla and Prince Iliago the aerian – exchanged bewildered glances.

“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” Frajk hissed, his black, crocodilian eyes searching out his enemy nearby, “but I know that he is responsible. And for that, I shall bite out hisss bastard heart!”

A few feet away, Kulan Gath – ancient Hyborian sorcerer now manifest in the physical body of poor Ben Clements – turned to see Frajk’s approach, and smiled. Visually there was little of the true Ben left now; he was taller, thinner, his limbs crooked and sharply angled and his head elongated, dominated by large, red eyes and a maw of needle-sharp teeth. There was something insect-like about him, enough that those looking upon him expected him to sprout wings or extra legs at any moment. It was perhaps no wonder that he’d ultimately found his closest allies in the children of Omm, the dark and dreaded omnivores of the shadow valley.

“Be silent, lizard!” Gath sneered, gesturing spitefully in the dyla’s direction and causing the air between them to suddenly ripple and spike. “Your pathetic clan has served its usefulness… as have the children of the hawk!”

King Frajk screamed and fell beneath a barrage of invisible missiles, his scaly flesh rupturing in a fountain of brackish blood. Iliago was further away from Gath’s assault and so fared better, but considering his condition was already critical – having been poisoned by arachni venom in a prior skirmish – he too fell all too quickly. Marty scrabbled for safety, an ungainly sort at first glance but possessed of surprising speed and nimbleness. Kulan Gath ignored him, evidently considering the zebra people a clan even less important than those he’d manipulated thus far.

Now it was Red Sonja who commanded his full and terrible attention…

Across the battlefield, at the orders of their Queen, the arachni’adna surged forward as one, devilishly quick. In an earlier encounter Shanna had held her own for a brief time against these beasts due to her superior speed of thought and cunning; Sonja was less intuitively gifted, and slower still than her enemies, but her prowess with a sword was unmatched. She stood her ground and swung and thrust with considerable strength and heft, unflinching even as she was sprayed with toxic spit and spider blood. She hacked away at limbs and heads and underbellies alike, and even managed to guard against being tangled in spools of steely silk – at first.

However, just like the woman whose body she now inhabited, Sonja was no match for the sheer numbers of arachni. Eventually, inevitably, she was snared… and when she stumbled, Queen Heri’dii herself was upon her, mandibles snapping in triumph.

“Nay!” Sonja roared, her muscular arms rippling as she tore free of her bonds and embedded her blade all the way to the hilt in the prime arachni’s head, splitting her skull right between the eyes. “Know this, O beast of nightmares… I am Sonja, born in violence and blood in the stepped of mystical Hyrkania, and slayer of fiends, blackguards and demons of all sizes. I am justice and wrath reincarnate, and pledged to oppose the insidious magicks of Kulan Gath whencesoever he manifests… and I will not be prevented from fulfilling my undertaking by the likes of you!”

Sonja flexed her wrists and cleaved Queen Heri’dii’s head in two, then rolled clear of her gushing blood and thrashing body, leaving the enormous corpse between her and the other spider-woman, who were stunned by the vicious dispatching of their matriarch.

Sonja hefted her sword, herself regal in victory. The arachni’adna began to retreat, even surrender to the dyla and aerian legions now swarming about them, their heart for the fight having died with their Queen. Marty appeared at Sonja’s side, his dark eyes wide and full of adoration.

“Daphne be cast away,” the quagga brayed. “You I like. Eisha, Eisha! I heart Sonja!”

Sonja gazed at the zebra man in abject dismay. “What in Mitra’s name…?”

“I Marty. I hero! We share romantic moment beneath beautiful stars, yes?”

Marty reached out shyly, but Sonja shrugged his offending touch away with a flick of her sword. “No man may lay a hand on me!” she growled.

“Not hand. Hoof,” Marty said. “And, technically, not man. I is quagga!”

Sonja sniffed, and her eyes strayed to her companion’s groin. “My advice, striped one?” she replied, with an air of disgust. “If you wish to disguise your manhood, such as it is, then you should wear a tighter loincloth…”

Momentarily unnoticed in the chaos, Kulan Gath was now almost fully manifest, his host body having contorted beyond all recognition and his own familiar attire – regal robes of black, magenta and midnight blue, with a tapered black coronet and a collar plume of silver feathers – having replaced Ben’s more prosaic clothes. He slithered forward as he witnessed Red Sonja’s temporary distraction by the zebra man, and his cadaverous countenance split with a malicious grin. The arachni’adna may have ultimately failed to cull their prey but Gath wasn’t to be thwarted – and one devastating spell, conjured by his sorcerer’s hand, would be enough to finally end the threat the accursed swordswoman had posed him throughout eternity.

Gath stretched out a spindly arm, collecting black particles of raw, primordial magic in his palm…

…and then convulsed, screaming, in response to a stabbing sensation in his skull and along the length of his spine. He fell to his knees, black smoke spilling from his various orifices as if he was hemorrhaging blood.

His coronet and robes shimmered, and the dark light of his onyx-sapphire amulet grew dim. It was then, as his body and clothes began to painfully revert to what they had been before his enforced manifestation, that he realized he’d overlooked something very important. The human male whose body he had usurped, Benjamin Clements, was striving to reassert himself…

“You can do this, Ben,” Shanna declared, watching her companion’s expression intently for any sign that he was about to falter. “That body, that mind… they belong to you. Kulan Gath is just a cuckoo nesting in your brain. He has no right. You told me you were a nobody, that you possessed nothing worthwhile in life before you found that amulet, but if that’s true then we’re all doomed. There must have been something, Ben. Some reason for your existence, personal to you. Find that and cling to it and you can defeat Gath…”

Ben grimaced, floating awkwardly in the null-space of wherever this was, this place of psychic and spiritual residue that Gath had once occupied but where he and Shanna had now been exiled in his stead. Was it the inside of the amulet itself? Some nether dimension linked to the real world by that necklace alone? Ben didn’t know, and didn’t suppose it mattered. All that counted was dragging that son of a bitch back here and setting things back to normal.

“Is love… a powerful enough emotion to see me through?” Ben whispered through gritted teeth. Shanna nodded.

“I’d say so.”

“Excellent. In that case, Shanna… I think I love you. Do you promise that when all this is done… we can be together?”

Shanna’s eyes narrowed sharply, the tenderness of the moment passing. Ben opened one of his and glanced sidelong at her.

“That’s not love,” the She-Devil said, coldly. “That’s lust.”

“And that’s not close enough? Not even with the fate of the world at stake? Because—”

“No, Benjamin.”

Ben sighed. “You’re so harsh.”

“Yes. And something occurs to me. If we’re looking for emotional response, I’m sure you’re the kind of fellow who reacts exceptionally to the threat of pain…”

Shanna brandished a hornscale-bladed dagger, or at least the ethereal equivalent of such. Ben paled.

“Very, very harsh. I’m trying to save us all from certain doom, remember?”

“Yes. And I’m encouraging you to try harder.”

And also using banter to distract you from the immensity of the task at hand, Shanna thought to herself. A gambit that, thankfully, appears to be working…

Ben huffed and closed his eyes once more. He concentrated fiercely…

…and then convulsed with a cry, a physical seizure that was instantly transmitted to the unearthly environment that surrounded them, causing the realm to fluctuate and contract with an alarming spike of activity. Shanna gasped and stumbled – and then looked to see Ben fading out of discernible existence, and Kulan Gath returning.

“He comes,” reported the voices of the triumvirate of ancient gods above, in melodic unison. “He who shackled us and abused our name and people. The High Priest of the N’Garai and the Scourge of Hyboria…”

The spindle-thin sorcerer shrieked with rage and reared to his full, intimidating height, his arms outstretched. He pointed a hooked finger at Shanna, his eyes blazing white and his rotting teeth bared.

“You! You did this! I swear a solemn oath, when I am emperor of your repellent world I’ll cull every flame-haired harlot who dares draw breath!”

Shanna raised an eyebrow. “Don’t kid yourself, sugar,” she purred. “Every man loves a redhead. As women go, we’re the only ones who are truly wild at heart…”

Kulan Gath released a clawful of virulent magic, black tendrils of pain slithering forth from his fingertips like serpents, but Shanna was too quick and far too determined; she darted forward, light on her bare toes, then grunted with exertion as she thrust upwards, shifting all her weight and strength into a single, savage blow. She slammed the blade of her dagger into Gath’s midriff and raked the sharpened scale upwards in a slicing arc that cleaved through whatever passed for flesh and bone in a centuries-old wraithlike cadaver sentenced to imprisonment in his own amulet. Black blood as thick as oil and possibly more akin to liquefied evil spilled from the sorcerer’s gut and chest, his shredded robes fluttering wetly in a sudden, localized maelstrom.

Shanna staggered backwards, buffeted. She regained her balance swiftly and pressed forward to deliver another strike…

…but, in the real world – in the dense, web-thickened undergrowth of the lost valley of the Children of Omm – Kulan Gath suddenly manifested once more, just as the spirit of Ben Clements had begun to regain the body that was rightfully his.

The skirmish between the remaining arachni’adna and the legions of croca’dyla and aeria’akah had ceased, all parties now watching on as the black smoke billowing from Gath’s tortured form – the acrid, smoldering essence of the foulest magic – filled the night air. With King Frajk and Prince Iliago still incapacitated it was therefore down to Red Sonja alone to take issue with her immortal foe… a task she was more than happy to accept.

Weakened from his wound incurred in the spirit world, Kulan Gath’s contorted face raised towards Sonja as she advanced with sword raised. In truth, this visage now belonged neither to Ben or Gath alone but was an unsightly amalgamation of the two, and the body the two spirits shared was similarly disfigured, still elongated and thinner than Ben alone would have been but no longer as daunting as Gath had seemed before psychic assault had caused his manifestation to unravel.

Red Sonja looked on without pity. She cared nothing for Ben Clements, after all.

Kulan Gath snarled and thrust out a hand, unleashing a wave of magic that peppered Sonja’s tanned flesh – already liberally scarred from a lifetime of battle – with one thousand, thousand tiny black needles. Red Sonja growled in pain, and she bled, but she didn’t falter.

The fury of men’s blades or fists, the affliction of sorcery, even the scorching flames of a dragon’s breath… she had known suffering and persecution of many kinds in her life, and she had endured it all. She no longer wavered in the face of pain.

“Know, fiend, that I shall e’er fulfill my duties… and my promises,” she hissed, striding close and ending her foe’s resistance with the flat of her leather boot, pressing firmly against his throat and forcing him back upon the ground, prostrate and helpless.

Kulan Gath looked on in horror – and so did Ben Clements.

No! he screamed, silently. No, please, I’m still in here. Shanna and I—

But it was too late. Red Sonja raised her sword…

“She’s going to kill me, she’s going to kill me, she’s—”

Ben was stricken, flailing powerlessly in the void-realm, his visual profile shifting back and forth between his familiar self and the wicked form of Kulan Gath at a bewildering rate. Shanna looked on in desperation, unsure what to do or even what Ben was seeing before his eyes whenever he returned to the real world for fractions of a second at a time. But she could guess.

She was here, in this phantom realm, because her own body had been usurped by some other redheaded warrior, a woman from some far-flung time and place. That woman was hell-bent on ending Gath’s threat at any cost. Shanna could sympathize with that; she even hoped she would be prepared to do the same if she was in the other woman’s position. But Shanna possessed one quality that, with all due respect, Red Sonja did not; she claimed a keener intellect, and with an instant of instinctive and intuitive decision she took a chance upon an educated guess. After all, what more did she and Ben have to lose?

Red Sonja’s mission was the pursuit of Kulan Gath’s death. There was no rule stipulating this final outcome had to occur in the real world… not when it could occur here, in this other place instead.

It was the She-Devil’s final gambit. Shanna closed her eyes and concentrated.

Her mind linked with Red Sonja’s, just for a single heartbeat. It was enough for each woman to recognize the other not only as a kindred spirit but perhaps even as distant ancestors, connected by an ancient bloodline they could never truly determine as fact but which they could identify in their soul just the same. And, in recognizing one another, there was also respect, and a union of sisterhood no man could ever comprehend.

In the real world, Sonja swung her sword…

…but it was in the other world, the null place, that the blade swept down and bit home, decapitating the quailing Kulan Gath in mid-shriek. The sorcerer’s severed head went spinning, decorating the formless realm with beautiful coils and spirals of the blackest blood. His flesh became dust, his robes now colorless rags. His amulet splintered, the onyx-sapphire at its heart shattering into a hundred pieces…

…the gods Sobek, Omm and Akah Ma’at looked on with cold, unsympathetic eyes, exulting in this moment of wrathful justice…

…and, in the real world, Ben Clements slumped forward with a choking gasp, his hands clutching desperately at his throat. By his side, Shanna sank to her knees and gathered him close, cloaking him with the heat of her body. He turned to her, breathing her in. He looked at his hands, but there was no blood.

“I’m… alive,” he whispered. And then he smiled. He looked up at Shanna – definitely Shanna now, no longer the harsher, slightly older features of the eternal Hyrkanian warrior who had usurped her physical self – and he returned her hug, his hands closing over the soft firmness of her body.

“Alive!” he cried in delight. Shanna stared down at him, her lovely amber-cognac eyes narrowed.

“But, unless your remove your hands from their present position,” she said, through gritted teeth, “not for long.”

Ben paused, and looked down. His hands were indeed in a very particular place, filled with the soft swell of animal furs and firm flesh beneath. He sighed, then smirked and gave the She-Devil a cheeky wink – and a squeeze.

“Ah, inevitable pain be damned,” he said, rejoicing in the moment. “There’s not a man in this beautiful world who can tell me it won’t be worth it…”

The companions emerged from the valley of the Children of Omm without much in the way of further resistance from the arachni’adna, but there were lines of enmity redrawn that day. The fragile peace that had existed for so long between the arachni and the croca’dyla especially was damaged, and King Frajk knew all too well that Queen Heri’dii’s successor, whoever that might prove to be, would be honor bound to avenge her predecessor’s death, regardless of how one fiendish outsider – Kulan Gath – had been responsible for all the madness leading up to that point. Perhaps Frajk was even relishing the prospect of renewing hostilities, for if not Gath then some other catalyst would surely have provoked the arachni sooner or later.

Some clans, it seemed, were destined to unite only in hostility.

High above the rainforest plateau, looking down upon a carpet of swirling fog lit by moonlight, Shanna the She-Devil was still dwelling upon this development two days later and wondering hat it might mean for the Savage Land in times to come. Kulan Gath had sought to instigate conflict between the clans; just because the sorcerer was no longer around to reap the benefits of such an insidious plan it didn’t mean that the hardship of war could now be avoided. Still, that was a concern for the future. Tonight, Shanna was anxious for… other reasons.

“Your friend, Benjamin Clements… he’s sporting a rather spectacular black eye and split lip,” Prince Iliago of the aeria’akah murmured as he approached Shanna from behind, laying his hands upon her bare shoulders. “I don’t recall him receiving such an injury from either Kulan Gath or Red Sonja.”

“No?”

“No. But he mentioned a curious thing when I questioned him about it; he said, ‘I was right. It was worth it.’ I can’t possibly imagine what he meant by that…”

Shanna snorted. She stared out into the warm night, balancing on the edge of a mountain outcrop, the kind of high ledge only an individual with wings – and whoever they deigned to bring here – might reach. This was the same precipice where Iliago had once imprisoned Shanna in a bamboo cage, in his ill-fated ploy to arrange some romantic union. Shanna had quickly put him to rights; back then she’d been betrothed to another.

But not any more.

The man Shanna O’Hara had loved – perhaps would always love – was long gone now. Kevin Plunder, Ka-Zar, wouldn’t have wanted her to spend the rest of her life alone. Strange, however, that she could face down dinosaurs and crocodile men and giant spiders and an ancient, parasitic sorcerer, all without qualm… but that tonight she was trembling with fear.

Iliago waited. Eventually Shanna turned and lay her hands upon his hard chest, and his abdomen, and his wings. The necrosis he’d suffered was healing, slowly, but she would need to be tender. Just as he would be tender with her, at first.

She closed her eyes. She had no idea if this was right or wrong, especially with Iliago, someone she’d always believed she hated up until encountering him again these past few days. But in the aftermath of the battle she needed… something. Because in that brief moment her mind had linked with her mysterious ancestor, the ancient Hyrkanian warrior with whom she’d shared her body, she’d sensed Red Sonja’s unbearable sadness, her loneliness. For her own reasons Sonja refused the prospect of a man’s touch, and in part her heart was black and cold because of it. Shanna didn’t want to become that, even as she clung to Kevin’s memory.

She needed something more.

Eyes still closed, she raised her mouth for Iliago’s kiss, and as they joined together the stars looked down upon the Savage Land and rejoiced in a brief time of peace.

Until the next adventure…

In a distant place, on the farthest edge of the world, a pair of dark green eyes glittered and a pair of red lips smiled. Fingers ran through hair of fiery red and a strong fist raised a gleaming blade in salute.

“Aye, sister in arms,” Red Sonja murmured. “Until the next adventure, and may that time not be too distant. But before then… I feel inclined to explore this strange land of yours.”

Sonja gazed out into the rising sun, breathing real air, feeling real warmth on her tanned, scarred flesh. No more the existence of a disembodied spirit for her; Red Sonja had returned. And if this modern Earth was as rich and entertaining as her own era of ancient Hyrkania, then she was sure she was going to enjoy herself immensely…