SHANNA AND THE DREAD OF THE CREATURE FROM THE PIT

By Meriades Rai

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I might have your attention? This evening’s main event is about to begin, so if you’d all like to make your way back to the arena – and, if you haven’t yet placed your wagers, then now is your last opportunity to do so…”

The announcer was a dashing fellow, a slender and silver-haired old rake who made women of all ages swoon. Philippe Bruneau regarded the man with disdain, loitering at the far end of the marble hallway with his right arm tucked behind his back. It was bad enough that the upper classes might be alarmed by the pallor of his flesh and the general ghoulishness of his appearance; for them to observe the fact that his right hand had been removed at the wrist and was replaced with a metal hook would be unacceptable. This fine establishment had rules, after all.

Bruneau – Le Cadavre – shook his head in mild disbelief, as he always did when finding himself reluctantly setting foot in this wretched environment, and waited to be given the signal to proceed. It was offensive that he should occupy the social standing of one of the common staff, of course, when he was so much more than a kitchen maid or the like; without him there wouldn’t be any ‘main event’ and the aristocracy of Prague and its environs would have no entertainment to look forward to whatsoever. But that was just the way this worked, wasn’t it? At the end of the day, provided he was paid for his services – and he always was – then he could endure any number of contemptuous glances cast in his direction from rouged women who wore diamonds like a second skin, or their braying, gel-combed spouses.

The silver-haired announcer tipped a gloved finger in Bruneau’s direction, and he grimaced, then nodded. He fished his cell phone from his pocket and made the call.

“The crusts are taking their seats,” he informed his contact, in Czech. “Give it five more minutes then let them loose. And remember – treat that feisty one with extra care. She may have killed once already today but that doesn’t mean she’s any the less hungry or ill-tempered, understand?”

Bruneau ended the call, then raised his hook so that it caught the light. He smiled. That evening’s show was going to be spectacular, he could feel it in his bones. And the audience would be delighted, which meant that he could renegotiate his fee with his employers – provided he could secure more eggs, of course. That was the one fly in the ointment. Still, there was plenty of time to address that issue.

For now, the show was about to begin. The Pit was calling…

“Stop! Slow down! Desist! I is calling you, toothy beast! Zoinks!”

Martyllr’kaedr the equ’quagga was growing increasingly desperate, and no less frustrated, that the sabertooth cub he was presently chasing through the snow-laden alleyways of Prague didn’t seem to be paying him any heed. Not that this was uncommon, because Marty could count the number of people (or tiger cubs, or animals of any other distinction) who ever listened to him on the fingers of one hoof, and hooves in general didn’t have fingers. His certainly didn’t. Which he’d always thought was a shame, as fingers were wonderful things, but-

There was a woman’s scream and then the screeching of wheels, both sounds emanating from around the corner of the next street. Marty winced but was secretly relieved, as without telltale noises like these he was in danger of losing track of the sabertooth completely. He sprinted forward, glad that he’d now acclimatized to the slippery texture of the ice and slush underhoof and was no longer likely to break one of his skinny legs by going head-over-haunch. This human world, with its strange weather? Not so bad once one got used to it…

Marty rounded the corner at pace then slowed, his large eyes widening still further with awe as he was presented with the magnificent view of one of Prague’s premier landmarks, the St. Charles Bridge that spanned the beautiful Vltava River. The sabertooth – newly christened Scooby – was entranced in similar fashion, seated at the base of a black iron barrier that ran parallel to the river, some six feet back from the water’s edge. He was wagging the small stub of his tail and looking back and forth along the icy tributary, his ears pricked. Marty breathed a sigh of relief.

“Eisha, Eisha,” he murmured. “You not be running off, Scoob old buddy, old pal. You, like, jeepers, are giving me attacking of the heart…”

Scooby glanced up and grinned a toothy grin. And it was at that moment that they both heard another woman’s scream – but this time it was nothing to do with anyone being alarmed at seeing a tiger and a zebra-person skittering amongst them. This scream came from above.

Marty and Scooby looked up.

It was the middle of winter and the gray light of late afternoon had already faded rapidly into the indigo-black of dusk. The bridge was elegantly lit, a sharp silhouette against the bruised sky, and a light snowfall was shimmering in their air like faerie dust. It was truly beautiful, almost enough to distract from the fact that a human form had just plummeted from the bridge before then – seconds later – striking the thin layer of ice that coated the surface of the river at the bottom of one of the bridge’s towering arches.

Scooby yelped. Marty’s nose twitched and his eyes narrowed. It all had happened too quickly and it was all too dark for them to have made any definite visual identification, but for these two natives of the Savage Land there were other, more trustworthy senses to rely upon – and these senses didn’t lie.

“Jeepers!” Marty cried. “Madeleine!” Scooby barked.

And then the pair of them, as one, vaulted the iron balustrade and threw themselves into the freezing waters of the Vltava…

“Shanna? By the steppes of Mount Kurj, what have you done…?”

Shanna the She-Devil turned at the sound of the familiar voice, her expression shocked. She saw the man standing before her, swathed in hooded furs, and for a moment she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t allow herself to believe it. But, even though she hadn’t been born in the Savage Land like Marty the quagga or his sabertooth companion, her senses had still developed to the extent that she knew she could trust them.

This was him. Her missing husband, Ka-Zar. Kevin. She stepped forward, scarcely able to breathe. It had been so long, so long…

Her cognac-amber eyes stung with momentary tears, then narrowed, and a second later her lips furrowed to bare her teeth.

“You sorry, stupid, lying son of a bitch!” she roared, unleashing a ferocious strike that surely would have torn the hooded man’s head from his shoulders had his own significantly enhanced instincts and reflexes not enabled him to shift his entire upper body backwards at the last moment. As it was he almost went tumbling over the edge of the bridge, snatching out at the railing to secure himself before his balance tipped.

He swore, righting himself and then whirling all in the same movement.

“Seven hells, woman!” he snapped. “I never expected you to have quelled that miserable temper of yours, but I swear it’s gotten worse…”

Shanna snarled and whipped out her hand, pulling the man’s furred cowl aside. When she saw the face beneath she gasped, her fury suddenly draining away just as the high color faded from her cheeks, leaving her pale and trembling.

“Oh, lord,” she whispered. “Oh, Kevin, what did that witch do to you?”

Ka-Zar raised a hand to his chin, and this hand was every bit as ruined as the face which Shanna now looked upon with such horror. Flesh that had once been hard, tanned bronze was now a mottled grayish-blue and the texture of ancient parchment, whilst his eyes were sunken pits and his hair hung in lank strings of cobweb from his peeling scalp. There was much of the corpse about him, even more so than when Shanna had last set eyes upon him almost one year ago.

“I’m dead, Shanna,” Kevin said, softly. “Or, at least, I’m not truly alive. Ezlenza, the Red Priestess… she didn’t kill me when she plunged me into that pit of hers and then healed me with her sorcery. She did something worse.”

“But Madeleine, she didn’t say-”

“She didn’t know what physical state I was in because I didn’t show her. She couldn’t have warned you. I came to her, disguised in furs, and after convincing her that I was who I said I was she agreed to come find you. To bring you here.”

“But-”

Shanna stilled, the sound of her thundering heart alive in the snow-filled air.

Madeleine…

Kevin was right. What had she done?

She turned slowly and gazed out over the dark river, her eyes haunted. Her world was unraveling… and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

The undead witch stood at the edge of the circular clearing, flanked by her two newly recruited minions, the dire wolf and the mutilated human named Drewitt. At the heart of the clearing was a nondescript obelisk of bluish-black stone, no more than four feet in height, weathered and misshapen and listing where it was embedded in the lifeless earth.

The Mandragorgona Helix.

“So long have I searched,” Ezlenza hissed, disgorging a trickle of wriggling insects – Pir’achai, ravenous piranha ants – from her desecrated mouth with every word. “So long,” she whispered, “and now I find myself drawn here, to the secret location that forever eluded me, the location I perpetrated such tortures to discover. Here, at last. But who or what has facilitated this revelation…?”

The Red Priestess smiled slyly, casting her lifeless gaze about the clearing, her filthy, blood-red robes fluttering gently in the warm breeze. That gaze came to rest upon some dark shape half-hidden in the undergrowth, and her smile grew.

“Wolf,” she breathed. “Fetch.”

The dire wolf responded without question, springing forward on its powerful haunches. It gathered its prize with surprisingly delicacy in its jaws and brought it to its mistress, depositing it in her outstretched grasp. Ezlenza turned the object in her hands, her rotting face cast with a curious expression beneath the hook of her scarlet coronet.

It was a head. But not human. The features were somewhat female, yes, but those bright eyes were reptilian and the flesh was a ghastly blue-gray, and in the place of hair there was a gently undulating mass of snakes.

“Sister of the Mandragorgona,” the blood witch murmured. “Sundered in body but clinging to the last vestiges of mystical existence through one overriding passion – the desire for vengeance, against the enemy who so cruelly cut you down in all your magnificence.”

She grinned, spilling pir’achai and fetid black ooze from her once-painted lips.

“I know that feeling,” she said, warmly. “You did right to summon me with your dying thoughts, sister. And, be assured in whatever afterlife that awaits a creature such as you, I shall shoulder your burden alongside my own. When I soon encounter once more the one who stood against us – that accursed She-Devil – I shall eviscerate her with such exquisite slowness and deftness of touch that you shall hear her screams in the pits of your destined netherworld, and that sound of it shall bring you eternal solace.”

Ezlenza raised the severed head of the Mandragorgona sister high, and in turn that reptilian face smiled bright with joy.

And then, beyond them in the heart of the clearing, the black obelisk began to glow as the residual power of the Helix re-ignited…

The waters of the Vltava were freezing and they flowed with a deceptively dangerous strength. For a minute or two Marty was unsure if he could prevail… but he was a more formidable fellow than most would believe. With Scooby’s aid he was able to procure Madeleine Presley’s limp body before it sank away into the black depths of the river, dragging her across to the water’s edge and out onto the concrete embankment. It was an incredible rescue, and act of selfless bravery.

Unfortunately, it was all inevitably rather futile. Madeleine’s body was still and cold to the touch, her face bluish-white, and there was blood in her hair and on her clothes from where she’d struck the ice after her fall.

Marty and the sabertooth looked on, aghast, when the medics arrived and began attempting CPR. A hushed crowd had gathered and the snow had begun to fall more fiercely.

For a long moment it seemed unquestionable that the woman was dead.

But then she shivered and coughed, and Marty gasped, and suddenly the medic crew were a hive of activity and there was a raised murmur of delighted appreciation from all those in the general vicinity. In that second the night shone a little brighter and Marty’s heart swelled with the thought that once, just once, something had gone right.

That feeling of elation would last for no more than five more precious minutes…

The Czech authorities would, of course, deny that The Pit existed, and great effort and expenditure had been routinely invested to ensure that this great and terrible secretremained a secret. It helped that no one ever believed such a ludicrous conspiracy theory even when whispered rumors occasionally surfaced, in much the same manner as the idea the British Royal Family were descended from reptilian extraterrestrials, or werewolves (two hypotheses that are blatant fiction. Apparently). But The Pit was real.

It occupied the meticulously renovated catacombs located deep beneath the world-renown St. Vitus Cathedral, one of the magnificent Gothic buildings that contributed to the grounds of Prague Castle in the district of Malá Strana on the west bank of the Vltava, a short distance from the St. Charles Bridge. The Pit was a massive underground coliseum comprised of a large, deep, circular arena surrounded by spiraling rings of seats and private boxes, all of which were full this evening as they were whenever the secret pozorovatele society (‘The Watchers’) congregated for their monthly feast of bloodletting. Once upon a time the pozorovatele had been sated with the spectacle of watching men and women – beggars plucked from the streets, sometimes convicts from the Pankrác prison that society wouldn’t miss – butchering one another, or in turn being butchered by wild animals, all for their viewing pleasure.

Nowadays, however, the main event was altogether more… extraordinary.

One year previously a mysterious Spanish gentleman named Del Vasque had collaborated with local entrepreneur Philippe Bruneau – more commonly known by his colorful sobriquet, Le Cadavre – to import velociraptor eggs from the remote Savage Land region in Antarctica, typically through the efforts of a third party, an Australian named Drewitt. When these eggs hatched the raptors were then reared in a horrific environment of deprivation and brutality not dissimilar to the conditioning of certain breeds used in the more mundane business of dog fighting, all to prepare them for their time in The Pit.

Bruneau and Del Vasque had earned a small fortune through their joint enterprise, their standard fees inflated by skimming off a percentage of the betting stakes market into the bargain. Not that those well-heeled folks who attended these fight nights ever bet on a human to actually survive against a velociraptor; it was more a case of wagering how many people one of these savage beasts could slaughter in a set period of time.

Sometimes Bruneau would cater for an extra element to be added to the mix, such as a bear or alligator. It was just part of the fun. And the climax of the event, after a couple of raptors had been allowed to eat their fill of screaming victims, was to set two of the beasts against one another in a no-quarter-given deathmatch, cheered on by the shrieking masses. If it wasn’t for all the hundreds of thousands of Czech koruna spent on soundproofing the catacombs, those attending the Cathedral overhead would have been rather alarmed by the noise, to say the least.

The mechanics of the situation usually amused Bruneau, but tonight he was feeling far less inclined towards humor. Close to fifteen minutes had passed since he’d given the order for the raptors to be released from their cages into the special tunnels that led to The Pit, an order which evidently hadn’t been executed. This lack of professionalism left him thoroughly vexed, and if there was ever a man whom one didn’t wish to vex it was a man with a hook for a hand.

The Pit – a bowl of stone and sawdust and blood and bone – was empty, save for the cluster of fifteen people all linked together by rusted manacles around their ankles who were clawing at the sheer rock walls of the arena with bloodied fingers and screaming for release. The first of the raptors should have shredded these hapless wretches down to their souls by now. The crowd were stamping and braying, and beginning to show vicious displeasure that their bloodlust wasn’t being catered for. Bruneau scowled.

He tried his cell phone for a fifth time in as many minutes but there was still no answer. Furious, he stalked from the wings of the auditorium and made his way down to the lower level where the raptor cages were stored. It perhaps should have occurred to him that something had gone disastrously wrong, especially after seeing one of his men lose a leg a short while earlier during the delivery of the cages, but in truth he believed that his remaining employees weren’t stupid enough to put themselves at risk for a second time.

When Bruneau arrived at the storage chamber and saw the sheer amount of blood the coated the walls and floor, however, he was forced to remind himself that the incompetence of human beings should never be underestimated.

They were all dead. All of them. Every last member of his workforce.

And whilst the cages were open, they weren’t properly connected to the tunnel gates… meaning that all four of the raptors had somehow-

Bruneau heard a snarl away to his side, off in the shadows. He turned his head slowly and saw a pair of huge, golden-red eyes glowing in the dark. For a moment, understandably, he forgot how to breathe.

As he watched, the velociraptor that had so concerned him – the feisty one he’d tried to warn everyone about, the one that had claimed a man’s leg, the one with such intelligence in those bright, fiery eyes – this one stepped out into the light, and Bruneau saw a bright scarlet crest on her crown and back, and the remains of a padlock in one of her claws. He blinked, his expression incredulous.

“You escaped,” he said, softly, “and then you let the others out. Because you’ve been watching us, haven’t you? Studying us. Seeing what we do, and just waiting for a chance to replicate it. You’re so much more than we ever realized…”

The velociraptor cocked its head, its crest flickering. And then, impossibly, it smiled, revealing rows of jagged, gleaming chainsaw teeth.

That was the moment that Philippe Bruneau finally understood that everything had gone terribly, terribly wrong…

“You thought me dead when you cast my body off the steppes of Kruj, out into the white mists,” Ka-Zar told Shanna. “But I wasn’t. It was some magical, near-death state I can’t begin to comprehend, even now. Or perhaps it was death, and this… condition I’m in now, it’s some manner of post-death. Undeath. Like a zombie.”

Shanna raised an eyebrow. Ka-Zar grimaced.

“I know,” he murmured. “I know how ridiculous that sounds. But whatever this life is, however much it can be called life, I’m the one living it, and those are the terms I find myself using.”

Shanna looked around, suddenly aware that she and her companion were the center of attention. There was a gathering crowd on the bridge – not surprising considering she’d just hurled someone over the side of it, and that Kevin truly did resemble a walking corpse from some horror movie – and it likely wouldn’t be long before the Czech authorities made their presence felt. But it was no good. There were things she needed to know, and she needed to know them now.

“So how did you get here from Kruj?” she asked. “Why Prague?”

“There was a river at the base of the steppes,” Ka-Zar told her. “Whatever dark energies that witch pumped into me, they enabled me to survive both the fall and then however long I spent down there, in the mist and the water. Eventually my body was washed out onto the fringes of the Savage Land, near the boundary of the Nuwali territory. It was there that I regained some semblance of conscious thought, although everything was still muddled. My memories, my emotions… everything.”

“You should have come back to me. I could have helped you.”

Ka-Zar saw the pain in her eyes and it cut him to the core. “I wasn’t… thinking straight,” he murmured. “Still not, to be truthful. Chances are my brain is in as bad a condition as my outer body, more so back then. All I know is, that day, I saw a band of hunters from the outer world taking eggs – velociraptor eggs – and loading them on to an aircraft. I was too weak to confront them outright so I stowed away, driven by some muddled notion of stopping them when we got to wherever we were heading, but my recovery was too slow. I kept slipping in and out of the real world, swallowed by the shadows inside me. I became obsessed with the eggs. Maybe the thought of them kept me going. Somehow I kept track of them on their journey, not just from the Savage Land to some port in Australia via a cargo ship but then further on, to Europe. To here.

“And that’s when I started to recapture some form of clarity. Put it down to blind luck, put it down to fate, I don’t know. But if I’d ended up anywhere else, chances are I’d never have recovered myself. Here, though, in this city that was so familiar… gradually I remembered. Remembered who I was, remembered you. And I remembered Madeleine.”

Shanna flinched, her eyes suddenly hot again. Ka-Zar held up a conciliatory hand.

“I was in London, following the trail of one of the men involved in the trafficking of the eggs. I saw Madeleine in the street, again purely by chance, and I recognized her. I knew that she could help me. And so I asked her to find you, to give you the message about Neptune’s Ring. I knew that you’d come, and somehow you’d understand.”

Shanna frowned, slowly shaking her head. “Understand?” she muttered. “Kevin… you dispatch your first wife to me, a wife I never even knew you had, instead of contacting one of our friends, like Reed Richards or T’Challa? You’re investigating someone stealing dinosaur eggs, sending me coded messages, like something out of one of those spy films you used to watch before your life in the Savage Land? Don’t you realize how all this sounds?”

The undead man pressed his hands to his head, his expression suddenly unsure. Timid. Kevin Plunder wasn’t a timid man, not in any way, but this wasn’t the Kevin that Shanna knew. This was a shell, frail and decaying, driven by a man’s dislocated spirit that was little more than a shadow clinging to some false form of life. The She-Devil regarded him with infinite sadness, her tears now spilling freely.

“Oh, Kevin. You said it yourself, whatever the Priestess did to you… it hasn’t just affected your body. Your brain, it’s not working properly. Things aren’t connecting. We have to get you help, get you treated-”

“But the eggs!” Ka-Zar cried, suddenly animated. Eyes wide and bright. Delighted. And more than a touch deranged. “The man I was following, the people I stowed away with and who brought me here, they’re all involved in something terrible. They have raptors! And they’re breeding them for lord knows what. That’s why I brought you here, not just so I could see you and explain, but because you need to help me. There’s trouble brewing and we have to stop it! That’s what we do, right? That’s who we are…”

There were sirens in the distance, drawing closer. The crowd was thick on all side now, the bridge swamped with a throng of onlookers. Shanna seemed desperate, and utterly bewildered.

This wasn’t her environment, and this situation was worse than anything she could have imagined. She should never have come here. She-

The screams erupted then, swift and shrill, emanating from the far side of the crowd on the west bank of the Vltava. Sudden hysteria rippled through the horde, and amidst it all there came another even more terrifying sound: a roar. A roar that Shanna and Ka-Zar both found eerily familiar, even though it was so incongruously out of place in this world outside the Savage Land. The roar of a dinosaur.

On the west end of the bridge a velociraptor surged forth, eyes wild and triumphant, a human torso clenched in its jaws. The body belonged to a man – a thin, pale man with a hook instead of a right hand. He was struggling and his eyes were open, wide with fear. He was bloodied but not dead. The raptor was displaying its prize before it killed it.

Ka-Zar gestured with unrestrained glee. “You see?” he cried. “That’s the man I followed. And that, my love, is a young but nonetheless very powerful – and very angry – raptor. And you thought I was crazy…”

Shanna the She-Devil stared at the effigy of her husband, then back at the raptor. She pressed her fingers to her temples, her head beginning to ache.

And to think, before today, she’d had such good memories of Prague…

NEXT ISSUE:

Velociraptors at large! Because, you know. We had to have some dinosaurs at some point, right?

Plus: Ezlanza and her fiendish entourage navigate the Mandragorgona Helix in search of Shanna, as the She-Devil’s night on the town goes from bad to worse!

You’ll be back, won’t you…?