Shanna the She-Devil

Previously in SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL…

Two hundred and fifty million years ago, the otherdimensional race known as the Nuwali (a worker species contracted by some other, unrevealed alien race) are assigned to build the equivalent of Earth’s first nature reserve in a sheltered plateau at the heart of the Antarctic continent.

Utilizing the incredible and inexhaustible heat of a ring of volcanoes to power their magnificent array of underground machines, the Nuwali terraform the enclosed plateau into a tropical jungle paradise that, in future millennia, will come to be known as the Savage Land. At the same time the Nuwali also construct a dimensional gateway through which they can accumulate numerous specimens of flora and fauna to populate their new reserve. When the Savage Land is abandoned in later years, the Nuwali technology – including the gateway, which will come to be known as the Mandragorgona Helix – is left in situ… a dangerous oversight that will eventually result in dire repercussions.

In the present day, a witch versed in the dark arts of necromancy – Ezlenza, The Red Priestess – seeks to locate the Mandragorgona Helix and harness its power to allow her to conquer the world beyond the Savage Land. In pursuit of this prize Ezlenza has already reduced Kevin Plunder – Ka-Zar – to a form of tragic undeath, whereby his body and mind are irrevocably deteriorating.

Having recently learned that her husband isn’t truly dead, as she’d long suspected, Shanna The She-Devil now finds herself in final conflict with Ezlenza – but it’s a fight she cannot hope to win. Ezlenza has discovered that mastery of the Helix has granted her access to the Nuwali’s terraforming technology, and wishes to renovate the entire planet into a large-scale replica of the Savage Land itself. Worse still, as suggested by a brief sequence of visions in Shanna’s mind’s eye, if the terraforming process is tainted by Ezlenza’s necromancy then the result will be truly nightmarish:

A dark, prehistoric Earth plagued by bloodthirsty zombie dinosaurs…

And now… the stunning conclusion!

SHANNA AND THE HORROR OF THE PLANET OF ZOMBIE DINOSAURS

By Meriades Rai

Shanna awoke.

It was a curious feeling, in that she couldn’t remember having fallen asleep in the first place. Certainly not here, back in her own home. But…

She smiled. She was happy. Surely it wasn’t natural to question things when she was happy…?

There was birdsong in the air, and the welcome, lingering smell of freshly cooked meat. Shanna slid naked from her makeshift bed, glancing about at the familiar interior of her jungle dwelling. The bamboo struts, wooden decking and nets of vines and leaves, these were all real, solid to the touch. More so the scent of this place was utterly distinctive. Shanna’s senses didn’t lie. This was the Savage Land, specifically her own small patch of jungle she’d laid claim to these past few years. Home.

Of course it is. Why would you think otherwise? What, you don’t want to be happy?

Shanna shivered and the smile died on her lips. She wandered outside, fingers pressed to her temples. Her eyes were stinging, her skin itching. What was wrong with her?

“Hey there, lioness. I knew the promise of breakfast would get you prowling.”

Shanna stepped into a clearing consisting of an area of hot springs surrounded by a circle of mangrove trees. The air was warm and sultry, and the steam from the springs misted like smoke. Across the clearing Kevin was standing beside a cairn of well-stacked rocks, stirring the contents of a wide, handled pan placed over an open fire. The Savage Land’s equivalent of a barbeque, attended by a loving husband. Kevin was beautiful, tanned and strong in the morning sunshine, his muscular arms and back gleaming like sculpted bronze. Alive.

Shanna closed her eyes.

“This isn’t right.”

“What, a man’s not allowed to cook for his wife?” Kevin Plunder said, with a grin. “I mean, I know our environment’s prehistoric, but that doesn’t mean I have to buy into the whole Neanderthal package, right? I-”

“Why am I dressed? A moment ago I was naked.”

Shanna opened her eyes and glanced down. Her lithe body was sheathed in her customary robe of leopardskin, foxfur and ivory, clasped at the throat and belted about her slender waist. She remembered slipping from her bed, feeling the warm air on her bare skin, but she didn’t recall clothing herself. It was the first sign that the illusion was fragmenting.

This isn’t right.

Kevin stood across from her, no longer stirring his pan. “If that’s some kind of invitation, I should warn you that we’ve got guests,” he said, with strangely blank eyes and a fixed smile.

Shanna turned to see Martyllr’kaedr the equ’quagga – Marty – seated nearby, with a sabertooth cub in his lap. The pair of them were munching on a box of Scooby Snaxbiscuits and making approving noises. Behind them, Zabu – the cub’s father – was curled in the sun, sleeping.

And that’s not a bad thing. None of this is. So what’s the problem? Why can’t you just accept? Why-

Shanna reached out and collected the nearest weapon at hand, a spear with an iron shaft and a diamond head carved from ankylosaur hornscale, slotted into a hollowed out shaft of bamboo. She measured the weight of the weapon, her countenance unreadable.

And then she hefted the spear and hurled it at the man who resembled her husband in every way but who wasn’t, who couldn’t be, Kevin Plunder. Because Kevin was dead.

The point of the spear entered the man’s face cleanly between the eyes, splitting open his skull like a coconut and spraying decomposing brains in all direction. There was, tellingly, very little blood. Illusions didn’t bleed as a rule – and nor did the undead hidden beneath them.

Kevin’s likeness slipped away like a silken shroud and it was the Australian man named Drewitt who sank to his knees, twitching and bucking, and then finally collapsing, the iron spear shaft protruding from what remained of a surprised expression. Drewitt had been the pilot who had brought Madeleine Presley to the Savage Land. Shanna was sure she’d already killed him once. Maybe this time it would stick.

Shanna’s eyes narrowed and her fists clenched at her sides.

“How disappointing,” a fetid voice whispered at her ear. “Didn’t you want to be content? I tried so hard to conjure up your heart’s fondest desire, this pathetic little cabaret of familial bliss…”

“For what purpose?”

Ezlenza, the Red Priestess, smiled as Shanna turned to face her. “Why else?” she purred. “To torture you when I stripped it all away again.”

Shanna cocked her head. “No,” she said, slowly. “No, I don’t think that’s it…”

“You? Think? You’re a savage, nothing more. Look at yourself, at what you do. You inhabit a primitive world of animal skins and hunting knives. Your gut instinct is to stab and pummel and flay. Why think when you can act?”

Shanna breathed deeply as she regarded the other woman. Ezlenza had been restored to her former glory, it seemed; she smiled once more with full lips that were soft and red with cinnabar, stark against skin the color of peaches, and her black hair was lush and wild within the confines of her splendid, scarlet coronet. No more decaying flesh, no more squirming pir’achai. The Red Priestess was whole again.

Or, at least, that was how she chose to appear. And that was the key to it all, wasn’t it?

“Illusions don’t really take in my mind, no matter how powerful the magic is that underpins them,” Shanna murmured. “It must be the primitive in me, don’t you think?”

Without warning she swept a dismissive hand in Ezlenza’s face and the other woman flinched, even though no contact was made. Her mask slipped a little, however – the illusory façade that Shanna had referred to – and for a moment, beyond the shimmer of cinnabar and scarlet, there was once again the mottled gray of decomposing flesh and hollow sockets where piranha ants had devoured every last scrap of what had once lived. The real Ezlenza.

“You’re using the power of the Nuwali to try and remake the world,” Shanna said, “but you’re finding it difficult to restore yourself, aren’t you? You can’t reverse it…”

“Silence! I’ll kill you, just like I killed your moronic mate, you-”

“It’s not just about wanting to see me suffer, is it?” Shanna persisted, her blood rising now along with her hope. “You’re trying to smother me. Cloud my senses. A smokescreen to keep me occupied so I can’t ruin your plans. And if you’re worried that I’m still a threat to you… that must mean there is a way to stop you, before it’s too late.”

The Red Priestess howled, arms raised and teeth bared. For a second or two there was another glimpse of desecrated, fleshless bones.

“Come then!” the blood witch hissed. “Fight me! Stab me, bludgeon me, eviscerate me! Give in to what you are…”

Shanna trembled. Come then.

That was her way, wasn’t it? Fist and blade. Kill or be killed. That was the code by which she’d lived so long. Why think when you can act?

Because if she was going to do this then it wasn’t going to be by disemboweling something. There had to be another way. The She-Devil closed her eyes. Think.

What were those visions she’d briefly experienced, back in Prague? A shield of red, white and blue. A number of identical, trenchcoated men. A behemoth of emerald green. And the others…

Think.

Think!

Th-

Shanna awoke.

It was a curious feeling, in that she couldn’t remember having fallen asleep in the first place. Certainly not here, back in her own home. But…

There was birdsong in the air, and the welcome, lingering smell of freshly cooked meat.

Shanna smiled, slowly. She was… happy. And it wasn’t natural to question things when she was happy.

But…

New York City was changing. Just a handful of centuries ago, the blink of an eye in geological terms, this tiny corner of the world had been nothing more than swampy marshland, thick with swathes of forests and fractured with waterways; now, in a rather more literal blink, the landscape was reverting.

Josiah X stared out across tracts of steaming, stinking bog and ferns and other wild, unchecked growth where once there’d been skyscrapers and tumultuous city streets, and scowled. He’d bet good money that Steve Rogers hadn’t had to put up with crap like this when he was-

“Cap! Look alive!”

Carol Danvers – the heroine otherwise known as Ms. Marvel – swooped low and fast from overhead, slamming into the side of the undead velociraptor that had just emerged from the shadows of the impossible forest on Josiah’s blind side. Her velocity sent the beast skimming through the swamp, throwing up a localized tsunami of filthy water and frenzied insects, with Ms. Marvel following close behind. Josiah – the new Captain America – grimaced as he instinctively raised his shield to protect him from the worst of the backwash, then immediately spun to face another raptor that was fast approaching him from the opposite flank.

“Okay, okay,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Quit it with the goggle-eyed wonder, Josiah. If you don’t want people treating you like a newbie forever then you damn well better stop acting like one…”

In the distance, Captain America’s fellow Avengers Iron Man, Storm and Nightcrawler were dealing with a pack of rampaging brachiosaurs that were hell-bent on sating their newly-developed taste for living flesh by snaffling up jawfuls of screaming innocents from what had been – just a short while before – the Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library. Ms. Marvel was occupied with two raptors of her own now, leaving Josiah with the third.

He smiled grimly. When the world ceased to make sense there was no better cure for the blues than to hit something.

The undead velociraptor charged at its intended prey, dripping rotten flesh from its jowls as it scrambled forward through the quagmire. Captain America set himself and hurled his shield, judging the weight and arcing trajectory of the gleaming disc to perfection; the result was that the shield not only slammed into the raptor’s straining neck and sent it stumbling sideways but that Cap was also able to collect his weapon once more as he sprinted forward and leapt to intercept it in mid-flight, all in one swift, flowing move. The raptor recovered its balance quickly, slashing out with teardrop-shaped talons as its foe sailed overhead, but Cap had already tucked his legs in close and was executing a full somersault, his muscles straining as he pushed himself to the peak of his endurance.

The raptor could have torn him in half with one hack but Josiah was too quick, too strong, too assured. Still in mid-air he twisted his body and whipped his shield down with a grunt of sheer physical force, angling the edge of the disc to connect with the exact juncture of the raptor’s head and neck. The dinosaur buckled instantly, its neck snapping and its legs folding beneath it. It crashed to the ground and thrashed weakly for a second or two, then was still.

Captain America landed on his feet, shield bright in the sunshine that shone upon the newly prehistoric world.

“Resident Evil, George Romero, The Evil Dead…” Josiah allowed himself a rueful smile. “Guess they were right. When you’ve got zombies in your face, always go for the headshot.”

“Steve…?”

Josiah turned at the sound of a woman’s voice and blinked in surprise as he found himself staring at a tall, lithe redhead in a leopardskin tunic standing before him. Shanna The She-Devil, in turn, now noticed the color of the man’s skin rather than just the familiar red, white and blue costume, and she pursed her lips.

“Not Steve, then,” she said. “But you are Captain America?”

Josiah squared his jaw for a moment or two, but then nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “Yes, I am.”

“Then I need your help.”

Shanna held out her hand. Something glittered in her outstretched palm. Josiah hesitated again, then took what was being offered.

“When the time comes, you’ll know what to do,” Shanna murmured. “The world depends on it. Thank you, Captain.”

And then, with a ripple and a sigh, the woman vanished again as suddenly and mysteriously as she’d arrived. Josiah X blinked once more, then frowned.

“Yeah,” he said, slowly. “You’re welcome, ma’am…”

From off to the right there came a sound of splintering wood, and then Ms. Marvel hurtled past with an enormous tree trunk twenty times her own size resting on her back. A zombie raptor was clinging to the other end of the tree, gnawing on the branches with rotting teeth. Josiah shook his head in bewilderment.

And then, clenching his recently acquired gift in his left fist, Captain America launched himself into the fray once more.

Shanna… awoke.

It was a curious feeling, in that she couldn’t remember having fallen asleep in the first place. Certainly not here, back in her own home. But-

Stop. Stop and think!

This isn’t real.

If she keeps you captive in this illusion long enough to finish what she’s started then everything’s lost. Everything.

So think. Concentrate on those visions. Think of-

“Jurassic Park,” said Jamie.

“Jurassic Park,” Jamie agreed.

“Definitely Jurassic Park,” Jamie said, authoritatively.

“The Valley Of Gwangi,” declared Jamie.

Jamie Madrox took a long, hard look at himself, which in most people’s cases was a figure of speech, but not in his.

“The Valley Of Gwangi?” Jamie snapped. “Seriously?”

The other Jamie spread his hands in despair. “Absolutely. Come on, dinosaurs and cowboys? Has to be the best dinosaur movie ever made. And you know full well that Jurassic Park borrowed liberally from Gwangi in terms of cinematographic- akh!”

Jamie’s argument was cut short as an undead pterodactyl arced down and plucked him up in its blackened claws, hauling him skyward with a gurgling screech. The remaining Jamies watched their squirming duplicate recede with a mixture of alarm and acceptance.

“Got to say he almost deserved that,” Jamie murmured. “He was just being an obscurist for the sake of it.”

“Well, I can’t believe no-one’s mentioned One Million Years BC yet. Raquel Welch? Hello?”

“Obscurist isn’t a word.”

“I like walnuts.”

“For goodness sakes, people!” Jamie Madrox – the real Jamie Madrox, as in the original, as in the progenitor of the small legion of duplicates who were discussing films whilst standing around waiting to be picked off by unliving flying lizards – rushed forward with a shotgun and an attitude of exasperation, flailing his free hand at his dupes. “Sincerely, you are the most dismal, worthless, dysfunctional, uninspiring-”

“We’re you.”

“Yes, I know you’re me!” Jamie yelled. “Why do you think I’m so embarrassed?”

Jamie Madrox was a mutant with the ability to create living, independently thinking copies of himself. This wasn’t always a constructive talent. Up until five minutes ago he had been the head of X-Factor Investigations in Mutant Town; now Mutant Town had transformed beyond all recognition, with buildings being replaced by ferns and trees and other prehistoric malarkey at a rate of knots, and Jamie – along with all the other Jamies – found himself/themselves at the mercy of gigantic, flying zombie dinosaurs, which was nowhere near as awesome as it sounded, and which also didn’t have a paycheck at the end of it. Not that a world regressed to a primeval state would value monetary matters, not any more, but-

The original Jamie aimed his shotgun and fired into the sky, whilst some of his dupes rallied to his cause and others reacted in numerous, entirely different ways, according to which fragment of Jamie’s highly fractured personality had manifested most forcefully within them upon their creation. It was the Jamie with a fondness for One Million Years BC who first noticed the presence of an interloper among them, which – considering her outward appearance – was only understandable.

Shanna The She-Devil glanced at each of the duplicates in turn with increasing despair, then sighed. “I’d ask to speak to a man named Madrox,” she said, with some annoyance, “but that’s probably asking for trouble isn’t it?”

“I’m Madrox,” said the Jamie who was transfixed by Shanna’s leopardskin outfit and who seemed strangely unsteady on his legs. “I’m… completely Madrox. Completely,utterly-”

“Hush!” the original Jamie barked, pushing his drooling dupe aside and staring at Shanna with bewilderment rather than lechery. “Ignore me, please. Him. Us. Hello. You’re looking for me?”

Shanna grimaced and held out her hand. Jamie took what she was offering, because he was a trusting sort.

“When the time comes you’ll know what to do,” she told him, although in truth she didn’t look overly convinced. “The world depends on it.”

Jamie frowned. “You know what’s happening here? With the zombies, I mean? And all this prehistoric whathaveyou? Because-”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have time to explain. Just… be ready. Oh, and one last thing. Multiplicity? Trust me on this – you have my sympathies, Mr. Madrox, you really do…”

And with that, time and reality warped and Shanna dematerialized once more. Numerous Jamies, original included, glanced at one another in befuddlement.

“So,” Jamie said. “Who… was that exactly?”

“It was Raquel Welch,” Jamie replied, dreamily. “She Knows Stuff.”

“Quiet, you.”

Shanna awoke.

It was a curious feeling, in that-

Enough!

Shanna slid from her makeshift bed, ignoring the familiar interior of her jungle dwelling and instead glancing down at her naked body. Part of her desperately wanted to cling to the illusion, to entertain the notion that recent events had been nothing more than some awful, fever-induced dream. But she’d never been one to surrender to easy temptation. A lioness wouldn’t tolerate the persistent ache of a splinter in her paw. She’d seek to remove the irritation even if she had to bite out the surrounding flesh and cause herself greater short-term pain in the process. For Shanna The She-Devil, submission was not an option.

When she studied herself Shanna saw only sleek, tanned flesh marred in places by a litany of old, familiar scars… but no. That was wrong. To set things she had to feel pain: physical pain, and the pain of loss. In Prague the velociraptor had inflicted a flesh wound to her left haunch, among other minor injuries.

Remember Prague. Kevin’s words. They held new meaning now.

Shanna blinked, breathed deeply, then looked again. This time the view was different; she saw the truth, the dark smears of velociraptor blood between her breasts and about her throat and arms, the bruising to her ribs where the raptor had clawed her. The wound to her hip and upper thigh. She felt the ache of it returning.

She smiled grimly. Ezlenza’s illusions couldn’t erase those telltale souvenirs of filth and discomfort. Her magic wasn’t working, not completely. The Nuwali’s technology was designed to remake physical matter, yes, but only in a geological sense; the Red Priestess could subvert the mechanics of the process through magic but she couldn’t simply recreate reality at her whim. Her attempts to do so would simply provoke widespread destruction.

The unraveling of the threads of time and space…

“How do I stop her?” Shanna whispered, forcing herself to try and remain calm instead of giving in to frustration. “Think. If she’s trying to blind me, overwhelm my senses, my instincts… what doesn’t she want me to see?”

There was something there, on the edge of her vision, her memory. If only she could concentrate. But she was so angry at what had been done to her. Furious. And the rage was building, threatening to spill over, threatening to-

“Okay, boy. You did it. You made me angry. An’ I guess you haven’t heard, wherever it is you’ve sprung from, but you’re really not gonna like me when I’m angry…”

This guttural snarl erupted from the depths of a freshly formed crater in the bleached bedrock of the Mojave Desert, but this crater wasn’t the result of any meteorite impact or manmade explosive detonation, the latter of which was nevertheless quite common around these parts. This crater was a footprint.

And the creature that had created it was a far more terrifying prospect than any meteorite or military arsenal.

The undead Tyrannosaurus Rex arched its head and roared an unholy bellow of triumph, its black, bloodless flesh hanging in rotting strips from its enormous jaw and its colorless eyes reflecting like black pearls in the sun. The beast was as strong and swift in death as it had been in life, its colossal body truly breathtaking as it stomped and swaggered about its new environment. The Mojave was warping, regressing to a prehistoric state as surely as the rest of the world but at a slightly reduced speed due to the arid nature of the climate. It wouldn’t be long before trees and ferns from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous held sway here, however, just as they did elsewhere.

It was an unsettling sensation, this widespread manipulation of physical matter, but there was one individual who didn’t much care. He was only concerned with the fact that, a few minutes previously, a zombie dinosaur had stepped on him as if he was nothing more than a bug. A big, green, angry bug… but still a bug.

The tyrannosaur was about to discover that this was no way to treat The Hulk.

The Hulk emerged from the shimmering cloud of dust kicked up by the dinosaur’s stomping, muscles rippling like iron beneath his distinctive emerald hide and his expression contorted with a lifetime of barely contained wrath. The Hulk was the embodiment of rage, the harbinger of destruction. The Hulk was mean. And The Hulk had a score to settle.

“Hey, Deadzilla!” he snarled, reaching out and grabbling two handfuls of tyrannosaur tail. “Get bit.”

The Hulk yanked at the dinosaur’s tail with all his considerable might, like a spiteful child dealing pain to the family cat, and there was a sickening wrench of dead flesh as something somewhere detached. The tyrannosaur shrieked and twisted its head low, drawing up its damaged tail at the same time with The Hulk still clinging on, and when the dinosaur saw the green beast that had harmed it, it spread its maw and bit down hard – just as The Hulk had hoped.

Someone had once said that where there was no sense there was no feeling. This wasn’t true. When a zombie dinosaur bit itself, no matter how tiny or degraded its rotting cerebellum was, it hurt. Granted, it took a moment or two for the tyrannosaur to realize that it was chomping on its own tail, and that The Hulk – showing a surprising swiftness and cunning for one seemingly so base and brutal – had avoided its lunge, and had climbed up on its snout. But when the pain finally reached the monster’s brain it caused it to shriek so loud that its cries could be heard up to five miles distant in all directions.

The Hulk looked directly into the tyrannosaur’s nearest eye – which was almost as large as he was – and grinned. A grinning Hulk was a terrible thing.

“Told you that you wouldn’t like me,” he growled. And then he balled a fist and punched the dinosaur so hard in the center of its decaying eyeball that it burst with an almighty explosion of black, oily pus and fetid gas. Choking and cursing, but also laughing in a way that suggested all wasn’t quite right inside that strange green head of his, The Hulk bounded clear as the dinosaur fell backwards, screeching and writhing in agony. It hit the ground with enough weight to cause the immediate surroundings of newly terrformed forestland to shake, whereupon it instantly attempted to scramble back to its feet.

That was when The Hulk wrenched a half-formed prehistoric sequoia from the undergrowth, his muscles corded like green steel, and used the tree to crush the tyrannosaur’s thrashing head with one perfectly aimed blow.

The dinosaur’s skull shattered like an egg.

The Hulk stepped back, satisfied. That had been… different.

“I need your help.”

The Hulk turned at the sound of an urgent voice. His black eyes narrowed and his nose wrinkled. He hadn’t heard or otherwise sensed anyone approaching. This person standing in his vast shadow, this auburn-haired woman dressed in animal skins… she’d appeared from nowhere. She was a child to his colossus, frail and insignificant in comparison, but she didn’t flinch or shirk. And her hand was outstretched, as if to give him something.

The Hulk made no move to accept what she was offering.

“The world’s ending,” said Shanna, her expression cold. “I need you to help me prevent that.”

The Hulk smiled thinly, then glanced about at his new surroundings. When he looked back at Shanna there was a glint of dark intelligence in his eyes.

“Something’s terraforming the planet, isn’t it? Remaking everything according to a pre-existing template.”

If Shanna was surprised to hear The Hulk with such intellectual clarity she didn’t show it. She merely nodded. The Hulk’s smile widened.

“So who’s to say a world like that wouldn’t be better than the cesspit we usually have to put up with?” he snarled.

“The… template. It’s corrupted. This isn’t the birth of new life we’re witnessing. All of this… it’ll prove unstable. It’ll collapse. All there’ll be is death… and undeath.”

The Hulk considered this, then snorted and looked away. “Even so,” he muttered, as much to himself now as to the mysterious woman. “Maybe that’s just the kick in the stones everyone needs. Why should I care?”

Shanna breathed deeply.

“Please.”

The Hulk hesitated, then glanced back. For a moment he didn’t see Shanna as she was; he glimpsed another woman, from long ago. An Empress rather than a warrior, but all the same there was something familiar about the pair of them, some shared impression of courage bordering on recklessness, of strength and dignity. Something in the eyes. The Hulk grunted, then grudgingly held out one massive hand to accept what Shanna was giving him.

“When the time comes you’ll know what to do,” Shanna said. “The world depends on it.”

“This world’s never done right by me.”

“Someone must have done. Once…”

And then she was gone, vanishing like a ghost in the heat and the dust. The Hulk snorted again, then looked down at that item now in his possession. Curious.

The trees all about shifted slightly in some hot, heavy breeze. For a moment or two everything was at peace. But there was the undeniable stench of death on the wind. The Hulk looked on, eyes shadowed.

Jarella would have liked it here, he thought. But there was always death on the wind, and nothing ever lasted.

Snarling and suddenly nursing the mother of all ill tempers, The Hulk went in search of something else to smash.

…Shanna awoke, Shanna awoke, Shanna awoke, Shanna a-

“Stop!”

The impulse to surrender was strong, but Shanna was stronger. Her amber eyes narrowed, her auburn hair afire in threads of red and gold as the sun filtered through the jungle canopy overhead. She found herself standing beside a wide, flat slab of black granite located at the edge of the hot springs, the rock where she’d carved such important and heartfelt words almost one year ago.

In memory of Lord Kevin Plunder, Ka-Zar, Son of the Tiger. Forever yours, my lost love. A eulogy to her husband.

But Kevin was dead, and nothing could bring him back.

It was time to end this.

Shanna closed her eyes and imagined herself where she wished to be. Ezlenza was close at hand, shrieking and spitting like a scalded cat, reaching for her with those wicked witch hands, but there was nothing she could do now. Shanna was too strong, too determined. And, even though she didn’t fully understand them, she trusted her visions. The Red Priestess dogged her like a scarlet shadow but couldn’t prevent her from riding the delicate spirals of the Mandragorgona Helix to traverse time and space and revisit a specific moment in her recent past.

From a distance Shanna observed a familiar location: a circular clearing ringed with trees and undergrowth, and with a nondescript obelisk of bluish-black stone, no more than four feet in height, at its center. The obelisk was listing and semi-submerged in barren earth. It appeared of no importance whatsoever, when in truth this was the heart of the world. The new world. This was the marker that designated the location, at a fixed point in reality, of the Helix itself. And the Helix was guarded, as Shanna knew well.

Not so long ago, Shanna had fought the three serpentine Mandragorgona Sisters here, watched by Madeleine Presley and Marty. She had defeated them and used the Helix as a dimensional gateway to travel to Prague. Shanna – the Shanna who had already experienced all that – now looked on as this scene played out in front of her, her present self lingering like a specter as her past self went about her business oblivious to the workings of the timestream. It was an odd affair, watching oneself, but in truth Shanna had eyes for one significant detail only…

Time ebbed and flowed, moving forward and backward and sideways. Shanna was controlling the spool, searching for the exact moment she knew she had to intervene – and then, suddenly it was there.

It was directly before her battle with the Mandragorgona, the moment where she’d released them from captivity within the Helix and activated the previously dormant vortex. It was the moment she’d tossed her keystone so carelessly into the whorl of the Helix, that keystone being a physical fragment of Nuwali technology infused with magic.

The keystone that now literally was the key to everything.

One Shanna watched as, in the past, the other Shanna cast the stone – a small, translucent, colorless gem – into the Helix, at which juncture it existed not only at one particular point of time and space but at multiple, infinite points. The Helix was awakened by the key. And the same key could close it. It was at this exact moment that the Shanna from the present reached out and closed her hand about the gemstone, not just once, but as many times as required. Time was folded with infinite creases, and each fragmented manifestation of the She-Devil collected an identical key as she/they passed through the vortex.

Stone after stone after stone after stone after stone.

And, from there, Shanna set about distributing those keys to certain locations – and key-bearers – throughout the world, simultaneously.

Multiplicity? You have my sympathies, Mr. Madrox, you really do…

She didn’t know why her visions her shown her certain individuals. Perhaps it was because these persons had become cornerstones of this world, and they were somehow more important to its well-being – regardless of their own private agendas – than anyone else. Perhaps it was random, as chaotic as every other aspect of existence.

All Shanna knew was that it was her responsibility to deliver those keystones. That Earth’s survival depended on her.

And she wasn’t the type of woman who could countenance failure…

At the same time as Shanna entrusted identical, time-splintered versions of the keystone to Captain America, Jamie Madrox and The Hulk, so her parallel visitations also occurred at other locations.

In Los Angeles, a beguiling young girl in gothic attire was curled up in the corner of her bedroom, listening to mournful music in the dark even as bright, midday sunlight attempted to trickle through her heavily-lined curtains and penetrate the gloom. When Shanna materialized before her, Nico Minoru was so startled that she couldn’t even draw her Staff Of One and speak a word of protective magic – although that was probably fortunate for all concerned.

Shanna handed Nico a keystone and told her to be ready. She also advised the girl to look out of her window every now and then, especially when the world at large was being regressed to a prehistoric state. After all, how could one strive for life when one was inclined to let it pass her by?

In Japan there was a muscular young man with a trailing mane of black hair and whose bare arms were tattooed with swirling black sigils. He was seemingly unconcerned that he’d become surrounded by a pack of flesh-hungry undead ankylosaurs, even though he had no weapon at hand; in fact, much like The Hulk, he was smiling as if in anticipation of what was to come. To him, life was conflict.

When Shanna appeared before him, the man named Daken coolly disguised whatever alarm he felt and nonchalantly unleashed his claws to carve the nearest dinosaur’s head from its chunky neck. Shanna didn’t appear impressed. As Daken accepted the keystone she handed him he promised the jungle girl that, next time they met – and therewould be a next time – that he’d find some way to capture her attention.

In Scotland, a rather drunken and unintelligible fellow with scruffy blonde hair had somehow clambered to the spire of a church in East Fife and was clubbing circling pteranodons about their pointy, undead faces with a pint glass whilst regaling them with a hearty rendition of Biffy Clyro’s God and Satan.

Shanna gifted Captain Scotland with a keystone, against her better judgment it must be said, and was greeted with a beaming, bearded smile and the declaration that she was a delightful young lassie with a fine pair of ankles. Which was odd, but at least slightly more charming than Daken.

And there was more. In that singular, magnificent moment of time, iterations of Shanna The She-Devil visited Wakanda, Atlantis, Latveria, Symkaria, The Hollow, Kansas… she traveled throughout the tumult of the new world, entrusting keystones wherever required, each act simultaneous and significant.

And then, and then…

Shanna emerged from the whorl of the Helix in the same heartbeat as when she’d left and was immediately struck by the immaculate silence that had fallen in the time-blink of her absence. No more birdsong, no more insects, no more distant cries of dinosaurs. No more sounds of a reality being forcibly reconfigured through the processes of unimaginable technology and arcane magicks.

There was only the steady thrum of her own heart… and then, beyond that, the beginnings of a faint and terrible skittering. Shanna turned slowly.

She was standing at the center of the circular clearing where the Helix obelisk had stood. On one flank there was the source of that scuttling, a swarm of pir’achai loitering at the edge of the clearing like an army awaiting orders to advance; on the other flank there was Ezlenza, the Red Priestess, with her loyal dire wolf at her side. The witch’s flesh was once more revealed in a state of decay, her illusions faltering. She appeared decidedly unhappy, Shanna noted with grim satisfaction.

“You can’t hope to win,” Ezlenza hissed. “You can’t stop me. Stop any of this. You’re spirit was stronger than I’d anticipated, I admit, but it’s only a matter of time before you’re as dead as your beloved husband. You can see that, can’t you?”

Shanna inclined her head, sunlight catching fire in her hair. In that moment she was beautiful and regal. And so coldly, assuredly vengeful.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” she asked. Ezlenza scowled, then beckoned a withered hand at her drach.

The wolf moved forward instantly, slathering and snapping, savagery rippling throughout its back and haunches. It was too swift for a human, even as augmented human like Shanna. Too swift…

…but no. In a fraction of a blink Shanna was already stepping forward to meet the beast. She glided with infinite poise, unsheathing her customized knife from the belt at her waist and slamming the uppermost blade into the wolf’s rapidly oncoming snout with one movement. The drach’s skull split, its black eyes wide with astonishment at its enemy’s seemingly impossible fleetness.

“Helix residue,” Shanna breathed, looking past the wolf’s shoulder and meeting Ezlenza’s mortified gaze. “Time slows when you wear it on your skin like a second scent. It gives you a bit of an edge, for the short while that it lasts… but that’s all the time I need. You didn’t think I’d endure all this just to be carved up by an animal, did you? Now then, my furry friend, let’s see you make yourself useful…”

With a grunt Shanna slid her shoulder beneath the dying drach’s torso and bodily hurled it across the clearing, into the heart of the swarm of pir’achai. Instantly the piranha ants began to devour this fresh flesh, ignoring the Red Priestess’ shrieks for them to abandon their feast.

“Losing control, Ezlenza?” Shanna murmured, darkly. “Well, get used to it. Because you’re going to hate what comes next.”

Shanna The She-Devil raised her right hand. Clutched in her palm was the colorless gemstone that had activated the Mandragorgona Helix. The keystone. Ezlenza glanced up at the gem and sneered.

“The Helix belongs to me, now,” she hissed. “It’s energy flows through my veins where once I existed on blood. You may have been able to use the keystone to destroy the Helix before, but not now. Not when I’m empowering it.”

“Not one keystone, no,” Shanna admitted. “But I wasn’t planning on using just one. And with you having linked yourself to the Helix so irrevocably, that means if I can destroyit… then I can destroy you too.”

Ezlenza’s ruined eye sockets widened, the ruined shadows within broiling in sudden fear. Shanna turned the gemstone in her hand, feeling its strength.

“Your powers are rooted in death, Ezlenza,” she said, softly. “You can reanimate flesh and bone, but you can’t re-ignite life once it’s been taken. Is that why you wanted to terraform the world? Did some deep, sick part of you crave the idea of giving life? Because you were misguided. Your world, populated by the undead, could never have sustained itself long enough for you to rule. Do you see?”

For a moment the Red Priestess seemed on the verge of comprehension. But, when all was said and done, she was nothing more than the unthinking creature ruled by rage that she’d accused Shanna of being.

It was cruel, perhaps – but deserved – that Ezlenza the blood witch’s final realization was that Shanna The She-Devil, the tempestuous jungle woman, had acted on intellectual reasoning instead of willful aggression or a need for physical confrontation. Shanna had outwitted her enemy.

And now it was time to end it.

Now, Shanna thought. Now.

And that instruction was transmitted, via the keystone, to every identical gem in dozens of raised hands throughout the world. Regardless of personal morality, regardless of situation, these individuals acted as one in this singular instance of consequence. Captain America, The Hulk, Jamie Madrox, Daken, Nico Minoru, Charles Little Sky, T’Challa, Captain Scotland, Doctor Doom, Namor, Susan Richards, Elektra, Baron Zemo… all those disparate persons and so many others like them, unaligned in every aspect of their lives but this one…

Now.

Across the world, all those time-splintered facets of the keystone were destroyed at once, along with the original fragment still clutched in Shanna’s hand. And it didn’t need an incredible show of force, not at all. Because each splinter in itself was beguilingly fragile, and the faintest of applied pressure caused each and every one to crumble to glittering time dust.

And, in that instant, the Mandragorgona Helix lit bright as a star and imploded, and all those myriad threads of rebirth and death that the Red Priestess had been weaving began to unravel as swiftly as they’d come together…

Shanna awoke.

For a long time she didn’t move. She couldn’t bring herself to even open her eyes. But, eventually, she knew that she had no choice.

There was birdsong in the air. Déjà vu. But this was no illusion, not any more. Shanna slipped naked from her bed and wandered outside, to where the steam from the hot springs hazed the warm air like smoke. She collected her tunic of leopardskin and fox fur and clothed herself in silence, then crossed the clearing to the flat, black stone with its carved eulogy. She let her fingertips trail across the words, and she breathed deeply.

Everything had unraveled. Everything.

Forever yours, my lost love.

Kevin Plunder – Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land and husband to Shanna – had first died almost a year ago. His second death had occurred when Ezlenza’s power, the only thing animating his undead cadaver ever since, had been erased by the destruction of the Helix. For all the events of recent days, for all that Shanna had seen and experienced, the simple fact of Kevin’s ultimate absence form her life hadn’t changed. Some things were, to coin a phrase, set in stone.

But she would always remember him. She’d remember everything, courtesy of having traveled the Mandragorgona Helix. For everyone else… for Captain America, Madrox, all the others… well, the brief transformation of the world, and its subsequent setting to rights with their aid, that would be a dream and nothing more. Perhaps it was best that way.

“Eisha, Eisha!” a familiar voice brayed from the undergrowth close by, and a second later the black-and-white striped snout of Martyllr’kaedr the equ’quagga emerged with a quizzical snuffle. “Is breakfast? Tell Marty I is not missing breakfast. What woman invites friend for breakfast then is not cooking?”

Shanna scowled. “I wasn’t planning on cooking. And I certainly didn’t invite you for breakfast. Or anything else for that matter.”

“But I is friend, yes?” Marty said, his eyes wide and hopeful.

Shanna sniffed. Marty grinned, then danced in a circle and clapped his hooves.

“That yes, that yes! Oh, Marty so happy…”

Shanna turned away, as much to hide her smile as anything else. She looked down at Kevin’s stone, the flat of her hand pressed against the warmth of the rock as if she were resting it upon his still-beating heart.

I saved the world, she thought. You would have been proud of me. But I hope you forgive me too. Because I could have given in; I could have remained with the memory of you and been happy in that world she constructed to occupy me, for however long the illusion had lasted. Please don’t think I love you any less because I chose the other path.

I miss you, and I always will. Until we’re together again, whenever that may be.

Shanna glanced up at the tropical sky, a prehistoric magnificence reserved once more for the extraterrestrially engineered geological anomaly that was the Savage Land rather than the entirety of the Earth.

Her amber eyes glistened with sadness, but she smiled all the same.

Forever yours, my lost love.

Forever yours.

…

…Ezlenza awoke.

The ground was hot and hard beneath her and the air in her lungs a thick, burning ash. For a moment even a devoutly irreligious woman such as herself had cause to wonder if she’d been cast body and soul into Hell for her sins… but no. The truth was far stranger.

Bright light spilled through the gloom of a dense cluster of trees. Ezlenza stood slowly and moved forward, eyes shielded against the glare. When she emerged into a small, circular clearing she couldn’t help but gasp as her gaze fell upon a peculiarly familiar sight: the black obelisk that marked the location of the Mandragorgona Helix. But this obelisk wasn’t ancient; it wasn’t weathered by hundreds of thousands of years of rain and volcanic heat, and nor was it rendered misshapen and semi-submerged by all those generations of subsidence.

This obelisk was new. And it was being tended by a crowd of dwarfen beings with large eyes and aquamarine-blue skin. Aliens. The Nuwali.

Ezlenza faltered, her heart in her throat. She gazed up at the sky, amber-red rather than blue and streaked with billowing clouds of black volcanic ash. Prehistoric skies. These clouds were lined with a curious tessellation of faint lines and glinting lights that signified technology: the technology of the Nuwali, in the process of constructing their hidden world within a world. Ezlenza knew then the truth of what had occurred.

When Shanna The She-Devil had used her keystone – keystones – to destroy the Helix in what was now the future, Ezlenza had been thrust backwards through time to the point of the vortex’s construction. The Red Priestess wasn’t dead, she was merely chronally dislocated. And, as she began to smile at this realization, she became aware of another significant detail. She was smiling with full lips, painted red with cinnabar, and her scarlet robe and coronet had been restored. Her hair was black and lush once more, her eyes dark and beautiful. And her flesh, her flesh…

Oh, this was no illusion. This was real! Cast back through time, Ezlenza had been regenerated. And thus Shanna had failed in her attempts to save the world – for now, set loose among the Nuwali themselves, there was surely nothing that could stop the rejuvenated Red Priestess from laying her wicked hands upon this extraterrestrial technology and using it to her advantage, nothing that-

“Whatever you’re planning, I feel obliged to tell you… you’re going to have to go through me first.”

Ezlenza turned at the sound of a voice behind her. Her new eyes widened in shock.

A man was standing on the edge of the clearing. A man with golden, shoulder-length hair, a tanned and muscular torso, and a hunting knife at hand; a man who was smiling, evidently delighted to feel ancient sun scouring his skin and to taste ash in his mouth because it had been so long since he’d felt or tasted anything. A man who wasn’t dead as believed, but who’d been regenerated by the Helix. Lost in time, yes; two hundred and fifty million years away from the world he called home and the woman he loved, yes…

…but alive. And where there was life there was hope.

Kevin Plunder – Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land – would find a way to return home one day. He was convinced of this. But for now, he had a planet to protect.

He extended the tip of his blade towards the Red Priestess and inclined his head.

“Here’s to old times, Ezlenza,” he said. “Now, I believe we have some unfinished business…”

Author’s Note

Thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to read this series and offer their comments. The final three or four issues haven’t been produced as regularly as I’d wanted but I’m glad I was able to finish the story, and I hope anyone still with me has enjoyed it all the way through.

I’ve always liked the idea of Shanna The She-Devil as a character, in her own right and not just as a bit of fluff for Ka-Zar to show off at parties (if they have parties in the Savage Land. If they don’t, they probably should). I think she’d make an excellent Avenger or Defender. Through this series I’ve hopefully shown enough glimpses of a rounded, interesting character who can operate outside the traditional Savage Land milieu, and who might therefore be picked up for the cast of another book at Marvel Omega.

If not, well… take care, Shanna. And maybe I’ll be back for an encore some time in the future.

And, as for Kevin…

Ka-Zar: Lost In Time. I’ll heartily endorse anyone who wants to give that series a spin. Go on, you know you want to…

Cheers!

Meriades Rai

 

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