Everything you need to know about SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL at Marvel Omega…

Some two hundred million years ago, the otherdimensional Nuwali race built Earth’s first nature reserve in a sheltered plateau at the heart of the Antarctic continent. Utilizing the inexhaustible heat of a ring of volcanoes to power their magnificent array of underground machines, the Nuwali terraformed the enclosed plateau into a tropical jungle paradise that, in future millennia, would come to be known as the Savage Land. The Nuwali populated the Savage Land with species of the era – dinosaurs and other prehistoric wonders – and, in later years, the Atlantean empire introduced numerous other genetically augmented races, typically splicing man’s genetic code with that of animals. The Savage Land has also become a haven for other time-displaced species and tribes throughout history.

African-born Shanna O’Hara, an Olympic class athlete and dedicated veterinarian, relocated to the Savage Land as a young woman after becoming disillusioned with the constitution of the so-called civilized world. Now known as Shanna the She-Devil, with her senses and physical attributes enhanced by prolonged exposure to the jungle’s unique elemental environment and to various powerful herbs, Shanna is the Savage Land’s designated protector following the loss of Ka-Zar, Shanna’s husband. Ka-Zar seemingly died at the hands of Ezlenza, the Red Priestess, who plotted to terraform the entire world using Nuwali technology; in fact Ka-Zar – and Ezlenza – have been cast back through time, and it remains to be seen whether they’ll ever return to the present.

For now, six months on from her conflict with Ezlenza, a reinvigorated Shanna remains the Savage Land’s sole champion – and her enemies best beware the prowess of the She-Devil!

And now… a brand new adventure begins!

“Who hasss dared defile the swamp kingdom of the croca’dyla…?”

King Oskek was dead, impaled by a hornscale spear that had been thrust with extraordinary strength down through his flat, reptilian skull and out through the swell of his gut, into the ground beneath him. It was an oddly symbolic attack, one that could only have been delivered from above, and the surrounding foliage of the marsh was soaked with a liberal spray of Oskek’s greenish-black blood. It had been a particularly brutal and chilling assassination.

King Oskek’s entourage gathered in hushed anger, teeth snapping in their mighty, elongated jaws and their eyes burning black and cold. They were croca’dyla, the Children of Sobek, the Crocodile People of the Savage Land and a proud and ancient race… and this offense against their clan would not be tolerated.

“Thisss tjati appeared from the east with the morning sun, claiming a vision,” an elder dyla hissed, urging forth a stooped figure in a green cloak so that his brethren could bear witness. “And to prove himself he bearsss the mark of Sobek himself…”

It was true; when the outsider pulled back the hood of his cloak he revealed not only a vaguely humanoid countenance but also a marked disfigurement, a crescent-shaped blood brand seared across his eyes. The wound blinded him but also gifted him with the holy second sight, as detailed by dyla scripture. Frajk, who would now be King in the wake of Oskek’s death, turned his black gaze upon the tjati, his manner suspicious.

“What race are you?” he rasped, to which the tjati smiled.

“I bear no affiliation to any clan, King Frajk,” the stranger whispered. “Not even to the humans. I am… otherwise.”

“And yet we should trussst you implicitly?”

The stranger inclined his head, his scarred, sightless eyes angled upwards in the direction of nothing in particular. The air was filled with a curious scent, of some fruit or flower perhaps, or foreign spice. The dyla didn’t notice, but after a moment’s pause Frajk seemed to calm and relent, bidding the outsider to speak. Once again the tjati smiled.

“It was a female,” he said softly, his blind gaze raised towards the thick jungle canopy overhead. “She came in with the night wind on a strand of silk, dressed in furs and with hair the color of flame…

“…and she struck the first killing blow in what may become the bloodiest war the Savage Land has ever seen.”

“There is death, my Queen,” the young arachni’adna reported, her many eyes shining in the darkness. “All seven daughters are slain, their sacred pelts burned to black…”

In the catacombs of the citadel of Omm, among the festering warmth of shadows and silken webs and cocoons of decaying flesh, Queen Heri’dii reared upon six legs and clawed the darkness with a further two, shrieking her rage and grief with venomous spit.

“Seven?” she screamed. “Seven? Every child?”

There was no doubt, the young herald confirmed; none of the Queen’s recent hatching had escaped the massacre. It seemed impossible, for the citadel was considered impregnable and the webbed valley of the arachni, the Children of Omm, the Spider People of the Savage Land, was surely without flaw. No treacherous insect could alight upon the strands without the uncanny perception of the eight-legs being triggered. And yet…

“There is a witness, of sorts,” the arachni messenger stated, the chitter of her voice marking her nervousness as her notoriously ill-tempered Queen raged. “A tjati – somewhat human in appearance but claiming, ambiguously, to be of no fixed race – arrived from the west a short time hence. He says he saw the slaughter, and its perpetrator, in prophetic dream.”

“A lie! Bring this outsider to me and I shall feed upon his bones whilst he still lives! He’ll tell me the truth of the matter, or—”

“He bears the mark of Omm as proof, my Queen…”

The herald skittered to the side and in her stead a stooped figure in a green cloak emerged from the shadows of the royal webchamber. The stranger pulled back his hood to reveal a pale and oddly unmemorable face save for the silk stitching over his eyes, threading the flesh of his cheeks to his brows and blinding him utterly.

“And what then did you see, visionless wretch?” Queen Heri’dii asked cruelly, crawling forth from her pit with bloodlust in her own multiple eyes. The stranger was a heartbeat from death, as the Queen’s impatience – especially with two-legs – was legendary. But the oppressive gloom of the catacombs was now abruptly scented with a strangely sweet and sickly fragrance, citrus and lotus blossoms, and after a moment’s pause Heri’dii withdrew, her fury abating.

The blind outsider smiled, his sightless countenance gently inclined.

“It was a human female who slew your brood,” he said, slyly. “Born aloft on stolen wings, dressed in furs and with hair the color of flame…

“…and she was aided in this atrocity by a people who wish to initiate your destruction.”

“Her wings were… bitten off?”

The venerated High Shaman of the aeria’akah, the Children of Akah Ma’at, the Bird People of the Savage Land, was visibly distressed by the report of the death of his beloved Shaman’tai, as was only to be expected. The feathers of his glorious wings were already darkening from gold to rust, his eyes turning to glass, and his narrow mouth trembled with the unmelodic croon of sorrow rather than song. His fellow courtiers were similarly given to genuine mourning for the Shaman’tai had been much adored, and this morning the skies of the aerie kingdom would surely cast black as if the sun had never risen.

The Shaman was permitted a few minutes of grief before the stooped man in the green cloak was brought before him, guarded by a tall, bone-thin, glister-skinned aerian male.

“A tjati, my lord, approaching the aerie gates from the south,” the bird-man said. “He claims to have envisaged this tragedy in his runes. He—”

“I give no credence to human witchdoctors, Prince Iliago, you know this,” the Shaman breathed, waving a dismissive talon. “This stranger, and his appearance at such a coincidental time… why should I infer anything other than guilt upon him?”

Iliago, the tall aerian, stiffened. He and the Shaman were old friends, but he’d never heard such a sharp tone from the elder’s beak. The Shaman’tai’s murder would be the end of him, perhaps.

“My apologies, my lord,” Iliago said, carefully. “But this tjati bears the mark of Akah Ma’at.”

The High Shaman wavered, his feathers darkening still further. He crooked his taloned paw now, and the man in the cloak removed his hood to reveal a waxen, humanoid face, mutilated about the eyes with five parallel horizontal lines scored into his flesh. The Shaman’s wings rippled. Iliago looked on anxiously. The air was filled with the scent of winterberries and honey, pricked with cinnamon, but the curiosity passed without remark.

“My runes speak of a female,” the outsider murmured with a half-smile. “She swam the green river from the swamp all the way upstream, crowned with a coronet of teeth. She was dressed in furs and her hair was the color of flame.”

The High Shaman glanced immediately to Iliago in both alarm and horror – and also, accusation. Prince Iliago closed his hawk eyes and folded his wings about himself, a mournful caw rising from the back of his throat.

“Yes, my lord,” he said, softly. “Our past… my indiscretions… seemingly come back to haunt us. After all this time, the She-Devil has chosen to take her revenge upon me and against our people…

“…and so now the war begins.”

WAR OF THE CLANS

Part I: Shanna and the Tjati’s Vision

By Meriades Rai

“Do you ever get the feeling that everyone has it in for you…?”

Shanna O’Hara’s question was heartfelt, but she didn’t really expect an answer. It wasn’t unknown for a dinosaur to speak with a human tongue – in an environment like the Savage Land one soon learned that nothing was impossible – but there usually had to be some manner of genetic mutation or supernatural manipulation in the mix. In this instance, the furious ankylosaurus that was attempting to bludgeon Shanna with the lethal – and enormous – cluster spikes at the end of its tail wasn’t any manner of synthetic hybrid, he was simply a very, very angry dinosaur, and dinosaurs were notoriously difficult to reason with at the best of times.

Still, it could have been worse. Shanna, at least, was used to dealing with gigantic prehistoric reptiles of irate disposition. Poor Benjamin Clements, late of Melville, Saskatchewan in Canada and a recent arrival in the tropical boondocks? Not so much…

“I want to go home!” Ben screamed, all boggle eyes and buck teeth. “I surrender! I apologize! This is not what I was expecting!”

Shanna ducked to avoid another hefty swing of ankylosaurus tail, her auburn-red hair flashing in the sunlight and her expression grim. Then, as the enormous beast turned in a cumbersome circle to try and find her again, she glanced over her shoulder at the man who was bellowing in her direction and saw that he was trying to hide behind a fern. This, obviously, wasn’t clever. It wasn’t even a big fern. And it was a toss of the coin whether the ankylosaurus was most likely to stab him, stamp on him, or eat him; not that ankylosauruses were carnivores, it was just that they had low attention spans and they really, really liked ferns, regardless of whether or not they were garnished with idiot human.

“What weren’t you expecting, Benjamin?” Shanna snapped, skipping over the dinosaur’s rear flank and grabbing her cowering companion by the scruff of the neck. “Which part of ‘build a new life in a lawless, prehistoric jungle populated by flesh-devouring behemoths and poisonous plants‘ turns out to glossed over in the brochure? There was a brochure, right?”

Shanna pulled Ben clear just as a humungous foot slammed down on the exact spot where he’d just been squatting on his hindquarters and sniveling. The fern didn’t stand a chance. Ben squealed and grasped at Shanna in abject fear, and one hand closed about something large and delightfully firm, encased in the upper bodice of a leopard-fur tunic. Shanna looked down, unimpressed.

“Tell me that was an accident,” she said, with admirable patience, “and I promise I won’t feed you to the big, terrible lizard.”

Ben followed Shanna’s gaze and his goggle eyes widened still further when he saw where his hand had come to rest.

“O,” he said, in a tiny voice. “It was an accident. It was such an accident. Please don’t kill me.”

“You’re still clutching.”

“Because… I’m frozen with fear?”

“Benjamin…”

The ankylosaurus bellowed with indignation, then swept its tail along the ground once more, uprooting vast swathes of vegetation and prompting Shanna to hurl herself backwards with a grunt, even as she used her own momentum to kick her companion to safety. Ben hit the ground with a satisfying whack, arms and legs akimbo, but then he was up and scrabbling for shelter behind a boulder that was, mercifully, far larger and sturdier than the fern from ten seconds earlier had been. His hand went to his chest, feeling the comforting shape of his necklace beneath the material of his shirt, and his eyes closed as if in prayer. Not that he was a religious man but it sure as hell couldn’t hurt, right…?

Shanna rolled to her feet and came up with something in her hand – a ten-foot spear of solid wood entwined with stranglevine and feathers, capped with a spearhead of whittled triceratops scale. The weapon, knocked from Shanna’s hand earlier when she’d first engaged the ankylosaurus, gleamed in the morning sunlight. Shanna stood tall and proud, an Amazonian beauty with cinnamon-tanned flesh smoothed over corded muscle, her hair a riot of color and thickly braided coils, her magnificence unmarred by the litany of scars earned during her many years in the savage wilderness. Her body was lithe and sculpted, as if crafted by the hand of a true artisan and poured like the thickest, sweetest honey into a sheath of hides and animal furs.

She was a lovely woman, Benjamin Clements mused. Such a shame she had such a volatile temperament and, in the brief two weeks they’d known each other, had always been far more likely to eviscerate him and leave him staked out for the pteranodons than to offer him a hint of romantic potential…

The ankylosaurus stalked forward on short, heavy legs, its massive body swaying from side-to-side just a couple of feet above the ground, its armored back shining in the sun like the chasse of a tank. Its spiked tail swung, thumping the ground like a club. Shanna raised her spear, her expression cool.

“Don’t kill it!” Ben suddenly cried, his head bobbing up from behind his rock. “Please, it’s just… it’s just—”

“Just defending its territory,” Shanna said, with a glimpse of stunning smile. She arched an eyebrow in her companion’s direction, easing her balance into her nearside hip and raising her spear to shoulder-height. “Trust me, Mr. Clements, I know a thing or two about dinosaurs. And don’t let the She-Devil reputation fool you; I’m really a pussycat at heart.”

Shanna flexed her wrist and angled her spear with expert dexterity, catching the sunlight along the shaft and directing the reflected rays into the ankylosaurus’ eyes. Something about her assured stance, the brandishing of her weapon, the fact that she exuded no discernible fear… something caused the dinosaur to falter, its survival instinct overcoming its mulish rage at the last moment. Watching on, Ben held his breath. The beast clubbed the ground once more, then again, snorting through its huge, flat nostrils…

“Go now,” Shanna said, softly. “We’ll go. We’re sorry. The bad Canadian man, he didn’t mean to disturb you or your babies. You understand? We’ll go. Let us go.”

Ben remained tense, but the hammer of his own heartbeat slowed a tad. Shanna’s voice was well-trained, modulated. A sign of experience, and of natural empathy with animals, even oversized reptiles. He saw the ankylosaurus turn its head and gaze across at him, its expression uncannily accusatory. Ben ducked his head, stifling a mewl.

Shanna lowered her spear and stepped back. The dinosaur looked at her again, still uptight, but made no further move to advance. Shanna continued to retreat, slowly, without turning her back. Only when she reached the edge of the clearing did she shrift her balance and slip into the undergrowth, melting into the dark foliage with nary a sound. Ben watched her depart, momentarily alarmed that she’d abandoned him, but a few seconds later she appeared silently at his side and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, coaxing him away from his rock.

Ben smiled, enjoying her touch. Shanna smiled too, and when they were a safe distance from the ankylosaurus she leaned in, close enough that Ben could smell the intoxicating scent of her musk, the perspiration of her skin mixed with the heady, natural perfume of the jungle.

“Mr. Clements,” Shanna said, with a sultry purr, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut off your feet and beat you to death with them. Okay?”

“Oh, Shanna, I thought you’d never… wait. What? You’re going to what my what? You—”

Shanna grabbed the smaller man by the throat and hoisted him to his toes. She was no longer smiling. Ben made a choking sound, which was appropriate, considering he was being choked.

“Wait – akk. What about – akk – the pussycat thing – akk? You’re a pussy – akk – cat. Remember?”

Shanna’s beautiful cognac-amber eyes narrowed and she tightened her grip. “Pussycats have teeth, especially here in the Savage Land,” she snarled. “And besides, I don’t mind lying when it suits me. That She-Devil reputation? It’s been well-earned.”

For a moment or two Ben truly believed she was going to kill him. Maybe not the cut-off-the-feet thing, but something equally painful and permanent. However, after a heartbeat’s indecision there came a sigh of frustration as Shanna gave him one final shake by the throat and then cast him aside like a rag doll. Her strength, Ben noted, was as formidable as her beauty. She really had to do something about that temper though…

“You know what annoys me most?” Shanna snapped, her eyes blazing. “Two weeks ago I discovered you setting up camp in the valley… you, with your ridiculous notion of leaving Canada behind you and starting a new life here, in the Savage Land of all places. And for two weeks I’ve been trying to talk some sense into that thick skull of yours. I told you, you’ve been through the wringer and want to start over? Emigrate to New Zealand. Go backpacking in Peru. Join a pagan sect in Lithuania and dance around a maypole dressed as a chicken, then spend your evenings licking high-heeled shoes. Anything else, that isn’t pitching a tent on a prehistoric plateau where I have to keep rescuing your stupid, sorry backside every second day. And what happens? Here you are, merrily stomping your way across a mother dinosaur’s nesting ground, looking for coconuts. You—”

“You’ve rescued me twice,” Ben retorted. “That’s hardly a trend. And I wasn’t pitching a tent, I was building a log cabin.”

“Badly.”

“It was my first time.”

“And a tyrannosaurus stepped on it.”

“Which wasn’t my fault. And how was I to know I was in a bloody ankylowhoosis nest?”

Shanna threw her arms in the air, exasperated. “Exactly!” she cried. “My point, Benjamin. You’re not of this world. And it’s not the kind of world you get to practice at. It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long, and I’m not always going to be there to snatch you from the jaws of death. You understand?”

Ben bowed his head, sullen. She was right, of course. He was running away from one wrecked life back in Melville, but all he was doing was quickstepping right into another one. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time; all the magazines made the Savage Land sound so mysterious and exciting, exactly the kind of environment a man like Ben needed. But the reality was so much different, as Shanna had spent the past fortnight trying to explain every time she’d come across him doing something foolish. Which was pretty much constantly. If only—

The jungle erupted in a sudden crash and flurry of movement, and Ben heard a wet thuk.

He saw Shanna’s eyes fly wide in surprise, and for a moment he believed the ankylosaurus had decided to come after them after all. Then his gaze dropped and he saw a hook protruding from Shanna’s midriff, a cruelly sharpened crescent of steel lodged in her flesh and oozing blood.

“Shanna…?”

The She-Devil staggered, tried to turn, but then a spiked length of wood came down hard against the back of her head, cracking her skull.

Her eyes rolled. Her beautiful eyes.

Ben gasped.

And then the Crocodile People emerged from the jungle on all sides, brandishing weapons and jaws crammed with razor-edged teeth, their eyes burning black with vengeance.

“Death,” hissed Frajk, the new King of the croca’dyla. “Death to the flame-haired assassin!”

And a short distance away, shrouded in a hazy scent of fruit and spice, the mysterious, blind tjati in his green cloak nodded to himself in triumph…

To Be Continued…