Mantra: The Rune Agenda free porn video

Mantra created by Mike W. Barr & Terry Dodson Rune created by Barry Windsor-Smith & Chris Ulm (Author's note: This story takes place shortly after my earlier tale, MANTRA: DAY OF THE STORM GOD.) MANTRA: THE RUNE AGENDA By Bob H (c) 2004 It was after dark as I swooped over the low suburban sprawl of Canoga Park, gliding just above the rooftops. The sharp early-December breezes of the San Fernando Valley here in Southern California were bracing, cooling rather than chilling me. I'm an Ultra, the sorceress the world knows as Mantra, and I was out flying this fine Friday evening, under my own power, in order to clear my head. It had been a long two weeks since we got back from our holiday in Berlin, and this was the first opportunity I'd had to cut loose since then. There have been times when I'd have given a lot for a fortnight free from mystic assaults or world-threatening crises. Now that I had actually experienced two whole weeks of nothing more exciting than going to work every day, and dealing with my children and my mother every evening, I was almost to the point of praying for a mystic assault or world-threatening crisis. I may be a wage-slave and a mother now, but for the first fifteen hundred years of my life I was a warrior, and in my soul a warrior is what I will always be. Naturally, it was while lost in such reflection that I relearned that old lesson about being careful what you wish for. One second I was enjoying my flight, and the next I was sent plummeting to the ground as something smashed into me at high speed from above. I hadn't been flying very high, but even a fall from that height could have broken bones if I'd hit asphalt or a concrete sidewalk. Fortunately, I landed in soft sand. It was the long jump pit on the athletic field of the local high school. Even as this was registering with me, and winded though I was, I pulled the ring from around the jewel on my belt. It instantly expanded to become the Sword of Fangs, and I leapt to my feet, simultaneously turning to face my attacker. From hitting the sand to turning, sword in hand, took no more than two or three seconds. It was not a moment too soon. As I turned, the creature that had been swooping in to finish me off reared back from the swordpoint, huge leathery wings beating the air. It was dark, but in the illumination provided by the streetlamps of the distant road and the security lights around the nearby running track, I could make out his powerful, almost naked form. The sodium glare of the lights washed the colour out of everything, but it was strong enough to be caught by the crystals hanging from a cord around his neck, and by the fangs revealed as he drew back his lips and let out a long hiss of fury. "Rune!" I gasped, recognizing the demonic figure I had first encountered on the Godwheel a few months earlier. "You have my sword, witch," he snarled, "and Rune, Prince of the Void, would have it back!" His fist closed around the crystals at his neck, and suddenly it was bright daylight and we were standing amid piles of dark bones, skulls crunching beneath our feet. I was momentarily disoriented by the sudden change, and in that moment Rune leapt. His speed and strength were unbelievable. He swatted me to the ground and tore the sword from my grasp in a single movement. Standing over me, purple-grey skin now clearly visible in the harsh light of the sun, long black hair sweeping down his back, Rune lifted the Sword of Fangs for the killing blow. "Time to die, hermaphrodite!" he said. I raised my arms to defend myself with a mystic bolt, but it was too late. The sword was already descending. I was a dead woman. I should have died then, and I would have if not for the red-and-gold blur that slammed into Rune, knocking him senseless. The instant this happened, it was night again, and we were once more in the grounds of the local high school. "Are you okay, Mantra?" asked my rescuer, helping me to my feet. "That Rune is a tough customer." It was Prime, my fellow Ultra, a seven foot tall, impossibly muscular flying powerhouse, and a loyal friend. Few people knew that inside that amazing body lay the much less impressive form of 14 year-old Kevin Green. "I'm fine," I said, as he handed me the Sword of Fangs, "Thanks for the rescue. Now where is that monster?" Rune was already gone, making a strategic retreat as Prime was helping me to my feet. I doubted I'd seen the last of him. "Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what are you doing back in Canoga Park, Kevin?" I asked. "Mom and I are just visiting," he replied, "but I saw you flying overhead and decided to surprise you. I guess it's just as well I did." "Yes, it certainly is," I said. "There's something I need to know, Kevin. Did you see Rune turn day to night and transform the area into a sea of bones?" "All I saw was you and him fighting on the field," said Kevin, "and it stayed dark the whole time." "Must've been an illusion," I mused, "something fed directly into my mind to distract me, to allow him in for the kill. It almost worked, too." "Why did he call you a hermaphrodite, Eden?" he asked. "Hurling insults at an opponent is a good way of goading them into acting rashly," I replied. "That's all it was." Only it wasn't. I may be a woman now, but I was born a man. My name was Lukasz, and for fifteen hundred years, in countless different bodies, I served the wizard Archimage as a warrior. All those bodies were male. Until this, the final body I would ever have. Now I was Eden Blake, divorced mother of two and a sorceress. Somehow, Rune had learned of my dual nature, but how? We had only encountered each other once before, and at the time of that meeting I had been in a short-lived, bio- engineered male body. "You said 'Rune is a tough customer'," I said. "Does that mean you've encountered him before?" "You know I have, Eden," he said, looking at me strangely. "The first time I met him was with you, a few months ago, right here in Canoga Park. It was the day I asked you to join Ultraforce. He was after your sword then, too." Ultraforce were the world's premier team of Ultras. Prime had asked me to join but I turned him down, and none too gently either. "That's impossible," I said. "Straight after refusing your offer, I told my family I had to go away for a while then travelled to the realm of my arch-enemy. I was there all the time you and Ultraforce were saving the world from Atalon. It wasn't until later that I first encountered Rune." "No, Eden," he said, sounding exasperated. "Right after striking out with you, I flew off to recruit Prototype. First, though, I decided to drop in at the local mall and hang for a while as Kevin Green in order to calm down a bit. While I was having a run-in with some local punks, I was hit by this mystical bolt that took me to where you were fighting Rune. I joined in, but he managed to get away with your sword. We traced him to this weird old temple in Mexico, got your sword back, and you used it to smash some of those 'star stones' he wears around his neck, freeing the souls trapped inside them. They were swarming all over him when we left and escaped back to Canoga Park. You dropped me off so I could get back to finding Prototype, saying you were heading for the Hollywood sign. Next time I saw you was when we fought Doc Gross, not long before Mom and me moved to New York." Kevin wouldn't lie to me. If he said we had fought Rune together before then we had. So why didn't I recall that meeting? There was a mystery here, and I hated mysteries. Mysteries could get you killed. As we were about to leave, I spotted something lying in the sand pit. It was one of Rune's star stones and had obviously come loose when Prime had slammed into him. I smiled. With the stone I had a chance of finding out what was going on. *** From his vantage point on the high school roof, with eyes that saw far more clearly in the dark than did those of the human cattle that infested this world, Rune watched the witch and the over-muscled puppy fly off. Things had not gone to plan. Not only had he failed to reacquire the Sword of Fangs but he had lost one of his precious star- stones. Still, he had lost them before, but he had gotten them back. He always did. The witch had shattered the stones when they had met previously, but they had reformed themselves, drawing all the souls she had released back into their cold embrace. Rune absently fingered the remaining stones, the shards that were all that was left of the Eye of the Infinite. Millennia ago, on a dark and long-forgotten world, Rune had launched a solo assault on the Shrine of the Darkur, slaying the guardians of the crypt, scaling the huge idol, and finally smashing the Eye into a thousand fragments with his sword. The handful of those crystal shards he gathered up, his star-stones, would serve him well in the long centuries that followed. With them, he could see the future, and seeing the future he had conquered worlds. Rune cast the stones on the roof before him now, bending over them and carefully studying the fire that danced between the crystals in order to divine what lay ahead. The shape of tomorrow remained unchanged. He growled in irritation. Seeing the future did not always mean being able to change it. It seemed he still needed the Sword of Fangs if he was going to turn what was coming to his advantage and rule this world. So be it. One way or another the sword would be his. And if he had to slaughter the witch to get it, so much the better. *** With my children, Gus and Evie, at last in bed and asleep, I finally had the chance to kick back and relax a little before diving in and probing the star-stone. In the several hours since my battle with Rune, I'd started to stiffen up a little. Stripping down to just my bra and panties, I examined my body in the full-length mirror in my bedroom. There were more bruises than I'd hoped to see, but few of them looked bad enough to cause me any problems. I flexed a bicep, nodding approvingly at the hard muscle beneath the smooth surface. I spent a couple of hours every morning, before anyone else was up, training in our basement and all that exercise was starting to pay off. I had a great body, one firmer and in better shape than most that had given birth to three children. I didn't inherit it until long after the first two pregnancies, I'm happy to say, and I was briefly in another body during the mystically accelerated third one. Thinking about them, I couldn't help recalling the woman who had experienced those pregnancies, the original Eden Blake. For a time, a very short time, it looked as if we were going to make it as a couple. Now she was gone for good, and I'll be Eden Blake until the day I died. Wistfully, I looked in the mirror at the face of the last woman I truly loved, at my face. The long dark hair, the full lips and deep blue eyes, that beautiful face. I had grown used to being a woman, to wearing dresses, high heels and jewellery. Putting on make-up every day was now almost second nature to me, and I had grown to love being a mother to Gus and to Evie but I still wished that things could have turned out differently, that she, I, and they could have been a family together. Still, unlike other men who had lost the woman they loved, there was no chance of my memories of what she looked like dulling with time. All I had to do whenever I wanted to remember her was look in a mirror. It was time to resolve the mystery that faced me. Staring into the star-stone, I wondered why I had forgotten my first meeting with Rune but not the second. The two were only separated by a few weeks. Did something happen in those few weeks that might explain this discrepancy, I wondered? From my point of view, by far the most significant event in that period was my slaying of Archimage, the wizard I had served faithfully for a millennium-and-a-half. Could that be it? And if so, did it mean he was responsible for either blocking or erasing my memory of the first meeting, that he would have done the same with my memory of the second? It was a disturbing thought. Why would he do such a thing? I didn't know why or even if he would have done this, but it was a good place to start. Placing the star stone on the floor in front of me, I chanted my mantra of power: "Change, growth, power!" At these words, a field of mystic energy swept over my body, clothing me in my costume - the armour, mask and cape of Mantra. I assumed a floating lotus position, hovering a foot or so above the floor, and levitated the stone to bring it up to eye-level. The stone represented Rune so I could use it to probe the link between us, to ascertain just why there was a problem. I reached out with my higher senses, picturing the meeting with Rune that Kevin had described. Then I brought my memories of Archimage to bear. There *was* a mystic connection! I could see it clearly now. My former master had cast a spell on me, one keyed specifically to Rune. I'm not the most experienced of mystics, but even a sorceress of my level can sense the presence of magic, can often 'see' a spell. For this one to have escaped my notice it had to be subtle rather than powerful, carefully woven into my own aura so as to escape detection. Knowing it was there, I could now probe it. That's when I got a real shock. The spell was almost 800 years old. I had not expected this. The spell was automatic, activating to bury my memory of Rune after any encounter with him. It was sustained by the power of Archimage. After his death, it could no longer hide any new memories of Rune, but it was still blocking the old ones. I was determined to do something about that. The constructing and casting of subtle spells is not really my strong point as a sorceress. My powers derive from the four classical elements. I can fly, phase through walls, construct mystic shields, have some ability to affect technology, can accelerate my healing process, and I cast a mean bolt of sorcerous energy. This may sound impressive but, as sorcerers go, I'm relatively limited in my abilities. I hope to remedy that situation eventually, find someone to tutor me properly, but for now my best bet in breaking this spell was brute force. Being able to see the spell as a ribbon of colour snaking around me, I could now sever it. A moment's intense concentration, a scalpel-like application of mystic energy, and it was done. The memories came flooding back. All of them. I now remembered the first time I had battled Rune alongside Prime, and how the vampire had sensed my dual nature. However, as the age of Archimage's spell suggested, this was far from the first time Rune and I had met. Before Prime and I first fought him, my most recent encounter with Rune had happened decades earlier, when I was someone else... BERLIN, 1947. It had been the coldest winter anyone not as long-lived as me could remember, the worst for a century, but now spring was here at last and it was time to step up my activities. My name is Heinrich Kreuger and I'm currently a Grossscheiber, also and less respectfully known as a Sussstoffgangster, a 'big- time operator' in the black market. Anywhere else my criminal activities would earn me opprobrium, but here and now the black market *is* the German economy, virtually the only means of survival for a people condemned to starvation rations and lack of fuel, clothing, and medicines, and I'm accorded respect by almost everyone. I run a large illegal operation dealing in things such as medicines, industrial chemicals, stolen art and antiquities, and precious stones as well as more basic and - to the average German - more vital commodities such as food and tobacco. My main base, and the warehouse for much of my 'stock', was a bombed-out factory in the British- controlled sector of Berlin, one that had been stripped of all it's machinery by the Russians in the orgy of looting that had followed their capture of the city two years ago. I was in the factory when the main doors were thrown open and a pair of trucks came screeching in. A grinning figure in a US Army uniform leapt out of the cabin of the lead truck and ordered his men to get the doors closed quickly. "The heist went perfectly," said Klaus Wessel, my chief lieutenant, sauntering over. "Two trucks laden with Lucky Strikes and Camels, apparently held up by members of the US occupation force. With the shoot- out a few weeks back between British and American soldiers over that train, no-one will have any difficulty believing we were real soldiers looking to make a fast buck." "Good," I said, "Those cigarettes will let us keep the small fry paid off and happy for a couple of months." With the official currency all but worthless, cigarettes had taken its place as the basic unit of exchange in the barter economy that now held sway in Germany, "Any more on that other business?" I asked. "No, but the men are still saying it's a nosferatu - a vampire," said Wessel. "I've told them there's no such thing, that nosferatu are superstitious nonsense, but they want to know what else could have torn out the throats of two of our lookouts without being seen. I'm not sure what to tell them, Lukasz. You and I have both seen far stranger things than vampires over the centuries." That was certainly true. Klaus Wessel was Thanasi, another of Archimage's twelve knights. Thanasi had been Wessel for most of a decade, but I had only been Kreuger for three years. Kreuger had been a Sturmbannfuehrer in the SS, something that might have caused me trouble after the war, particularly in the Russian zone of Germany, where the tattoo that was proof of membership in the SS automatically earned you a summary execution. Fortunately, Archimage had magically removed mine leaving no sign it had ever been there. Archimage had ordered Thanasi and I to set up the operation we now found ourselves running. Like us, he knew what was coming. We had all seen the situation play out hundreds of times before. Within hours of the occupying forces arriving there would be widespread looting, first by the natives themselves and then by the troops. Museums, libraries, private homes - nowhere would be immune. The choicer items would inevitably find their way into the hands of the occupying forces. This was all utterly predictable. The first and oldest rule of war: to the victor the spoils. Much of this booty would be shipped back home by the military. Soldiers at every level, from privates to generals, would get involved. Some items, however, would be traded locally. Rare and ancient items of great value in more civilised days would be traded for the necessities of life or for quick money. Some of those items, unbeknownst to their sellers, would have mystic powers. With the way the Nazis had scoured Europe for such things, it was inevitable some would find their way onto the black market. Archimage had a great interest in acquiring such items and Berlin, a city with its four sectors controlled by different occupying powers, was the obvious place for them to be traded. The organisation Thanasi and I had built up had us perfectly positioned to acquire any that found their way on to the market. In fact we should be getting our hands on what looked to be a very promising find within the hour. "We've got more to worry about at the moment than vampires," I said, at length. "You're sure the Armenian has the package in question?" "As sure as I can be," said Thanasi. "I first noticed him sizing me up at the big open air black market in Bulmke. You really ought to come along one day, Lukasz. It's an amazing sight. The biggest one in all of Germany. A man can pick up almost anything he could want. Anyway, when I spotted him lurking around when I was at the Tiergarten and the Alexanderplatz on black market days, I figured he wanted something. Got a couple of the boys to 'invite' him over for a little chat. Said he had a line on a jewelled mace looted from some castle or other in Bavaria and he'd heard we were interested in that sort of thing. Our sensitive says she found a trace of mystic energy hanging around the Armenian, so he's certainly been near something powerful recently. Even money says it's this mace." "Okay then. Get the cigarettes unloaded and we'll wait for him to show. In the meantime, let's eat." I tossed Thanasi a can of 'bully beef', corned beef bartered from a British army NAAFI unit, and grabbed one for myself. I stabbed the top of the can with the bayonet I kept in my boot and prised it open, spooning the meat into my mouth with the blade while I watched our henchmen unload the trucks. It wasn't cordon bleu, but it was good enough for us. We were both used to foraging for whatever we could find, eating or sleeping whenever a lull in the fighting presented itself. Compared to many of the situations we'd eaten in, and what we'd been forced to consume, this was almost luxury. We were just finishing our repast when someone rapped on the door. It was the Armenian. Tossing the empty bully beef can onto a rusting pile of its discarded twins, I went over and let him in. Krekor Ourganian was a tall, sallow-skinned man with a large and imposing nose. In more prosperous times he would have stood broad and erect, but in these straitened days he looked as stooped and undernourished as all too many others in this tired and defeated country. I wondered what his story was, but not enough to ask. Under his arm, clutched tightly to his side, was a paper parcel, tied with twine. "Is that it?" I said, without preamble. Neither of us had time for the niceties. "Yes," said the Armenian, glancing nervously at the dozen or so men I had in the warehouse. "Let me see it," I said, holding my hand out. He passed the package to me and I tore off the wrapping. The mace was everything he had said it was. Heavy, and encrusted with precious stones, there were words in some language I did not recognize, cast into the gold it was made from. "Nice workmanship," said Thanasi, coming over, "but I don't recognize the period." Neither did I, but I got the sense the mace was incredibly old, that its age was measured not in centuries but in millennia. "Ekri fumin thalasu," came a strong, sepulchural voice from somewhere overhead, its words bouncing around the hollow interior of the factory. I dropped the mace and whipped out my mauser, even as Thanasi and our men were pulling out their own guns, all of us aiming them upwards, peering into the darkness of the roof trusses, high above such illumination as our oil lamps provided. "Artki ekrus Maladon," came the voice again, and we all squeezed the triggers of our pistols, almost simultaneously. Not one of them would fire. "A powerful artifact, the Mace of Maladon," said the voice, its tone darkly amused, causing me to notice one of the jewels embedded in the mace was now glowing brightly. "Stopping fire from igniting is but one of its abilities, and why it must again belong to Rune, the Dark God." Then it was among us. Diving down out of the shadows, bat-wings extended, came something out of a nightmare. Talons slashing, fangs tearing into flesh, it had eviscerated four of my gang before any of them had time to react. Like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, the men stood there, paralysed by shock. Not so Thanasi and I. Even as Rune tore Krekor Ourganian's head from his body, I was pulling the pins from a couple of grenades and pitching them among the oil drums holding the fuel for our trucks, figuring the damping field created by the mace would prevent them from exploding. I pocketed the pins, hoping I would need them again but fearing I would not. Thanasi meanwhile had grabbed a sword, a beautiful blade a Prussian officer had bartered for food, and was slashing at Rune. The flashing blade was keeping the demon at bay, but not for long. Even as I ran to aid Thanasi, Rune knocked the sword from his hand with the sweep of a wing and was on him, fangs sinking into his neck as a taloned hand plunged into Thanasi's gut, ripping out coils of intestine. Running at the monster from behind, I leapt onto a crate and launched myself at him, burying my bayonet between his wings, deep in the muscles of his back. Rune reared up, roaring in anger and in pain, monstrous wings beating the air and sending him soaring up towards the roof with me hanging one-handed from the bayonet embedded in his back. He tried to shake me off, but I flicked the wrist of my free hand, activating the spring-loaded sheath strapped beneath my sleeve and shooting a long, thin stiletto out into my waiting grasp. I thrust this blade into Rune's side with all my strength, but not with enough speed to prevent him from grabbing my arm. He cracked it like a whip, and I howled in agony as it snapped in several places above the elbow. He had me now, easily dislodging me from the bayonet and throwing me to the ground with all his formidable strength. I hurtled fifty feet, crashing into the concrete floor with tremendous force. I was badly hurt. As well as my arm, both my legs were broken and twisted at impossible angles beneath my body. My pelvis had shattered, and I could tell I was smashed up badly inside. I coughed, covering my shirt with blood. At least one rib must have snapped and pierced a lung. I was dying. Rune alighted almost casually, folding his wings up behind him and pulling out the two blades I had sunk into him. He licked the blood off each then dropped them, slowly turning his head to survey the blood- drenched scene of carnage before him. Except for the Armenian, everyone else was still miraculously alive, though all had been immobilized and were dying. I realized it wasn't a miracle when Rune began to feast. It had been deliberate. Rune liked his food still kicking. 'Nosferatu' my men had called him, but Rune was no simple vampire and he did more than just leave teethmarks on the neck. As much cannibal as vampire, he tore great gobbets of flesh from his victims, rending their bodies with his bloody maw. As his predation killed each victim, so a light would briefly flare in one of the stones he wore around his neck. That's when I realized he wasn't just feasting on flesh. No, he was feeding on their souls. When he had dispatched our henchmen, he turned his attention to Thanasi and I, like a gourmet deliberately saving the best for last. Thanasi lay unconscious where he had fallen during my attack on Rune. Lifting his head now, Rune plunged his fangs deep into my sword-brother's neck, and Thanasi's life began ebbing away to the rhythmic sound of the vampire sucking him dry. I saw the life leave him, watched Thanasi die, but this time there was no accompanying flare of light in Rune's stones. No, Thanasi's soul escaped, to make the soulwalk and start life anew in another body. Rune screamed in anger. "One of the slippery-souled!" he raged. "Why do you keep crossing my path?" Rune knew of Archimage's knights! Then why had we never heard of him or encountered him before? Dropping Thanasi's lifeless body to the floor, Rune turned to face me, slowly pacing across the thirty or so feet that separated us. He moved like some great cat, closing on its crippled prey. "And so to the wolf," he snarled. "The first wolf Rune met on this world was the Cimmerian. When I fell from the stars all those years ago, I thought I had fallen among sheep. He taught me otherwise." Barely able to move, I watched him scoop up the Mace of Maladon from where it lay some ten feet away from me. "Thalasu ekri," he said, and the jewel on the mace that had been glowing ceased to do so. He closed the distance between us and then he was on me, sinking his fangs into my throat, but it didn't matter. It was four seconds since he had cancelled the damping field the mace was generating. The grenades had five second fuses. There was a thunderous explosion as the grenades detonated amid the fuel drums, filling the whole warehouse with an enormous fireball. I just had time to smile before the flames engulfed us. Then I died. *** I broke myself free from the memory with a start. I had previously remembered none of this, and so it carried the freshness and horror of something I had only just experienced rather than the distance usual to fifty year old memories. I glanced down at my woman's body, floating there above the ground, feeling reassured by that now familiar sight, and centered myself. After Heinrich Kreuger died, I awoke in the body of Gary Carter, a Captain in US Army Intelligence, stationed in Berlin. If I was in a new body then I had obviously died, but I had no idea what had happened to Heinrich Kreuger. I remember climbing into Carter's jeep and rushing over to the British sector, where I found the factory that was Kreuger's base of operations a blazing inferno. The meagre resources the Berlin fire brigade were able to bring to the task were woefully inadequate and it was clear the blaze would have to burn itself out. I figured there must have been an accident of some sort, that somehow the fuel or explosives we had kept in the factory had gone off, killing everyone. Some eyewitnesses talked of seeing what looked like Satan himself fly out of the flames, his body ablaze as he described a fiery arc across the night sky. Like everyone else, I dismissed this as raving brought on by too much alcohol or too little food. Now I knew better. I hope the bastard's recovery from his burns was long and painful. Rune had raged about the 'slippery-souled', and wondered why we kept crossing his path. I now recalled many encounters with him down the centuries, and I had also figured out why they kept happening. Rune was a player. The war between my master Archimage and his brother, Boneyard, the war in which I was a soldier, had long since reached a stalemate with neither able to gain the upper hand. The only way to alter that state of affairs, was for one or the other to somehow acquire the extra power needed to defeat his brother. Thus, chasing down and securing powerful mystic artifacts had become one of our main activities. Given the way he had gone after the Mace of Maladon and the Sword of Fangs, it's obvious that Rune too was seeking out such items. I doubt he had any interest in the private war between Archimage and Boneyard, but his quest for such objects put him in direct competition with them. Making my Mantra costume vanish, I threw a dressing gown on and went to the kitchen. Pouring myself a glass of milk, I sat down at the breakfast counter, turning the star-stone over and over. All those memories. I recalled being in London in 1888, investigating a series of brutal murders in the Whitechapel area. At the time I was Frank Bennett, a government agent, and my partner was Melissa St. Clair. Ah, Melissa! I hadn't thought of her in years. We were the Mulder and Scully of late-Victorian England, investigators of the occult. Unlike our modern counterparts, however, our mission wasn't to uncover the truth about what was happening but to make sure it stayed under wraps. We knew full well the occult menaces threatening the British Empire were real - we faced them almost every day - but it wasn't deemed safe to share that knowledge with the public at large. Catherine Eddowes, Martha Turner, Mary Jane Kelly, Annie Chapman, Mary Anne Nichols. The world remembers these women as the victims of Jack the Ripper, but their killer was no mere man. I sipped my milk thoughtfully, idly running a finger across my cheek as I remembered the feel of Frank Bennett's 'mutton chop' whiskers. Archimage had been concerned by the success of Bennett and St.Clair and the department they worked for. Their investigations had come close to our activities on several occasions and he was determined his war with his brother should remain a private affair. On the other hand, having someone inside that department presented an opportunity to gain possibly vital intelligence that could not be ignored. And so I took the soulwalk, displacing Frank Bennett's soul and becoming him for over seven years. Whitechapel was my first case. As soon as I saw the body of one of the victims, I knew we were dealing with no ordinary killer. In the 1880s, Whitechapel was known for its poverty and its slum housing. Disease and infection were widespread thanks to overcrowded housing and poor sanitation. Crime was rife, prostitutes were ubiquitous, and alcoholism a way of life for the poor. And now into this cauldron had come a savage, inhuman killer. The policeman in charge of the investigation, Inspector Abberline, had been seconded to H (Whitechapel) Division by Scotland Yard CID and was a decent enough sort. Stocky, mid-forties, and with a receding hairline, he was solid but unimaginative, which suited us. Our involvement in the investigation was never made public, but while encouraging Abberline and the police to believe they were looking for a madman with surgical skills, we knew otherwise. Those apparently precise cuts were the work not of a skillfully wielded knife but of razor-sharp talons. We eventually tracked the monster we were looking for to Christ Church in Spitalfields, within spitting distance of where two of the killings had taken place. The church was an imposing structure, built of the gleaming white stone favoured by its celebrated architect, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and located opposite Spitalfields Market. The monster had made the belfry of the church its lair, venturing out only to feed on the blood and viscera that sustained it. It was Rune, of course, but he was different than on any other occasion I ever battled him. This time he was all beast, a predator with no slightest spark of human intelligence in his eyes and only now, with my memories of him restored, am I able to wonder why. I suppose I'll never know. At the time I assumed this was the beast as he always was, and battled him accordingly. I survived my encounter with him that time, and the one that was my final investigation as Frank Bennett, but I was uneasily aware that there were many more encounters where I did not. We must have faced each other on a score of occasions over the centuries, and Rune had killed me on at least a dozen of them. After Whitechapel, I was allowed to retain my memory of Rune until my next rebirth, the only time that ever happened. I held my hands out in front of me, spreading those slender fingers with their long, painted nails. They were trembling. Remembering my encounters with Rune was filling me with dread. It wasn't just his killing me so many times, either. I had lost count of the number of times I had met a violent death. It wasn't an event that held much fear for me any more. But remembering Rune brought me out in a cold sweat. I knew the answer to the riddle, to why Archimage had done what he had, lay in my first meeting with Rune, more than eight hundred years ago, but I was finding it hard to face the memory. I have been alive for one-and-a-half millennia. Over those centuries I have worn countless bodies, and done more than a mortal mind should be able to recall. Time dulls memory, knocking off the sharp edges and slowly washing it away. But not for me. As part of whatever sorcery allows me to move to another body on my death, my memories are refreshed and made new by every rebirth. How else could I remember my beloved wife Marinna, now fifteen hundred years dead? And yet I was finding it hard to recall the details of my first meeting with Rune. This was not due to Archimage's spell any more, or to the passage of time. This was down to me. My mind was shying away from the memory, employing the standard response of any human mind to events too terrible to face. Ordinarily, the recovery of such repressed memory is the province of psychologists, but I had neither the time nor the inclination to approach one. Rune was still after the Sword of Fangs and I had to be ready to face him when he next attacked. Which meant I had to know what had happened all those centuries past. Using techniques I learned in the Orient long ago, I slowed my breath and turned my mind inwards, lapsing into a trance. And, eventually, the memories came... THE MIDDLE EAST, 1191. My body hung limply from the chains sunk deep into the walls of my stinking cell. Congealed blood matted my beard and streaked my naked form. Some had run down my legs from my many wounds and mixed with the shit and the urine-soaked straw at my feet. In the light that came into the cell from the single slit-window high in one of the ancient stone walls, I could make out the decomposing remains of my comrades with my single remaining eye, hanging from their own chains. The smell must have been indescribable, but I was barely aware of it. All I knew, all I could feel, was the pain of my own torture. More than anything else, I wanted to die. My name was Edmund de Quincey and two years ago, in the year he was crowned King of England, I rode out with Richard Coeur-de-Leon - the Lionheart - to join the Third Crusade. Two years earlier, after defeating the Christians at Hattin, Saladin and his Muslim armies had conquered Jerusalem so now, headed by Emperor Frederik I, the knights of Christendom were assembled to liberate the Holy Land. My true master, the wizard Archimage, had placed each of his twelve knights in positions of influence in the courts of the various kings and princes of Europe over recent years. So it was that all of us found ourselves Crusaders. Making the Holy Land safe for Christianity was not a quest Archimage had any interest in, but the Third Crusade did provide convenient cover for a mission for our master. Each in our turn, we twelve knights slipped away from those monarchs we served and assembled at a pre-arranged spot on the edge of the great Arabian desert. Three days ride into those trackless wastes, in that vast unexplored interior, was a source of great power that Archimage had detected from afar. We were to secure it or destroy it. Progress was necessarily slow and measured under that merciless sun, yet we made good time. We were all there - me, my friends Thanasi, Yaron, and Hamath, and all the others - and it felt good to be together again for the first time in almost a decade. I remembered swapping war stories with Thanasi on the final day of our journey... "I hear tell Richard the Lionheart took Cyprus a few weeks ago, Lukasz," said Thanasi, "and that you were in the thick of the fighting." "I cannot deny it," I said. "Combat is my meat and my drink." "You have achieved a station of some influence with Richard. I doubt Archimage would be happy if you lost it through dying in some ill- judged conflict." "'Ill-judged', is it?" I laughed. "Were it not for my willingness to be in the thick of battle I would not have acquired such influence. Richard is at heart a warrior and appreciates well such willingness." "I hear Richard also has an appreciation of Arab boys," said Thanasi, slyly. "Such matters are his own affair," I said, shrugging. "Of more concern are others who have influence on him." Thanasi knew what I meant. "Yes," he said, "the master was much aggrieved when, after taking it, Richard sold Cyprus to the Knights Templar. He seems concerned the Templars may one day oppose our interest. What do you know of them, Lukasz?" "Not a great deal," I said. "Formed by Hugh de Payens in 1119 or 1120 - I forget which - and at first comprised in the main of French knights, they established themselves in London in 1185, a full three years before I became Edmund de Quincey. On the surface they appear to be a noble order of Christian knights, but beneath...? If Archimage is concerned then there must be more to them." We rode in silence for a while, the shadows cast by the dunes lengthening as the afternoon grew late, then Thanasi said: "The kings we served, Richard and Philip, would be attacking Acre about now. I wonder how the battle goes?" Philip was Philip Augustus of France. "It's no longer any concern of ours," I said, "but, if successful, Richard confided in me that he hoped they would then be able to conclude an armistice with Saladin and force him to cede the coastal strip between Tyre and Jaffa." I would have elaborated more on this had we not then crested a dune and finally caught our first sight of our objective. Below us the dunes gave way to rock, and the rock to carved pillars and beaten copper walls. The copper was heavily scored, testament to the passage of many sandstorms, and though the edifice was half buried by the shifting sands, the cleared steps and portico indicated it was inhabited. Its obvious great age suggested it must have been entirely buried by the desert at some point, and if so then someone must have expended great effort to uncover it, but who and why? This was clearly the place Archimage wanted us to find, but I was deeply troubled. There was a mystery here, and I hated mysteries. Mysteries could get you killed. This was something that had been borne out to me time and again down the centuries. Late afternoon was giving way to night with a speed that would shock those not used to such deserts, so we lit our torches before we rode our horses down the dune and out onto the paved avenue leading into and through the structure. The weight of millennia pressed down on the brooding stone of the palace, and the only sound to be heard above the hissing desert wind was the clip clop of our horses hooves as we filed unspeaking down a deserted avenue that had not known human feet in five hundred generations. There was a *wrongness* about this place. We could all feel it, humans and horses alike. Our steeds were beginning to get skittish, whinnying and snorting as they did whenever a predator was lurking nearby. There was a sudden flurry of motion at the rear of our column, a brief scream that cut off abruptly, and the sound of giant wings beating the air, a sound quickly lost amid the looming columns. We all swung about immediately but it was already too late. Hamath had been at the rear of the column, but now he was gone, vanished without trace. All that remained was his horse, lying there on its side as the blood poured from the wound where something had torn its throat out. "Form a defensive circle!" I yelled, but the others, experienced warriors to a man, were already doing so, horses facing outward to meet whatever lurked in the shadows. Even before we had finished forming a circle, it struck again, plucking Yaron from his mount while raking the beast's neck with its talons. This was too much for our horses. Panicking they kicked and reared, throwing their riders and bolting back the way we had come. Two of our number died then, one breaking his neck in the fall, the other being trampled by the bolting animals. We had lost a quarter of our number and every one of our horses, which were carrying all our supplies, in a matter of minutes. We were in serious trouble. "Mother of God!" said Thanasi, drawing his sword and falling in beside me, "What was that thing?" "I only glimpsed it," I said, but it looked like some sort of giant bat." We had formed a circle, swords facing outward, torches held high, but it wasn't enough. The demon came swooping out of the darkness again, gliding fast and silent and giving us no chance to spot it until it was on us once more. Wielding rocks on the end of swirling lengths of rope, it knocked four of our number senseless on its first pass, and three more on its second. And just like that, it was down to Thanasi and I, the only two of Archimage's knights still conscious. We stood in the pool of light created by our torches, swords hefted defiantly, waiting for death. Then the darkness was gone. With a suddenness that took us by surprise, torches flared into life from where they jutted out of every column and wall, banishing the night. And there he stood, those great bat-wings folding up behind him then somehow being absorbed into the very muscles of his back, a sword in each hand. "I am Rune, Prince of the Void," he said, purple-grey skin glistening with sweat, his unblinking eyes fixed on us, "and you are prey." Thanasi and I were world-class swordsmen with centuries of experience behind us. Rune was better. We spread out, hoping to catch him between us, then attacked together. Rune parried every slash and thrust, holding us both at bay almost effortlessly. He was toying with us. When he decided to take us down he did so swiftly and brutally. Sidestepping one of my swordthrusts, he slammed the pommel of a sword into the back of my head with enough force to send me spawling, simultaneously knocking Thanasi's sword aside with his other blade and driving it through Thanasi's guts. It was a killing blow. Thanasi staggered backwards and Rune leapt on him, sinking his bared fangs into Thanasi's neck and tearing a huge chunk out of it. I tried staggering to my feet as he drained my comrade's lifeblood, but my legs would not bear my weight. As Thanasi died, Rune let out a howl of rage. "His soul," he said turning to face me, his nose and mouth covered in blood, "his soul has escaped me! What manner of men are you?" Casting Thanasi's corpse aside, he pulled me to my feet and dragged me into another chamber where Hamath lay, unconscious. In the chamber were all manner of artifacts that almost throbbed with mystic energy, chief among them an enormous opal, held upright in a golden, three-legged brazier, the light from which pulsated rhythmically. "My treasure," snarled Rune. "Others have tried to take it from me. All have met the same fate that awaits you." He threw me roughly to the floor, consciousness left me, and I knew no more until I woke, chained to the wall in this cell. That was three weeks ago. My mind shies away from the horrors I have witnessed over the past weeks. All of the surviving knights were tortured until they broke, then Rune would finish them off, feasting on their blood and on those parts of their still-living bodies he craved and had not already eaten. The torture was punishment for having souls he could not feed on. He was very good at it, knowing when he had broken someone and when they were pretending. Only when he had broken a man would he give him the release of death. One by one, all of Archimage's knights had been broken then killed. Now only I remained. My hair was grabbed, my head pulled back roughly, and a familiar, sweet fluid poured down my throat. Rune had returned to resume his torture of me, the mysterious fluid providing the sustenance to keep me alive. Rune wanted me to die by his hand, not through thirst or hunger. His eyes, those fierce, unearthly eyes, bored into mine with savage intensity. I trembled uncontrollably. I did not know how much more I could take. "Rune is impressed," he said. "Most other humans would have broken long before this." He casually ran a razor-sharp talon down my chest, then bent to suckle on the wound. After a few minutes feeding, he poured some of the sweet fluid onto the wound and pinched it shut. It stayed closed. Licking the blood from his lips, he regarded me levelly. "It's been nine thousand years since humans walked these halls," he said, "nine thousand years since Rune fell from the skies after a battle the like of which your feeble mind could not comprehend. The people of Agrapur found me in the dunes beyond this city, broken and dying. They nursed me back to health, and I became their god. I killed them all, of course, and the memory of Agrapur and her people was lost to history. As Rune intended it should be. The opal will cover or uncover Agrapur at my command. Which makes it the perfect place to store the objects of power I've amassed over the centuries and with which Rune will one day rule this world." This was more than Rune had said since he had captured us. I wondered at his unaccustomed garrulousness. Perhaps even a creature like him needed company occasionally. I was clutching at straws, of course. It's a sign of how fragile my state of mind was that I could even consider such a thing about that inhuman monster. He tore a strip of flesh from what remained of my right arm, dousing the arm in the sweet fluid, and began slowly to eat it in front of me, never taking his eyes off my own. That was when I broke. After all he had done to me, all I had seen him do to my comrades, I could take no more. I started to sob uncontrollably. Rune, no slightest sign of pity in those cold eyes, swallowed the remaining flesh he had ripped from me, threw his head back, then struck like a cobra, fangs fastening on to my throat. Rune feasted for the final time, sucking me dry. And finally, blessedly, I died. I came to with a start, surging forward only to be restrained by strong arms holding me back. Facing me was my master, Archimage. "Relax, Lukasz, relax," he said. "You're safe now." I broke down again, crying and shaking violently, and Archimage held me in his arms. All twelve of we knights had displaced the souls of members of a Bedouin tribe that wandered the great Arabian desert, I later learned. The tribe had been the closest living beings to Agrapur, and were cowed by the arrival of Archimage when he appeared among them in a burst of fire. They probably thought they had been damned when one after one the men of the tribe were possessed by what they must have regarded as demons. And perhaps they had been. I was a mess, almost totally non- functional. The remaining eight Rune had broken were in a similarly bad state. I saw Thanasi, and the other two who had not been tortured, conferring with Archimage. It was clear they were wondering what to do about us. I didn't care what they did. Curled up in a fetal ball in my tent, I just wanted the memories to stop screaming in my skull. Lost in a world of my own, I had no sense of the passage of time, so I have no idea how long it was before Archimage gathered us before him, all twelve knights, and made his announcement. "You have suffered grievous harm in my service," he said, "harm that is perhaps beyond repair. In your current, broken state you are no use to me, or to yourselves. Due to the nature of the enchantment that allows you to be reborn, you are likely to stay that way. With time, the human mind dulls even the most painful memories, but your memories are refreshed every time you gain a new body. The hurts done to you will be as fresh a thousand years from now as they are today. I see only one solution. Your memory of what was done to you, of Rune himself, must be expunged. Should you ever encounter him again, those memories too must not be allowed to stand lest through association your minds uncover these current, incapacitating ones. And so I now cast a spell on you to accomplish this, one I cast over all twelve of you, which will restore that which was cruelly taken from you." So saying, he cast the spell and we were all bathed in a golden light, and given the blessed release of forgetfulness... *** I couldn't stop trembling as I shook myself free of memories of those events eight hundred years ago. Rune's torture felt as fresh as if it had happened to me yesterday and I found myself examining my chest in the mirror as if needing reassurance it didn't bear the scars of his feeding. Seeing the flawless, unmarked skin, the soft and shapely breasts, actually did provide that reassurance, strangely. Rune had ravaged my flesh but it had been *male*, not the female flesh I now wore, something which provided just enough distancing to let me bring my trembling under control. At least for now. Eden Blake had never been much of a drinker, and it's in the nature of taking over a body that I'm not much of one now either, despite having had a large capacity for alcohol in several previous lives. But I got down a half bottle of Southern Comfort from the cupboard, and poured myself two fingers. It tasted awful, but I knew I wouldn't get much sleep without it. As it turned out, I didn't get much sleep with it, either and I was unusually grumpy the next day when I drove my kids, Gus and Evie, to Sherman Oaks to stay with their father for the weekend. On the Ventura Freeway, driving back to Canoga Park, I cast my mind back to the early 1930s and to the expedition I'd gone on alongside that American archaeologist with the whip and the fedora. Archimage got the location of Agrapur to him via a third party, and I managed to attach myself to his group. With Archimage's map, and the labor of native diggers, we uncovered much of Agrapur. I experienced a powerful feeling of deja vu walking its ancient halls, something I only understand today. In what I now know was Rune's treasure house, we found the shattered remains of a giant opal, but little else. In one of the dungeons were the skeletal remains of a dozen men, bearing evidence of teeth marks, as if they had been gnawed on by some large beast. Based on what little was left of their garb, the archaeologist decided they had probably been 12th century Crusaders. Something heavy landed on the roof of the car, causing me to swerve in surprise. I straightened up, and powerful talons stabbed through the roof, peeling it back like tinfoil. Instinctively, I threw the steering wheel as far right as I could, the sudden lurch momentarily throwing my attacker from the roof as the car ploughed through the roadside crash rail and down the scrub covered dirt slope. "Change, growth, power!" I yelled, as soon the car was out of sight of the road and before it had ground to a halt. The words were my mantra of power, magically replacing my skirt and blouse with the garb of the sorceress Mantra. I flew through the gaping hole in the car roof, casting a shield of mystic energy before me as I did so, Sword of Fangs in hand. Rune hit my shield at speed, knocking me backwards. I slashed at him with the sword as he tried to press his advantage, slicing through the skin of one wing. He hissed in fury, and I could feel panic beginning to build in me. Not now, please not now. Dropping my shield, I fired mystic bolts at him with my free hand while trying to keep him at bay with the sword. He dodged inside them with ease, grabbing my wrist and twisting the sword from my grasp in one fluid, impossibly fast movement. I was outmatched. He was going to kill me again. Even as I thought this he smashed the pommel of the sword down on my head, knocking me out. It was the same move he had used on me 800 years ago. When I came to, a few minutes later, Rune was emerging from my car with the star-stone I'd found. As he reunited it with its fellows, they briefly glowed as one. So that was how he had zeroed in on my car. Coming over to where I lay, still groggy and barely holding on to consciousness, he squatted down beside me and cast his star-stones on the ground. Cold, mystic fire danced between them and Rune looked deep into the flames, as if searching for something. Whatever it was he found there was not to his liking. He leapt to his feet, howling in rage and waving the Sword of Fangs around like a madman. My senses returning, but still unsteady on my feet, I struggled upright, my back against a tree. Rune saw me, and threw the sword my way with all his might. It buried itself in the ground, inches from my feet. "It seems for now that Rune's time to wield the sword has passed, witch," he snarled. "The Destroyer of Worlds is coming, and you are the only one with a chance - a small chance - of stopping him. The stones have spoken. If he is not stopped, Rune will perish, and that must not be. So keep the sword and, when the time is right, let three become one. If you don't, he will kill you." He regarded me with an expression of contempt. "I have been called Thanatos and Grandfather Spider, Huizilopochtli and Anansi. I am Rune and I am Death. And one day, I will feast on your entrails." He turned to leave, unfolding his wings. I could not, must not, let it end like this. "Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt," I said. "You dare to mock Rune, witch!" he said, turning back to face me, lips pulled back from his fangs, voice low and menacing. "Why not?" I said, with adrenalin-fueled bravado. "Dying at your hands holds no fear for me. You've killed me a dozen times or more, yet I keep coming back." "What madness do you spout?" he growled. "Not madness, truth. I'm one of those you've called 'the slippery- souled'. I suppose you thought those souls went to their eternal rest when you couldn't eat them. Not so. We get reborn, time after time after time. When you were reduced to little more than a mindless animal and hunted through the squalor of Victorian London, that was me. When that black-marketeer in post-World War Two Berlin fought you for the Mace of Maladon and caused you to be engulfed in fire, that was me. I died then, yet I was already reborn, free of pain, healthy and whole when you burst through the roof of the factory in flames. I laughed as I watched you cut a flaming arc across the sky, screaming your pain. When you tortured those twelve Crusaders in the lost city of Agrapur, I was the one who held out the longest. You gouged my eye out and ate it in front of me. You broke me, then killed me. Yet here I am, whole and unafraid. Every time I'm reborn I am made anew, restored in mind and in body. And every time I face you, I learn a little more about you, become ever more familiar with your strengths and weaknesses. So kill me if you want, vampire, kill me again and again. I'll keep coming back. And I'll keep learning that bit more about you every time until I have all I need to kill you. Remember, you can kill me a hundred times, but I only have to kill you once." It was a mixture of truth, half-truths, and lies, delivered with fervor and conviction. It had the desired effect. I saw uncertainty in Rune's eyes and, fleetingly, fear. Then, without another word, he spread his wings and launched himself into the sky. Within a minute, he was a black dot in the distance. I staggered back against the tree, shaking. Shock was setting in as I came down from my adrenalin high. I had done it. I had faced Rune down, had made him be the one to blink first. And all without revealing the terror I was barely keeping at bay. Retrieving the Sword of Fangs, I willed my costume away and, in my street clothes, scrambled up to the road to flag down a passing car. Fortunately, no one had stopped to gawk when I crashed my own car through the rail, so no one had seen me change into Mantra. I wondered about this 'Destroyer of Worlds' Rune had mentioned, and what he could have meant when he'd said "when the time is right, let three become one". Whatever it was, I was sure I'd find out eventually. In the meantime, while I may not have bested Rune in physical combat, I *had* defeated him. It had taken the cajones I now only possessed metaphorically to face the fear that could have paralysed me, to make Rune the one to doubt himself. But I had overcome the fear and I had overcome him. He would not be back to make good on his threat. Archimage had done what he thought was for the best when he cast the spell that would make his knights unable to remember their encounters with Rune, but he had been wrong. You defeat your fears not by burying them but by facing them. The important battle I fought here had not been with Rune but with my own fear. I had battled it, and I had won. My sleep had been filled with nightmares last night. Tonight, I knew, there would be none. THE END (Author's Note: For those interested in such matters, Mantra & Prime's first encounter with Rune occurred in RUNE #6 (Dec'94). The story you've just read was inspired by the in-house ad for that comic, which showed Mantra and Prime wearing different costumes than in the story and so suggested a second, later meeting. Rune's destruction of the Eye of the Infinite was shown in GIANT SIZE RUNE #1 (Jan'95), and his fall to Earth and encounter with "the Cimmerian" in CONAN VS RUNE #1 (Nov'95). All were drawn by the great Barry Windsor-Smith but, if you can find them, they should be available in the cheapo bins at comics shops. My primary source of historical detail for 1947 Berlin was Douglas Botting's IN THE RUINS OF THE REICH (1985, George Allen & Unwin ISBN, 0 04 943036).)