Mantra Black September
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Mantra: Beginnings free porn video
MANTRA: BEGINNINGS
by BobH
(c) 2010
Author's Note: The planned next story in my Mantra sequence is
MANTRA: THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS. I started in on this immediately
after I finished the last one back in 2005. Obviously I never
finished it, and I don't know if I ever will. I've done odd bits
of work on the story over the years such that the text file now
weighs in at 40kb. However, unlike in my other unfinished tales
this one contains a couple of sequences that, when excerpted and
put together, form a reasonable standalone tale, an origin
story for Mantra. If I ever do finish the larger tale it will
be posted here with this one incorporated in it. I've
marked this complete as it stands because in this form it *is* a
complete telling of Mantra's origin story, or at least my version
of it. I've left in the prologue as a teaser for the larger
tale in order to whet your appetites and let you know what you
can expect to see if I ever finish it.
My previous Mantra stories, all available on fictionmania, are:
1) MANTRA: DAY OF THE STORM GOD (Berlin, 1945)
2) MANTRA: THE RUNE AGENDA (Berlin, 1947, and the
First Crusade, 1191)
3) MANTRA: BLACK SEPTEMBER
This story takes place after BLACK SEPTEMBER, which
in turn takes place after THE RUNE AGENDA, which
in turn takes place after DAY OF THE STORM GOD. All
are stand alone stories, but each contains spoilers
for its predecessors.
(NB: While FM author Aladdin has also been posting
stories featuring Mantra and her cast here, our
stories are not related to each other and do not occur
in the same continuity. We've both taken the comics
stories as our original inspiration then gone off in
different directions. Things that have happened to the
Mantra in his tales cannot be assumed to have happened
to the Mantra in mine, and vice versa.)
**************************************************************
- Prologue -
I knew I was dreaming, but the dream - no, the nightmare - was not one I
seemed able to wake from. Nor did it have the surreal disjointedness of
most dreams. No, this had the hard-edged clarity of reality. The screams
of pain and the once-smelled never-forgotten stench of rotting flesh
assailed my senses, and for all my long centuries of battle-hardened
experience I was appalled at what I was witness to.
The world was dying.
Alongside the remains of Highway 5, stretching all the way into the
scorched ruins of Los Angeles, the massive damage it had sustained
rendereding the skyline strange and unfamiliar, were the crosses bearing
the crucified remains of the city's defenders. Not only police and
soldiers but also ultras, their colorful costumes now torn and bloodied,
clouds of carrion birds tearing the flesh from their corpses. Beyond
them, along the horizon, the sky glowed red as far as the eye could see,
the terrible glow of a world on fire. And silhouetted against the flames
were those who had caused them.
"Prime!" I whispered, recognizing the powerful ultra I called friend.
Every one of the scores of flying figures was a version of Prime, the
heat beams from their eyes turning the land beneath them into an
inferno. On a nearby hillside, sitting on a mound of skulls and watching
the destruction impassively, was the architect of all this carnage.
Fully eight feet tall with slate-grey skin and massively muscled, he was
dressed in the garb of a barbarian warrior. His hands were resting on
the pommel of a sword thrust into the ground before him, an outsized
version of a sword I knew all too well.
"The Sword of Fangs!" I gasped.
I recocognized it instantly, for the sword was my own.
"Do you like what we've made of this world, Eden?" said a female voice
behind me.
I turned to face her. She was tall, with long, jet-black hair and clad
in thigh high boots and a short-skirted green dress with billowing
sleeves gathered in at the wrist. What was most remarkable about her was
her face.
She didn't have one.
Where a face should have been was only blank, featureless skin. How she
saw or breathed or spoke was a mystery, but her voice issued forth as
strong and as clearly as if issuing from a mouth:
"This dream is a warning, a glimpse of what will soon happen to your
world," she said, throwing her head back and laughing maniacally. "Sweet
dreams, Eden!"
"Eden, Eden, wake up!!"
Someone had hold of my shoulders and was shaking me.
I opened my eyes and looked up into a familiar, beautiful face. It was
the face that stared back at me from the mirror.
"Lauren," I said, thickly, lurching forward in the chair where I was
sitting. "I must've nodded off."
"It was a bit more than that, sis," said my newly-acquired twin sibling,
concern in her voice, "I step out into your back yard to smoke a
cigarette and when I return you're having a nightmare and thrashing
about like someone in torment."
"It was just a nightmare," I said, forcing a smile, "that's all. What I
need now is a coffee. Can I make you one?"
"Well, if you're sure you're okay..." said Lauren, looking at me
dubiously.
"Yes, I'm fine. You go look in on the kids, make sure they're getting on
with their packing and I'll make us coffee."
Reluctantly, she did as I asked. When she had gone to check on Gus and
Evie I held my hand before my face, controlling my breathing until I
could stop it trembling. I had lied to Lauren. I knew with a cold
certainty that what I'd just experienced was no dream.
-1-
I pouted at my reflection in the restroom mirror, nodded my satisfaction
at the job I'd done freshening my lipstick, then picked up my mascara.
As I concentrated on applying the small spiral brush to my lashes, I
couldn't help but smile ruefully at my situation. I was Eden Blake, a
divorced mother of two young children and also the sorceress and ultra
the world knew as Mantra. Yet this had not always been the case. Until a
little over two years ago I was the male warrior Lukasz, and I had been
a warrior in countless male bodies for fifteen hundred years. All that
changed when the war between my master Archimage and his brother
Boneyard had heated up. Of Archimage's twelve knights only two now
survived: me, and the one who had betrayed us to Boneyard, my sword-
brother Thanasi, a man who for centuries had been my closest friend.
Sliding the brush back into the mascara tube, I leant in to the mirror
to inspect my handiwork. Not bad. Eden Blake's face was easily the most
beautiful that had ever stared back at me from a mirror, but it also had
another distinction: it would be the last. For a millennium and a half,
dying had meant nothing more to me than being the starting point for the
soulwalk, the process that let we knights displace the soul of some
unfortunate and claim his body as our own, but no more. The last time I
took the soulwalk, after Thanasi's betrayal, the unheard of occurred and
I found myself in a female body for the first time ever. And also, as it
turned out, the last. The death I die in this body will be my final
death. The soulwalk is no longer open to me.
(End excerpt #1)
*************************
(Excerpt #2: Later, at the home of Brandon Tark aka Warstrike):
*
"Archimage and Boneyard," mused Brandon. "Those sure are dumb names."
"Can't say I ever had any problem with them," I replied, "though they
weren't their real names, of course."
"Really?"
"Yep. And before you ask...no, I have no idea what those were. What you
have to remember is that Archimage and Boneyard were major league
sorcerors and like all true sorcerors, they concealed their true names
lest that knowledge give their enemies power over them. In all the
centuries I served Archimage, I never got an inkling of what their names
might be."
"I sometimes forget just how long you've been around, Lukasz," said
Warstrike, rubbing his chin. "Was there ever a time before you became
Eden Blake when dying meant to you what it does to the rest of us?"
"Of course there was," I said. "I expected my first death to be my final
one, just as it is for most people."
"When was that, anyway?"
"In the year 451," I said, "when I was a soldier in the forces assembled
in Gaul to stop Attila the Hun."
"The Battle of Ch?lons!" said Warstrike, excitedly, "you died in the
Battle of Ch?lons!"
I should have known he'd be a military history buff.
"I think of it as the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains but, yes, that's
the one," I said.
"The Romans under Flavius Aetius, the Alans under Sangiban, and the
Visigoths under Theodoric, took on the Huns there," said Warstrike.
"Attila had already plundered the Eastern Holy Roman Empire, and when he
turned his attentions to the West he and his Huns were run to ground
after they tried to sack Orleans."
"More or less," I said, "though things didn't unfold *quite* the way the
history books would have you believe. As for me, I was 21 years old,
pretty full of myself, and had left my birthplace in what is now Poland
seeking adventure with my friend Thanasi and my young wife, Marinna...."
GAUL, 451AD.
"They say he was knocked from his horse during the fighting today and
was crushed beneath thousands of flying hooves," said Thanasi, absently
wiping away the blood oozing from a cut above his left eye.
We were leaning against a wrecked wagon, bone-weary after the day's
battles, one eye on the bodies that littered the plain, now barely
visible as twilight descended. Attila had retreated to his laager of
wagons to lick his wounds. Tomorrow, if the gods willed it, we would
destroy the Huns.
"It certainly looked that way, but no, Theodoric still lives," I said.
"I was with a party of Visigoths led by Aric of Dacia who fought off
those who would kill him as he was helped from the field. An impressive
warrior, Aric. He's seen three score of summers, yet he still fights
with the strength and fury of a man a third his years. Doubtless,
Theodoric will address his men before battle commences tomorrow, let
them know reports of his death are greatly exaggerated. Luckily for us."
"What makes you think he'll see you, Lukasz?" said Thanasi, sounding
exasperated.
"Why wouldn't he?" I replied. "We fought bravely alongside the Visigoths
today and I'm sure King Theodoric will offer us a rank in his armies."
"The Visigoths aren't the Romans," said Thanasi.
"And Rome isn't the power it used to be," I said.
"You think not?"
"Didn't you see what happened today?" I said. "Attila deployed his Gepid
allies to the right, the Ostrogoths to his left, and held the center
with his Huns. On our side, the Romans faced the Gepids, the Visigoths
took on the Ostrogoths, and Sangiban and his Alans were deployed in the
center."
"That was only so that Theodoric and Flavius Aetius could keep an eye on
Sangiban," said Thanasi. They didn't trust him. And after what happened
at Orleans, who could blame them?"
The rumor was that Sangiban had opened the gates of Orleans to the Huns,
and they were already ransacking the outer districts when the armies of
Theodoric and Flavius Aetius arrived and drove them out of the city.
"That's as may be," I said, "but what interests me is what the Romans
did in the battle today. Or, more tellingly, what they *didn't* do.
Aetius refused to commit his legionaries against the Gepids despite
outnumbering them. I doubt he's a coward, so why was that? Was he
anxious to preserve the only existing Roman army left? Or was it that
that army been hastily assembled, were of doubtful quality, and he was
nervous about committing them to a fight? Either way, it doesn't speak
well for the power of Rome, does it? By contrast Thorismond, King
Theodoric's son, successfully led his Visigoths against Walamir's
Ostrogoths and took the only hill on this plain, so depriving Attila of
it. No, their forces may be less structured and disciplined than Rome's,
but they're the ones we should hitch our fortunes to."
"Ah, you're always watching, always weighing things up, Lukasz,"
chuckled Thanasi, "but still, you're usually right. Theodoric and Aetius
were at each other's throats until Attila presented them with a common
foe. As soon as he's defeated, they'll likely be fighting each other
again."
"Maybe," I said, rubbing my chin thoughtfully and gazing across to where
Attila's camp lay, knowing we would be in the thick of it again
tomorrow, that that day's battle would decide things, "or maybe Aetius
has something else in mind."
"Like what?" demanded Thanasi.
"I...don't know," I admitted, "but with Rome weakened, the last thing
Aetius wants is a return to warring with Theodoric. I've been sharing
stories with Roman soldiers, Thanasi, getting a feel for what's
happening in the empire, and what those legionaries told me is very
interesting. The emperor, Valentinian III, is but a child, and his
mother, Aelia Galla Placidia, serves as regent. That advisor we've seen
at Aetius' side, Gaius Mordius, is apparently the emperor's
representative, though both the child and his mother are little more
than figureheads. General Aetius is the real power in Rome now, but what
use is it to control an empire if it crumbles to dust in your hands?"
"Ach, as long as I have food and wine in my belly and a sword in my hand
I'll take on all-comers, Lukasz," said Thanasi. "What does it matter to
me whether they're Huns, or Romans, or Visigoths?"
"I know, my sword-brother," I smiled, grasping his shoulder
affectionately, "which is why at least one of us has to have some sort
of strategy for the future. Go now, and return to Marinna at our tent.
I'll join you after I've seen King Theodoric."
"As you wish," he replied, giving a mock bow before turning and heading
for where our tent lay amid the large encampment to our rear. With luck,
Marinna had foraged for food and I'd find a rabbit or a bird cooking on
a spit over our campfire when I rejoined them.
In order to prevent Hunnic assassins creeping up on him under cover of
darkness, Theodoric had wisely established several rings of guards
through which those seeking an audience with him had to pass.
Fortunately, Thanasi and I were known to many of the Visigoths and our
prowess in battle had earned us their respect, so I passed each of these
with little trouble.
Theodoric's son, Thorismund, had set up camp on the hill, and as I
approached I could make out Theodoric, Sangiban, and Aetius at its
crest, looking out over the battlefield, deep in conversation. A
respectful distance from them, just out of earshot, was Aetius's
retinue. Gaius Mordius was there, of course, a tall and lean man maybe a
decade older than me. He gave me a look of distain as I joined them. The
legionaries I'd talked to despised him, saying he thought himself
superior to those of us who actually got our hands dirty fighting. They
had also made scurrilous comments about his parentage. I did not bother
to return his gaze, my attention being wholly focussed on the woman
standing next to him. Young and very beautiful, fair haired and blue-
eyed, she returned to my attention with an amused smile.
"I am Lukasz," I said, "I fight alongside the Visigoths, under Aric of
Dacia."
"A legendary warrior," she replied. "To fight alongside such a one a man
has to be a formidable warrior himself. I am Katinya, and this is my
master."
She indicated the third member of the retinue. He was a man of many
years. His hair and beard were both long and grey, and he affected the
clothing of a barbarian, but his eyes put a lie to any suggestion that
age had weakened him or that he was the barbarian his garb proclaimed
him to be. His whole bearing radiated strength, and his gaze held a
terrible power. It was a gaze he turned in my direction, one I could not
help but flinch from. It felt like he was reading the very core of my
being.
"Rumor in the camp has it that Aetius's advisors include a sorceror," I
said, tearing my eyes away from that fearsome gaze.
"Miltary camps are always hotbeds of rumor," he replied, his voice deep
and sonorous. Clearly, he was not going to respond to my implied
question.
"Come, Katinya," he said, "I need to see Attila's defenses for myself. I
know we will meet again, Lukasz."
With that he turned, and they headed back the way I had come. I turned
my attention back to the hill. Aetius and Sangiban were coming down it,
leaving Theodoric alone. This was my chance.
"Hold, Visigoth!" commanded Gaius Mordius, mistaking my current
alliegance for who I am and placing a hand on my shoulder. "King
Theodoric has another visitor."
A figure had appeared from the other side of the hill. I recognised him.
It was Thorismond.
"The hand," I said, voice low and menacing, watching as Theodoric
greeted his son. Mordius removed his hand, and I stiffened.
"Something's wrong," I said, realising that sounds from the nearby camp
had suddenly stopped.
"What?" said Mordius, as I spun round to take in the scene behind me,
instantly seeing the camp was as busy and bustling as ever but with no
sound from it reaching us. "I don't...."
"Sorcery!" I hissed. I turned back to the hill in time to see
Thorismund's form shimmer and shift until in his place there stood a man
I had never seen before. Tall, bald, a long cape swirling about his
shoulders, his body and half his head were encased in some sort of
armor. In his hand he held an odd looking sword.
Brushing Mordius aside, I drew my own sword, preparing to rush to
Theodoric's aid. I had barely taken a step when a searing pain shot
through my back. I fell forward in agony, turning as I did so. Gaius
Mordius stood there, my blood dripping from the dagger in his hand. I
glanced back to where Theodoric faced the man who had masqueraded as his
son, just in time to see him lop the king's head from his shoulders with
a single sweep of that strange sword.
"Why?" I gasped, looking back at Mordius.
"I had to stop you from interfering with my master, Boneyard," he said,
looking down at me dispassionately. "If I serve him well, he has
promised me eternal life."
Darkness descended over me then as I blacked out from the pain, my
lifeblood still trickling away freely into the dirt. I had not expected
ever to wake again.
But I did.
"Lukasz, Lukasz, wake up!" said a commanding voice, cutting through the
darkness. Slowly and with enormous effort, I opened my eyes. Looking
down at me was the sorceror.
"This body is dying and beyond my ability to heal," he said, "but there
is a way you can live. Swear allegiance to me, serve my cause and no
other, and you will take the soulwalk and live again."
I nodded, he gave a small smile, and then I died.
Death was nothing like I expected it to be.
I found myself bodiless and gazing down a long tunnel of light at the
end of which was an even brighter, purer light from which pilsed rings
of crimson energy. On either side of me, leading all the way into that
light, were rows of shimmering, translucent capsules. All were empty,
save for one. In that one was an image of my body, as still and unmoving
as a corpse. As I noticed this, so I began to fall forward down the
tunnel, into the light....
....and then I was lurching upright, taking in great gulps of air.
"Welcome back, Lukasz," said an amused female voice. I recognised the
beautiful woman standing before me in the tent.
"Katinya," I said, in an unfamiliar voice. "What happened?"
"You died, you took the soulwalk, and you were reborn in the body of
another."
Standing, I looked down at my body. I was dressed in the short-skirted
tunic and sandals of a Roman legionary, my helmet, breastplate, and
weapons leaning against the tentpole. Silently, Katinya handed me a
small metal mirror. It showed me a stranger's face. I touched my short,
blond hair, so different from the shoulder length dark mane I was used
to.
"Marcus Arcadian," said Katinya. "That's who that body used to belong
to."
"What happens now?" I asked, lowering the mirror.
"That's up to my master Archimage," she said.
"'Archimage'? Is that the sorceror's name?"
"The name that most know me by, at least," said the sorceror, choosing
that moment to enter the tent. "I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner, but it
took me a few minutes to get from where you died and make my way down
through the camp. Now tell me what happened on the hill and what you
saw. Do not leave out any detail, however trivial it might seem."
I did as he commanded, telling how Boneyard had killed Theodoric after
approaching him bearing the the face and form of his son, and how I had
been stabbed in the back by Gaius Mordius. Archimage listened, his face
grave, letting out a deep sigh as I finished my tale.
"It's worse than I feared," he sighed. "Boneyard has broken our covenant
and has obviously been recruiting agents for some time, promising them
life eternal. My brother and I have our, ah, philolosophical differences
but getting involved in the affairs of mortals, slaying a significant
figure at such a crucial point, represents a major escalation. All out
war between us is all but inevitable now, alas."
"Why did he kill Theodoric?" I asked.
"The Huns are essentially just looters and pillagers," said Archimage,
"and in the course of all that looting and pillaging they must have
acquired something my brother wants, some item of great power. It would
be this he was promised by Attila in return for killing Theodoric.
Attila probably thinks the death of their king will demoralise the
Visigoths."
"If he truly believes that then he has miscalculated," I said. "If
anything, it will just spur on Thorismond and his men to even greater
efforts."
"Quite so," said Archimage, stroking his beard and regarding me
thoughtfully. "You've pledged yourself to my service, Lukasz, but you
are only the first of those I need to recruit to counterbalance those my
brother commands."
"Thanasi," I said, "my sword-brother. He has followed me since we were
children. I'm sure he would follow me into your service."
"Then take me to him," said Archimage.
I did as he bade me, and it was only as we made our way through the camp
to my tent, past soldiers cooking foraged game over campfires or chewing
on hard biscuits or salted meat from their rations, that I thought of
Marinna and wondered for the first time how my beloved wife would react
to my new appearance. Would she accept me like this? And what would I do
if she didn't?
I spotted Thanasi sitting outside our tent, but not until we were upon
him did the light from the campfire reveal the blood running down his
right arm.
"Thanasi, what happened?" I shouted, gripping his shoulders. He seemed
to be in some sort of stupor, but my grip brought him out of it.
"Who?" he said, lurching to his feet and throwing off my arms, glaring
suspiciously at me and my companions. "Who are you people?"
"It's me, Lukasz," I said. "I was murdered, then given this new body by
Aetius's sorceror."
"What nonsense is this?" said Thanasi. "Do you seek to trick me?"
"It's no trick, my sword-brother," I said, "and I can prove it."
I proceeded to tell him stories of our childhood that only he and I
could have known.
"By the gods, Lukasz," he said, staring at me in wonderment when I had
finished, "it *is* you."
"So what happened here?" I asked. "And where is Marinna?"
His eyes went to the tent...and I knew.
Flinging back the flap, I saw her lying there. There was an ugly bruise
on her throat where her neck had been broken. Her sightless eyes looked
right at me but saw me not. They would never see me again.
"They...they crept into camp through the darkness," said Thanasi from
behind me as I gently stroked my wife's hair. "I tried to fight them off
but..."
His voice, already halting, trailed away into silence.
"Assassins," said Archimage. "My brother moves swiftly to strike at
those who might ally themselves with me."
"Then he has made himself the bitterest of enemies this night," I said.
"Gather up your things," said Archimage. "We will bury your wife but
then we must leave this place. The outcome of this battle is no longer
your concern or mine. From now on there is only the war with my
brother."
***
I paused to take a sip from my coffee, looking at the slender-fingered
hand that held the cup, long nails painted and manicured, remembering
when I had the strong, rough hands of a man and not those of this
woman's body I now inhabited. Warstrike was regarding me thoughtfully.
"You're the military history buff," I said. "I'm sure you know what
Aetius did after we'd left."
"He let Attila and his Huns go," he replied. "Aetius feared the strength
of the Visigoths within the empire and was concerned a total defeat of
the Huns would strengthen that power. He needed Attila as a counter-
weight, so instead of finishing him off, he decided to let Attila
withdraw. Thorismund wasn't too happy with this plan, but Aetius somehow
managed to convince the new king he needed to return to Toulouse to
consolidate his position against his jealous brothers. The Visigoths
withdrew from the battlefield, and Attila was allowed to slink back over
the Rhine, with his tail between his legs, but with his power still
intact. All of which gave Rome a breather on its long slow decline."
"Pretty much," I said. "He was a wily one, was Aetius. And, of course,
history records that Theodoric died beneath a thousand hooves when he
was knocked from his horse. I guess that was a more acceptable story to
put about than his death at the hand of an unknown assassin."
"Did you ever get revenge on Mordius for killing you?"
"Many times," I said, "but then he slew me several more times, too. This
will probably sound odd to you, but it got to the point where one of us
killing the other wasn't personal anymore; it was just business."
"Some business," snorted Brandon.
"Looking back, I'd have to agree," I said. "Still, I eventually got to
see Mordius die his final death, the one there's no coming back from, in
Berlin in 1945. Got to meet the Norse gods then, too."
"You mean like that Thor character we met on the Godwheel?"
"He was from the Black Knight's universe. The ones I met were linked to
ours and their thunder god calls himself Donar. He's pretty impressive.!
That was an understatement.
He was tall, easily seven feet, rippling with muscles, and had long red
hair and beard. He wore a tunic of some sort of dark leather and
gauntlets of the same material, but his arms and legs were bare, while
his feet were clad with boots of the same white fur as the cape around
his shoulders. His helmet was made of gold, as were the bracelets on his
arms and the decorative inlay on his tunic. He carried a hammer, one
whose head and shaft were a seamless whole, formed from some strange
substance that was neither stone nor metal but a weird hybrid of the
two, blue fire dancing across its surface. He was like some Platonic,
idealized version of what a man should be, some perfect representation
of distilled maleness. I had been dreaming about him a lot lately,
disturbing, erotic dreams. He was the only man I'd reacted to that way
to since becoming a woman.
"Eden?" said Brandon. "You looked like you were miles away there."
"Sorry," I said, shaking my head and feeling myself blush.
"So where are these gods now?" he asked.
"The runestone that links their plane with ours is safely tucked away in
the pocket dimension within the folds of my cape," I said. "Donar said
he trusted me to know when to activate it again."
*
(End excerpt #2)
****************************
Here's a list of my non-Mantra comics-related stories, all of which are
currently available on fictionmania -
Super-Sister (DC):
1/ CLAIRE KENT, ALIAS SUPER-SISTER: THE BEGINNING
2/ CLAIRE KENT, ALIAS SUPER-SISTER: THE RETURN OF SUPERBOY
3/ CLAIRE KENT, ALIAS SUPER-SISTER: THE BOY FROM GOTHAM
Batman (DC):
1/ FROM BATMAN TO CALL GIRL
The Wasp, aka Hank Pym (Marvel):
1/ WASPS
2/ LOVE & ROBOTS
INTRIGUES (one-off set in Mantra universe, no Mantra)
Jeannie
- 01.09.2022
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