THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, Chapter 1, Part 1

 

 Posted 3-12-21

Updated 5-11-21

Updated 01-05-22

 AUTHOR'S NOTE: The back story of Necromantra, a supporting character in MANTRA Magazine (Malibu Comics), is rich and complex. Most Ultraverse fans will already be familiar with Necromantra's exploits as the Ultraverse’s most powerful and evil femme fatale and for this reason we have limited the expository material presented herein. The character’s career summary is appended as an appendix at the end of this story segment for the benefit of those new to the Malibu universe. Chronologically, The Beauty and the Beast continues and concludes (as part five) the four‑part Necromantra miniseries published in 1995.

Necromantra, the Arielles, the Tradesmen, the Darkur, the Aerwa, and some of the major characters featured in this story are original creations of Malibu Comics and are copyrighted by Marvel Comics, Inc.


THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

A story of Necromantra

By Aladdin

Edited by Christopher Leeson

Part 1 of Chapter 1

The road wound before me like a serpent’s trail. I could see nothing to the right or left except a cornfield shrouded by night. Where was I bound to? Did I have to be somewhere? I couldn’t recall. I thought of taking my bearing from the stars, but couldn't recognize any of the constellations. In fact, the whole countryside had an eerie and unreal cast to it, though it baffled me to explain what was wrong. I kept asking myself, where was I and how had I come here?

But I had another question even more important than these.

What was my name?

I had no personal memories whatsoever. Who was I? Looking down at myself, I beheld a cloaked body that might as well have belonged to stranger.

Perplexed, I again glanced skyward. I couldn’t remember what a proper moon should look like, but this moon somehow looked odd. But at least it was giving off a little welcome light. I held my up hands, hoping that their appearance might evoke some of my missing memories. I was surprised to see that they looked so  youthful. Was I young? While I had been walking, I had assumed that I was old. But why should I think such a thing? It was not as though I carried with me any memories of a long life. Nor was I feeling the bodily aches that so often remind a person of advanced years. So why had I been supposing that I was old?  

But there was something else that surprised me even more than my apparent youth. The hands I was holding up looked like a woman’s.

Was I woman?

Just as I had been seeing myself as old, I had also assumed that I was a man.

Feeling beneath my cloak, I touched a contoured body, firm but slender. Its smooth skin felt as warm silk to my touch. The feel of my breasts should have been enough to convince me of my sex, but being female seemed so wrong that I continued checking, thereby confirming absolutely my womanhood. What was wrong with me? How could I have forgotten something as basic as my own sex?

There was a hoarse call from overhead and I recognized it for a crow's cry. How strange it was that I knew what a crow sounded like while being unable to remember so much as my own name. The flap of  the bird’s wings had arced over my head and so I looked back. The creature of Nature had settle to earth almost camouflaged amid a crisscross of moon-shadows. The tightening of my lips told me that I possessed the power to smile. I said, "Aren’t you supposed to be a day-bird, Master Crow? Why are you out so late?" The timbre of my own voice sounded soft and high-pitched, absolutely unfamiliar to me.

My fair-feathered visitor, I could see, was pecking at something and I presumed that he had found some corn. Just then, behind the bird, I noticed a table set up by the side of the lane. I stepped toward it, causing the crow to walk out of my path. The table was cluttered with cups, dishes and platters; there were enough stools for several eaters. Had there been a picnic? Why had the diners abandoned everything upon leaving? Or had they fled from the roadside in sudden fear?

I frowned thoughtfully. What had caused me to think so readily about fear and flight? Did I have a reason to be afraid myself? Might there have been some forgotten danger that had put me onto this rustic road?  I did sense something like fear lurking at the back of my mind. Or had the feeling been aroused by nothing more than this location's darkness, loneliness, quietude, and emptiness?  

Standing beside the table, I made out a child's teddy bear seated on one of the stools. A toy should be cared for by a child, I thought. A toy without a child seemed sad somehow. Would the child return, or would the bear have to sit where it was alone, until a strong gust toppled it to the soil? It would languish there, I knew, dank and dirty, unwanted, unneeded, forgotten. In the end, its cloth would be rotten, its seams broken, its every fiber would go away with the birds for building nests. But, alas, wasn’t that the cruel way of Nature? Hadn't the detritus of death always provided the wherewithal to support the new life that will not arrive until tomorrow?

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw something that made me even sadder ‑‑ an executed man suspended from a cross. As I stared at him, I was set to wondering what his crime had been and who had punished him.

My feet wanted to move toward the corpse. A few steps along, I gave a sigh of relief. This was no tragedy after all. I was seeing not a corpse but a scarecrow, a very crude homunculus tied to a wooden frame. But what a poor excuse for a scarecrow! A crow searched for grubs and worms only a few yards away, entirely undaunted.

It was then that I heard something moving among the shadows of the growing corn. My eyes searched out the night-prowler almost at once.  It was no night‑stalking beast, after all, but a wandering girl‑child.

She should have been able to see me, but the waif never glanced my way.

The small wayfarer, here at this ungodly hour, caused me wonder if she were a living tyke or a haunting spirit. The night-child made for the disorderly table and took an empty stool from its side. This she toted up to the feet of the scarecrow. The girl did not hesitate to climb up upon it then. Standing on her tiptoes, she reaching aloft to touch the head of the pathetic effigy.

I heard myself speaking aloud: "Girl, why are you out here at  night? Do you have a home and parents?"

She still disdained to look my way, but chose to get down from the stool just then and walk away into the brake-like expanse of corn. She made no sound during in her departure, moving as quietly as a field mouse.

When I could no longer see the girl, I again contemplated whether it had been a young person or a ghostly manifestation. The stool was still there and I wanted to know if it was real or something phantasmagorical. Therefore I walked to it and put a hand upon its seat. It surely felt like solid wood.  If the stool was real, had the girl standing upon it been real also?  It didn’t seem logical that a ghost should require a material stool to stand upon.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a red spark. Turning, I drifted toward the spot where the glint had been. It turned out that I was walking directly toward the avian, who now scurried away. It deigned to retire only a few yards before stopping and staring back at me with – I supposed – indignation.

There was another carmine glint from the ground and I advanced to stand above it. Seeing nothing at my feet, I sank to one knee and groped through the earth-chunks and grass. My fingers touched something anomalous and picked it up. The moonlight illuminated something like a ruby fixed in a metal setting. It had a chain attached in the form of a pendant. I dangled it in front of my eyes and its scintillation filled my mind with flashes of a blonde girl’s face. I paused, fascinated. If this was a memory, I surely needed to take it seriously. I was sure that the face looked familiar and this person seemed to be important to me.  Contemplating that face gave me a sense of loneliness and loss.

For some reason I found myself wishing myself to be not where I was, but with that girl, whoever she was.

"Go back," someone behind me said.

Startled, I turned but saw nothing beyond the moon-illuminated stalks of corn. No matter what I had supposedly heard, I was still alone. Dismally alone. Who had spoken? Had I heard a ghost? Had it been the crow? I somehow recalled that crows could be trained to pronounce words.

For no reason, a child's rhyme came to mind:  `Birdie with the yellow bill hopped upon my window sill, cocked its shining eye and said....'

What did it say?

"Go back."

I looked again at the crow, trying to make out if it had truly been the speaker.

“Go back.”

Yes, it was the crow. I smiled ruefully. So that was what the birdie with the yellow bill had said!

*****

The next thing I knew, I was elsewhere and hearing a woman screaming.

I felt I should help a being in trouble if I could, until I realized that I was myself the screaming person.

My first impulse was to sit up, but found that I could move neither my arms nor legs. Is this sleep paralysis? I asked myself. But my clearing senses made it all too clear that this was not the case. My immobility was the intended effect of cords having been fastened around my wrists and ankles. I was tied to a rack or a similar frame. Was I someone’s captive? I heard voices. I could not understand their language but, even so, listened carefully to them. The speech gradually became comprehensible, but yet my ears still only heard gibberish. It was as though the conversant beings were projecting thoughts from their minds directly into mine. As they spoke, they seemed not to know that I was listening in.

"Have you succeeded, wizard?" one asked. I did not like his voice; it was hard and somehow inhuman.

"I believe so, Tradesman," replied the one called wizard. "It is a pernicious devil, this Soul‑Rider, one that cannot easily be cast out. Our spells have weakened its grip, but if the witch is to avoid a new possession, she must use her own great power frequently to rebuff and banish it. I think that if her heart is set upon being free, she will succeed."  

"As long as the slave has the potential for relapsing, her value will be lessened," stated the one called Tradesman. “Are her powers diminished by being partially possessed?"

"I doubt it, Great One. Hopefully, she will be more cooperative that she was before, when fully dominated by the demon."

"Any acquisition that will not accept commands must be destroyed," stated Tradesman.

As I lay there, my thoughts seemed to be forming up into some kind of order.

I gasped as I began to see snatches from my past. I had thought that I wanted to remember who and what I was. But now that the process had begun, I did not like the memories that I was getting!

My teeth clenched and my womanly hands fisted. I was being told by the voice of guilty recollections that I had committed murder, and I had murdered the person whom I had loved most in the world.

Afraid that this indictment was true, I no longer wanted to remember. I didn’t want to become all over again the person whom I remembered. It would be better for me to go back to that lonely road and become a ghost again, a ghost blessed by forgetfulness and with no company at all except for other ghosts.

If only such a thing were possible! 

TO BE CONTINUED, Chapter 1, Part 2.



APPENDIX TO THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,
A Story of Thanasi

By Aladdin and
Edited by Christopher Leeson

 In the mid-Fifth Century, Archimage the wizard came to Earth as an exile from his homeland on the Godwheel and began to recruit fighting men for an elite force. His intention was to wage war against his necromancer brother, Boneyard, who had attacked and stolen kingdom. Two of those whom he recruited were the knights Lukasz and Thanasi, fighting men who had already proven their prowess during the last days of the Roman Empire.  Boneyard would occasionally venture to Earth himself to take reprisals against the knights and their loved ones, slaying Lukasz’s wife Marinna. Thanasi, already the former’s friend, stood by him in his bitter grief.
 

From that time until the present era, the two men remained comrades, fighting many battles against Boneyard and his agents. The wizard’s men stood by him for more than a thousand years because he could place their souls into new bodies in the event of their death or incapacity. Over this long period of time, neither Archimage nor Lukasz were given any reason to doubt the nobility of Thanasi’s character or his loyalty.

 Then came a day when Archimage realized that one of his band had betrayed him. Aided by some internal enemy, Boneyard struck decisively. The knights were slaughtered to a man, while Boneyard took Archimage captive.

 But Archimage had prepared a defense. In his last moment of freedom, he triggered a pre-prepared spell. Its purpose was to put the soul of Lukasz, his best knight, into the body of a young divorced mother named Eden Blake. Archimage had already chosen her to be the mortal vessel for his champion because he had learned that Eden was an undiscovered magical ultra of great power. Though Lukasz was shocked to be draped in such a shape, he rapidly, if grudgingly, adjusted and set himself/herself to the study and use of sorcery. Determined to regain his manhood, he made it his mission to rescue the only person who could help him achieve that, his imprisoned master Archimage.
 

Lukasz, calling his female persona Mantra, soon learned that the knights’ betrayer had been his own best friend Thanasi.  The latter’s reward had been to receive from Boneyard a form of immortality, the ability to steal bodies at will. But when Mantra next met Thanasi, he was wildly hostile and seemed to be suffering from a personality change. The traitor knight was obsessed with destroying the only person whom he still feared, the sorceress Mantra, being convinced that he would never be safe as long as Lukasz lived in any form.

 As the feud became more bitter, Lukasz recognized that it could only end in the death of one of them. Thanasi was a threat not only to Mantra’s life, but to the friends and family that he had acquired while living the life of the divorced housewife Eden Blake.

Lukasz, meanwhile, learned that the spirit of Eden Blake was still attached to her former body and the two of them were able to communicate telepathically.  The knight-turned-sorceress continued to seek for a way to return his soul to a male body, but he also wanted to restore Eden to her own.  At last, with the help of the ultra Pinnacle, Lukasz managed to transfer his soul into the empty shell of a male clone, intending to leave Mantra’s body in possession of Eden.  But when he exited Eden’s body, Thanasi's soul immediately entered it, keeping Eden’s spirit suppressed.

 Their face-off was brief. A minute later, both Lukasz, now male, and Thanasi, in Eden’s body, were whisked off by the will of an evil god to the artificial mega-world of the Godwheel.  While Lukasz had resisted falling into the mental and emotional patterns of a woman, Thanasi’s reaction proved to be very different. He regarded his change as the beginining of an exciting adventure. He/she continued to be cruel, paranoid, bloodthirsty, and treacherous, but had also become a vicious, mock-seductive witch.  Thanasi christened his knew identity "Necromantra." 

When later defeated in battle, Thanasi’s spirit retreated back into limbo, but it continued to haunt Eden Blake.  When Lukasz and Eden returned home to Earth, they made love for the first time and this tryst resulted in a magical pregnancy. Thanasi at once entered the body of the fetus and placed it under his influence while Eden came to term with unnatural speed.  When born, the new parents named the girl-child Marinna, after Lukasz’s late wife. But this infant matured into a young woman before their eyes and attacked both her parents, even kidnapping Eden and her daughter Evie.

 Lukasz, aided by Pinnacle, traced Necromantra to her lair and they jointly fought her. Eden, present as Thanasi’s prisoner, also joined the fight, but was struck down.  With her dying breath, she urged Lukasz to take back her body and use its powers to save both himself and Evie.  Forced by circumstances, Lukasz complied and the magic that was spontaneously released healed Eden’s wounds, allowing Mantra to fight and defeat Necromantra. Mantra cast her into a dimensional rift that the witch had herself opened.  The villainess’s ultimate fate could not be known at the time, but Lukasz hoped that she was finally dead.

 Nonetheless, Necromantra had survived, having been cast out of the portal into a medieval-style human kingdom on the Godwheel.  Weakened by her ordeal, she was rescued from the attack of a giant snake through the intervention of a nobly-born maiden named Arielle, assisted by her father’s hunting party.
 

The father, a local ruler named Tavon, took a fancy to the mystery woman and Necromancer accepted his advances, but only for her self-serving ends.  She sought out a wizard for advice on how to regain full power and did so by means of a ritual of sacrifice, one that fatally victimized both the wizard and her husband. Afterwards, the witch assumed the authority of a queen-regent in behalf of Arielle due to her young age.  The grieving Arielle did not know who had murdered her father and so continued her friendship with Necromantra, even after learning her stepmother was a powerful and ruthless sorceress. Necromantra’s politics were tyranical and warlike. During a battle with a neighboring power, she was hard-pressed. She saved herself by calling up a horned demon that had a tie to her that she did not as yet understand.
 

But there was a worse danger arising for Necromantra. Her mother/father Mantra had, before her unnatural birth, traded the life of her “next-born child” to the alien tribe of the Tradesmen in exchange for a favor.  The birth of Marinna to Eden Blake had fulfilled the terms of that bargain and the Tradesmen knew that Necromantra was was Mantra’s child. Under the agreement, she was also their slave.  They sent an agent to seize her, but the horned demon appeared again to slay the powerful Tradesman.

The Tradesman were furious but undaunted. They brought in a new ally, an artificial being called Lord Pumpkin, to attack and overcome the sorceress-queen.  When his first attempts failed, the Tradesman enhanced Lord Pumpkin’s power with a magical red jewel. With this, he attacked again and fought her to exhaustion.  Only Arielle was still standing by her at that deadly hour, but in the moment of crisis the demon reemerged and energized itself by taking the girl's life as a sacrifice.

 Even so, the Tradesmen overcame and captured her. They proceeded to teleport Necromantra away, along with the dead body of Arielle.  Lord Pumpkin, incidentally, was himself vanquished a short while later by the intervention of a god whom he had tried to cheat.

 The story ends strangely, with Necromantra being seen walking through a benighted country lane. This scene is enigmatic. Had Necromantra somehow escaped from the Tradesmen so soon? Or was this closing tableau merely meant to represent a metaphor, or even a dream…?

 Necromantra would reappear again in three of the last Mantra stories, published in the world of “Black September,” but they do not explain her escape from the Tradesmen. Black September was a far-ranging revision revision of the Ultraverse universe, in which the world's familiar history had been changed. The fans seemed to dislike all of the changes made and the company's sales plummeted catastrophically. The company was kept on life support by the owner, Marvel Comics, for a year, and then cancelled. They never again revisited the Ultraverse or used any of its characters.

 When addressing plot of THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, we were interested in explaining how Thanasi could have convincingly changed from a noble knight into a vicious witch.  We are guessing that the key lies in the existence of the mysterious demon featured in the 4-issue miniseries. 

NOTE: Necromantra also appears in my novel THE WOUNDED WORLD, but that story features the Necromantra who was part of the Black September world. Our intention in THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is to imagine that Necromantra's might have taken a powerful turn had the Ultraverse been allowed to continue. After all, it had already been established that the Ultraverse existed in many different alternate worlds.

End