Marvel Feature Presents: Red Sonja #3 (Marvel Comics, 1975)

After stealing a mysterious key from a brigand named Rejak in Marvel Feature Presents: Red Sonja #2, Red Sonja finds herself on horseback, in the mountains, fleeing from the militia in the middle of a windstorm. She tries to jump a ravine, only to miss the landing by a few inches, thanks to the wind. As she falls to her death, Sonja calls out Conan's name.

When she comes to, Sonja learns that she never made the jump at all. A crazy old wizard named Neja used magic to convince the militia and Sonja of what they saw. As the militia trundles away, Neja takes Sonja to her cave, and the two discuss the key around her neck: Balek's Key!

Red Sonja inquires about the significance of the key, and Neja tells her a tale of the kingdoms of Thros and Skurga, who had been at war for a century. King Milos of Thros was a better warrior, but King Thelok of Skurga was a better tactician. However, Thelok grew tired of war. One day, a strange man named Lamrac arrived with a gift, a beautiful mechanical bird. Thelok was amazed, so Lamrac then made him more mechanical animals.

Transfixed by Lamrac's mechanical creations, Thelok paid less attention to the war and more to the animals. Then Lemrac made him a gigantic mechanical man in Thelok's image.

King Thelok tarries in idle narcissism with his mechanical likeness and was shocked to see his castle overrun by Thros' armies, and his nemesis King Milos, treating with Lamrac at his own royal table. After he was thrown into a prison cell, Thelok used his rage to summon a storm and imparted his spirit into the mechanical monstrosity, sending it into a rage that destroyed the castle and his enemies. Only King Milos remained, who battled the mechanical man and removed a key from its back, stopping the machine. Thelok stabbed him and then tossed himself, the key, and the gigantic automaton into the ocean.

Although Sonja seemed to enjoy the story, she failed to pay attention to her drink, which was drugged. When she awakens, Sonja finds herself chained to the giant mechanical likeness of Thelok! Neja cackles nearby that she is the great-granddaughter of Lamrac and seeks revenge on the world! She inserts the key into the mechanical Thelok, and it attacks Sonja.

Sonja, being a great warrior (and the star of her own comic book), jumps, scurries, and outwits the machine by tricking it into smashing her chains and freeing her. She eventually gets it to leap off a cliff, strangles Neja with a chain, and then, as the mechanical man climbs out of the cliff, she leaps onto its back and removes the key, nearly being squashed in the process.

In the end, Sonja melts the key down into a new armband!