Author's Note: This story is an old one of mine that has been recently revamped. The essential story is the same, although a number of scenes have been expanded upon and fleshed out, to the tune of being approximately 20,000 words longer than the older version. If you enjoyed this story in its previous incarnation, I urge you to read the new version, as I feel it's a much richer version of the tale.
Revival
(Revised Edition, January 2009)
by Cheezey
Part One: Memories
Chapter One
The midnight hour was upon New Thundera. The Thundercats slept comfortably in their beds inside the Cat's Lair, just as they had most every night for the last decade or so. Twelve years had passed since their battle with Mumm-Ra in the Book of Omens, and the residents of New Thundera enjoyed a mostly peaceful and prosperous life on their rebuilt world. Over the past decade more and more Thunderian refugees had returned to the reformed Thundera, and the city that had formed around the Cat's Lair as its capitol, New Thundera City, was a thriving metropolis.
That was not to say that the Thundercats were not busy all those years. Even without Mumm-Ra or their Mutant and Lunatac foes from Third Earth, there was still the occasional bout of trouble. Their reformed world was not an exact replica of the original, and they had more than one adventure exploring the yet uncharted terrain and interacting with New Thundera's new residents, just as they had in the months prior to their battle with Mumm-Ra. Also, like any diverse population, Thunderians had dissidents and troublemakers amongst their number. Baron Tass was not alone in the Thunderians' elite nobility that survived the destruction of Thundera, and a number of them wished to see more of Old Thundera's cultural norms and societal roles re-established. Then, of course, there were still Mutants, Lunatacs, and alien traders and mercenaries that turned up on the planet to cause trouble. Those from their enemy sister world and its moons' still plagued Thunderians with petty crimes, trade disputes, and open hostilities at times, and that kept the Thundercats' plate full enough.
Still, times were far easier in the years after Mumm-Ra's defeat than before, and it was largely considered an era of prosperity and growth for the Thunderians and Thundercats. The luxury of relative peace allowed the Thundercats to build a truly new Thundera where Thunderian refugees could have a fresh start, and the Thundercats themselves indulged in that freedom as well. On the third anniversary of Mumm-Ra's defeat, Thundercats Bengali and Pumyra wed, and not long after that they announced the impending birth of their first cub. Nearly all of New Thundera City celebrated with them.
Less than a year and a half later, Lord Lion-O made a similar announcement with his engagement to Cheetara. As the first Thundercat Lord in history to take a mate outside his clan—and one who had been amongst his caretakers in his youth at that—the young Lord's announcement made quite an impression and caused an even bigger stir. Still, aside from the gossip of staunch traditionalists, their engagement and subsequent marriage came to be known as just yet another act under Lord Lion-O to demonstrate that New Thundera was a place of new beginnings for all Thunderian people.
A brave new world indeed, how very touching. The musings of the undead mage watching the image of the sleeping Cat's Lair in the bubbling waters of his cauldron were as dark and cynical as his ancient soul. Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living was not nearly as gone as he had seemingly been forgotten, and soon he would no longer be the latter, either.
"Enjoy it while you can, Thundercats," he rasped with a malevolent red glow in his eyes that burned bright with hatred, hatred that had grown and festered for the last twelve years. After his defeat in the Book of Omens, Mumm-Ra had thrown his pride aside and pleaded to the Ancient Spirits of Evil to be spared whatever terrible fate awaited him in eternal judgment. After living so long as the ever-living source of evil, he could not bear to imagine what might await him beyond that existence, and he was willing to go to any length and endure any punishment to avoid it. Fortunately for Mumm-Ra, his masters proved merciful, if one could call it that, and at the last moment had spared him, albeit with conditions.
One was that he never defy them again, on pain of being delivered swiftly to that judgment he so feared by their own powers. The other was the equivalent of being told by his evil spirit masters to sit in a corner and think about what he had done, like a parent might do to an unruly toddler. For Mumm-Ra that punishment was served by being earthbound to his pyramid. To leave would mean instantaneously crumbling to dust. The Ancient Spirits of Evil did not tell him how long that "time out" would last, only that he would know when it suited them to release him from it.
That night, Mumm-Ra had felt the faint pulse of his evil powers within his decayed bones once more, and he knew that the time had come when his masters had finally chosen to release him. It was then that he learned of the third condition. It was the one he found perhaps the most galling, as it showed that his masters still did not trust him or have full faith in his competence. They demanded that he summon his slumbering and who-he-wished-he-could-have-left-forgotten once-partner Torlei from her undead sleep to join him. Mumm-Ra regarded their partnership—he refused to think of it as a marriage—with distaste and resignation at best. He had disliked the Lunatac in life, as he did the entire group she had turned up on Third Earth with, and did not find her much improved in the ancients' new incarnation of her. Mumm-Ra only grudgingly admitted that she had shown potential the one time they had teamed up, and while he had been surprised that she survived her seemingly fatal fall into the volcano, as fledgling ever-livings were far less durable than ancient ones like himself, he only took her back into the pyramid to rest out of obligation to their bond before the Ancient Spirits of Evil.
After that defeat his bride had been weak, not unlike his own state for the last twelve years, and Mumm-Ra had recommended that Torlei rest for a decade or three to rebuild her strength. He was pleased that she listened—a first, he recalled with a sneer—and gladly played the role of caretaker of her sarcophagus during that time in exchange for the freedom to work alone in the years that followed. Once she was committed to the cold sleep of the dead, he had given her little more than a passing thought. Now, however, times had changed, and with them the time for both of their rest and peace had changed with them.
Raising his withered and bandaged arms over the waters of his cauldron, he began to recite the spell that would awaken his bride and smiled with wicked confidence. His probation was up, and he had been a good little mummy. Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living was free once again.
"We've entered the airspace, Luna," TugMug's accented voice called out from the console on the ship that carried the six outlaws known as the Lunatacs of Plundarr toward their home moons. Their craft, stolen from a crew whose luck was worse than their own, had seen better days, but it was still good enough to get them around the galaxy and had thus far pulled them out of the scrapes they got themselves into on a regular basis.
Luna watched the image of the Third Moon of Plundarr, or as she knew it in her native tongue, Dasanalith, grow larger in front of her on the monitor. The sight of her home world brought strange feelings to the surface. It had been many years since she had last been there, since they all had been forced to flee or risk an ugly and painful end at the hands of the moons' royal criminal justice system.
But the years had left their mark on both them and the Moons of Plundarr—although perhaps the moons moreso than the Lunatacs themselves. They were still much the same souls they had been when they had made their hasty escape so long ago, aside from being older, a bit wiser, and possessing a healthy hatred for and distrust of black magic mummies, Thundercats, and Thundercat friends such as Mandora and Captain Bragg. Thank the gods we escaped from that pit of misery, Luna thought, grimacing as she remembered their incarceration on Way Out Back. She only hoped that wherever he was, Captain Bragg was suffering ten times more than he had made them endure as a part of his pathetic circus train.
The Moons, on the other hand, had changed far more. For starters, the government that forced their flight was long gone. Old Thundera's cataclysmic destruction had affected neighboring Plundarr and its moons as well. The aftermath of Thundera's explosion had created horrific natural disasters on both the planet Plundarr and its satellites. While what they suffered had not decimated the populations of those worlds as badly as Thundera's, enough chaos had ensued that the societies of each had been thrown into turmoil, upheaval, and uncertainty. The Lunatacs had heard the rumors about what had occurred back on the Moons in their absence, but had chosen not to go near them to see for themselves until now.
The Lunatacs themselves were a bit of a time anomaly given their unique circumstances. When Mumm-Ra encased them in lava on Third Earth, they had effectively been put in a sort of ageless stasis for what they figured amounted to about fifteen standard years. Added to the five they had spent on Third Earth cumulatively before and after their encasement on DarkSide, plus the twelve that encompassed their imprisonment on Way Out Back and years at large afterward, it came to a good thirty or so years that they had been away from their homeland.
Given that, it was an easy assumption that any rulers from their time were aging or infirm, if not dead, and any records that existed of their crimes had likely been destroyed in the disasters on the Moons. Luna had verified that the capitol city where the royalty lived had been struck with violent volcanic activity at the time of Thundera's destruction. That along with the fact that she had not heard anything recent of King Lunaro, her second cousin and much-loathed ruler of the Moons, or his wife in some time, led her to believe it was a safe gamble for them to pay the Moons of Plundarr a visit.
Now, as she watched the landscape come into view on their approach, Luna found herself once again imagining what had changed and how in her once familiar haunts. After all their years on the run, curiosity had gotten the better of them, and despite the Moons' proximity to New Thundera and their enemies the Thundercats, they decided to go back and see their homeland for themselves.
As they neared the ground, Luna recognized a familiar mountainscape in the distance. A lifetime ago it seemed, she had lived in a building that had a magnificent view of that same mountain—her family's estate. Luna had been born into a noble bloodline, an indirect branch of the royal household of the Third Moon. Her particular branch of the family was not a consideration for the throne, but her birthright was enough to command the respect of the commoners. That station had allowed her to rise to the questionable position she once held in the seamier side of Lunatac society, where she might as well have been a queen of her own making rather than the undeserved, at least in her opinion, title her second cousin had inherited. That, and Amok worked wonders in "convincing" anyone that might disagree with her take on things.
The sound of someone stepping up beside her broke Luna out of her thoughts, and she turned to see Alluro looking at the screen.
"It's been so long," he said quietly, sensing her inquisitive gaze upon him. "The last time we were here, my sister was still…" He looked away from the screen. Even after so much time, he had difficulty talking about Torlei, especially in front of Luna. It was rare that he could mention her without slipping into a sour mood.
TugMug bounded over to the control panel to join them. "Hey, I wonder if your girlfriend's still around," he said in a poorly masked attempt to change the subject. It was not so much that TugMug actually cared one way or the other, except that he found Alluro annoying when he was moody. The woman the graviton spoke of, a psi named Lurella, was someone Alluro had been involved with at the time they fled the Moons. The relationship had not been a deep or loving one, at least not from Alluro's perspective. His primary interest in her had been her family's station and bank account, and the fact that she was pretty had been a nice bonus. His ambition had been to have her fall in love with him so he could enjoy the benefits of the finer things in life she had been born with. In truth he had found her to be bubbly and airheaded, but she was easily manipulated and found him attractive, and he certainly had no qualms about using that to get what he wanted.
An unimpressed hiss from Chilla's direction interrupted the conversation before Alluro could say anything. "She must look older than Luna's grandmother if she is." The ice woman did not bother to hide her contempt. She had never particularly liked Lurella back then, and she doubted that anything could have happened that would change her opinion now. Her feelings at present were in part due to the fact that she was used to being the focus of Alluro's flirtatious attention—whether she admitted that she liked that role or not—and partly because even back then, when she certainly would not have cared what Alluro said or did, she viewed Lurella as a spoiled little rich girl that whined too much. She had no patience for that type, especially considering she worked for one.
Of all of the Lunatacs, Chilla looked forward to going home to the Moons the least. Her own memories of the past there overall were not fond ones. She was an only child and had never known her mother, an icewalker drifter that had shacked up with her father and then disappeared after deciding that motherhood and life with her abrasive, ill-tempered father was not for her. Her father had the typical rough outlook on life of an icewalker coupled with a short fuse that led him to bully and beat his daughter whenever she displeased him. Chilla left him and Lixuvekh, the ice moon, for a chance at something better in the capitol of the Third Moon as a teenager. She lived hand to mouth until her fighting prowess landed her a job in Luna's crew. Life on the seedy side of town did not faze Chilla, as it was her only real chance at making something of herself as a nobody and a runaway. Tedious and demanding as Luna was, life working for her was better than it had been with her father. Luna at least paid her well with ill-gotten spoils and free room and board.
As a result, Chilla did not feel any yearnings or nostalgia in returning to the Third Moon. She was merely along for the ride. "Readings indicate we'll land in five minutes," she reported after glancing at the console.
Across the bridge at another console, RedEye looked over toward Luna. "We just received a communication from a place called the MoonTower, which I'm assuming is that large structure by the mountain with the royal crescent moon insignia on the top," he said, pointing to a building visible in the distance on their viewscreen. "An officer identifying himself as reporting directly to the Governor General wants to know why we're landing and what our purpose is. What do we tell him?"
Luna glanced at the screen, and then back at RedEye. "Tell him we're coming home."
Panthro pushed his newest creation, a sleek and compact space vehicle, to top speed, rushing through the bright afternoon sunshine, climbing higher and higher into the sky. "All right, let's see what this baby can do!" He slid a lever as far upward as it would go. The ship roared out of New Thundera's airspace into the starry universe above. Since he was taking it on its first real flight, he did not plan to take it too far into space. He intended to race around the planet's orbit to get a sense of its maneuverability at different speeds, and then perhaps swing around some of neighboring Plundarr's moons before taking it home. He had been looking forward to the test drive all week, as he anticipated it to be a fast and exciting ride.
A grin spread across his face as he felt the speed pick up and he noted how effortlessly it made a turn plotted into its course. "Nice," he said aloud, even though he was alone. "Now this is what I call a joyriding ship!" Panthro noted that the craft did not burn quite as much Thundrillium as he initially thought, a nice bonus, and since he had the fuel for it he decided to see how it would react to a sudden dip into an atmosphere slightly different than New Thundera's. The ice moon of Plundarr was closest for that test, so he put in the coordinates above a remote area on the world to give it a try. Although the ice moon was an enemy world, only cities on Plundarr and its moons generally shot at foreign crafts deemed threatening on sight. Besides, Panthro had armed his newest creation with defensive capabilities just in case.
"Seems to be responding a little slower," he murmured while checking the latest readings on the gauges. The atmosphere of the ice moon, while still breathable, was still a little lighter than New Thundera's, so he concluded that it must be the effects of the temperature. He had built it to the specifications of the Thundercats' other ships for temperature, but since he had not tested it specifically for it yet, he supposed that now was as good a time as any. He steered the ship lower into the atmosphere, allowing him a view of the landscape below.
The desolate view of snow-covered mountains, the occasional patch of scrubby evergreens, and iced over lakes and oceans surrounded him. What a wasteland, the panther thought. Hard to believe anything can actually live here. Of course, things could live there, for the ice moon of Plundarr was home to a race of Lunatacs adapted to live in that harsh environment as well as many snow-dwelling beasts and marine life that survived under the ice crust in underground waters. At one time, there had even been a race of Thunderians that would have been able to live in such a climate, the snow leopards of Old Thundera.
They had been a reclusive clan native to Thundera's snowy mountaintops, born with thick white and black spotted coats that protected them from the weather of their homeland, sharp claws and strong limbs adapted for climbing rocks, and keen senses that allowed them to survive and hunt in harsh wilderness. Tolerant of ice and frost, the snow cats could easily traverse ice-slickened surfaces, and their extremities had a natural resistance to frostbite. Because of their harsh natural existence, many were also devoutly spiritual and had a sixth sense that allowed them to communicate with the astral world. Unfortunately, none of the snow leopard clan survived the destruction of Old Thundera. At the time of the Exodus, the snow leopard clan leaders held fast to an old grudge they had against the rest of Thundera's nobility, and they refused to leave their homes at their word. Even years later, no snow leopards had turned up amongst the returned Thunderian refugees, so it was assumed that their leaders' stubbornness led to their unfortunate extinction. Panthro supposed that even if there was a snow leopard around to ask, he or she would probably agree that Plundarr's ice moon was still too nippy for Thunderian tastes, even theirs.
The sound of a loud bang on the side of his ship jolted Panthro abruptly out of his thoughts. Looking over the gauges on the console, he saw with a feeling of alarm that the temperature had become so low outside that it was causing parts of the metal hull to contract and warp. He let out a Thunderian curse and berated himself for overlooking such a dangerous possibility in his excitement to test his new baby. "I'd better get off this frozen chunk of rock fast if I want to get back home in one piece!" he said, and pushed the steering lever forward all the way.
Unfortunately it was too late. More alarm lights flashed on the console and readings dipped to dangerous highs and lows that signaled his impending crash. "Damn it!" He sent an emergency distress call out over the communicator—that was still working properly at least—and hoped that his friends on New Thundera would hear it soon. Panthro then braced himself for the inevitable crash as the ship stopped responding entirely and began its plummet downward.
A thick blanket of newly fallen snow cushioned the impact enough so that it was not fatal, and the new, newly-destroyed ship glided a fair distance across an icy plain before coming to a halt amongst a glade of stout evergreens. The stunned Panthro attempted to get his bearings and find his emergency gear, for he knew he would not last long in the bitter cold of the ice moon without it, but he never got the chance. A few moments later a broken branch from one of the trees the ship had slid into came crashing down onto the hull, buckling its side, and knocking the panther unconscious against the console.
In a mining camp in the same region of the ice moon as Panthro's crash site, a middle-aged icewalker Lunatac named Frostor saw the bright object that was Panthro's falling ship streak across the sky. Frostor, who held the title of Governor General of the Moons of Plundarr and despite being a Lixuvekh native, actually resided back on the Third Moon with the rest of the ruling government officials, was on his home moon on official business. He and his colleagues had received promising data from the miners indicating that there could be a large untapped vein of fuel ready to be mined with just a few adjustments to their operation. He had been on his way back to the supervisor's tent with his companion, a thirty-something aged psi wrapped in every form of cold gear imaginable, when he saw the unusual flash.
"What in the name of the Moons was that?" Frostor asked, thinking that it did not look like a typical falling star or meteor.
"Beats me," his companion, named Psiarik, replied. Although they were unaware of the comparison, the psi bore more than a slight resemblance to Alluro. They shared the same build, had similar facial features, and even the same hair color and pattern baldness. The most notable difference aside from their age was that Psiarik still had more of his hair, both on his head and on his face in the form of a goatee that accented his brooding expression. He shivered and pulled his coat tighter around him in a futile attempt to feel warmer. "Probably just some cosmic litter from Plundarr. The Mutants are always throwing their junk in the Moons' airspace."
"Just because it's always snowing here to cover it up doesn't mean that it should be a junkyard," Frostor grumbled with a shake of his head. "If we have a thaw and I find too much Plundarrian debris here, I'll personally charter the barge to dump it right over their capitol."
Psiarik let out a dubious snort and dug his chilled fingers deeper into his sleeves. "Thaw. Hah. That's going to happen."
"Not used to our 'spring weather' are you?" Frostor replied with an amused smile. "You know, this is kind of warm for this season. Winter's still two months off yet. You should wait for a real cold spell to have something to complain about."
"Thanks, I'll pass," Psiarik retorted. "Give me the comforts of home anytime."
"'Home'? You've never even been on Mirindet for more than a week," Frostor countered, naming the small Fourth Moon that was home to the psi race. Like him, Psiarik lived on the Third Moon and he had even been born there.
Frowning, the psi answered, "I meant the MoonTower." He sighed, visualizing the posh, and more importantly, warm royal quarters he had lived in ever since they had been built for the now ruling queen and her younger brother. He, Frostor, them, and several others that now ran the Moons in their post-disasters world were amongst the survivors of the capitol city. Psiarik himself had been but a teenager at the time and had been raised from then, as the royal children Selene and Silvian and a number of others, viewing the crusty ice general Frostor as a surrogate father of sorts. A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of the psi's mouth as he thought of home and its comforts, including his wife. Selene, now crowned Queen, and he were married, which technically made him the king by marriage, an act which surely would have made her parents spin circles in their tombs as lunar royalty was supposed to marry only other lunar royalty or nobility. But adverse circumstances made for strange bedfellows, and much like it was on New Thundera, the survivors on the Plundarrian Moons had their own views of what rules were important and which ones were not in a world struggling to survive.
"Well, you're going to have to get used to traveling to the other moons more often than you're used to. Silvian and Selene can't do it all themselves and being married to the queen, you should play the part of acting like a king." Frostor slipped into the lecturing tone he often used on his "children" like Psiarik.
"If I'm a king, why do I have to put up with your dumb ideas?" Psiarik rubbed frost crystals out of his goatee. "And for the record, I never complained about trips to Tukabir," he argued, naming the gravitons' native moon by its local moniker.
Frostor chortled. "Who does? If there's one thing gravitons do better than anyone else, it's host a feast fit for royalty. Now quit griping. You know as well as I do that we need all the fuel reserves we can get, and if this pans out, it'll solve a lot of problems."
"Yeah, I know," Psiarik agreed. "Though if Vultureman could design something that didn't burn a bucket of Thundrillium each time it ran, maybe we wouldn't need to keep such a stock on hand."
That time it was Frostor's turn to chortle. "To paraphrase you, 'Vultureman. Design and run something cheaply and without unforeseen collateral damage. Hah. That's going to happen.'" The presence of Vultureman in the royal employ of the Lunatac government was another odd turn of fate that the past twelve years had seen. The avian Mutant had been separated from his peers after his escape from Way Out Back on the stolen bookmobile ship, but Mandora had not allowed him to go free after the Zaxx debacle. Rather than return him to Bragg, however, she had remanded him directly into CONTROL custody, and the Mutant had served his sentence on the grey penal planet. Unlike his former Mutant associates, Vultureman saw the wisdom in working with the system to behave well enough to earn privileges and a low security tech assignment during his incarceration, which he later used to escape. From there had been able to barter his technological skills to fix a mercenary ship to gain passage to the system that held Plundarr, its moons, and New Thundera. That landed him on the Third Moon of Plundarr in a spaceport, and since Vultureman was used to Lunatacs to an extent from his dealings with Luna and her crew on Third Earth, there he was able to carve a niche for himself amongst the disaster survivors in the capitol area. Eventually word of his presence reached Frostor, who had been a historian before the disasters and knew the Mutant's reputation, and the icewalker offered to hire him. Frostor had no particular love for Mutants, but he also saw the value in having someone that could design weaponry and defense systems of the caliber Vultureman had in the past on their team.
A Lunatac mine worker approached Frostor and Psiarik, and addressed the icewalker. "Governor General, we've found something I think you ought to take a look at."
"Not problems with the ore or equipment I hope?"
"No, that's all fine," he assured him. "We've found something else, something that looks important. Let me show you."
"All right, let's go." Frostor motioned for Psiarik to follow, and they made their way into a different tent nearby. Inside were the supervisor and two more workers, gathered around a table that had an ornately carved sword upon it. The weapon was beautifully crafted and clearly antique. Its hilt was made of gleaming silvery metal with a bulb at the very bottom in which a crescent-shaped moonstone jewel was embedded. The blade itself was forged from a translucent material that seemed almost luminous in the tent's artificial lighting, framed at the base by an artfully designed metal crescent moon that matched the shape of the moonstone on the handle.
Frostor stopped short, eyes wide, when he saw the weapon. "By the gods…"
"Nice sword," Psiarik remarked, giving it only a cursory glance as he made his way to the hot beverage dispenser in the corner.
When he recovered from his initial shock, Frostor immediately went to the table and picked the sword up, running his fingers over the blade in an almost reverent manner. "It couldn't be… but I think it is," he murmured as he examined it.
"What is it, Sir Frostor?" one of the workers asked.
Ignoring the question, Frostor faced the supervisor. "Where did you find this?"
"They found it in the rubble near the floor in one of the new tunnels," he answered. "They didn't know what it was at first, it was in a block of this odd, freezing blue ice."
Psiarik looked up from his coffee with a raised brow. "Is it that odd for ice to be frozen?"
"It is when it's colder to the touch than regular ice, highness," the gruff icewalker answered the sarcastic psi, adjusting his mining hat as he did so. "Strange stuff, this blue ice. Must be some underground chemical reaction, maybe to the metal or the gems in that thing. Anyway, we saw something was embedded in it so we broke it out and that's what we found. We thought it might be a relic, or at least something valuable. Don't know how it might've gotten there, since this area's been unsettled for a long time, but you never know when you might stumble on an old primitive burial ground."
Frostor turned the blade over in his hands, and then eyed the moonstone gem more closely. "If this is what I think it is, it's not part of a tomb. At least not for anyone but the dead Thundercat that tried to steal it." He held it up to the light and noted how the beams diffused through the translucent blade. "This was thought lost forever…"
"Dead Thundercat? What is it?" Psiarik asked, joining Frostor's side. "It just looks like some ancient warrior sword to me."
"Technically it is, if you want to trivialize it that way," Frostor responded with a mildly snappish tone before he went on to give an explanation. "If I'm right—and I think it's very possible that I am—this is the MoonSaber."
Surprised looks filled the faces of the mine workers, and one even gasped, while Psiarik simply looked on blankly. "The MoonSaber—the legendary sword of Luran the Conqueror, founder of the Unified Kingdom of the Moons?"
A vague look of recognition crossed Psiarik's features. "Luran the Conqueror, yeah, I remember reading about him in school way back." Back when the Moons still had real schools, before Thundera blew them and the rest of our civilization back to just better than Mutant levels.
"And you don't recall the MoonSaber as part of that?"
Psiarik shrugged. "Not specifically. History's your favorite pastime, not mine."
"Well then, the short version is that the MoonSaber is the sword forged for our people, according to legend given to Luran himself by one of the gods in mortal form to use to unite the moons and end the civil wars among the Lunatac people in ancient times. It was supposed to be used to unite and protect our people, and is one of the three known swords of its level of power in the system—the other two being Plundarr's Sword of Plundarr and Thundera's Sword of Omens. Countless wars were fought for and with these swords."
"Then why was it in a mine shaft, Sir?" one of the workers, a man a few years younger than Psiarik, asked.
The mine supervisor turned toward his subordinate. "If I remember the accounts right, some Thundercat on a stealth mission tried to steal it from the Third Moon claiming that we were going to use it to destroy Thundera. They probably sent one to Plundarr too, damn nosy felines. One of King Mallar's—Queen Selene and Prince Silvian's grandfather—advisors, one of our finest, an ice-mooner named Chillandra, chased the bitch down and cornered her right here on our moon. She took her out and took the sword and hid it on Mallar's order so that it stayed out of sight until needed. Chillandra herself then went into hiding so that nobody could interrogate her. No one knows exactly what became of her, as she assumed a new name and pretty much just disappeared. Some rumors said she even went so far as to marry and have a family to hide herself. Supposedly King Mallar knew what happened to her after that, but he took the secret to his grave and never brought the MoonSaber out of hiding." He looked to Frostor. "Did I miss anything?"
"That about covers it," Frostor confirmed with a nod. "King Mallar's aim was to keep the MoonSaber out of enemy hands unless it was absolutely needed. We'd made a lot of technological advancements in that era and he thought it was best to rely on that to keep our enemies at bay and the Moons safe. His reasoning was that if the prophecies of old were true, as long as the MoonSaber existed safely in our hands, the Moons would be protected from destruction. Part of the legend surrounding the MoonSaber and the other swords from Plundarr and Thundera involves an invocation that could be used with all three of them to wreak inconceivable devastation on all the worlds. He was superstitious enough to buy into that, especially after the Thundercats' attempt to steal it, so he hid it to keep the Moons safe."
Psiarik frowned. "Well his plan sucked. The Moons are a wasteland compared to what they were thanks to Thundera's explosion and the disasters." Though the disasters had affected all of the survivors, Psiarik was particularly bitter about them. Harboring years of survival guilt for living due to a quirk of fate when his mother, sister, and stepfather had not even though if it had happened only minutes sooner he would have been with them, had left deep marks on his psyche.
"You don't understand the importance of this, Psiarik," Frostor said, meeting the younger Lunatac's eyes with urgency. "We need to get this back to the MoonTower at once. The MoonSaber is too important to have laying around where anyone can walk in and take it."
"We can keep security on it, Governor General," the supervisor offered.
"Thank you, but that's not enough. If word got out… well let's just say that while I'm not as paranoid as the late King Mallar, I know enough of the history and legend to know that it would be ill-advised to leave this out of royal custody for any length of time."
Picking up on the anxious note in Frostor's tone, Psiarik gave a slight nod of assent, but could not resist making a smart remark nonetheless. "Has Silvian ever even fought with a sword before?"
"He did some fencing and sparring."
"Oh, that makes me feel real secure," he said with a snort, and refilled his mug.
Not nearly as amused by Psiarik's sarcasm as the psi himself was, Frostor frowned again. "The prince of the Moons is the ideal candidate for holding the MoonSaber. Though if you lack faith in him, Queen Selene could also wield it."
At that Psiarik was unable to hold back a genuine laugh. "I don't think Selene's ever even held a sword."
"Her highness has guardsmen to do that sort of thing for her," the mine supervisor interjected with a wry smile.
"Indeed," Frostor agreed. "And before you dismiss the significance of documented history as well as legend, realize that if the Thunderians didn't also believe in the power these swords have, they wouldn't have sent one of their Thundercats to the Moons to steal it. The prophecy is well known and translated into many languages; I'd be surprised if their Book of Omens didn't have a mention of it somewhere."
"Prophecy?" Psiarik asked.
"What I told you about earlier, the prophecy King Mallar feared—that if the MoonSaber was used along with the Sword of Omens and the Sword of Plundarr and a certain incantation was used, vast destruction would be visited upon all the worlds and the victor would claim what remained. Conversely, if the three fought united and a certain incantation was recited, the worlds could be united forever in peace. Well, I don't need to tell you about the chances of that, then or now, so it's prudent to be concerned about the destructive powers in the prophecy." Frostor paused for a thoughtful moment. "Interesting if you think about it, considering after the MoonSaber was hidden, the wars between all three factions became more and more vicious. Ratilla the Mutant used the Sword of Plundarr against acting Lord Jaga of Thundera with the Sword of Omens there on Thundera. Jaga was the one who took the Sword of Plundarr from Ratilla and threw it into a volcano, and look what its revenge was—obliteration of the old Thundera."
Psiarik set his drink down and folded his arms. "And Thundera's explosion messed up both Plundarr and our Moons. We weren't even involved and we got the shaft. Nice."
"I wonder if the devastation wasn't quite so complete because the MoonSaber wasn't present and the ancient incantations weren't used," Frostor theorized.
"It was complete enough," Psiarik said, and one of the mine workers nodded in agreement with him. "And while this makes for a nice story, and I'm sure it's a real artifact, I still find it hard to imagine that something like this can destroy a planet." He cast his gaze toward the sword in Frostor's hands.
"You could've found it in any number of history books if we still had all our libraries," Frostor informed him matter-of-factly. "And if there's even a chance that the legends pertaining to the MoonSaber are true, don't you think we should get this into Silvian and Selene's possession as soon as possible?" He did not wait for Psiarik to answer and extended the sword handle-first to him. "And being that you're the queen's husband, it's most appropriate for you to carry it."
Giving a shrug of resignation, Psiarik accepted the MoonSaber and nodded to the ice general. "Whatever you say, Frostor." As held it in his hands, Psiarik did have to admit that he could sense a faint pulse of power within the sword, and he could swear that the blade glowed the slightest bit. A hint of wonder filled his usually cynical eyes. "Amazing."
"I told you," Frostor said triumphantly. "Now let's get home."
Back on New Thundera, it was Cheetara that received Panthro's distress signal while she was on watch duty. Immediately she sounded an alarm, the Thundercats available in the Lair were in the control room to find out what happened in a flash.
"Cheetara, what is it?" asked Tygra. The tiger's station on Third Earth at the time Mumm-Ra had been defeated had not been permanent. After an adjustment period, the Thundercats decided to rotate the duties of keeping watch on Third Earth in six-week shifts spaced three weeks apart per station. A Thundercat presence was maintained in Third Earth's Cat's Lair and the Tower of Omens at all times, but a different Thundercat was arriving or leaving every few weeks. Currently it was WilyKat and Lynx-O who were stationed at the Third Earth bases.
"Panthro's ship crashed," the cheetah informed them gravely. "From what information I was able to get from his location and the brief distress signal that came through, he took that new craft he's been working on out for a test run by the ice moon of Plundarr. He crashed there."
"Guess it failed that test," WilyKit joked in an attempt to lighten the mood. The once-Thunderkitten was now a grown woman, although she still had her fiery red and black mane styled to a dramatic point and the same impish smile and gleam in her eyes that she had as a child. That smile was not on her face now, however, given her concern for Panthro, and she fingered the explosive pellets—which now packed a serious punch as well as a few tricks—in the pouch on her belt.
"We have to get a rescue party together right away," Cheetara asserted. "I can't reach him and I don't know if it's because the communications are busted or because he's hurt and can't answer. I also have no idea what sort of cold gear he had in that thing—I hope to Jaga he has something."
Lion-O drew the Sword of Omens from his claw shield. "Panthro's usually pretty good about preparing for contingencies, but I agree that we need a rescue party to go right away. Do you think we should all go?" he asked, looking over the faces of the Thundercats present—Tygra, Bengali, WilyKit, and Cheetara.
"The more of us there are to search, the better. Pumyra and Snarfer were calibrating some equipment and told me to get them if they were needed, but I think they can handle watch duty. Or maybe they can send Snarf up here to keep an eye on things," Bengali suggested. "I'd like to go. The cold doesn't faze me, and my hammer works pretty well on ice."
"Cheetara, perhaps you and Tygra should stay and keep on top of the communications while the rest of us go. Snarf must have his hands full with the cubs and if Pumyra and Snarfer are already in the middle of something it's probably best to leave them to it for now," Lion-O said.
The cheetah nodded. "All right. Be careful, all of you, and keep me posted."
"You betcha. I'll go get the cat suits," WilyKit volunteered.
"I'll go and let Pumyra and Snarfer know what's going on," Tygra said.
"And I'll go fire up the Feliner," Bengali finished. The three Thundercats wasted no time in heading out to see to their tasks, leaving Lion-O and Cheetara alone briefly. She approached him and set her hand on his claw shield.
"Keep the Sword of Omens close, Lion-O," she said in soft and low tone filled with both concern for her lord and leader and affection for her mate. "I don't want to alarm the others, but my sixth sense has me on edge. I answered Panthro's distress signal a second before it even came in. But it's not just Panthro. I feel like—like something else is going on. Something big is brewing. But I can't sense what."
"Panthro is all right," Lion-O reassured her. "I just know I'd know, and the sword would know, if he wasn't."
Cheetara nodded uncertainly. She felt the same sense that Panthro would be fine, but could not shake her feeling of unease regardless, and seeing Lion-O—her mate and the father of their young cub Cheetaro, nicknamed Chet, who had been born just shy of two years prior—head off into the unknown did not settle her concerns in the least. "Be careful."
Lion-O leaned over and kissed her forehead, touched by the concern. "Don't worry. You know I will. I promise." He then offered her a smile of reassurance and hurried out to join Bengali and WilyKit on the Feliner.
When Panthro regained consciousness he found himself inside an icy cavern. A small bonfire burned nearby, and he noticed that his surroundings were not as intensely cold as he knew it must be outside. Wondering who had rescued him, especially considering he was a Thundercat in Lunatac territory, he looked around and realized that he was not inside a cavern at all, but in some type of igloo-like structure. That made him even more curious, and he drew himself closer to the fire and pulled the blanket his benefactor had given him more tightly around him. "How in blazes did I get here?" he wondered aloud. "I know I crashed, but someone must've brought me here. Who?"
A soft feminine voice to his left answered him. "I saved you, panther Thundercat."
Surprised, as he would have sworn he was alone, Panthro turned his head in the direction of the voice and saw a lovely Thunderian woman standing just in front of an archway that presumably led out of the chamber. His feline savior was unusual and striking in appearance, with snow-white fur decorated with coal black spots. Her mane was colored the opposite, silken black fur dotted with white spots. Her eyes were a cat's lambent green, and around her shoulders she wore a long black cloak fastened with a Thundercat insignia.
"Who are you?" the astonished Panthro asked. "You're a Thundercat?"
She nodded. "I was, once upon a time, but I've lived here alone for a long time now. My name is Snoelle. I saw your ship crash and found you when I checked for survivors." With a walk so graceful it almost seemed like she did not touch the ice-packed floor, she approached Panthro and crouched beside him. "How do you feel, my lost panther?" Her voice was so soft it was almost like a gentle whisper, and her caress so delicate that when she touched his cheek, he could not even really feel her touch, only a pleasing sensation of warmth.
I must have been out in the cold for a long time to be by a fire and still be this numb, he realized grimly. I'm lucky to still be alive. Panthro cleared his throat faced his benefactor, finding himself almost rapt as he looked into her eyes. "I—I feel all right I guess. Thanks for saving me," he stammered, still shaken by his circumstances and a rising desire to know more about the woman and feel her warmth again.
Snoelle smiled back at him. "So who are you, panther Thundercat? What brings you to this cold place?"
"My name is Panthro, and my ship brought me here, though it was just supposed to be a visit and not a stay," he said, somewhat bemused as he thought about his newest creation and its wrecked state. "I'm one of the Thundercats serving under Lord Lion-O. I thought we were the only Thundercats left. Have you been stuck here? Do you know about New Thundera?"
Snoelle seemed less interested in the mention of New Thundera or Panthro's crash than she did at the mention of his lord's name. "Lion-O," she repeated, lapsing into thoughtful pause before saying, "I'm not familiar with that name. The Lord of my time as a Thundercat was Katan."
Panthro stared back her in complete shock. "Katan? But he was Claudus' father!"
"Indeed, he had a boy by that name," Snoelle said with a nod.
"Boy?" Panthro said, his mind reeling to reconcile the inconsistencies with what his savior said with what he knew. "Claudus isn't a boy. He's—he's gone. His time as Lord of the Thundercats is past. Lion-O is Claudus' son." He stared at her, seeing a face far too young to belong to someone that claimed to be from the era she spoke of as the present. "How could you have possibly served under Katan? You don't look any older than Cheetara, much less Jaga or Claudus."
"My age is unimportant," Snoelle said, brushing aside his questions as deftly as she brushed warmth onto his skin when her fingers smoothed over his shoulder, which he noticed were now aching from the crash the more he warmed up by the fireside. Snoelle drew herself to a standing position once more and smiled down at him. "Just concern yourself with rest and healing. You need it. Don't worry, your friends are on their way looking for you. I'll make sure they find you. Rest now, Panthro. Conserve your strength." She placed her hand upon the top of his head and stroked it in a manner meant to show comfort, and once again Panthro felt that pleasing sensation of warmth without touch.
"Sleep now," she whispered as they parted, and Panthro felt his eyelids droop. Stretching back out on the floor as the urge to rest grew, it was not long before he settled fully into the welcoming embrace of sleep. He dreamed of his savior the entire time.
Continued