Darkness wound across Third Earth, a hostile, living darkness that choked the flora so that fauna guttered toward extinction. A black cowl wrapped across the sun, cast by some ancient evil, something older and more terrible than Mumm-Ra. There was no hope of lifting it, it was an indelible blackness and energy was slowly seeping out into the universe as unusable entropy. Berbil fruits dropped to the ground, black and rotten, inedible and the landscape was dotted with the fallen bodies of Thunderians and Berbils and Mutants alike. They collapsed, exhausted and depleted of energy, where they decompose into the ground. Fungus and bacteria consume them, absorbing the energy encapsulated within their cells, recycling the small amount of remaining energy within the dead. Giants fell first, followed quickly by Brute-Men and Trolls and Trollogs, anything large that required more sustenance. The giants' bodies slumped over, forming new skeletal hills across the landscape. Soon, only the smallest and youngest of creatures remained. They were weak and lethargic, but they had been given the remaining food by the dying Thunderians through some mistaken sense of honor, although quickly slicing them through from behind before they had any sense of their agonizing fate would have been the merciful action.
Snarf and the Thunderkittens crawled across the brown, ruined horrorscape of a dying world. Snarf was barely dragging himself forward, his ribs jutting out from his exposed, furless skin scraped across the rocky ground. WilyKit and WilyKat were walking easily, still as full of energy as always. With their less advanced sense of honor and their youthful capacity for mindless survival, the Thunderkittens had accepted taboos quicker, and their bellies were fat with the flesh of Panthro, the last of the elder Thunderians. They were gleefully oblivious to the horror around them, tumbling and playing as happy as ever. They spewed wasted energy out into the uncaring universe, their exertion shortening the lifespan of the universe. It was not that they were incapable of understanding the dying world around them, it was that they were unwilling to accept the dying world around them. Their wild, ebullient behavior was a sin against the purity of universal energy, but it was the coping mechanism of two dying kittens who did not choose to believe in death. Their lives had been spotted with trials and difficulties, but some force of reason and benevolence had always guided them and their friends out of grim consequence such that no one and no thing ever had to die. They conceptually could understand death, as all conscious creatures of a particular age can, but had never been given the framework by which to process it. And so, the little Thunderians danced and rolled around their depleted ghost of a friend.
"Snarf, children, please leave me behind. Leave me by a river and go on. Look for an oasis in the darkness."
"No fuuuuuun!" Shouted WilyKit, batting at Snarf's drooping ears.
"Yeah, Snarf, play with us! Play with us!" Said WilyKat.
The ThunderKittens rolled around Snarf. He hissed with pain as they leapt on him, kneading at his bony back. They chanted "Play With Us! Play With Us! Play With Us!" While Snarf cried piteously. "Please let me die, ThunderKittens."
"Noooooo!" They shouted in unison, their voices playful and cheery. The kittens tackled one another , batting at the others whiskers.
WilyKit burped and giggled, "I miss Panthro."
Snarf moaned. "Snaaaaaaarf"
They moved on, picking their way across the darkened land, shadowy as if eternally held in gloaming twilight, until they reached a river. The kittens splashed and laughed in the biting cold water, splashing one another and drinking from the fresh water. Snarf managed to climb to the edge of the water. He looked deep into the gentle current, into the black water. Without another thought, only with hope of ending his misery, he rolled his ragged body into the river and let the current roll him down and batter his body against water-smoothed stones. Snarf inhaled deeply, drowning almost instantly. His last thought was one of euphoria, his brain alive and joyful in the one pure death. The little heat remaining in Snarf's body seeped into the essentially infinite heat absorption well of the river.
"No fuuuuuun!" Yelled WilyKat.
"Haha, yeah, no fun. Snarf is no fun." Said WilyKit, tackling her brother. "Now we can't eat him."
"He needs to learn a lesson about sharing."
"Too late now, he's already so far down the river. Let's go play in a cave!"
"Yeah! A cave! A cave!"
The desire to play in a cave had reached the both of the kittens had the same time. They had been dreaming of caves for many nights, but only then realized the powerful desire they both had to crawl deep within a cave.
"I know just the cave." Said WilyKat.
"I know the cave, too." Said WilyKit. "We know the same cave."
The Thunderkittens gamboled across the crackling, brown grass, leaping over corpses and batting small, dead animals out of the way. They laughed and joked on their way to the cave from their dreams, with its tiny opening leading down into endless blackness.
"WilyKit?"
"Yeah WilyKat?"
"When do you think Snarf is coming back?"
WilyKit thought for a moment as they bounded along, "I suppose whenever Lion-O and Tygra come back. Probably tomorrow, when its light."
"It hasn't been light for a long time."
"I think it will be light when we leave the cave."
"Yes. I think you're right."
When they reached the cave mouth, Wilykit and Wilykat were starting to feel tired and their fat little bellies were starting to rumble. Wilykat realized that some part of him had cajoled Snarf into following him to the cave because he had always planned to eat him. Some sense of reality, the direness of their world, tickled at the back of Wilykat's mind. He forced himself to meditate on the cave, the cave was everything now and he didn't want his doubt to pain Wilykit.
"Alright. Let's go in." Said Wilykat.
The Thunderkittens squeezed through the cave entrance, a thin stone lip that curved inwards into the cave.
"Wilykit?"
"Yeah, Wilykat?"
"We're going to die in here."
"Yes."
"We killed Panthro."
"Yes."
"He screamed when we started eating him. We didn't even wait for him to die."
"Yes."
"He was so weak."
"Yes."
"We deserve to die. We should have died many days ago."
"Yes."
The two little Thunderkittens picked their way down into the cave, slowly across slick stone. They dug their claws in deep to keep themselves from skidding down into an abyss.
"Where are we going Wilykat?"
"To the lake."
"Yes. To the lake.
They wound down further into the cave, growing weaker and sicker as they drew closer to the great underground lake.
"Wilykat, I understand now."
"What's that, Wilykit?"
"This is our fault. Do you remember when we accidentally released Mongor in those old ruins?"
"Yes. Lion-O thought he defeated him."
"Yes. He did not, though. Once Mongor was released he became part of everything, he became our fears, he became everything terrible and there are far more fears and terrible things on this Earth than there is bravery. He is the ground and the sky, and it is his cowl sheathing the sun."
"Even the hidden fears of Mumm-Ra empowered Mongor."
"Snarf stood up for us. He told Lion-O not to be mad. He said we are just little kittens and should not judged harshly."
"I miss Snarf."
"I miss Snarf, too."
"I'm hungry, Wilykit."
"Soon, Wilykat. Soon. The lake calls."
"Wilykit?"
"Yeah, Wilykat?"
"He's in my mind. Mongor is in my mind."
"Think about fun, Wilykat. Think about playing."
Mongor's incomprehensible voice, powerful beyond all things and speaking in an a language beyond the universe mocked Wilykat. Compelling him, screaming at him. Chanting and hissing and spitting.
"I'm sorry Wilykit."
Wilykat fell upon Wilykit, feeling her salty blood flood his mouth. A passionate and intimate act, he ripped his sister's flesh away and filled his fat little belly with Wilykit. She never made a sound. She allowed him to consume her wholly, he had her implicit consent. His hair matted with her blood.
"I'm alone." Said Wilykat.
He reached the end of the path; rocks skidded ahead of him and fell into the abyss before him. After a long time there was a tiny splash.
"The lake."
Wilykat threw himself down into the lake without any thought. His mind was empty. He struck the freezing water and his muscles seized up, contracting with the sudden impact cold. His bones cracked, but he did not die. Wilykat achieved the pure death. He inhaled the water deeply and his body exploded with pleasure and pure joy as the water rushed into his lungs, filling him with purity. The one true death.
:) John Smith