To his shame, Tygra started begging as soon as Mumm-Ra opened the vast metal door to his cell and stepped inside. Tygra's voice was low and steady, without any hint of the humiliating quaver he'd been dreading. But he was still begging, and they both knew it. "Please. Not again, Mumm-Ra. There's no need. You've won. Don't… please. Don't make me relive it again."
He hadn't been expecting sympathy or mercy in those flat red shark-eyes, on that stark dead grey face. He couldn't even force himself to look up to meet Mumm-Ra's gaze, given what he was asking. But he had hoped that somehow, his submission would drive Mumm-Ra to gloat about breaking his victim, and that the gloating would take precedence over putting him through the same ritual they'd gone through together every day since the Thundercats' defeat. It was a thin hope, and Tygra knew it. But he also knew his pride was buckling under what Mumm-Ra was making him endure. It was humiliating, asking for clemency from such a loathed and loathsome foe. But after what Tygra had been through over the past few weeks, he couldn't stop himself.
And as he'd expected, as he'd dreaded, Mumm-Ra just laughed. It was that deep-bellied, rise-and-fall villainous cackle that went across Tygra's singed nerves like claws on metal sheeting. The mummy stepped into the cell and pushed the door shut behind him with a slow, grinding squeak, followed by a mighty clang. It was a door fit more for a treasure vault than a dungeon, and even in his monstrous Everliving form, Mumm-Ra had to lean his full weight into it to budge it. Every time Tygra watched his jailer perform the show of strength involved in pushing that door shut , he winced inwardly. The chances of leaving the cell through that door by any kind of force were minimal. Maybe Panthro could have managed it, but Panthro was… he was… Tygra's mind danced skittishly away from the thought. In all likelihood, Mumm-Ra was about to force the knowledge on him yet again. No point in beating him to the punch.
"Poor kitty," Mumm-Ra said, stepping up to where Tygra stood, barely clothed in his blood-streaked rags, shackled in the middle of the large stone room. His ankles were fixed to the ground by heavy cuffs welded into the floor at three points. His wrists were cuffed together, secured to the ceiling with a thick chain. There was only a foot or so of slack in the dangling chain, so that his hands perpetually hovered just below his face. Tygra didn't have enough give in his bonds to shuffle away from his captor's approach. "Poor Thundercat, all by himself in a cage. Don't you miss your friends, Tygra? Don't you want to see them again, one more time?" He leaned close, his desiccated face inches from Tygra's. "Don't you want to remember how you failed them, Tygrrrra?"
Tygra had always hated the obscene sound of his name in Mumm-Ra's mouth, the way the ancient monster drew out the R in a parody of a lover's affectionate purr. It was difficult not to flinch from this hideous thing, this living corpse that knew so many ways, large and small, to make him feel small and vulnerable. But he didn't know how else to respond to Mumm-Ra's mockery. Defiance would be savagely punished, but any submission would be pursued doggedly, gleefully, in search of more. Tygra had a brief, miserable glimpse of his future, on his knees in front of this hideous beast, pleading shamelessly and futilely for an end to torment. The fact that the short slack in the chain on his arms wouldn't permit kneeling seemed, for the moment, almost like a kindness. It was warm and dry in the stone cell, no great surprise since it was almost certainly buried deep within Mumm-Ra's desert pyramid somewhere, but Tygra shivered anyway.
Mumm-Ra paced slowly around him, deliberately unnerving Tygra by moving out his field of vision, then reappearing on the other side of him. "I would think you would appreciate these little… visitations to the past," he said, circling. Standing behind Tygra, he extended one clawed finger and ran it suggestively down Tygra's bared back, across the dozens of barely healed, criss-crossing scars. Tygra fought the urge to jerk away, which would delight Mumm-Ra to no end—after all, where was there for him to go? There was a smirk in Mumm-Ra's voice, though his lipless, toothy mouth couldn't quite form the expression. "You've always been so analytical, Tygra. Don't you want to analyze your mistakes? Don't you want to know exactly where you went wrong? I would think some appreciation would be in order."
Tygra tried to brace himself. There was no question, it was coming again. Maybe this time he could resist, and push Mumm-Ra out of his mind. He tried to gather the shreds of his will, his focus. You know illusion. You know it's just an illusion. This is your strength. This is your talent. With Lion-O's ascension trials in the past—again, his mind recoiled from the errant image of Lion-O—there was no need to conserve his mental energy anymore. But he couldn't help but wonder if he was helping Mumm-Ra by exhausting himself, fighting Mumm-Ra's illusions.
The mummy stepped close, grotesquely close, and buried both of his hands in Tygra's thick mane, wrapping his fingers tightly around the Thundercat's skull. Tygra instinctively grabbed Mumm-Ra's wrists and tried to push his hands away, but he had no leverage, and the little wrestling match didn't take long. Mumm-Ra pressed his forehead to Tygra's. His breath was dusty dry rot. Tygra was uncomfortably aware of the mummy's skin, the intertwined snakes on his chest pressed close to Tygra's own naked fur. The dried, wrinkled hands were corpse-cool and unnatural against his face, in his hands. The glaring, glowing, lidless eyes were not even an inch from his own. And then the cell swam away, and Mumm-Ra pushed Tygra, fighting and furious and grieving, into the recent past. It's not happening again, it's not real, it's just a memory, Tygra repeated to himself, fighting back, struggling, and then he tumbled backward into darkness and was lost in the past.
He was sitting next to Panthro in the Thundertank, performing vector and loadout calculations for the tank's weapons as quickly as he could type. They'd approached Mumm-Ra's pyramid dozens of times now, to rescue captives or wrest some new dangerous item of power from him, or to foil some other cracked new scheme for power. But the landscape always changed, and the question of how they would get in was newly open each time. Mumm-Ra had been obvious in baiting this particular trap, and when he was eager for them to join him in his seat of power, he often left the approaches clear, with an obvious pathway into the Black Pyramid itself. If he wasn't in that sort of mood, eager for a face-to-face confrontation, they might face any number of conjured creatures or artificial barriers, from jagged, tank-skewering rocks that rose up out of nowhere to gigantic thornbushes out of a fairy tale. And getting into the Pyramid itself might involve the laser cannon, or using the grappling hooks to slide up the side to a more accessible point. The Thundertank's thundrillium reserves were topped out, though, and Panthro had recently given her a full tune-up. She was in good fighting trim. They knew they were driving into a trap, but they also knew it was necessary, and they were equipped and prepared.
"Hurry, Panthro," Lion-O said for what seemed like the tenth time. "There's no telling what he's doing to Snarf in there. Oh, I can't believe we let him go out alone. He can't protect himself the way we can!"
"You can't keep Snarf cooped up in the Lair all the time, Lion-O," Cheetara said reasonably. "You know he likes to go down to the Berbil village for candyfruit, or check up on what the Wolos are building. We all go out on our own, and we all get into trouble sometimes."
"And Mumm-Ra will always target whoever he sees as vulnerable," WilyKat said, resentfully. "He's a bully that way." WilyKit nodded, and they shared a look. They'd both been bait in traps themselves, and knew how it felt to be considered a Thundercat weak link.
"We're doing point-seven-five-niner over safe speed for the tank's engines," Panthro told Lion-O. "We're already 'hurrying.' We'll be there in a few minutes, if he hasn't blocked the way on us. Tygra?"
"Long-range scans showing nothing unusual," Tygra said, studying the sensors. "It looks like this is one of Mumm-Ra's open-door invitations." Inside, he was screaming to his past self, Use caution! He knows you're here! Try stealth, not barging in the front door! But his past self couldn't hear him, and was only focused on the readouts. He was already making the mistakes that would doom his friends. Why had he not gone in alone and invisible, to trip the trap himself? Could he have avoided what was coming?
The Thundertank pulled up in front of the Pyramid without incident. Pale, crackling electricity ran erratically across the top of the Pyramid, jumping between the high obelisks at its corners, a sure sign that Mumm-Ra was awake, alert, and exerting power to do who knows what. Sure enough, there was a doorway open on the front of the Pyramid, much too small for the tank, but big enough for them to walk in, two abreast. Panthro pulled the tank up and eyed it doubtfully. "Well, Lion-O? Do we try to bash our way in, or stick our heads in the hole and hope it isn't full of blades?"
"Whatever's in there, we can take. We have to rescue Snarf!" Lion-O vaulted easily out of the tank's central jumpseat and landed on the sand. "Spread out a little, so no trap can catch more than one of us. I'll go in first and a little ahead. The Eye of Thundera will warn me if something's about to go wrong. Kit, Kat, stay close to me. The rest of you, give each other some space, and watch each other's backs." They all nodded, pulling out their weapons and heading for the black gap in the black edifice ahead.
The Tygra in the cell, head still in Mumm-Ra's hands, groaned at the procession through the Pyramid. They'd been so cautious, watching the walls for hidden flamethrowers or dart guns, the floors for tripwires and pit traps. They'd been so certain it would be something simple, something they could fight or speed past or outwit. Every time Mumm-Ra put him through this memory again, the trip down the corridor to the sarcophagus chamber seemed to take longer than anything. What Tygra now knew that he hadn't back then was that the real trap was inside, where Mumm-Ra lay in wait. They were worrying for nothing, ready to jump at shadows.
The real clue that Mumm-Ra was eager for them to get past his usual defenses was that the corridors didn't even branch. Sometimes there would be a maze of sliding, heavy stones within the Pyramid, and the risk of getting lost or crushed. Then it would be necessary to use the Eye to find the proper path, or throw their collected strength into moving a slab in a direction it didn't want to go. But while the journey seemed to take eons to present-Tygra, past-Tygra was disturbed at how quickly and effortlessly they were able to get to Mumm-Ra's cobweb-choked sanctum, with its familiar scrying pool and unthinkably old glowering idols. "That was too easy," he muttered to Panthro, who was half-crouched on his left, scanning the room for visible trouble. Panthro nodded grimly. "Means the difficult part is still waiting. Unless old bandage-face is really losing his touch."
There was no sign of Mumm-Ra in the chamber itself. The pool bubbled slowly, but the sarcophagus was closed and silent. The idols' eyes were dark. The only movement came from a small white bundle wriggling on the raised stone pathway between Mumm-Ra's resting place and his scrying position. They all focused their attention on it simultaneously as it made a muffled squeaking noise. Panthro snapped the chain between his nunchucks taut, as Tygra tightened his grip on his whip. The Eye of Thundera flared in the hilt of the Sword of Omens as Lion-O stepped forward. "Snarf!" he cried. The bundle—a mass of bandages in a familiar loafy shape, with hanks of red and yellow fur protruding at random intervals—responded unintelligibly but with unmistakable eagerness. Lion-O ran forward.
Tygra in the present tried, simultaneously, to cry a warning and to avert his eyes. This was it, the point where he had doomed them all. As Lion-O charged, as the Thundercats automatically fanned out around the chamber to cover him, Tygra saw a telltale flickering blur of something looming over Snarf's wrapped and struggling body. There was something there, tall and gleaming, disguised perfectly from the angle of the door where they'd entered, but not from all angles. An illusion, he thought, wonderingly. He's hidden something there, something invisible. This is the trap. And yet, was he entirely sure of what he'd seen? He hesitated, then realized false caution was better than incaution. He opened his mouth to call a warning. But too slow, too late. The wrapped and struggling Snarf disappeared, and in his place, a sort of small tower came into terrible being all at once: It was a many-faceted clear crystal, almost perfectly round, bigger in circumference than Tygra's own arm-span, and sitting in a filigreed cradle atop a slim metal tripod. As the invisibility fell away, as "Lion-O, wait!" fell from Tygra's mouth, the sphere emitted a bright orange beam of pure, focused light that struck Lion-O full in the chest. Lion-O brought the sword up to block and deflect the beam.
It struck the sword, and Lion-O burst into flames.
It was instantaneous, irrevocable, so sudden and shocking that all the Thundercats cried out as one. Then they ran for him, as though there was something they could do. Lion-O screamed, terribly, falling to his knees, dropping the sword. His entire body was burning, shriveling, the flames so hot that the Thundercats were forced back, unable to get to him to try to put out the fire. Panthro turned wildly toward the faceted glass sphere and struck at it with his nunchucks, as though breaking it might somehow extinguish Lion-O. And a second beam, this one purple, emitted from a different facet and struck him full in the face.
The orange beam had faded, and Lion-O was no longer screaming. Tygra could barely see the dark shape withering and collapsing within the flames, as he turned to Panthro in horror. What he saw made no sense—it was as though Panthro had become a two-dimensional shape, an image of that familiar powerful body printed on paper, and then crumpled in vast, strong hands. His body twisted inward on itself with a hideous wet crunching, and dropped, mangled and compressed to an impossible degree, hitting the floor with a dull wet noise. This time it was WilyKat who shrieked.
Mumm-Ra appeared then, laughing his hideous laugh, from behind the sarcophagus, behind the great sphere on its high stand. He was small and wrinkled, in his cowled mummy form, but his triumph dominated the room. Cheetara, clearly seeing it was death to attack the sphere, charged at Mumm-Ra instead, a blur of yellow speed with her bo-staff swinging up and out of the blur toward their enemy. But the sphere was faster. A blue ray struck her mid-charge, and she melted into water. For only a fraction of a second, Tygra saw a blue-green, transparent version of her hanging in the air, a look of mild surprise on her liquid face, and then the shape lost form and splashed to the ground. He looked helplessly from Lion-O—now little more than a dully burning pile of ash on the ground—to what was left of Panthro, a leaking ball of blue cloth and fur barely larger than two fists curled together—to the puddle where Cheetara had been. Too slow, too late, and what are you standing there for? his present self raged at the memory. It had all happened so fast, no more than a few seconds, and yet surely there'd been time to do something. To grab the Thunderkittens and escape that horror.
The Thunderkittens had gone back-to-back, as they so often did when fights turned against them, and they each grabbed pellets from their belt-pouches. In a neat bit of coordination, WilyKat tossed his to the ground, producing a vast and spreading cloud, while Kit threw hers at Mumm-Ra, producing several vivid flashes of colored light. In the distraction, Tygra grabbed for the sword. It hadn't saved Lion-O, but instinct still told him it was the only hope, not just for him and the children, but for any generations of Thundercats who might someday find their way to Third Earth, looking for their lost lord. He snatched it up with his free hand, but it was savagely hot from the flames, and he instantly dropped it again. Fool. Coward. You couldn't stand a few burns in order to save the Thunderkittens' lives?
Because Mumm-Ra, though squinting from Kit's light barrage, was already stepping forward, raising a hand and chanting in some lost language. The sphere began, slowly, to glow in its metallic cradle. A hard wind blew suddenly through the Pyramid, dispersing the kittens' obscuring cloud. They had moved silently closer to the exit, but the second they were exposed, twin beams shot from the sphere to strike them. Tygra's stomach clenched in cold horror as they turned to stone from the feet up, just slowly enough that what was happening to them registered on their terrified faces. Wildly, he tore the sleeve-cap from his left shoulder and used it, one-handed, to cup the sword's orange-hot grip.
Mumm-Ra's attention was still on the kittens. He raised his hands, chanting louder, and the wind blew harder. It caught the two stone Thunderkittens up and flung them through the air, slamming them against the far wall, where they shattered. The children! Tygra-of-the-past and Tygra-of-the-present thought, simultaneously, in anguish. Distracted for that crucial second, he didn't run as he might have. And yet another beam of light, this time a dull and sickly green, came from a new facet of the crystalline ball and struck the Eye Of Thundera.
Tygra barely had time to tighten his grip on the sword before he was forced back, his feet skidding painfully on sandy stone, his toe-claws scrabbling for a foothold. The pressure against the sword was tremendous, like a powerful wall inexorably shoving him back. Automatically, he slid his bolo-whip into its pocket at his side and wrapped his right hand around the sword's grip as well, trying to keep his sleeve between hot metal and bare flesh. He braced hard against the force threatening to tear it backward from his hand and into his face. His slide backward ended as his back struck a wall. The green beam brightened. Tygra, overwhelmed by shock, did the only thing he could think to do. And here, for once, Tygra-in-the-cell had no advice or arguments. What he did then was the only choice he could have made. He cried "Ho!"
Now the sword roared and grew to full size in his hands. Now—far too late, it seemed to him—the Thundercats' sigil shot forth, to drive back the shadows of the sarcophagus chamber. Now he felt the sword's energy surge through him. But the green beam of light doubled in intensity, then doubled again. Tygra was near-blinded by the blazing red and green energies struggling and crackling against each other, and the muscles in his arms trembled with the forces pressing against him. He could feel energy feeding into him from the sword, but he could also feel that energy thinning rapidly.
And then there was a sharp crack. Tygra, holding the sword up in defensive position in front of his eyes, at full extension from his face, saw in wonder that a fine hairline fracture was forming at the heart of the Eye Of Thundera. And then, with a noise like a glass window hitting a tile floor, the Eye shattered. The sigil disappeared, the light went out, the Eye fell from the sword in a spray of fine red dust, and Tygra was standing, bathed in greenish light, holding a tiny toy sword with an open, empty circle in its hilt. For a moment, he was too staggered to react. There was no way to take in these monumental losses, no way to understand how he was still alive. Tygra-of-the-present joined Tygra-of-the-past in a fresh wave of grief and fury, self-recrimination and mortal fear. Nervelessly, he plucked the whip back out of its pocket and whirled it around himself, disappearing in a flash of blue. Numbed, hardly able to think, he staggered toward the door they'd all run through together, only a few bare minutes earlier. He still gripped the sword, still felt its dull heat through his torn-off sleeve, but to all his mental senses, to all his Thundercat will, it was a piece of dead metal. That gentle presence, that sense of virtue that had been at his back since he was first invested as a Thundercat, first given his sigil and his rank, was utterly gone. The Sword of Omens was destroyed.
Electricity crackled through the Pyramid as he heard Mumm-Ra laughing behind him. "So much for the mighty Thundercats!" the mummy cried, almost deliriously triumphant. "All but one gone, and that one… oh, where do you think you're going, Tygra? Surely you won't be so rude as to run off, not now! With your friends destroyed, we finally have a little time to get to know each other! Ah ha hahahahah!" The greenish light coming from the sphere was no longer pushing or pinning Tygra, now that it wasn't fighting the sword, but it was still burning brightly throughout the Pyramid, and Tygra could clearly see two things: A vast slab of black obsidian dropping with considerable speed to cover the open doorway the Thundercats had come through, and his own tall and trembling shadow cast against the wall, clearly indicating exactly where he was standing. "That shouldn't be possible," he'd whispered, staring at his betraying shadow, forgetting all his training about not speaking while sneaking. "What is that sphere?" And then the whirling winds that had grabbed Kit and Kat grabbed him as well, and dashed him against an unforgivingly hard wall, and everything went black.
Mumm-Ra let go of Tygra's head as the cell and the present reasserted themselves. Blinking, dazed, once again feeling all the pain and fear and confusion of that terrible fight freshly, Tygra stared dully into the triangular teeth of Mumm-Ra's grin, his hands dropping limply away from Mumm-Ra's wrists. The mummy seemed perfectly willing to wait for him to come back to himself. Tygra remembered the first time Mumm-Ra had put him through this replay. He had cursed the mummy by Jaga's beard and Thundera's lost moons and anything else he could think of. He had thrown himself forward against the chains, clawing at his enemy's face, spitting and shrieking, and immediately caught up by his ankle restraints. He had fallen forward and torn his shoulders badly. Which hadn't prevented him from trying to attack again, the second and third times Mumm-Ra visited him. The fourth time, after the replay, he had cried, helplessly as a newborn kitten, to Mumm-Ra's ghoulish delight. But while seeing his friends die yet again brought up all the wretched misery, all the anguish, all the guilt, exactly as he'd felt it the first time, he was running out of strength to fight back. Now, when Mumm-Ra withdrew, Tygra just stood wearily in place, head lowered in surrender, body shaking with fatigue. The mummy's throaty chuckle faded down to that sharky grin. "Well. Burning out so soon, Tygra? And here I thought you'd provide me with… entertainment… for years to come. Not so brave as you thought you were, eh? And perhaps not quite so capable."
Tygra stared blankly at the floor. No, Mumm-Ra was right. He had failed them all. Now he was gradually failing himself. Unable to fight off Mumm-Ra's projections, unable to break his chains, unable to avenge his friends. Almost, he was glad when Mumm-Ra, as he always did, reached behind his back and produced something that had been tucked away in the belt of his loin-wrap. He held it up, as usual: Tygra's bolo-whip. Drained, compliant, Tygra watched without a word as Mumm-Ra methodically took the bolo-whip's three red balls into his fingertips one at a time and squeezed, forcing them gradually down to their lowest setting, into three sharp, narrow cones. Tygra had rarely used the barb-tip setting, except when rock-climbing, when they were useful for catching and digging into nooks and crannies, or when clearing brush. They were dangerous to use around other people. As skilled and controlled as Tygra was with the whip, he had been up against opponents capable of turning it in midair, and he would hate to put out someone's eye with it.
Mumm-Ra grabbed his chin again, forcing his head up, trying to meet his eyes. Tygra looked down instead, in what might have been submission or rebellion. Mumm-Ra hissed at him, "You think you deserve this, Tygrrra. Some part of you craves punishment. Leave it to Mumm-Ra to provide that punishment for you. But not because I want to help you. Because I like the sound of your screaming." He let go, and moved behind Tygra again.
Resigned, Tygra reached up and took hold of the chain at the highest point he could reach. He'd learned the hard way that if he didn't keep himself taut, the force Mumm-Ra could put into beating him would throw him forward against the chains, and could dislocate his shoulders. If he held himself fully upright, the blows landed directly, harder, but without throwing him down. If he pulled upward hard enough, his ankle-cuffs had just enough give that he could pull his feet off the ground, and swing slightly with each impact. It didn't make it bearable, but at least it felt like he was doing something in his own defense.
Tygra cried out at the first strike of the whip. There was no point in trying to keep silent. He had, at first, and it just spurred Mumm-Ra on to greater brutality, to longer whippings, to see how long it took before his captive couldn't stay silent any longer. To him, it was a game. Tygra had lost interest in playing. If he didn't resist, if he didn't speak, if he didn't curse, if he didn't fall, Mumm-Ra would get bored faster, and eventually he'd go away.
But it seemed to take forever, every time. The whip fell over and over, tearing open his bared back yet again. The protective clothing Jaga had given him had come apart with the first beating: Thunderan cloth armor was no match for Thunderan weapons. As always, it vaguely surprised Tygra that the whip would respond to Mumm-Ra's touch at all. It was supposed to work only in Thunderan hands, answer only to Thunderan intent. But possibly whatever technomagic had driven it was now shattered along with the Eye. However it was possible, it was undeniable that in Mumm-Ra's hands, Tygra's weapon worked perfectly well to cause excruciating torment.
Crack. Crack. Crack. Each stroke tore three new bleeding lines across Tygra's tensed skin. Like all the others, this whipping went on far past the point Tygra thought he could endure, far past the point where his cries of pain became screams of agony became weak gasps of impact. His grip on the chain slid downward, his knees buckled, his vision blurred and blackened. Jaga watch over me, he thought, despairing. But Jaga's strength, like all the strengths of Thundercats past, was in the Eye, and the Eye was shattered. No one was coming to help him. No one would use the sword to feed and marshal his inner strength and let him break his chains. No one would push open that door and call his name with kindness instead of a sneer. I'm going to die here, and die badly, and deserve it, he thought. The bitterness of that knowledge was almost as consuming as the pain of his own whip ripping through fur and skin.
Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. Tygra's world narrowed to the maddening, gleeful cackle of Mumm-Ra thoroughly enjoying himself, and the unbearable sensations that overtook him every time the triple lash fell. At least once the pain became huge enough, it drove out all other thought. It drove out the unbearable memories of how he'd come here. It drove out the feeling, badly buried, but constantly tumbling and then resurfacing, like a corpse tossed in a raging river, that this torture really was something he had earned.
When Mumm-Ra finally left—only after chucking Tygra familiarly under the chin with the retracted, bloodied bolo-whip, and promising he'd be back soon enough—Tygra tried yet again to find a way to rest. The chain on his wrist shackles was too short to let him kneel, let alone sit or lie down. There was nothing to lean against to take the pressure off his arms and legs. He was forced to stand, as he had been since he first arrived in the cell. He didn't remember how Mumm-Ra had brought him here, didn't remember the chains going on. For that matter, he didn't remember regaining consciousness. Had he been dangling, half-kneeling, from the ceiling? He must have been. Standing at this point was painful, but hanging would be worse, would stretch out his back excruciatingly.
At least the burning sensation of his open wounds covered up the gnawing pains of hunger and thirst, and distracted him from the images Mumm-Ra had forced him to relive yet again. But there was no distraction from his loneliness at being the last. It wasn't just the hopelessness of rescue. It was simply the knowledge that he was finally, terribly alone.
As a noble of Thundera, Tygra had spent relatively little of his life by himself. Previous generations of Thundercats had seen how isolation in the elite could lead to arrogance and disassociation from the people. He had been raised in a nursery with other children of Thundercats, in a riotous mixed-species gathering where all the kittens quickly learned that other kittens could be good friends regardless of whether they had spots or stripes, the common orange eyes or the rarer blue, thick manes or sleek heads, flat faces or protruding, toothy muzzles. Everyone was different, and those differences were purposefully celebrated, to everyone's benefit.
Later, during his years of combat training, he'd worked and slept in a barracks of other trainees, all treated the same whether they came from noble or commoner stock. He'd been encouraged to bond across class lines, rather than to see background as a barrier. Even the years of study that taught him architectural skills had been done with a small class of like-minded and like-talented students. As an adult, he'd been granted privacy at will, but his childhood had guaranteed that chaos and camaraderie seemed more natural to him, and he'd never endured forced isolation. He had always been aware of the others like him, not far away: friends and family in the great Tygra-clan halls where he kept his rooms, other architects to consult with on knotty problems regarding tensile strength and shearing factors, other campaigners in the Mutant Wars. The Thundercats' time on Third Earth had felt strange because their numbers were so few, but he'd come to know all his companions intimately after living, working, and fighting together so often, in such close conditions. They were his brothers and sisters in arms, in adversity, and they were dead because he was too cursedly slow, too hesitant to shout a warning, to strike when it was needed.
The isolation was what he couldn't bear. Being locked away in his silent, barren stone cell was bad enough. With nothing to look at but the cracked and pitted stone wall in front of him, nothing to smell but his own blood and sweat, nothing to hear but his own breath, his own increasingly cracked voice if he chose to speak, it was a state distressingly like sensory deprivation. And if he closed his eyes, the images came back. Lion-O, engulfed in flames. The Eye Of Thundera, shattered. All the Thundercats, gone. Even without Mumm-Ra forcing the images into his head, he couldn't escape them. He would lose his mind, if he didn't starve first.
If he didn't starve first. It came back to him again that he was hungry, that he was tired, that he was hurt. And no wonder, since… Could he remember eating since he woke up in this cell? Drinking? His hands were close enough to his face that he could feed himself if someone handed him something to eat, but no matter how hungry he was, he couldn't imagine willingly accepting food from Mumm-Ra's hands. The Silky incident was an increasingly distant but still sharp humiliation in his mind. And the forced intimacy of enduring Mumm-Ra's familiar touch was a horror that turned Tygra's stomach. Besides, as eerily tender as Mumm-Ra could be when it suited him, when tenderness was part of tormenting his new pet, Tygra couldn't see him holding a cup so his captive could drink. There was more kindness in that gesture, no matter how ill-intentioned, than Mumm-Ra could possibly bear.
Tygra frowned, finally seeing something besides painful memories and bleak stone walls. How many times had Mumm-Ra visited him and tortured him in this cell, always the same way, first with the memories, then with the whip? He had not tried to count, he had not wanted to know, but he felt from the way the events blurred together that it had been dozens, at least. And yet… could he remember being unchained, even once? Had anyone else been in the cell at any point? Had anyone treated his wounds, or offered him water? Thundercats were strong, but… I haven't been standing up, without food or water, for weeks. I haven't been recovering, healing, from beatings like this on a daily basis. This is nonsense.
Why haven't I noticed this before?
Was it possible that he was being drugged, without knowing it? Some odorless gas that rendered him instantly unconscious, so he had time to be unchained, to heal and be fed, to be magically restored so he didn't succumb to his needs? And then drugged again, his memory wiped so he could be instantly returned to his cage without experiencing any lapse in time? Mumm-Ra had accomplished more complicated feats of magic. But this seemed needlessly elaborate. And more to the point, it was a plan that would require some awareness on Mumm-Ra's part of the needs of a physical, living body, and some nuanced awareness of his victim, or some ally capable of handling others with care and comfort. Tygra could see their old foe wanting to keep an enemy around to play with long-term. He had captured the Thundercats before, and turned them into mummy-wrapped decorations for his sanctum, or placed them in a sleep not unlike the kind provided by the hibernation capsules, rather than simply killing them. Maybe he'd placed Tygra under some sort of spells that kept him from needing sustenance or sleep, that healed him more quickly?
What was the likelihood that a creature like Mumm-Ra knew healing spells, or would care to learn them? What was the likelihood that someone so dedicated to blunt shows of power knew how to do something as subtle as keep Tygra from needing food, but also keep him in a perpetual state of dull, distracting hunger? Was he immortal like Mumm-Ra now, and only feeling echoes of his old bodily needs? What was the likelihood that Mumm-Ra would make him immortal, to suffer torture endlessly, and then not torture him with that knowledge as well? When had he ever had a success that he didn't brag about to his victims?
There was a much simpler answer, one that didn't require an unlikely subtlety or silence on Mumm-Ra's part. An answer Tygra latched onto as the thinnest thread of dawning hope.
What he was experiencing wasn't real.
The idea obsessed him. The moment it first came to him, it suddenly seemed obvious. He's been distracting me this whole time. Distracting me with misery and pain, so I wouldn't think my way through the anomalies. I've been fighting the memories he forces on me, but not the experience around the memories. He's been weakening me, wearing me down. Tygra's mind, dulled by mourning and shock and exhaustion, roared back into full speed. It was like coming out from under Silky's spell when he heard Mumm-Ra boast about controlling the architectural marvel of Cat's Lair. It was a sudden and profound awareness of things he simply hadn't been seeing somehow.
Why would I not notice that I haven't eaten in weeks? Because it hadn't been weeks. Because in the illusion, things were progressing more rapidly than they would in real life. Because the sense of long periods passing between Mumm-Ra's visits was part of the illusion. Because the illusion glossed over the spaces that might have given Tygra time to think.
Why would I not notice that he whips my back to shreds, and then it heals before he comes back the next day? Because there were two phases to every visit: One to consume him with guilt and horror and completely preoccupy his mind, one to put him in too much pain to think properly. When one pain became unbearable, it would stop him focusing on the other, and when one faded, the other would reassert itself. It was Mumm-Ra's form of sadism: not subtle, but crafty.
If this is some sort of dream, when did it start? That was the worst question, the one he was afraid to answer. Was it possible that the other Thundercats' deaths were part of the illusion? It would explain so much, about why the sword hadn't protected Lion-O, how it was possible to shatter the Eye of Thundera, how it was possible for Mumm-Ra to activate Tygra's whip. The things Tygra had barely been able to process, because they seemed so abrupt, so impossible—maybe it was because they were impossible.
But if he was lost in some kind of dream, where was he really? What was going on in the outside world? If the other Thundercats were alive, were they in cells somewhere too? He almost called out, then thought better of it. If Mumm-Ra really were holding them close by, surely he'd be able to hear their familiar voices. Surely he'd be able to hear Mumm-Ra's awful, booming, carrying laughter as he gloated over them. Whether sound couldn't penetrate the immense door or the others were being held too far away, it wouldn't help to yell for them. And if, worst-case scenario, he was wrapped up like a mummy, dreaming poisoned dreams in some fetid sarcophagus of his own, and Mumm-Ra heard him crying for the others, he would know Tygra was beginning to see through the illusion. And that could be dangerous.
Let's think this through. Tygra stood up straighter, sweaty palms tightening on the chain attached to his cuffs. Mumm-Ra responded directly to what Tygra said or did. He stayed longer the time Tygra had cried, and taunted him specifically and cruelly about it. He grew bored when Tygra was unresponsive, and left more quickly. The things he said changed every time he visited. In spite of the ritualistic, circular nature of their sessions together, they weren't a recorded loop. Mumm-Ra, or at least something intelligent with Mumm-Ra's sense of cruelty and savagery, was interacting with him directly inside the illusion.
How long does he stay with me? There was no knowing how long the replay of the Thundercats' deaths took. It could be a momentary flicker of the time, the way a dream could seem to stretch out for days but take only minutes. But even if it played out in real time, the whole fight, the whole defeat, had taken only a few minutes. The beatings seemed to go on for hours, but Mumm-Ra was eager and vicious, and yet always motivated to stop before killing his victim. Tygra knew that realistically, objectively, the whippings might be as little as ten or twenty minutes.
And then he goes away for… a day? More? Less? It was impossible to tell time in a windowless cell. Windowless… Tygra looked around abruptly, straining his torn neck and back and legs to the utmost to try to see fully behind him. There were no windows, in the walls or the door, but there was also no light source. How was he able to see? None of this is real. The conviction rose in him abruptly, powerfully. It's true. This is all an illusion!
His subjective sense of time insisted that Mumm-Ra left him alone for hours at a time between beatings, at the very least. Even if it wasn't days or weeks, it was still plenty of time to visit six other captives. But was it really even hours? Over such a long period, surely he would have been able to regather himself and start seeing through the illusion before. Yet Mumm-Ra always seemed to return, with almost clockwork accuracy, at just the point where Tygra was starting to feel like himself again, where he was capable of gathering himself and trying to consider escape. He knows when I'm starting to regain my strength and will, and cycles back to me. What does he do in the meantime?
Tygra stared at the cracked stone wall, the imperfect joins where mortar held together vast irregular slabs of the obsidian that made up the entirety of Mumm-Ra's home. He stared at it, but seemed to see through it. There was no real evidence for the terrible conviction that gripped him, and yet he was suddenly, jarringly positive. In the meantime, he checks in on the others. I'm still in the Pyramid. Maybe we all are.
If any of the other Thundercats were still alive—if, Jaga be praised, they all were—Mumm-Ra was almost certainly torturing them, too.
Tygra began to take deep, calming breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The gashes across his back hurt less now, and as he drew his focus away from his own pain and fear, they receded into unimportance for him. He had let himself be battered and broken by his own fear of failure, his own wavering confidence, the vulnerability of his need to protect the other Thundercats, the vulnerability of self-recrimination when he thought he had lost them. He needed to put all these things aside and focus, not on saving them in some possibly imagined past, but saving them now, here, in a real present. Now he scanned the wall in front of him, looking at the cracks and joins in the mortar. He set his gaze firmly on one particularly large, dark one. There are cracks in this world. No illusion is perfect. I will not be fooled by what is not there. I will not succumb to what is not real.
His training, at the hands of the clan illusion-master himself, came back to him. He'd been deemed the most promising tiger-clan illusionist in a decade. In practice mind-duels, he had had shrugged off the sendings of illusionists years older than himself. This was no time for pride, for basking in the past, but it was a time for confidence in his abilities. Whatever Mumm-Ra had done to him, he had not taken away a lifetime of sharpening and developing this skill. Tygra knew illusions, and he would not let this one master him.
He targeted the innocent crack in the wall, and the darkness behind it. He stared deep into it, calmly, with certainty. At peace. His chains were not real. The walls were not real. His bloodied skin and ruined clothes were not real. This version of himself, this isolated failure caught up in an endless cycle of grief, was not real. And then, as the crack seemed to tremble and widen under his staring, blazing eyes, he focused on the other Thundercats. They need me. They're alive. He's hurting them, and I have to stop it. His rage, suppressed and beaten down for so many subjective weeks, flared abruptly, and he roared, a full-throated, furious battle cry, an I'm-coming-for-my enemies cry. He threw his fury, his conviction, his will at that shuddering, widening black rift on the wall.
The wall shattered.
Tygra's eyes were filled with bright, kaleidoscoping light, an array of dazzling rainbow colors. They were blinding him, dizzying him. He made himself hold perfectly still, trying to take stock of his surroundings. He couldn't see, but he could feel his body, set in a half-crouch, ready to leap. His feet were far apart, his knees bent, his hands and feet unshackled. His hands were gripped tight around something—he squeezed slightly, and felt the familiar handle of his whip in one hand, the stretchy give of its pliant length in the other. Whip out and ready, then, in battle posture—and blinded, frozen in place. His muscles were stiff and aching. How long had he held this position?
He narrowed his eyes, but the light continued. He risked straightening slightly, then slowly leaning to his left. There was blessed darkness there, and he carefully, slowly slid his feet in that direction, first one, then the other. If what he thought was happening was happening, he mustn't give himself away too early. Moving fractional distances at a time, he slipped inches to the left, into the dark.
His eyes adjusted, though flecks of dazzling light still burned and danced against his retinas. He was standing in the sarcophagus chamber—side by side with the other Thundercats. His heart leaped at the sight of them, after seeing them dead over and over. He had to choke back a sob. They were alive—but not well. They stood in their battle pattern, Lion-O ahead of them, where he had charged forward toward the bundled Snarf-mummy, the rest arrayed out behind him, ready to cover him. The faceted crystal sphere he had seen over and over inside the illusion was real, a huge glowing orb cradled atop a tripod sitting in front of Mumm-Ra's sarcophagus. Rays of pure white light were emitting from it, shining directly into the eyes of the other Thundercats, replacing their eyes with shifting colors. Not just the Thundercats, Tygra now saw, but also Snarf, who really was bound in bandages and sitting below the sphere, staring raptly up at it with a look of purest horror. And Mumm-Ra as well. He stood in mummy-form, hands on the sides of the sphere, stroking it as gently and covetously as a lover. Tygra could barely see his face—his cowl was filled with radiant white light, dancing with faint glints of sparkling rainbow colors. He was oblivious to Tygra's movement, or to the one empty beam projecting from the sphere to the spot where Tygra had stood a moment ago.
Tygra, still vibrating with fury, glanced around at his friends. All of them stood frozen in battle stances, clenching their weapons, but with their eyes blanked by light, and their faces twisted into terrible expressions of anguish. The Sword of Omens, clenched in Lion-O's hand, was blazing its customary warning of danger, but it was clear no one could see its flaring light. Tears were streaming down Lion-O's face now, and Tygra heard him say, in a small, humbled voice with none of his usual brash force behind it, "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry I failed you all." And Mumm-Ra, staring into the ball of glowing light, chuckled cruelly and said—into the sphere, not looking at Lion-O at all, "That's right, Lion-O, they died because of your impatience. Your foolishness. Your lack of planning. And you know you deserve to be punished for it."
"No," Tygra hissed. "No more, damn you. The only one who deserves punishment is you, you sick, twisted evil." He was running now, toward the plinth where Mumm-Ra stood. Tygra's arm came up, the bolo-whip whirling above his head, and he shot it forward with all his might. The bolo end coiled firmly around the thin, fine silver tripod that held the sphere. "Sword of Omens, give me strength," Tygra snarled, and gripping his whip with both hands, he sent the mental command that would stiffen it in place. Then he whirled, pulling the tripod upward and outward, just barely clearing Snarf's head, and yanking the accursed sphere, base and all, into one of the endless hideous stone idols that filled the pyramid. Lights spun wildly around the room as he jerked the thing out of its position, and when it struck the statue and cracked both idol and sphere, the lights multiplied a dozen times over, spraying every which way. The Pyramid was full of bright, crazed light.
Tygra could see that the sphere was cracked and chipped, that dozens of tiny pieces had broken off of it, but the bulk of it was still intact. Behind him, he also heard Mumm-Ra shout in wordless fury, and the other Thundercats crying out in shock, and possibly relief. "Get down, all of you!" he yelled. "Snarf, roll!"
He could only imagine what the others had been through and whether it was anything like his own experience, and there was no knowing how it felt to be forced out of the sphere's illusion instead of forcing his way out of it. But the Thundercats had trained extensively together, and if there was one thing they had all been drilled in well, it was to respond decisively when one member of the team shouted "Duck!" or "Look out!" or "Get down!" All five of them obediently dropped, and Snarf, still swaddled, rolled sharply to the side and tumbled off the raised catwalk, landing with a muffled thump and an equally muffled protest. Tygra glanced back at Mumm-Ra, snarling with anger, opening his hands to blast them with energy. "You want this monstrosity back?" Tygra cried. "Then take it!" And he drew the whip taut again, jerking the crystal sphere and its base upward. He spun in a circle, the sphere and its base spinning around him at the end of the whip, tearing through the air over the Thundercats' heads, gathering momentum. And then, calculating his arc, he drew it upward, hard and fast.
He could feel the Sword of Omens answering his call for strength. Its power pulsed through his muscles now, as it worked through all of them in times of great necessity. But now he barely felt he needed its help. He was so angry at seeing his friends, his partners, in such a state of disarmed helplessness. Thinking of them enduring what he'd endured, alone and afraid, he felt like he could have lifted the entire Pyramid and thrown it at Mumm-Ra.
Instead, he whipped the crystal sphere as high as he could, and smashed it to the ground in front of the mummy as hard as possible. The sphere, already badly cracked, glowed sun-bright and blinding, then exploded into a thousand faceted pieces. The impact threw Mumm-Ra back against the sarcophagus. "The Dream-Sphere! No!" he wailed, reaching for whatever was left of the shattered relic. And then he seemed to realize that the explosion had driven many of the sphere's shards deep into his dried flesh, and into the sarcophagus itself, into the source of his rejuvenation and power. He screamed, clawing at himself, as the shards buried in the stone around him began to smoke and melt. The other Thundercats, still dream-dazed, were standing back up now, but Tygra only had eyes for Mumm-Ra, writhing and smoking and shrieking. It was what he needed to see most right now—not Mumm-Ra's pain, but the clear evidence that their enemy couldn't just reassemble this weapon, that it couldn't all happen again.
As the cracks on the sarcophagus spread, as Mumm-Ra painfully pulled tiny knives of crystal out of his arms and chest, he gathered himself. His eyes glowed a fiery, blazing red as he glared at Tygra. "You," he breathed, with pure loathing. "You broke the illusion. You shattered the Dream-Sphere. I'll shatter you yourself for this, Tygra. By the time I'm done with you, you'll wish you were back in that cell!" He took three shaky steps forward, raising his arms to call on the ancient spirits of evil. Tygra watched calmly, unflinching. One corner of his mouth drew upward in the tiniest of smirks. He saw exactly what was coming.
"Before you do that, O mighty Mumm-Ra," he said, with edged and hateful politesse, "I'm afraid you'll have to look down."
Mumm-Ra did—into thousands of tiny, broken, reflective pieces of crystal sphere, all reflecting his weak and twisted visage back at himself.
From there, it was a familiar enough sight. He writhed, he screamed, he resisted, he tried to cover his eyes or look away, he stared bug-eyed at the evidence of his own withered weakness. Tygra ignored it all, and walked forward to the base of the catwalk to tear loose the winding restraints and free Snarf, who they'd come all this way to save. As soon as Snarf was halfway loose, he leaped into Tygra's arms, trailing torn bandages and wailing piteously. "Oh, Tygra, I dreamed that you—that everybody—that Lion-O—I thought—oh, I thought—"
"I know, Snarf," Tygra said, burying his face in Snarf's thick red-and yellow fur, and hugging the shaking body firmly. "I know. But it's okay now. It was never real. Let's go home."
He turned back to the others. They were all watching him now, gravely. WilyKit and WilyKat clung tightly to each other. Panthro had one arm around Cheetara, and the other on Lion-O's shoulder. The tears on Lion-O's face had nearly dried, but he still looked stricken, glancing at each one of them in turn as if counting them over and over. As Mumm-Ra's shrieking and raving died down behind them, as he retreated once more into his damaged haven, Tygra carried Snarf, still snuffling, to join them. He glanced at the vast black slab that really had blocked their departure route, and looked back at Lion-O.
Gradually, he watched the Lord of the Thundercats come back to reality, to the here and now. Lion-O turned and pointed the sword directly at the stone. "Ho!" he cried. A beam of clean blue energy leapt from the sword, striking the center of the blockade and melting it like candyfruit ice cream sitting in the sun. Lion-O fanned the beam from side to side, widening the hole until they could step through all at once, together. He sheathed the sword, and Snarf immediately leaped from Tygra's arms into his. Snarf pressed his head into Lion-O's shoulder, subvocalizing his usual "Snarf, snarf" as little more than a whimper. Tygra couldn't help but notice that Lion-O, usually so quick to impatience with his old nursemaid, nuzzled him back, without a word. And they headed out, back down the suspiciously simple, obviously unguarded passageway they'd come in.
"Tygra," Lion-O said, after a minute of walking. Tygra glanced over at him. "Thank you." Tygra nodded. He didn't quite know what else to say. It seemed obvious that they'd each been through a lonely ordeal, and that they might all benefit from talking about it, once it was a little less immediate. They would need to share their experiences to erase that feeling of loss and isolation. But no one was entirely sure how to start.
Together, they emerged into bright daylight, and Tygra squinted up at the sun, almost directly overhead. It had been early morning when they went in. Assuming days hadn't passed—and he didn't think they had, judging by how quickly he'd shaken off his residual stiffness—the whole awful adventure had taken less than three hours. He looked around at his fellow Thundercats again. Lion-O, grim and pale and still holding Snarf. WilyKit and WilyKat, still holding hands, pressed shoulder to shoulder and not meeting anyone's eyes. Cheetara, standing by the Thundertank and running her fingers over its gleaming surfaces gingerly, as if it might evaporate into mist at any second.
And Panthro, who met his eyes seriously and held them, then took a deep breath. And then, bless him, Panthro stretched ostentatiously, with a slow, luxurious roll of his bulky shoulder muscles, and a lazy, elaborate yawn. "Nothing like waking up from a bad dream, eh?" he said to all of them warmly, easily. "Time to go get some late breakfast, I reckon. Who's for spoiling ourselves with some baconfruit?" Tygra smiled, and then they all did, and before long they were all laughing, and the last traces of the crystal sphere's dreams faded away.
They were only illusions, after all.