3

"Well...there it is..." Wilykat stood on his board, looking at the oppressive Black Pyramid in the distance.

"Yeah..." Both of them were scared silly, and both of them knew that, but by mutual agreement, they did not admit it. At least not yet. Wilykit sighed and sat down. "Okay, how do we go about this?"

"Well..."

"This was your idea!"

Wilykat frowned. "Yeah, I know, that doesn't mean I had a plan."

"Well, can Mumm-Ra see us in our cauldron?"

Wilykat looked as if he were about to shrug, then grinned. "Well we'll find out if he fries us with that red lightning coursing over his pyramid."

Wilykit scowled. "That's not a great method." Then she laughed.

Her brother shrugged, still grinning. "Well let's go find out."

"Right." The twins took off.

Twenty minutes later, the duo was soaring along the perimeter of the massive structure, the hot gray stone seeming dead in the silent desert of the Sinking Sands. "I thought things were supposed to sink here," Wilykat said a little worriedly.

"I think they only do it when Mumm-Ra wants them to," her brother answered. "I think."

Cautiously, they searched every square inch of the place. "The others have gotten in before, where?"

Wilykat shrugged, feeling the urge to whisper, even though anyone inside the thick stone walls would not have heard them even had they shouted. "Wait, whenever I see Mumm-Ra go into it, it's always near the top!"

Gaining height, the twins soared up to the top third of the pyramid, again completing the circuit. "There!" Wilykit pointed to a small opening in the side of the pyramid, kind of tall but narrow. "How does he even get in there?" she wondered.

"He's a mage, Wilykit. he can make that hole any size he wants." He regarded it, feeling again the almost tangible silence of the dead desert, and shuddering at the equally tangible feeling of evil and death. "This place is wrong," he whispered. "If it had been the old days of gods and spirits, the spirit of the earth would have cast this thing out long ago."

Wilykit raised an eyebrow at the analogy. Wilykat seemed to have a way with words, whereas she usually only said things in bluntly spoken statements. "Yeah,l it's nasty all right. Well let's go in."

The pair ended up directly in the ancient priest's main chamber, where the portal at the top led. Wilykat winced, having second thoughts, but unwilling to lose face. "This place sure is creepy," he whispered. They had been there before, but never alone, and never as a sneak thief would, creeping around in the dimness that was lit only by a few eternally burning torches along the walls.

Jumping from their boards once they reached the ground, they drew closer together, creeping in the wide open space, feeling suddenly vulnerable. "W- well?" They had made a decision on the way there, that the item they would seek was a piece of the place itself: a chip from Mumm-Ra's sarcophagus.

Wilykat peered into the pool, and wrinkled his nose from the smell of combined decay and unknown chemicals, drawn from who knew where. He stifled the urge to gag and drew from it. "Boy that thing stinks," he said in a nearly inaudible whisper.

As he had stated only the obvious, Wilykit only nodded in agreement as they skirted around the cauldron, now clutching each other, and stared at the bleached stone of the casket that Mumm-Ra "slept" in. He didn't truly sleep, as someone who was not really alive didn't need to, but it was the closest thing he could get to it. In any case, his mind, if he had an actual physical mind, shut down as he regenerated. Wilykit gulped. "W-well there it is," she whispered.

With a hand that shook a little more than he would have liked, Wilykat searched his belt for something he could use to chip off a piece of the casket, and found nothing.

Wilykit looked about and spied a twisted piece of steel in the corner of the chamber, and ran silently to grab it. "Okay...I'll get it you carry it."

Wilykat nodded, his deep orange eyes wide with fear. The place may not have looked so scary from the outside, but inside, in the realm of evil, you knew that it was a place of fear.

Taking a big breath, Wilykit brought the metal up...and struck once. The clang echoed in the chamber, and the twins cringed against each other, freezing as they heard a stirring from inside the casket. If they were caught this close to their enemy, and with their spaceboards not within their reach, they would either be killed or captured, neither of which they wished to happen. For the first time, they thought actually of the danger...the real danger...of what they were trying to do.

Wilykat bit his lip and looked around. "The statues," he said. "We take one from there."

"Okay," Wilykit agreed quickly, a look of relief crossing her face. Hunching over the foot of the first statue, Wilykit began hurriedly chipping at the stone, her fur rising as fear made her senses sharper than they ever were. She could hear the wind outside, and sand blowing across the floor--blowing?

Wilykit looked up. "Since when does the wind blow inside?" she demanded in an intense whisper.

Wilykat gulped. "I-I don't know...hurry up!" The beginnings of panic could be seen in the unnaturally wide radius of his eyes, and Wilykit nodded hurriedly and started again to chip.

It was almost done, the wind in the chamber rising rapidly until it howled inside as well as out, the sand blasting the two cubs with their gritty ammunition, making them squint their eyes and shield their faces.

Wilykat's hair was standing on end, not from fear he finally realized, but with a build-up of energy, or electricity. He was just about to yell for his sister to forget it so that they could leave, when she grasped something in her hand and cried, "I got it!" Her voice was scarcely audible in the storm that seemed to have developed in the chamber.

"Let's get out of here!" Wilykat screamed, the feeling of energy making his whole body shake as he stumbled away from the statue.

"Here!" Wilykit threw him the piece that he was to carry out, and he dropped it with a yelp, half expecting it to burn his hand. It did not, but as the twins backed fearfully from the statue, the eyes of all four monoliths suddenly blazed red, and the gasped. Both turning to run, they suddenly sprawled onto the floor with an identical scream of surprise and pain as a jolt of red energy coursed from the statue they had defiled, knocking them halfway across the room.

Dazed, they sat up, and Wilykat pointed at the sarcophagus. "Look!" he shrieked. It was opening, a hiss of what sounded like fury emanating from it.

Finally her paralysis broke, and Wilykit dashed for her spaceboard, her brother on her heels. Fighting the winds, and having to fly on their knees, they soared up for the hole in the roof.

Down below, the ancient form of Mumm-Ra, summoned by his masters, emerged from his resting place, a snarl of fury on his withered featured. "Those impudent whelps have gone too far," he growled, then threw his hands skyward. "Ancient Spirits of Evil!"

"He's awake! Let's get out of here!" Wilykit screamed, and finally out of the gale force winds of the pyramid below, they took off at high speed for the Cats' Lair...

Part Two

Part Four

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