Chapter One
For the Thundercats, the day had also begun peacefully; nearly a week had passed since the Mutants had last caused them any trouble and they planned to make the most of the rare opportunity to do something other than battle their age-old enemies.
So it was that Lion-O, Tygra and Panthro could currently be found hard at work in the Thundrillium mines stocking up on supplies of the mineral that had been their power source for countless generations. Thundrillium had been one of the most common minerals in existence on Thundera, so much so that all the planet's advanced technology ran on the stuff and there had never been any question of supplies running short as had been the case with those fuels the Thunderians had used before Thundrillium was discovered. In any case, the Thundercats could count themselves lucky to have landed on a planet with a decent supply.
"Think we've got enough?" asked Tygra as he loaded another slab into the back of the Thundertank.
Panthro, leaning against the Tank's engine, nodded with satisfaction. "If we take much more, we won't be able to close up the back. Let's finish up and haul this lot back to the Lair."
It was just as the three Thundercats were about to head back to the Lair that they were alerted by the all-too-familiar hum of a Sky-cutter being flown at low altitude. Lion-O, shielding his eyes with his hand, scanned the horizon in search of the offending Mutant craft. Sure enough, there were two of them, one piloted by Slithe (whose long Reptilian tail meant he was easy to recognise even at a distance) the other piloted by Monkian. And they seemed to be . . .
"They're heading for the Wollo village!" Lion-O informed his two companions, his muscles tensing and his fingers instinctively gripping the Sword of Omens as he realised Mutants heading in that direction could mean only one thing.
Panthro felt the same way. "Rats!" he muttered, resisting the urge to use somewhat more colourful language. "Forget the Thundrillium," he told Tygra and Lion-O as all three climbed into the Thundertank. "Looks like we've got more important things to worry about."
With Panthro driving the Thundertank at full throttle, the three Thundercats reached the Wollo village to find themselves confronted by a scene of absolute chaos and devastation. Slithe and Monkian had the Sky-cutters' lasers trained on the small community of simple dwarfish folk and seemed to be firing indiscriminately, taking pot shots at anything that moved. Down below, Wollos were shouting and milling around in confusion as they frantically tried to out-distance their attackers. Seeing their ancient enemies attacking a peaceful race who rarely resorted to violence soon galvanised the Thundercats into action.
"Lion-O, man the rear guns!" Panthro ordered as he swerved the Tank round in a three-point turn.
Lion-O did not need telling twice. As Tygra, seated beside Panthro, pressed the button that activated the guns, he took up position at the trigger, bracing himself to fire once either of the two Mutants came within range. "You two deal with any that come at us from the front!" he told Tygra and Panthro.
It was a truly epic battle, the Thundertank versus two Mutant Sky-cutters, but something was making all three Thundercats uneasy. Something was not right about this; the way Slithe and Monkian were moving made it appear almost as if they had wanted to be spotted, as if they were trying to create a diversion to draw the Thundercats away from something more important.
"Do either of you get the feeling something weird is going on around here?" asked Tygra as Monkian, whooping in anticipation, swooped down on them with his Sky-cutter.
"With Mutants, there's always something going on," Panthro said. "What's your point exactly?"
Tygra aimed the front laser guns at Monkian's Sky-cutter and proceeded to fire two short blasts at the Mutant craft, smiling with satisfaction as the Simian Mutant lost control of it and it went careering into the trees. "My point is," he told Panthro, "that the way they're behaving suggests they're only doing this to bait us. If you think about it, neither of them has fired a single shot at us - and that bothers me somehow."
"He's right," Lion-O said as he turned round briefly to address his two companions. This sort of thing just wasn't what he, or any of the Thundercats, had come to expect from the Mutants; usually, in a battle between the two sides, the Mutants would throw everything they had at their enemies. Not that it ever did them much good - the Thundercats invariably outclassed them - but it was most unusual to see them moving in as if to attack and then pulling out at the last moment. And, if there were two Mutants attacking in Sky-cutters, there was usually a third launching a ground assault from the Nose-diver.
However, the Thundercats did not have time to speculate on this before the two Mutants - Monkian had reboarded his Sky-cutter - suddenly zoomed high into the air and headed in the direction of their base at Castle Plundarr. Lion-O fixed his gaze on the sky, watching as his enemies flew off into the distance; he was not about to let them get away with terrorising the Wollos. As Lord of the Thundercats, it was his duty to defend the weak and innocent and there was no way he was going to let this pass. "They're getting away, Panthro," he told the older Thundercat as the latter turned the Thundertank in the direction Slithe and Monkian had headed.
"Not fast enough!" Panthro said as he jacked the Thundertank up a gear and prepared to give chase. But, before he could do so, a cry issued from behind him.
"Wait! Please, wait!" The speaker was a young female Wollo with long brown hair. The Thundercats had met her at her wedding when they were returning from an adventure in Baron Karnor's Tower of Traps, a sinister building which Lion-O, Wilykat and Wilykit had barely escaped from with their lives. Indeed, she was the reason the Thunderkittens had ventured near Karnor's Tower in the first place; her father had been delivering her wedding gift, a gold bracelet with two entwined hearts, when the long-dead Robber Baron's living gargoyles intercepted him and "relieved" of it. Luckily, Wilykit had found the bracelet seconds after it was tossed onto a pile of loot accumulated over countless years.
Right now, she was clearly in some distress, so much so that Panthro couldn't help but pull the Thundertank over when he heard her cry out. "What is it, Dari?" he asked as he drew level with her and saw from the look in her eyes that something was definitely very wrong. Dari looked at the three Thundercats pleadingly, her hands clasped in front of her, making it immediately obvious that she was not wearing her gold bracelet, a bracelet she had never been without since her wedding day.
"My bracelet," she replied, her voice shaking. "My bracelet has been stolen!" She held up the wrist on which she normally wore the bracelet to show them that it was now bare of all jewellery as Lion-O, Tygra and Panthro each asked themselves the same question: why? They had fairly good idea who was behind the theft, but what could the Mutants hope to gain from stealing a bracelet?
"Do you want to tell us what happened?" Tygra asked Dari as he climbed out of the Thundertank and stood beside her. Standing at half his height, the Wollo looked up at him with her large eyes and began to explain as fully as she could.
"It was that Mutant, Jackalman; he grabbed me as I was about to take shelter in my hut. I think the way the other two were flying about like that was just a diversion . . ." The Thundercats nodded and exchanged knowing glances at this point. " . . . so he could do what he was supposed to do. What that was I only realised when he . . . forced my bracelet off."
Hearing this, Lion-O gave a low growl; there were few things that angered him more than cowards who robbed the innocent - and Jackalman was well known for being the most craven out of all the Mutants. He would probably have taken off in the direction of Castle Plundarr in a reckless bid to take on the Mutants single-handed and retrieve Dari's bracelet, had Tygra not restrained him. "No, Lion-O, something tells me there's more to this than robbing a Wollo. We should get back to Cats' Lair and discuss this properly."
Jackalman held the stolen bracelet up so that the gold reflected the sun and cackled to himself as he thought of how easy it had been. True, that Wollo wench had given him a few kicks, but she was no match for him and it had only taken a moment's work to pin her down and yank the bracelet off her wrist. "Like taking Candyfruit from a baby!"
He hoped all the tasks Mumm-Ra required before he could call forth this Curse of Sekh would be so easy. It had been good of Slithe and Monkian to divert the Thundercats' attention while he rifled through every house in the Wollo village in search of the item Mumm-Ra had ordered the Mutants to find for the ritual that would call down the Curse. Why this included a Wollo bracelet was beyond him, but he knew better than to question Mumm-Ra. In any case, he was too cowardly to even think of doing so.
He was still cackling to himself when his two companions swooped down in their Sky-cutters, both eager to hear that the raid had been successful and they could cross one item off their list. "Ooh ooh! Did you get it?" Monkian asked as he dismounted and walked over to join the Jackal Mutant. The "ooh ooh" sound he often made when he began to say something was a speech characteristic of his race, much the same as the elongated S sound of Reptilian speech, and, had any translator tried to put a meaning to it, they would have been unable to do so. It was simply something Simian Mutants did.
"Yes, Monkian," Jackalman replied as, with an evil grin on his face, he held the bracelet up for the others to see. They gazed in wide-eyed awe at the beautiful object, both of them longing to swipe it for themselves but well aware that it was far too valuable for that. If Mumm-Ra caught them keeping back items they had stolen for him, there was no telling what he would do.
"Sssso," Slithe hissed as he took the bracelet from Jackalman and placed it in the leather pouch he was carrying round his neck, "that'ssss phasssse one, yesssss? Now to collect the other ingredientsssss. But we musssst be careful - the Thundercatssssss could already be onto ussss."
"Are you saying Dari's bracelet was the only thing the Mutants took?"
This question came from Cheetara as she sat with Snarf and the Thunderkittens listening to Lion-O's account of what had happened at the Wollo village. Her Sixth Sense had been driving her crazy lately; it was as if she knew something big was about to happen but was unable to tell what it was or when it would start. All she knew was that, unless the Thundercats could figure out what it was, Third Earth would be in serious trouble.
"Yes and that's the strangest thing," Lion-O replied. "It's as if they went to the Wollo village with the specific aim of stealing a bracelet . . ." He broke off and furrowed his brow as he tried to consider the best course of action, how a Thundercat Lord would handle something as extraordinary as this. For, while the Mutants had looted and plundered even before their obsessive desire to steal the Eye of Thundera led them to pursue the Thundercats all the way to Third Earth, they would never be content with a single bracelet unless they needed it for a specific purpose.
"But what would they do a thing like that for?" Wilykit asked.
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Tygra said. He stood up and paced round the room as he struggled to collect his thoughts. "You all know as well as I do that this isn't like them; had they been after loot, they would have gotten away with a lot more than Dari's bracelet."
All the while Tygra was speaking, Lion-O sat staring absently at the Sword of Omens, currently in its resting position with the Eye of Thundera reduced to a vertical slit. But, as he looked at the Sword which had helped the Thundercats through so many times of peril, he began to wonder if its Sight Beyond Sight power might be able to help solve at least some of this mystery. After all, it had worked on most other occasions; only rarely, as in their encounter with the ghost of the renegade Thundercat Grune, had it been known to fail. "Let's see if the Sword can shed any light on this," he said. With that, he drew the Sword and raised it so that the crossbar of its hilt was level with his eyes. Then, in a clear commanding voice, he called out the words handed down through generations of Thundercat Lords that would activate the Sword and enable him to see what was happening. "Sword of Omens, give me Sight Beyond Sight!" And, as if by magic, the Sword's crossbars began to curl upwards.
As Lion-O looked through the Eye of Thundera, he saw the Mutants assembled before Mumm-Ra in the Black Pyramid, Slithe in the process of presenting something to the evil mummy.
"Greetingssss, oh Mighty Mumm-Ra!" Slithe was saying. "Asss ordered, we have brought you a Wollo brassselet."
He held the bracelet up for Mumm-Ra to see and, looking through the Eye of Thundera, Lion-O immediately recognised it as Dari's. There was no mistaking the two entwined hearts stamped into the metal. Wilykit had identified the same bracelet by that very design when she found it among Baron Karnor's pile of loot.
"Excellent," Mumm-Ra said, giving his minions a rare nod of approval. "But there are still more items to be collected before the Curse can be invoked." He bent down and picked up a small bottle that appeared to be made out of solid jade, holding it up for the Mutants to see. "This holds the venom of a rare Golden Cobra and should not be opened without reason, for one drop spilled reduces its effectiveness."
"And I suppose he wants us to go after a Golden Cobra next," Jackalman muttered under his breath as he gave Slithe and Monkian a sly sneer.
"On the contrary!" Mumm-Ra snapped, pointing imperiously at the three Mutants. "I have all I need for our purposes right here in this bottle. However, I still require water from the River of Despair, the tail-hair of a unicorn and . . ." he paused to give an evil chuckle as he thought of the last ingredient. " . . . the blood of a young girl! You will collect those items and bring them here to me!"
At this point the image in the Eye faded and the Sword's crossbars returned to their usual shape. Lion-O placed the Sword on the table and turned to his fellows, a grim expression etched into his face. "The Mutants have taken Dari's bracelet to Mumm-Ra," he told them. "And, from what I saw, they seem to be planning some sort of ritual."
"Evil, I'll bet," Snarf cut in, huddling into a ball as if to avoid being hit by one of Mumm-Ra's blasts of energy. "Snarf, snarf!" He shuddered as he wondered what Mumm-Ra could be planning this time, what terrible dangers Lion-O, to whom he had been fiercely loyal throughout the Thundercat Lord's life, must face now. Despite the fact that Lion-O had been the only one of the Thundercats to age visibly during their time in the suspension capsules en route to Third Earth - or maybe because of it - Snarf still had a hard time adjusting to the idea that he was now an adult.
"Yeah, figures," Panthro commented in a slight undertone as he and the other Thundercats turned to look at each other, each of them wondering the same thing: what was all this about? The Thundercats all knew only too well what was likely to happen if Mumm-Ra started performing rituals. These tended to involve summoning some ancient demon or monster to terrorise Third Earth and, since the Eye of Thundera was all that stood between Mumm-Ra and total domination, the Thundercats invariably found themselves in the firing line.
In the end, it was Tygra who broke the silence which followed. "We'd better find out what's going on. And soon. If Mumm-Ra is planning a ritual . . . Well, let's just say it's not going to be any fun for us."