Chapter 3: What Remains
"…e's… live!"
"…no …ay."
"hey… re yo… live?"
Leppria woke up to the smell of smoke and the feeling of someone shaking her. Her eyes felt like they were full of sand, but she managed to force them open enough to see the sun shining overhead, and the vague outline of someone leaning over her.
They were small, but thinking they were lizards that had returned to finish her off, she tried to jump to her feet, but smacked her forehead into the face of her supposed attacker.
Pain raced through her skull as she clutched it, the small body beside her copying her as they screamed in agony together.
Baring her claws, she prepared to attack, but was surprised to find two kittens, a boy and a girl, in place of the lizards she'd thought them to be. They were scruffy and wearing commoner's clothes, but that hardly made a difference. They were both Thundercats, and they were alive.
The boy was furiously rubbing at his sore forehead, but the girl looked at her giddily with her huge amber eyes. She grabbed her companion, probably her brother, and shook him excitedly.
"See Kat! I told you so! I knew she was still alive!"
The bump on his head immediately forgotten, the boy flashed Leppria an impish grin, his honey-colored eyes identical to his sister's as he held out his paw to her. "Glad we dug you up! We thought we were the only cats left!"
She stared at the pair of them, their kitten grins and lashing tails, the small hand extended for her. They thought they were the only two survivors in all of Thundera, the once towering city, the beacon of light in an empty sea, and the staple of the empire the Thundercats built.
It was all gone.
The smoke she'd tasted was all around them, rising up in weak pillars from the destroyed buildings and crumbled streets. Sooty stars from the explosions painted across every other surface, and the smell of death outlining each silhouette of the fallen cats buried beneath the rubble.
The attack last night was a success.
Thundera had fallen.
The Thundercats were now an endangered species.
Leppria looked back at the kittens in front of her, the boy and his sister still smiling despite the destruction around them, and for some reason, it made her feel hopeful.
Ignoring the burn in her eyes as smoke rather than tears, she took his smaller paw and gave it a firm shake, a silent declaration of their new friendship.
Wilykat and Wilykit, or Kat and Kit as they preferred, helped her comb through the ruins for supplies and survivors. Both were scarce if not nonexistent. She realized partway through their search that her knapsack was missing, starting to overturn every piece of rubble she found looking for it and hoping those lizards that knocked her out hadn't taken it.
It wasn't until she heard a string of static that she found it, buried under debris and covered in dust, but there. Unfortunately, the lizards had picked it clean, her tech and most of her tools gone save for the explosive she pried from the wall of the shelter and a wrench. Her audio scanner however had gotten the worst of it.
It looked like it had been ripped open and stepped on, the metal dented and the wires frayed, both of the dials missing as it made puny static noises before dying completely.
Leppria felt her heart sting painfully as she held her years of hard work in her hands, torn apart in seconds. It had taken centuries to build Thundera, even longer to maintain peace among the other clans, and it had all been destroyed in a night.
The kittens found her like that, staring at her smashed trinket, Kat weaved under her arm while Kit brushed her bushy tail across Leppria's hand. "Since we're the last of Thundera, we should stick together, eh stranger?" Kat proposed.
She took his smaller paw in hers and gave it a firm shake. "Sure, I'm Leppria."
Kit shook her hand while her brother was still holding it, the newly formed trio sticking close together as they continued to search through the ruins. They pulled out bits of scrap metal from the forge, along with food and clothes from the remains of the slum markets, and Lep even managed to dig up some explosive units that hadn't detonated.
Her knapsack was full of bombs as she and the kittens made it to the edge of the city, the pair scavenging for more supplies from piles of scrap metal while the leopard girl looked solemnly out over what used to be Thundera.
It almost felt like a dream, it didn't quite feel real.
As a cub, she was taught that the Thundercats were the only species capable of preserving peace among the warring animals, so to see their entire legacy razed to the ground, felt like an extremely vivid nightmare.
But it wasn't a nightmare, it was real.
Her home had been taken from her by the lizards, just like her parents.
She didn't realize she was crying until she felt Kit's hand in her own, the cub looking up at her with understanding eyes. The child no more than ten knew exactly how she felt, and that was honestly the worst part.
There was no plan for where they'd go or how they'd survive, but they had to keep moving forward.
Leppria's ears suddenly twitched as she heard movement close by.
Someone was coming.
Three cloaked figures approached them, and she briefly considered grabbing a rock to defend herself with, but quickly relaxed when she saw they were cats like her. The kittens however were much more open in their relief, running out into the open once they spotted them.
Her verdant eyes widened when she saw him; from his Thunderan blue clothes to his scarlet red mane. He looked exactly the way he did yesterday yet at the same time entirely different. His eyes were cold and angry instead of wide and innocent.
Prince Lion-O in all his glory, alive and standing right in front of her.
"I don't believe it!" Kit exclaimed, "Prince Lion-O and Tygra to the rescue!"
The princes and their companion walked right past the twins, Lion-O not even sparing them a second glance. Leppria was stunned, the crown prince just found survivors and he didn't even look at them, he just walked by them like they were nothing.
Kit tailed the prince, "Maybe we can join you until we get to where we're going?" Kat pulled a scroll of paper from one of his many pockets. "El Dara the City of Treasure!"
The prince scowled. "Never heard of it."
"Of course not! I've got the only proof!" he held out his scroll as if it were made of gold, precious and to be looked after. His bright smile quickly fell however when Lion-O once again shot him down.
"No."
The kittens' tails drooped sadly, and Leppria suddenly wanted to punch the spoiled prince in the face. First he chose lizards over his own people by pardoning them, and now he was walking away from the last of the Thundercats entirely.
Words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. "You can't just leave us here!"
That at least seemed to give him pause. Both of the princes and their companion, she could now see she was a tall cheetah woman, stopped and looked at her, a leopard covered in dirt and ash with two kittens at her hip.
Prince Tygra's eyes flashed with brief recognition, "I know you," he said. "You're the blacksmith's apprentice."
She nodded, turning back to the taller lion. "Please, we don't have anywhere else to go."
His direct anger stung much worse than his rejection, and if he recognized her at all he didn't show it. "We're on a mission to avenge my father, your king! I don't have time to play babysitter!"
He turned his back on her and began to walk away, his comrades seeming to disagree as they remained in their places.
"Lion-O…" Prince Tygra began.
"They're just going to have to take care of themselves!" with that final rejection, the other two began to follow him, leaving her and the kittens behind.
Leppria felt fear spread throughout her body as she watched them walk away, grimly reminded of two leopards leaving for the Lizard War and never coming back, she couldn't let them leave, if not for her survival than for the kittens who had no one else.
Her tongue felt like lead, but the words tumbled out like vomit. "I'm an engineer!" she shouted.
Lion-O's cold eyes made her flinch, but she quickly brushed it off, standing as tall as she could and trying to exude confidence.
She cleared her throat, "And I'm practically an expert with technology, I've studied it my whole life… and I can fix things, the Gauntlet of Omens for example." That seemed to grab his attention, his golden eyebrow arching questioningly. She nodded once, entirely serious. "You need me."
They stared at each other, storm blue locked with olive green, so different from the last time they'd encountered one another, but they were different people then, despite it only being two days ago.
He sighed through his nose. "If you slow us down…"
"I won't."
A pregnant pause lingered between them before he made a resigned expression. "Fine."
He turned away and continued on, unaware of the huge sigh of relief that left the leopard girl. She and the Wily siblings all exchanged relieved smiles, the princes' cheetah companion even giving them a warm quirk of her lips as the newly formed group began their trek from Thundera.
Leppria spared her home one more look before she turned and followed her king.
She was thoroughly regretting every decision she had ever made in her life.
Rain had soaked her to the bone as she huddled beside the cheetah woman she now knew as Cheetara. The group had hiked without stopping all day, making it out of the valley that held Thundera and coming to a forest, Lion-O only deciding to stop and rest once the icy rain started.
The prince, or rather, the king sat apart from everyone else, already asleep or at least pretending to be with his back to them as his chest steadily rose and fell. He'd barely spoken a word to anyone, only fixing a glare at the horizon whenever he had the chance.
It worried Leppria like crazy.
She had no idea where the lion was taking them, if he even had a destination at all, and forgive her but she didn't feel like dying after barely escaping the lizards because the new king didn't have a plan.
Cheetara opened her cloak slightly when she started shivering, the leopard giving her a grateful smile before huddling closer, marveling at how warm she was. She was like a ray of pure sunlight, golden and kind like a blanket that had been left in the sun forever.
She almost choked when the taller woman chuckled slightly, Leppria realizing she had been purring.
The rain eventually came to a stop, and the group quickly feasted on their waning rations before moving on.
After another day, they came to a canyon, every stone and surface was covered in thick green moss, so the entire valley looked green. It had taken some time getting to the bottom, but they had managed and were now taking a break beside a river, Leppria thankful for the cool water down her parched throat.
It was strange, everywhere they went there wasn't a sign of life anywhere, besides the chirping neezles in the trees above or the desert crawlers concealed along the riverbed.
It wasn't anything like the bustling city they'd come from. There was just… silence.
She decided she hated it.
Her fingers drummed impatiently, a tick she'd developed after working so many years in the forge. It was always better to keep busy than be idle, so her hands were always busy, whether she liked it or not.
Lion-O filled his cask by the river before tucking it into his cloak, already continuing forward without knowing or caring that his comrades were following him. Their journey left the green valley behind, throwing them into a harsh and unforgiving desert.
They decided to travel at night to avoid the sun, their cloaks thick enough to repel the dropping temperatures.
She was almost in awe as the third moon reached its highest point. Leppria had never seen the sky so clear, it was like every star in existence had pushed its way into the sky, glittering among the nebulas like precious gems.
Cheetara fell into step beside her, the two females staying close to preserve warmth once again. "As cold as he is, we were all thankful to find survivors." she spoke, briefly looking back at the kittens trailing close behind them. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you escape the lizards?"
Her verdant gaze fell from the stars above to the sand below, watching the grains fall and shift beneath her paws. "I saw them putting bombs at the entrances to the shelter, and when it exploded they grabbed me… I tried to get away but one of hem knocked me out." She rubbed the back of her head, the ache having long since faded. "When I woke up… everything was gone."
The cheetah nodded sadly, so understanding.
She rubbed her thumb across one of her silver bangles, the metal glinting slightly in the moon Panthera's light.
"What… what happened?" if she was traveling with the princes than she must have seen something during the attack, or at least more than Leppria had. Thundera had fallen so fast, and if the lizards had bombs like those in her bag than what stopped them from having something stronger? Something big enough to crumble an empire.
"General Grune betrayed Thundera, he let the lizards into the city with more technology than we ever thought possible, destroying everything in their path… but that was far from the worst of it." Her ruby rose eyes narrowed. "He allowed Mumm-Ra into our walls as well, I saw him, he was more evil than any story could have ever told you, he killed Claudus, and we were only spared thanks to the rising sun, I suppose its light burns the flesh of evil."
Leppria only stared, her mouth agape with disbelief but her stomach filling with dread as she realized the cheetah was completely serious.
"So, Mumm-Ra… is real?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Cheetara's nod was like a knife in her gut.
Of course she knew about Mumm-Ra, but he was always just a story her parents and then Cougra had used to get her to do stuff as a cub, threatening that Mumm-Ra the Ever Living would gobble her up if she didn't do this or that. But he was just a story, a nightmare.
Only, he wasn't.
That monster was the one responsible for the fall of Thundera and the death of its king. No wonder the lizards had taken the city in a night, they were helped by the worst force of evil the universe had ever known.
Swallowing, she continued, not letting herself be too distracted by that terrifying revelation. "So… where exactly are we going?"
Cheetara's brow furrowed slightly, the barest hint of irritation marring her golden features. "Mumm-Ra is after the Eye of Thundera, and our only chance at defeating him lies in the Book of Omens."
She considered commenting but didn't; if Mumm-Ra was real, then perhaps it wasn't too much of s stretch to believe the Book of Omens was real too.
"My teacher, Jaga, told us that it rests in a temple at the edge of the sun's horizon… that is where we need to be going." Her voice chipped, and Leppria remembered the sun setting to their left only hours ago.
Her ears perked as she realized they were heading south instead of west, they weren't following the horizon at all.
Their king was leading them in a completely different direction!
Far too late, Leppria suddenly realized that Lion-O was crazy.
Leppria is gay for Cheetara because so am I. That's all. Ciao!