The blade nicked his outstretched fingers, but Lion-O knocked it aside and pounced. Pumyra shrieked as his heavier body thudded into hers, sending them both sprawling. He pinned her wrists to the ground, trying to capture her gaze.
Pumyra thrashed under him, her eyes pinched shut, throwing her head from side to side.
"Pumyra!" Lion-O shouted over her shrieks and growls. "Pumyra, look at me!"
"No!" she howled. "I hate you! I hate you!"
"Lion-O!" Panthro's deep voice stabbed as sharp as iron splinters, but Lion-O ignored his warning.
Desperate, wildly hoping she wouldn't bite him, he covered Pumyra's mouth with his own.
She gave a muffled shout and her eyes opened wide. She tasted of blood and heat. After half a heartbeat, she relaxed, her resistance seeming to melt away. She kissed him back. Her eyes slid shut, thick lashes hiding amber depths, and it was like nothing had changed between them. Her kiss burned through his body, baring all of his nerve endings to the elements. His grip on her wrists loosened and her hands crept up his arms, caressing, loving. For a moment, he was lost.
Then her feet found his stomach and she launched him across the field.
Lion-O rolled in the dirt, small rocks scraping his bare arms. Panthro ran toward him, while behind the big cat, Pumyra propped herself up on her elbow.
She began to scream.
She screamed like someone had set her on fire. Panthro and Lion-O gaped as she curled up on herself, her hands pressed over her pointed ears. Lion-O thought he could see red staining her teeth, and his own throat ached. Her screams reverberated in his skull.
"Such a disgusting display," said Vultaire, his urbane tone amplified to drown out Pumyra's demented howling. "I hate to say 'I told you so,' because when I ruled Avista City, no one was gauche enough to disagree with me in the first place."
The sleek black sky cutter hovered over the scene, its mobile repulsors whipping the air into a hurricane swirl, clearing the immediate area of clogging dust. Lion-O felt a flare of Felline's earlier anger. He cursed the tech that he did not have. He had been outmatched, time and again. No matter how far he ran, he always ended up three steps behind Mumm-Ra.
On the other hand, when had that ever stopped him?
"At least they see you for the snake you are, Vultaire," Lion-O shouted. "What leader would attack his own people?"
"General Slithe," General Vultaire snapped through the loudspeaker, though this was a command and not a reply, "your orders were clear, were they not? Remove the smelly little heathen before she injures herself."
Instantly, several lizards hopped off Pumyra's hovercraft and jogged toward her. Slithe brought up the rear, his ax propped on his shoulder.
"Resstrain her," he commanded, and the lizards obeyed. Binders snapped shut on slender wrists and ankles, but Pumyra didn't seem aware. She was still screaming when the lizards hefted her onto their rounded shoulders and bore her off the field.
"Wait!" Lion-O cried. "Pumyra!"
Without fully turning to face him, Slithe pointed his upgraded ax at him and pulled the trigger. The energy blast melted a hole through solid rock next to Lion-O's head, stopping him mid-stride. He could smell the heat from the rock vaporizing the water in the air.
Slithe's lips cracked apart, showing pointed teeth. His thick tail smacked the ground once, and then he allowed his people to pull him aboard the hovercraft. It lifted and then zoomed away.
"Now then," Vultaire said, concealed behind the cockpit's darkly tinted windscreen, though Lion-O imagined him rubbing his spiderlike hands together. "Lion-O. We have some business to attend, you and I."
"We have nothing to discuss, Vultaire," Lion-O said. He glanced up, squinting against the glare. Avista City had shrunken to a black speck in the blue sky, its sails scooping sun-kissed wind. Within moments, it disappeared beyond the clouds.
He blinked and returned his attention to the ground. Tygra stood to Lion-O's right. A trickle of blood oozed from the black stripe over his cheekbone, but he otherwise seemed fine. Panthro cracked his knuckles on Lion-O's right. WilyKat and WilyKit appeared, riding on Anet and Aburn's shoulders, their small faces savage. Dobo limped into view, holding his arm across a long cut that wept scarlet down his damp-sand-colored chest. Peering from behind boulders, trees, and shredded bushes, the berbils fixed scores of expressionless onyx eyes on the sky cutter.
The birds were safe, the lizards were retreating, the battle was won.
Lion-O pointed the Sword of Omens at the black sky cutter, wishing he could see Vultaire's ugly face one last time so he could punch the pretentious bird right in it. "Your people have abandoned you. You're all alone, Vultaire. You've lost."
"I beg to differ." Vultaire didn't sound defeated. He sounded pleased. "I am not alone. Mumm-Ra treats his allies well and rewards those who follow his orders. As I have been rewarded."
"Funny, I don't see him here," Tygra called scathingly. "He has servants, not allies. You're a glorified butler, Prefect. Oh, wait –" Here, Tygra gave a lopsided sneer that bared sharp fangs. "I forgot. You're not a prefect, you're a traitor."
"Cats." Vultaire sniffed in disgust. He spoke in a fussy, businesslike way. "Even now, you fail to see beyond your ridiculously small, unsophisticated noses. You took something precious away from me, Lion-O. Now, thanks to the boon of the Ever-Living, I shall return the favor."
The hooked scavenger's beak of the sky cutter split apart to reveal an aperture that sucked all light from the immediate area. The black hole glowed purple around the edges. A purple identical to the malevolence emitted by the Sword of Plun-Darr.
Lion-O stared at it, transfixed. Was it possible that the Sword of Plun-Darr was in the sky cutter? Was it possible for an animal like Vultaire to wield Mumm-Ra's personal weapon through layers of machinery? Was it possible for Mumm-Ra to trust his precious Sword with another?
The sphere of purple energy grew, sucking more daylight into its center. Then it shot forward in a dark beam, leaving doubt in the dust. The Sword of Plun-Darr was here, and it wanted nothing more than to destroy its twin, as well as the one who had bonded with it.
"ThunderCats, ho!" Lion-O cried. His fury and an undercurrent of fear spiraled down the Sword's length. The spirits within took those emotions and transformed them into power.
The slit pupil of the Eye of Thundera sprang open, nearly swallowing the crystalline red. The Sword roared. Crimson energies, shot through with sizzling blue lightning, gathered in the depths of the Eye and then exploded outward.
The red beam collided with the black beam, sending out a shockwave that threatened to flatten the mountains. The cries of Lion-O's friends were swept away like leaves before the gale.
Vultaire's lightless beam forced Lion-O to one knee, but he poured everything he had into his own attack. For a fleeting moment, he believed that the good of the Sword of Omens would overpower the evil of the Sword of Plun-Darr, as it had ever since the birth of the blades. Then he watched in horror as the non-light staved off the red light like a palm crushing downward.
The weight from above increased, and Lion-O sank to both knees. A minuscule corner of his mind couldn't help pointing out that Vultaire probably loved the sight of the Lord of the ThunderCats kneeling before his might.
The ground crumbled beneath Lion-O, making it seem as though he were burrowing downward. He fought to push Vultaire's attack away, to redirect it, but it strengthened before his eyes, visibly thickening like a flexed muscle. The Sword vibrated and the grip slipped in Lion-O's sweaty hands. Instinctively, he leaned into the attack, steadying the Sword with his shoulder. He refused to let it falter. He would not give in. He would not surrender.
A fresh burst of red shot from the Eye. It pierced the black beam.
At the same time, the black beam broke into finger-like tentacles that succeeded in grabbing the Sword. Its vibrating blade changed color, from the familiar quicksilver to an incandescent red surrounding a white-hot heart. Lines of shadow, like the cracks in the bed of a dried-up lake, crossed and zigzagged over the burning blade. The heat pouring from it singed Lion-O's eyebrows. He gave a wordless shout that nobody heard, eyes streaming. It felt like he was pushing against a mountain.
Keening, a high-pitched sound that Lion-O felt as though screwdrivers had punctured his eardrums, the Sword shattered.
He watched the pieces of his heritage fly apart like the shell of a grenade. The black beam slammed into his chest and drove him into the ground. His hand struck the rocks and the remains of the Sword of Omens, dull, tarnished, and bent, bounced from his fingers. His head struck the rocks and the sun imploded.
Silence descended upon the battlefield. Lion-O had no idea if anyone was still alive. He wasn't sure he was. The otherworldly voices of the Sword had cut off as surely as a door slamming shut. Emptiness yawned in his fractured heart.
"There," Vultaire said from somewhere overhead, his voice supremely satisfied, and then he chuckled. "Now we're even."
..::~*~::..
This couldn't be happening.
Sounding bored and very far away, Vultaire called off the troops. He and the lizards withdrew, leaving utter destruction in their wake.
Lion-O sat up in a day going dark, his mane clogged with dirt. He could not summon the curiosity needed to question why Vultaire had left him alive. Most likely, that had been Mumm-Ra's orders; have Vultaire destroy the Sword, have Pumyra kill its master.
A stray ray of sunshine passed over milky, lifeless shards of metal and then dropped them into shadow. The hilt to the Sword of Omens lay not far away, on the pushed-up dirt lip of the new hole that held the king in its bottom.
He picked up the Sword, or what was left of it. It did not respond. The Eye of Thundera looked dead, as opaque and featureless as a lump of red clay. The pupil had closed to nothing. Whatever power the War Stone still possessed had locked itself away from him, now that he no longer had an instrument to control it.
As he looked at it, one thought kept running through his mind, over and over, as flat and soundless as lighted shapes on a screen.
Happy birthday, Lion-O!
A/N: Oof, guys, I'm sorry this update is on the shorter side. I've been struggling and struggling to finish this chapter with the right feeling, and I ended up making this part short, and a second part about the same length - too long for a single update! I'm still on the fence whether it's the right way to go, but I guess you all will let me know if it's good or not when we get there. Meanwhile, hope this update was worth the wait! X3
Reviewer Thanks! Billamon, KelseyAlicia, The Night Whisperer, St4r Hunter, Atea1793, Heart of the Demons, Hestia28 (Would it please you to know that there is a scene I wrote and then discarded, in which Lion-O actually performed CPR? No? Well, it exists, somewhere in the ether, LOL), Darwin, and FallingStar5027. Thank you, everyone. You are the light I am always walking toward.
Much love,
Anne
