"Lion-O!" Cheetara called. "Felline's not breathing!"

His stomach dropped into his toes. He ran over to his friends, dread drying out his mouth. "Is she—?"

"No, but I have to act fast," Cheetara said tensely. "Tilt her head back and make sure there are no obstructions in her throat."

When he didn't immediately obey, Cheetara closed cold, hard fingers on his wrist. Her sunset-colored eyes were laser-beam sharp. "Now, Lion-O."

Why was he hesitating? He nodded, and the steely fingers disappeared. He awkwardly lifted Felline's head over his folded legs and opened her mouth. She did not resist. She was warm but completely limp, unconscious but not asleep. There was no life in her at all.

Meanwhile, Cheetara held Viragor's staff horizontally over Felline's body, her eyes closed in concentration. The staff began to glow a soft green, reminiscent of fungal phosphorescence. The glow spread up her arms.

She opened her eyes. They glinted green, too. Slowly, she pressed one glowing hand against Felline's chest, and then she pressed harder. The green glow invaded Felline's body, rippling like a pool of water under Cheetara's palm. The staff made an alarming cracking noise, like a branch breaking.

"Breathe, Felline," Cheetara said, her gaze locked on Felline's chest—not as if she saw it, but as if she saw through it to a still and cooling heart. "Breathe!"

She worked for a few seconds over their lifeless friend, pressing the green glow deeper until, with a loud snap, a sliver of the staff cracked away from the whole.

Felline jumped. Her eyes opened, more cub-like and rounded than ever. After enough time to make Lion-O, holding his breath, begin to wish for air, she gasped. Panic flooded her white face. Then she started coughing.

"It'll be all right. Just breathe," Cheetara said, sounding breathless herself. She lowered the cracked staff, helped Felline sit up from Lion-O's lap, and rubbed her back with a perfectly normal, non-glowing hand.

"Thanks," Felline managed to say. She held her head in her hands, burying her face in her knees. Her voice, when she spoke, was muffled. "Now I know how it feels to get run over by the ThunderTank."

Startling Lion-O, the sliver of staff that had fallen gave a wiggle. Wormlike, it squirmed for a moment over the rocky ground, and then tiny, hair-like fibers sprouted from one end. These sought the cool darkness of the soil, turning the sliver upright. As Lion-O watched, a few tender green leaves unfurled from the tip.

It had become a seedling. If it survived, then a piece of Viragor's magic would live on, far from the Forest of Magi Oar.

"Where did you learn magic like that?" he asked Cheetara wonderingly. He hoped her staff would heal as well, in time.

She grinned. "Here and there. A little from Faun, a bit from the elephants, some from the fishmen. There is wisdom in all ways. All ways are wise."

"Right." Lion-O wasn't quite sure what she meant, but he did know one thing: Cheetara was still Jaga's best student.

This thought killed his relief at Felline's recovery. Cheetara was the last cleric. He was the last king. So many animals had sacrificed everything they had to get them to this point. Felline had almost joined their number.

No more.

Lion-O stood. "You two get to the Feliner and prepare for takeoff," he said.

He expected Felline to object, but she seemed groggy and sick, her ears wilted, her arms wrapped around her chest as though she needed to hold her ribs together.

"Where are you going?" Cheetara asked.

"To put a stop to this."

"How?"

"Pumyra. She's here. Kaynar was supposed to keep me busy, keep me away from her. If I can stop her, then I stop the battle."

Cheetara's mouth popped open. "You think that's what Kaynar meant? Wait! Lion-O—!"

He was already running, his heartbeat loud in his ears. Lizards reared out of the obscuring dust clouds, thick-haunched, thin-shouldered, and toting hefty energy rifles equipped with bayonets long enough to pierce an elephant's leathery skin. Their swamp-colored hides, mottled blue and gray and green and brown, camouflaged them until they were underfoot, so he concentrated on the telltale winking of their red-lensed goggles or the accidental gleam of sunlight on their helmets. Not so long ago, he had wasted several weeks trying to save a people he had once seen as pathetic, misunderstood victims in need of a champion. Instead of killing those he caught, he had set them free and given them a chance to return home. The fact that they were here, still fighting, still doing Mumm-Ra's bidding—his pity burned away in the heat of battle, and he struck them ruthlessly down. Left and right the Sword arced, smashing apart rifles, releasing cold reptilian blood in sprays that dampened the dust. Several times, he called forth the blue lightning that made his fur crackle and flung it off the Sword's blade at the zipcraft that tracked him through the chaos, blowing them out of the sky. He carved a path through the worst destruction as though a force had leashed him and dragged him forward.

To her.

Mumm-Ra's generosity toward his newest general shone under her feet, which were wrapped in the kind of supple leather footwear the cats preferred. The oversized, snake-headed hovercraft bore her leisurely through the battle, its lizard crew manning the deck cannons, mowing down the resistance fighters. On Avista's doorstep, ravenmen and dogs and elephants fell to the overpowered cannons' efficiency. Tygra stood with them, his blue whip seeking soft lizard throats to wrap around, weapons to steal from thin fingers, unwary legs or tails to pluck from underneath. His pistol fired constantly from his other hand.

Behind Tygra, the city rumbled. With agonizing slowness, like a stone falling upward through tar, Avista lifted from the ground. It shed rocks and dirt from its smooth metal and perspex skin, shuddering as it fought to break free of Third Earth and reclaim its place in the sky. The fleeing stragglers spread their wings at last, crying out as they chased the city into the air, begging not to be left behind.

Pumyra stood at the hovercraft's prow, an electric spear propped upright in one hand, the other hand fisted against a shapely hip. Her golden wrist bow gleamed. The wind combed through her ginger ponytail. The fur-lined dress had been replaced with a suit of armor similar to Lion-O's, though the black metal swallowed the light, and the bloodred emblem of a double-headed snake blazed across her chest plate. She watched the city struggle to stabilize and pointed with her spear. As one, the deck cannons angled up, firing upon Avista repeatedly.

At her side, somehow dwarfed by her tall, slender, and imposing form, Slithe, leader of the lizards, stood impassively watching the slaughter. He crossed his freakishly long arms over his pale, flabby chest, his wedge-shaped mouth closed and unsmiling. He looked bored, his eyelids at half-mast, his tail barely moving to keep his balance. Not once did he look at the armored mountain lioness who had taken his place at the head of his people's armies.

Lion-O thought he had prepared himself, but when Pumyra turned her head and fixed heavy-lashed eyes on him, he felt as though she had punched a fist through his chest and wrapped claw-tipped fingers around his heart. Autumn-glossed lips spread in a grin as manic as Kaynar's, her face transported with feral pleasure. The phantom claws squeezed.

Zipcraft circled, firing at the thundrilium thrusters that groaned with all the force of a dragon's exhale. The thrusters shot tails of blue-white flame that stretched ten feet, fifty, one hundred. The remaining ravenmen, aboard their replenished sky cutters, dropped from the city's bays like vengeful wasps. While they turned upon the lizards still circling, the city gained momentum, rising faster now, an air bubble streaking for the surface.

They had done it. The city, though trailing black smoke, shrank with distance, flying free. It was going. Going.

Lion-O barely noticed. "Pumyra!"

"Lion-O," she said, her raspy voice hungry. She crouched, grasping the spear in both hands. It crackled and buzzed to life.

"Stop this now!" he said, his own voice raspy as he fought against the tide of emotions that battered his body from the inside.

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't take orders from you."

With a roar, she sprang.

In The Pit, Lion-O had refused to fight her because he had seen her, this beautiful, feral woman, as another victim in need of a champion. He knew better now.

"Thunder. Thunder. Thunder! ThunderCats, ho!"

Pumyra spun in mid-air so that the red beam that shot from the Eye of Thundera missed her by a handspan. She landed on her feet. Bent double, she charged at him on a curve, seeking his unguarded back. Lion-O held the beacon of the roaring cat head steady and flung out his Gauntleted left arm. He just needed to hold her off until help arrived.

The Spirit Stone flared and planted a vibrating pink shield of light between them. Pumyra checked her charge and threw up her crossed arms, but Lion-O's shield expanded. It pushed her back. She dug in her toes, her claws leaving long furrows in the dirt, and snarled her frustration at him.

From the side, laser blasts tore up the ground around Lion-O, forcing him to jump out of the way. The beacon blinked out. Pumyra punched the spirit shield, breaking it into pieces. Instead of resuming her attack, she whirled, bristling, upon her hovercraft.

"I don't need help from you, lizard," she spat with withering venom.

Slithe blinked his reptilian eyes. He didn't seem perturbed in the least that the birds had slipped through their claws. "Mumm-Ra'sss ordersss," he said in a bored tone of voice. "We lizardss are to provide asssistansse and backup for General Pumyra."

"I don't need a cubsitter!"

Slithe stared down at her with sunken yellow eyes, his body a hill of corpulence. "Mumm-Ra'sss ordersss," he repeated.

So furious she couldn't seem to talk, Pumyra hissed at him. Then, the hiss morphing into a bloodcurdling screech, she pivoted on her heels. She swung the electric spear at Lion-O. He blocked the strike, but she had already leaped back and armed the tiny wrist bow. He moved to summon the spirit shield, too slowly. He had always been too slow for her.

A red nunchaku lashed out, quick as the stroke of a hummingbird's wing. Panthro stalked onto the field, knocking each of Pumyra's pellet-sized bullets out of the air. Broad chest scarred, harem trousers cinched around a thick waist, square-jawed face grim, he whipped his nunchaku around his shoulders in a lightning-fast display of reflexes and strength. His mismatched eyes, Lion-O noted, glowed with golden light, like polished shilligs catching the sun.

As he had commanded, the Sword of Omens had called its champion.

Panthro didn't utter a single word. He blocked the last of Pumyra's bullets and then took a stance in front of Lion-O, the king's loyal bodyguard once more. If Slithe was a hill, then the gray panther was a mountain, a slab of muscle as hard as stone.

Pumyra, grinding her teeth, twisted the handle of her spear. The tip separated into a fork, its tines webbed with electricity. She charged.

Panthro's nunchaku parried her thrust. He wrapped the spear shaft in the chain and yanked, which carried Pumyra into his range. He grabbed her head with a big metal paw and threw her toward the ground.

She seized his wrist with both hands and swung her lower body up, both heels catching his jaw with a bone-rattling crunch.

Panthro reeled back, but, in thrall to the Sword, recovered faster than a blink. He released a flurry of hydraulic-fueled punches that Pumyra could not hope to block, not at close range. The spear broke in two. She tried to sweep his legs from under him but winced as her guarded shin bounced off his muscled calf, and then cried out when his fist crashed into her cheek.

She landed with a grunt. Retched out a mouthful of blood. Raised frightened eyes when Panthro's shadow blanketed her.

"Enough!" Lion-O burst out. If he had to watch more of this, he was going to explode.

Panthro stepped back. His eyes brightened like heated metal, and then returned to their normal warm brown and milky gray. His expression of stern disapproval did not vanish, however.

"I don't need your pity!" Pumyra cried. Red smeared her cheek when she scrubbed her forearm across her bleeding mouth.

"It's not pity!" Lion-O snarled in frustration. He had to get through to her, one last time, before Slithe and the lizards, inexplicably watching from the sidelines, doing nothing, decided to act. He stepped toward her, and she scrabbled backward. He felt like stamping his foot. Child king, Lord of Fools. "We are not your enemies, Pumyra!"

"Stay back!" Pumyra produced a dagger, as curvy as a snake, and she slashed at Lion-O with it.

A/N: Hello, FanFiction! Hope you're all well, and thank you very much for waiting for this update. It was hard-fought on my part, let me tell you, lol. I think I rewrote it three separate times . . .

Reviewer Thanks! Hestia28 (hello, friend, good to hear from you! I think your request is a reasonable one, so I will definitely do my best!), KelseyAlicia, Atea1793, Lionessa, St4r Hunter, Heart of the Demons, Billamon, LunaStone115, The Night Whisperer, and FallingStar5027. You all deserve cookies for being such great readers. Thank you!

~ Anne