Lion-O dropped the velocycle low to the ground and flew to the east, where multiple rivers flowed swift and brown, and stately trees clustered along their banks. There, they learned that Hattanz-O, famous for his role in the Duelist's defeat, had returned home in victory, and they were proudly directed to his workshop in Bunnyburgh.

A lop-eared rabbit, his long hair pulled back and secured with a sateen ribbon, leaned against a haphazard picket fence. He spat out a willow twig as the velocycle glissaded up to the fence and then powered down. When he saw who emerged from the unsealed canopy, he opened the crooked gate, beaming so widely that his large front teeth gleamed and his dark eyes closed to crescents.

Behind him, autumn gold carpeted a low hill. A line of wash hung drying from one end of it, snapping like flags in the wind. Children's playthings lay scattered in the yard where little ones had abandoned them for chores inside the burrow.

"Lion-O!" the rabbit greeted in his unexpectedly cultured baritone. He came out to meet them. "Felline! It is good to see you, my friends, good to see you. It is fortunate you have found me at home. I leave tomorrow for the market in Foxford."

Felline had never seen the diminutive swordsmith so well-groomed and dapper, or smelling so clean. He pressed her hand warmly between both of his paws, seeming truly glad to see them.

"I'm afraid this isn't a social visit, Hattanz-O," Lion-O said in a low voice, so that the small yet pretty rabbit standing curiously in the doorway that led into the hill, a kit in her arms and several more peering around her ankles, wouldn't hear. "I need your help."

The wind rustled the branches of the towering weeping willow that protected Hattanz-O's snug burrow from the weather. Hattanz-O himself said nothing as Lion-O showed him what was inside the Gauntlet of Omens. He merely stroked his furry chin, brows furrowed.

"Yes . . . hmm . . ." he mumbled, sounding as distracted as he had the first time they'd met him. "Er . . . I suppose . . . you'd better . . . come in the back . . . Follow me."

After sharing a meaningful glance, Felline and Lion-O fell into step behind their host. Hattanz-O waved reassuringly at his wife. She, with a dubious look at the two tall ThunderCats, pulled her children inside the burrow and closed the door. Hattanz-O, deep in thought, his long feet occasionally leaving the ground so that he drifted along like a toy boat in a stream, led Lion-O and Felline around the back side of the hill, where several stone chimneys breathed wispy gray smoke into the wind. He opened a warped wooden door, jiggling the handle until it unstuck from the frame, and motioned them inside.

A neat dirt tunnel led to his workshop. Anvils, hammers, tongs, and swords decorated the rough earthen walls, soot blackened the intruding roots of the willow. Scarred and scorched workbenches supported thick stacks of hand-drawn designs and scrap buckets, a faucet dripped into a drain in the corner, and the stink of iron hazed over it all.

Felline protested the rosy glow of the furnace and the close, humid air with a heartfelt sigh. Lion-O grinned at her, obviously reveling in the heat. When she made a face at him, he snickered. She felt like slapping him, but she refrained. It had been so long since he'd teased her. She'd sort of . . . missed it.

"Here's the thing," Hattanz-O said, sobering both of them right up. "I can't help you. I work in iron and steel. I have studied nothing of the arcane arts. This—" he rapped his knuckles on the Gauntlet and looked gravely up at Lion-O, "this is beyond even my abilities, my friend."

Lion-O sagged. "Is there nothing you can do?"

"I'm afraid not."

As though all of her bones had turned to silt, Felline sat on an anvil, her tail and her ears drooping. Was that it, then? Was this the end of their long journey? They couldn't fight without the Sword of Omens and the War Stone. Mumm-Ra, his evil sorcery boosted by the Tech Stone, would kill them all.

Hattanz-O did not misread their dismay. He rubbed his cheek, then the back of his neck. He sank into thought. At last, he seemed to come to a decision, though with apparent reluctance.

"There might be a way," he said, brows knitted. "In circles within circles of smiths and guilds, I have heard tell of a legendary hammer, fashioned by the gods themselves, which can work magic the likes of which hasn't been seen in centuries. It may be the only thing powerful enough to repair something as unique as the Sword of Omens."

"If anything like that actually exists, I've never heard of it," Lion-O said.

"Yes, you have," Felline corrected him, surprised. "It was in the Book of Omens."

"You mean—you're talking about—" Lion-O faltered, and then an expression of hope blazed from his dark blue eyes. "The Hammer of Thundera!"

"Does it still exist, do you think?"

"No one knows what happened to it after the Black Pyramid crash-landed on Third Earth, but the Stones survived, so it has to be here somewhere."

"What if it's still inside the Black Pyramid?"

Lion-O hesitated, but then he shook his head. "If Mumm-Ra had it, he wouldn't risk any stories leaking out about something so powerful, not before he had the War Stone in his possession. He would have used it to remove the Stone instead of relying on that ritual."

"Which didn't work."

"Exactly."

"You speak in riddles, friends," Hattanz-O broke in with a rueful chuckle.

"We've heard of a legendary hammer," Lion-O said apologetically. "It's a relic of the ancient cats, my ancestors. It was what forged the Sword of Omens in the first place."

Hattanz-O stroked his chin, once more thoughtful. "Then I urge you to seek it out, friend Lion-O. I can tell you at least this much. Legend goes that the hammer chooses its master, not the other way around. The rumor which last reached my long ears hints that it and the one it has been entrusted to were glimpsed far to the south, beyond the Greater Barrier where the prairies roll under wide-open skies and the bull-men are formed of iron. More than that, I cannot say, though I wish it otherwise. Instead, I think I have something here that could help."

He pawed through a barrel of swords, then examined the weapons adorning his rough walls, coming up with one that gleamed golden. Felline recognized it immediately. The Sword of Hattanz-O.

"I can't take that," Lion-O said flatly.

Hattanz-O laughed at him. "Of course you can, and you will, and you will do great things with it. I could gift my masterpiece to no other swordsman. I bid you good luck, ThunderCats, and godspeed, and may one day we meet again."

..::~*~::..

Beloved.

Pumyra opened her eyes to a box of a room devoid of color, consisting of silver-white walls and floor and gray-black shadows. A fan turned languidly behind the grate in the ceiling. Its blades cut the low light into revolving strips. She sat up, holding her head. The nondescript blanket below her was barely mussed. The air was neither warm nor cool. There were no windows this deep in the Pyramid. No smells. Few sounds. What had woken her?

Come to me, Beloved.

"Master?" she asked thickly, her mind cobwebbed with sleep.

Come!

She saw it, then. Color. A fiery pink. The black jewel pendant she wore on a string around her neck was glowing.

She closed her fingers around it, dousing the glow, but its warmth burned the cobwebs from her mind. The pendant had been a gift from Him, and how He had kept in touch with her during that interminable journey with . . . him.

The jewel pulsed with her Master's need, His desire for her. Pumyra leaped to her feet and hastened from her room. Down the corridors she flew on long, strong legs, bare feet slapping on the tiles. She bypassed the sluggish lifts for the stairs. Her heart pattered in her chest, longing to reunite with her one true love.

The doors to Mumm-Ra's inner sanctum whooshed open and Pumyra flitted inside, breathless. "I am here, Master."

Out of the shadows, He came. He was small and thin, hunched within His tattered red cloak, His emaciated body wrapped in trailing bandages. Pumyra, however, only saw the bottomless eyes, glowing like red coals with a power unmatched in the entire universe.

"Excellent, my dear," He said in His clotted voice. He lifted a skeletal hand and caressed the side of her face.

Her eyes drifted shut, and she leaned into His touch.

"Now that we are all present, we may begin," He added.

The hand dropped away. Pumyra's eyes snapped open. She and her Master were not alone!

As Mumm-Ra shuffled around the pool sunken in the center of the room, which radiated eldritch blue light, she caught sight of another. Jealousy and a fighting instinct burned hot in her chest. Her hands closed into fists, and a growl worked its way up her throat. Slithe merely looked at her out of his yellow slits of eyes. His fins fanned around his cheeks and reflected the eldritch light, throwing weird shadows across his bloated, reptilian features.

After a short struggle with herself, Pumyra controlled her reaction, only because she knew that Mumm-Ra did not like it. He did not allow anyone else to speak when He had something to say. Therefore, she swallowed the growl and stood straight, striving to emulate her rival's impassiveness.

Mumm-Ra either did not notice her struggle or chose to ignore it. He lifted two wasted arms from the confines of the cloak and spread knobbly, dirty scab-colored fingers over the pool. The Well of Souls, which had returned life to Pumyra's body after she had perished in the smoking ruins of Thundera. The water, which seemed more like a clear blue gel than actual water, responded in ripples that became waves. Not a drop splashed onto the pool's rim or Mumm-Ra's bare, long-nailed toes, but ghostlike figures rose from the depths. The shiny gel replicated every detail, so that facial expressions could easily be recognized, even if the faces themselves were semitransparent.

Pumyra felt a jolt all the way down to her toes. The Well had cloned the ThunderCats, grouped together and talking animatedly, though silently. The ThunderCats, and . . . him.

The heat of jealousy and the electrifying surprise drained out of Pumyra, replaced by a glacial indifference. She studied the pellucid blue face of her king. He was not happy, she saw, but she felt no answering empathy, nor did she feel glad. She simply did not care. Her former companions were obviously in the middle of one of their casual group councils, arguing back and forth over something inconsequential. WilyKat jumped up and down to make a point, but Panthro put a paw on his head and squashed him down; the kitten laughed. The others joined in, and they wasted a few moments in meaningless mirth.

. . . he . . . looked down and said something unintelligible to Felline, who held Snarf in her arms. She smiled up at him in that quiet way of hers, while Snarf made his silent snarf sounds as though in agreement.

. . . and feeling rushed back. Pumyra grunted, pressing a fist to her chest, for it felt as though her heart had been pierced with a needle. Felline. They had been friends, hadn't they? Felline would understand why Pumyra hated it here. Felline would make it better. Felline would—

"Pay no mind, Beloved," Mumm-Ra said calmly. "They are beneath you."

His measured voice filled her ears, blocking all extraneous thought.

"Of course, Master," Pumyra said in monotone. He was right. These animals meant nothing to her. She straightened, letting her hand fall. "Do the Spirits have a mission for me?"

For the Ancient Spirits were the all-knowing, all-benevolent, ancient purveyors of power and rule. It was by their counsel that Mumm-Ra, the Ever-Living, faithful servant of order and peace, had come so close to unifying the universe once before. By their counsel, he would succeed at last.

"We do." Mumm-Ra waved as though backhanding a goblet off a table. The ghostly figures in the pool collapsed like melted wax, and a new scene arose. A ring of sleeping volcanic mountains. A prairie that stretched for hundreds of miles. A town, bustling with large creatures. A figure, features blurred and indistinct, but by its posture, Pumyra surmised that it was a blacksmith. The Well zoomed in on the tool in its hand and then froze there.

A hammer. Oddly, it looked like a roaring lion's head, the back of its flowing mane flattened. She'd never seen anything like it, but . . .

Pumyra tilted her head. It was familiar to her. Like a memory of a dream one of her ancestors might have had.

"The ThunderCats seek something that was stolen from me many centuries ago," Mumm-Ra said. "I want it back. You, Pumyra and Slithe, will retrieve it before the cats get their hands on it."

Pumyra dropped to one knee. "I will not fail you, Master," she said to the floor.

"I know you won't," Mumm-Ra said. Chuckling, he held his arms over what was an ordinary pool of water, his bandages and his cloak floating on the still air, strings of spit clinging to his pointed teeth.

Pumyra cast a sidelong glance at Slithe, intimating that he should hurry if he didn't want to be left behind. What did she need a lizard like him for, anyway? She was perfectly capable of outwitting . . . him . . . on her own. Slithe, however, was studying the four tall statues that stood behind their master in a tight half-moon as though he hadn't heard a word their master had said.

Pumyra frowned. They were just four crude stone statues, crumbling and blackened with age. Four animals, limbs and bodies hidden beneath carved robes that fell straight from their rounded shoulders to the floor. A spot of reflected reddish light flickered over four pairs of blank stone eyes. The spot ran from the reptile, to the ape, then the jackal, and then the bird.

She blinked. The spot vanished, the statues were lifeless stone, Mumm-Ra was cloaked head to toe in the shadowy center of their half-moon, His laughter was silenced, the pool was motionless and dark, and Slithe was the one leaving her behind. She followed him from the room, ready for some action.

The ThunderCats weren't going to know what hit them.

A/N2: Labor Day! Finally, a day off where I could work on this, haha.

Reviewer Thanks! KelseyAlicia, Heart of the Demons, Blacktiger93, The Night Whisperer, Atea1793, Hestia28 (I'm really glad you're picking up on Pumyra's problem - it's a very tricky line for me to walk! But it seems like you're getting it, so I'm happy with that, hee. Also, yes, "sturdy." LOL!), and St4r Hunter.

Here's hoping you've enjoyed this update!

Love,

Anne