Welcome back everyone! I hope you enjoy this week's chapter :)
Storm clouds and thunder roiled overhead long before the cats made it to the heart of the Roiling Sands, a desert considered so inhospitable that not even cacti or insects graced its barren expanse. It was really living up to its name, too. Leopara hadn't seen anything but dunes, and the occasional rock protruding through the sands, in the hours since arriving. It was stormy without rain and it was full of sand.
The mere air itself felt like it was one spark from igniting into a lightning storm. The ambient static raised her fur and made her teeth itch; and that would have been bad enough, but it was rife with magic that was malicious if not outright hostile to her presence.
Purple lightning occasionally struck near them, and constantly flashed in the distance.
A part of Leopara wished that Snowmeow was with them. With his help during battle, they might have been able to get the Sword of Omens back. They could have chased after the hovercraft and tried to get it.
But she knew it was for the best that he wasn't there. They might have just killed him rather than risk transporting him and he would have been miserable in the desert.
Above all, she wanted him to be safe. Eventually, the lizards would come for the Book of Omens. If they didn't make it back… all she could do was hope that he was out hunting or already gone by the time they found it. And they would find it, she had no doubt about that; Mumm-Ra still needed all the stones, and the book would take him to them.
They crested the final dune to look ahead at Mumm-Ra's temple. It was a towering black pyramid that stood proudly amidst the sandy wastes that surrounded it. Purple lightning crashed in the distance.
"Mumm-Ra's temple. It's even scarier than I thought." Cheetara murmured.
"I nearly died in that pit, thanks to Grune." He looked to Tygra. "Sure you want me to help get us in? Getting out was hard enough."
"I don't like it either, General, but we have to get the Sword of Omens back."
They didn't have a choice in the matter. Getting the sword back was a matter of winning or losing the war- for good. If Mumm-Ra got his hands on the Eye of Thundera, it would be over.
The only thing standing between him and that stone were the wards generations of Thunderan sorcerers empowered to make sure that he could never even touch the sword. When she was younger, she'd thought 'the hands of evil' was hyperbole on Jaga's behalf.
Some fairytales were quite real, and some spells were literal.
"There's an air shaft on the north side. Dangerous, but it's your call… king."
"Prince." Leopara muttered to herself.
He wasn't king until he had the sword in his hand and it responded to his call. Lion-O hadn't even been… dead… for a whole day.
Her blood boiled a little.
Tygra raised his scope to his eye and examined their path. From here, Leopara could see lizards moving about, but not really what they were doing. He lowered his scope.
"We need to take out the guards." Tygra finally said.
Panthro nodded and stood. He began to make his way down the sloping dune, seeming perfectly confident in his ability to bash some lizards.
"You okay?" Cheetara asked.
"I always told Lion-O I should be king…" he looked away as regret rose up. "But I never wanted it like this."
"You're not king yet." Leopara reminded him, climbing to her feet. "Get the sword, and then you can worry about how you came to have it."
Almost to spite her, Cheetara softly said, "The only thing we can do now is finish the job he started." Tygra was quiet while the two of them followed after Panthro. "What do you have against Tygra being king?" Cheetara asked her.
"Lion-O's been dead less than a day, Cheetara." Leopara snapped. "And maybe you've forgotten all of our traditions, but the sword chooses its king; not you or Panthro, or anyone else." She swept her arm to gesture, ignoring the hurt pinch to Cheetara's expression.
Good. She should hurt.
Everything about this hurt.
Tygra's whip lashed out, looping around two lizards. He yanked them close while Cheetara raced ahead in a blur of yellow, swiping at a line of them. Panthro jumped into the thick of it and started punching lizards out with a vendetta.
Leopara used Jaga's staff to conjure a small cyclone and unleashed it on the platoon, letting it lift up those unfortunate enough to have it bear down on them and then toss them in random directions. It raged like her emotions, albeit contained.
Most of the lizards didn't have any time to do anything other than yelp or exclaim.
Panthro dropped two more lizards onto a large heap of them- by far more lizards than any of them had taken care of.
"Nice work, general." Tygra complimented him.
Panthro led them up the side of the pyramid. It was completely smooth, but bore multiple sets of punctures consistent with claws. Leopara let everyone else go ahead of her, and carefully did her best to find purchase within the punctured holes, but each set was wider than her own.
Were they Grune's? Panthro's?
As they got close to the triangular doorway, Panthro began feeling around the wall. "Know it's here somewhere…" he grumbled. After another couple of moments, during which Leopara glanced around them to make sure no one was nearby or watching, he found what he was looking for. A circular pressure plate that lit up red when he pushed it in. It went in to his elbow. The center of the airshaft lit up red and spread along patterned lines.
Leopara looked over her shoulder again, anxious someone, anyone, would notice. Red light wasn't exactly subtle, and it was just about the only light in the whole desert.
But, miraculously, no one did.
Panthro led the charge inside. The corridor was also triangular, dark steel with a speckling of light here and there, perfectly symmetrical on either wall. "So far, so good."
"My plan may just work after all." Tygra said optimistically.
Not a moment later, when he and Panthro crossed the threshold of the corridor into a larger, perpendicular hall, did the alarm start blaring.
They stopped in their tracks.
Whiskers. What do we do about that? The alarm was bound to attract attention. Should they make a break for it? Try to hide?
A quick glance around told her there wasn't anywhere to hide.
She heard the distant hissing of lizards. "Whiskers." Tygra said.
"Hide!" Leopara hissed, grabbing his arm and pulling him back into the corridor. She tucked herself as close to the wall, in the acute angle where it met the floor, as possible, hoping to buy them a few more moments to think.
They couldn't scale the walls, they slanted towards them. She didn't see any vent covers nearby…
"Now what, king?" Cheetara asked.
"Prince!" Leopara hissed.
"Just… just let me think."
"Wait." Leopara snapped her fingers. It had been so long she'd nearly forgotten. She could put them to sleep! It wouldn't solve the alarm, but at least they could flee.
"Don't worry," WilyKit piped up, "I've got them."
Leopara perked up curiously. Is she about to use magic again? Before anyone could offer protest, WilyKit danced out into the hall in front of the lizards with her flupe, and began playing that lullaby of hers Leopara always heard her play.
She poked her head out, watching intently.
Indeed, Leopara did feel the pull of the magic. It didn't affect any of the cats, who could hear it; only the lizards who grew tired and sleepy, falling into a light slumber.
"Let's go." Tygra whispered. Leopara nodded and led them out of the corridor, running by. "Way to go, Kit."
Leopara paused at the hallway corner, waiting for WilyKit to join her. The kitten danced and played her way down the hall until she reached her. As they ran down the corridor, she heard the lizards hiss awake.
"Do you know what you just did?" Leopara asked her.
WilyKit looked up at her, a little confused. "I put them to sleep?"
Leopara grinned, genuinely, for the first time since… well, since. "With magic, Kit."
The kitten blinked at her owlishly, then looked down at her flupe in her hands. "I used magic?" she murmured.
"Yes. We'll talk later."
The alarm stopped blaring and the red lights stopped flashing.
"Over here!" Tygra called out to them quietly.
"We found just what we needed." Panthro said, pointing up. As Leopara joined them, she followed his finger to a grate in the wall, fairly high up.
"How are we going to get up the-"
Before she could finish her question, Panthro stretched his arms the entire distance, grasped the grate, and pulled it free.
"-ere? Never mind."
"You're up first, kid." Panthro said. Leopara nodded and climbed onto the grate. Panthro lifted it back up and she made the short hop from it into the vent. Thankfully, the vent was level and not angled, like she feared. She turned around and waited.
Panthro lifted WilyKit, WilyKat, and Snarf next. Panthro pulled himself up next and reached down to grab both Cheetara and Tygra, then finally the grating. He pulled into place just as a small lizard patrol passed by below.
"Lead the way, general." Tygra beckoned him.
Panthro nodded solemnly and began leading the way. With his tall stature, he had to walk while ducking.
"Where do you think he has the sword?" WilyKit asked.
Leopara thought for a moment, then closed her eyes. It was… it was hard to push the boundaries of her gift. She was grieving, in pain, and it's radius wasn't very large anyways. But she did. It was painful, in the way imagining all the walls closing in and pushing back against them was. She sensed… boredom, wariness, disquiet- all sorts of misgivings within the temple, but towards the middle, a little to their left… she sensed the overpowering, vile presence of Mumm-Ra.
She took a deep shuddering breath and opened her eyes. Her awareness seemed to snap back into place, like a shutter closing. "That way. It's that way." she pointed.
Tygra glanced back at her. "What makes you so certain of that?"
"I sensed Mumm-Ra. He has to have the sword with him."
Tygra eyed her for another moment, while they all stood there waiting for him to say something. Then, he nodded. "Your senses have never led me wrong before. Lead the way, Leopara." He gestured for her to move ahead of them.
Leopara took the lead, a little nervous at what they would find.
Mumm-Ra couldn't have separated the stone from the sword yet, could he?
No.
Things would be a lot worse if he had it already.
Leopara followed her instincts and led them straight for as long as she could before she made the turn left; at least this way, they could backtrack easily and not worry about becoming lost.
She was shocked when that worked, with only a couple more turns necessary.
And she knew they were in the right place because she heard deep, ominous chanting and what sounded like drums or rhythmic stomping.
She crouched down on the far side of the grating, next to Tygra, and watched.
Mumm-Ra and his generals stood on a circular dias with a black anvil before them, upon which the Sword of Omens itself rested. In a circle within the dias, lanky lizards in white robes and hoods stood, chanting.
"At long last, the king of the Cats is dead and the Eye of Thundera will be mine once again. And this time, no spell will keep me from the stone, for within these walls, my powers are immeasurable." Mumm-Ra boasted. He began to chant and gesture, raising his arms. The Sword of Omens began to spin in a circle.
Leopara's heart dropped into her stomach.
"I can't see anything. What's going on?" WilyKat complained.
"A thousand bad things, kid." Panthro answered.
From the other end of their lineup, Cheetara asked, "What do you want to do?"
"Drop in for a surprise attack."
Leopara was a little surprised when the others looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "And land in the middle of trouble?"
"It's not a perfect plan, but we owe it to Lion-O to try."
"We have to stop this ritual." Leopara agreed. "We can't let Mumm-Ra get his hands on the stone." All the work of my predecessors will mean nothing if we allow Mumm-Ra to undo their bindings.
And… it was admittedly what Lion-O would do.
Tygra stood and kicked the grate out, bending the metal where his foot connected with it. The screeching of metal ground the chanting to a stop as a dozen surprised lizards, the generals, and Mumm-Ra snapped their attention towards them. Tygra lept down, brandishing his whip, and called out, "Thundercats, ho!"
They followed him, each with their own weapon out.
"Keep them from the sword!" Mumm-Ra cried.
The lizards dissolved into chaos charging at them. Effortlessly, Panthro batted several out of their way with his nunchucks. Cheetara swatted at them with her staff and knocked over a few more. Tygra's whip lashed at a couple more and he fired his blaster at a third. Leopara bowled over the last couple standing with a gust of wind.
"You were fools to come here!" Mumm-Ra declared, firing a blast of purple lightning at them.
There was no one bolt for them to dodge or for her to defend against with her barrier. The lightning that barreled into all of them, even WilyKit and WilyKat who'd been hiding, was a pure, giant beam of raw power. If her own pain and cries were not enough, she could hear everyone else's screams and sense their anguish, their pain, too. It lasted for forever. It lasted for a few seconds. Leopara couldn't count how long it lasted before her throat grew hoarse and her eyes burned with tears of pain.
It lasted long enough that, when it finally stopped, each of them fell to their knees, weak and feeble. Leopara couldn't even lift her head nor her hand to wipe the tears out of her eyes.
"No more delays!" Mumm-Ra barked. "Take them to the cells. I'll deal with them once I destroy the sword."
She heard WilyKit weakly say, "We bought him some time."
"Bought who some time?" WilyKat asked, just as weakly. "There's no one coming to save us."
With those depressing words, the lizard priests picked up Leopara under her arms, and dragged her away.
"Snowmeow?" Lion-O asked, confused.
He didn't expect to see the giant blue felyne up on the cliffs, but there he was: curled up, asleep, under the moonlight. He was completely alone, without even Snarf to keep him company.
How long had he been waiting like that? Since the others were taken?
Lion-O felt a bit of pity for the felyne. He crouched down to gently pet his flank.
"Rawr." The great felyne's head shot up. Reflective eyes stared at him. And then, a loud, rumbling purr erupted from his chest and he scooted in to nuzzle Lion-O.
Lion-O was no expert, but he dared to say that Snowmeow was happy to see him; he'd been left behind hours ago, and he was always sad when wasn't brought with them. Truth be told, Lion-O was grateful for his existence right at that moment.
He chuckled. "Yeah, I'm happy to see you too, boy." He moved his attention to Snowmeow's head, scratching his ear with one hand and under his chin with his other. "I don't have a lot of time, boy. I need to find the others before sunrise and save them; they were captured by Mumm-Ra. Think you can help me?"
Snowmeow blinked at him a couple of times.
Okay, maybe that was too many words at once.
"Can you help me find Leopara?" he asked instead.
"Rrow!" Snowmeow roared. He rolled to lay flat on his stomach and flicked his tail over the stone.
Lion-O didn't need to be told twice. He knew an invitation from Snowmeow when he saw one.
He climbed on and patted his shoulder. "Let's go."
Snowmeow stood and raised his head high, smelling the air. Once he caught their scents- her scent- he bounded forward.
Hope burned a little brighter for Lion-O as they raced past WilyKit's marker; with Snowmeow's speed and the trail left for him, he- they- stood a real chance at saving the others now. If he could do that, then his sacrifice would be worth it.
Thank you for reading! A special thanks to The Night Whisperer, Heart of the Demons, and Frankannestein! See you next week!