Author’s Note:
This is an updated version of a story I wrote originally over 10 years
ago. It was rewritten and expanded once
since, in 2000, but a recent review of it let me to go through it once more to
update it with a few continuity tweaks that I feel are important to this and
subsequent stories in the universe.
Enjoy!
Evil’s Bride
(Revised Edition, December 2008)
A sinister cascade of lightning crashed above the black pyramid in the forbidding desert of Third Earth. Deep in the heart of the dark structure, Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living stirred in his sarcophagus, awakened from the sleep of the undead. Irritated at the unexpected disruption to his rest, he emerged and stepped over to the edge of his cauldron. The liquid within it bubbled and an image slowly took form in the murky waters while Ma-Mutt approached the edge of the pool, barking loudly.
“What is it, my horrible hound?” Mumm-Ra said, looking down at his pet. The grotesque dog gave an excited bark in response and began to run around in circles. Puzzled by his behavior, and not in the mood to decipher his familiar’s dog-speak, Mumm-Ra gave a sigh of exasperation. “If you’ve energy to spend, go dig a hole or something,” he grumbled, and then quickly added, “and do it outside.”
Ma-Mutt ignored his master and continued to bark with
increasing urgency. Narrowing his eyes,
Mumm-Ra decided to ignore Ma-Mutt’s behavior for the time being and instead
focus on the cauldron. He wondered if
whatever it was that had Ma-Mutt so wound up was the same reason he had been so
suddenly awakened. The image he saw in
the pool was odd to him; the gloomy picture of a lone grave in what looked to
him to be the
At
the sound of his voice, the statues of the Ancient Spirits of Evil shook on
their stands and their eyes glowed a bright and sinister red. “Mumm-Ra…”
Mumm-Ra
looked up from the cauldron to the giant statues that loomed above him. He could not tell from their tone whether
what they were about to say was good or bad.
“What is it, Ancient Ones?”
“Mumm-Ra,
after all this time, you still have yet to defeat the Thundercats. From what we have seen it is apparent that
you do not have what it takes to rid this world of them on your own. To compensate for this incompetence, we have
arranged for you to have a partner.”
Their
words stunned the mummy speechless for a long moment as the implication of what
they had told him registered. A partner? An assistant was one thing—he had used those
who the Ancients had sent to aid him many times—but a partner? One who would presumably be his equal, with
whom he would have to share the spoils of victory? That was ludicrous!
“No,
spirits!” the indignant, and somewhat alarmed Mumm-Ra objected. “I will prove myself worthy! I can defeat the Thundercats! I don’t need anyone else. I have both the Mutants and the Lunatacs in
my employ. All I need is some time—”
“Time?”
the spectral voices of his masters cut him off.
“We have given you time! Time and
time again you have tried, and time and time again you have failed. That is why we are sending you one who will
join you in your quest to destroy the Thundercats. We are giving you a bride, an eternal partner
in evil.”
Mumm-Ra’s
previous thought of the notion as “ludicrous” suddenly felt woefully inadequate
to convey his feelings on the matter.
Furious, he hollered, “A bride? I
have no need for a bride! I am Mumm-Ra
the Ever-Living! I work alone!”
“Not
anymore, Mumm-Ra, unless you want us to leave you with no power at all.” Their response was seemingly oblivious to his
outrage, a fact that did not escape his notice and galled him all the more.
“No!” Mumm-Ra desperately tried to think of a way,
any way, to talk his masters out of the insane idea before it was too
late. He could tell that they were not
in the mood to be trifled with, and would not take open defiance well, but
perhaps some humble supplication…
“Please,
Ancient Ones,” he said, amending his tone to one less rebellious, “Don’t take
my power. I swear on my unholy life that
I will prove my worth to you, as I have over the millennia. But please, I beg you, my wicked masters,
don’t force me to—”
The
Ancient Spirits of Evil were not swayed by what they considered more empty
promises. “You will go now to this grave
in the
Mumm-Ra
recoiled, and glowered resentfully as he took the talisman. “All right.
Who is she?”
“In
life, she was a servant of evil, and your servant for a time. Her name was Torlei.”
“Torlei?”
Mumm-Ra repeated the name, searching his memory. He recalled that it belonged to a Lunatac,
one that had been a part of Luna’s gang of Lunar-Plundarrian renegades back
when they had first come to Third Earth.
The waters of the cauldron swirled again and that time formed another
vision to jog their servant’s memory further.
Mumm-Ra saw flashes of a time long past, when the Lunatacs arrived on
his world. There were a total of seven
of them: Luna, Amok, RedEye, TugMug,
Chilla, Alluro, and one other, a female named Torlei. She was a psi and bore some resemblance to
Alluro. Like him, she was tall and had a
slender build, and had long grey hair of the same unkempt and wild consistency
as his. Her belt also had a medallion
not unlike the other psi’s eye talisman, except that hers bore the image of a
lightning bolt in the center. It had
been the symbol of her power, the mastery of telekinesis and energy fields,
which allowed her to move things with her mind and direct blasts of psychic
energy at her adversaries. Mumm-Ra
remembered then that she had been Alluro’s sister, but unlike her brother and
the rest of Luna’s crew, she was no longer among the living.
Unchecked
ambition and greed, qualities she shared with her fellow Lunatacs, had ultimately
been her undoing. One day she had
ventured into an ancient temple ruin on DarkSide and found a mystical black
sphere that pulsed with energy that she realized she could use to augment her
own powers. What she did not know was
that the ruin had once been an altar to the Ancient Spirits of Evil, and that
the orb was a focusing item of a long-gone priest who had not achieved
immortality as Mumm-Ra had. All she had
known at the time was what her psi senses discerned when she touched it, an
incredible surge of power that seemed to fill the depths of her very soul. The lust to harness that power, combined with
her own ambitions and destructive nature, drove her quickly into a twisted
madness from which she would never recover.
Consumed
with ambitions for conquest, she returned to the other Lunatacs and demanded
that they make her their new leader instead of Luna. Though she had worked for Luna for years,
Torlei had resented being subservient to her, and knew that the day would come
when she would prove herself more worthy of leadership than Luna. But to her dismay, the other Lunatacs would
not follow her, hurling accusations that she was mad, dangerous, and
unstable. In her fury at being balked,
she turned on all of them, her brother included, and attempted to kill
them. With the magic of the Ancient
Spirits of Evil reinforcing her powers, she was able to overpower them and
imprison them in a telekinetic energy field that nearly burned them all alive. In an ironic twist of fate it was the physically
weak Luna that saved the other Lunatacs.
Her tiny size allowed her to slip through a small flux in Torlei’s
energy field long enough to take hold of and aim a laser pistol. She shot the psi woman and struck her dead in
the heart, killing her instantly. The
deadly energy field evaporated with Torlei’s last mortal breath.
Although
Mumm-Ra already knew the gist of the circumstances surrounding her death, he
had never given it more than a passing thought.
What was one less troublesome Lunatac to bother him, after all, when he
had never held any particular fondness for any of the lot of them to begin
with?
“So
she is who you would have me bond with,” Mumm-Ra mused, and glanced up at the
statues dubiously. “Why her, Ancient
Ones? What makes some fool Lunatac
worthy of such power and immortality?”
The
statues rumbled again and gave their answer, their ominous voices echoing
through the dark sanctuary of the evil mage once more. “Torlei’s mind touched our Dark Orb of Power
and with that touch she learned the darkest secrets of our evil. That knowledge drove her mad, but it also
drew her to us. In her dying moment she
agreed to give us her soul and servitude in exchange for more power and the
chance to seek her revenge. Her spirit
is restless and it has been waiting since her death to return to the physical
plane and carry out her destiny. We will
now grant that by having her join forces with you. Together you will have the means to defeat
the Thundercats. Go to her grave and
raise her now, Mumm-Ra. You know the
consequences for disobedience.” With
that, the statues reverted to their inert state again and the spirit presences
withdrew from the pyramid.
As
the Ancient Spirits of Evil finished speaking, Ma-Mutt ran to his master’s feet
and barked again. Mumm-Ra frowned,
reached down, and picked up his faithful hell-hound. “A wife.
Of all the ridiculous things, the Ancients want a wife for Mumm-Ra the
Ever-Living,” he groused. Ma-Mutt whined
back at him. “What, you don’t
agree? Well, I suppose a woman might be
worth having around for a few reasons.”
He smirked, pondering the possibility of more earthly pleasures he
remembered from times past. “It doesn’t
look like I have a choice anyhow.”
The
resigned Mumm-Ra set Ma-Mutt back on the floor.
“Guard the pyramid while I’m gone.”
The dog barked obediently in response, and Mumm-Ra flew off towards the
* * *
Skytomb was in chaos that afternoon. Luna was busy screeching at RedEye, TugMug, and Chilla to fix some faulty wiring that had just given their leader an electric shock that caused her hair to stand up on end, making it even bigger than usual. The other Lunatacs were taking great delight in making fun of her, which only served to worsen her mood. “What on Third Earth is taking you idiots so long to fix this?” she screeched angrily, waving her crop for emphasis.
“Luna,
the power grid’s destroyed. The surges
burned up a lot of the circuits, and they have to be rewired,” RedEye
explained, rolling his eyes while his back was to her.
“It’s
going to take us hours to get the power cells recharged again too,” added
TugMug.
“Unless
maybe we plug Luna’s hair into them and drain the static,” Chilla snickered,
inspiring similar reactions in the other two.
“Enough
out of you!” the irate Luna hollered.
Her normally near-nonexistent patience was worn even thinner at the
moment. “Just fix it! I don’t like having only emergency power on
in Skytomb. We’re too vulnerable.”
RedEye
turned and frowned. “We’re working as
fast as we can. Besides, there’s no sign
of Thundercats on DarkSide. The scanners
work well enough on emergency power to let us know if they’re in the
area.” He brushed some grime off of his
gloved hands. “If you want it done
faster, get Alluro in here. If his lazy
hide was here to help, the mess would be fixed faster.”
“Where
is he, anyway?” asked Luna.
“Right
here,” Alluro answered as he entered the room.
When he saw Luna’s impromptu hair restyling he laughed. “What happened to you? Did you stick your finger in an electrical
socket?”
“She
blew up the whole power grid just to get a new look,” Chilla laughed rudely.
“For
the last time, shut up and get to work!” Luna snapped at Chilla. “And where have you been, Alluro? You were
supposed to be helping us!”
“I was out. There was something I had to do.” His tone changed abruptly as he answered, becoming curt and mildly defensive. A more sensitive individual than Luna might have picked up on the cue not to press the issue, but Luna was not known for her sensitivity.
“What
could possibly be more important than your duties at Skytomb?”
Alluro
sighed and turned away. “Never mind,
Luna, you wouldn’t understand. I’ll go
get some tools,” he said, and then left the room.
Luna
frowned as he left. “Do any of you know
what’s going on with him? He’s acting
strange.”
“Stranger
than normal, you mean?” TugMug said with a snort, and then gave an odd look
when something occurred to him. “Wait,
what day is today?”
“The
189th day of the Third Earth year,” RedEye answered automatically, and upon
hearing the date, the Lunatacs fell silent and exchanged looks of
realization. Chilla was the first to
vocalize the thought however.
“Oh,
this is the anniversary of the day Torlei—”
“I
told you to never speak that name!” Luna shrieked, her mood growing
exponentially fouler as she cut the icewalker off. She waved her crop at Chilla, her eyes ablaze
with fury. “She was a traitor, Chilla,
and I don’t want any of you to ever mention her again. You know how I feel about that!”
“Like
you ever keep how you feel to yourself,” RedEye muttered, irritated by Luna’s
dramatics.
TugMug
was also annoyed, mostly because he could not concentrate on the wiring when
she was hollering. He set his pliers
down and turned toward Luna. “She was
crazy, Luna, and she was Alluro’s sister.
You can’t expect him to just forget about it. Not even you’re that cold.”
Luna’s angry scowl deepened and her voice rose in tandem with her temper. “She tried to kill me! She tried to kill us all. Don’t expect me to forget that. Now finish this wiring job and tell Alluro to get over it and get back to work! I’ll be upstairs. Take me out of here, Amok,” she ordered her steed. Without a word of comment to add, the brute dutifully carried her out and to her quarters.
* * *
Miles
away, Mumm-Ra arrived at Torlei’s gloomy gravesite. He set the talisman that the Ancient Spirits
of Evil had given him, a small onyx statue with jewels embedded in it, atop the
headstone and began to chant in the ancient tongue of his evil masters. As he did, the wind picked up and whipped
around him. A glow of energy began to
emanate from the statue, which grew as Mumm-Ra finished chanting. It then pulsed outward, enveloping the
gravesite and a swath of ground in front of it that covered the body laid to
rest there. Mumm-Ra watched as magical
energy caused the dirt to roll aside as something stirred and rose from
beneath.
A
moldering corpse, little more than a skeleton, emerged from the grave. Mumm-Ra would have found the sight fearsome
and disgusting had he not been one of the undead himself. The decayed body stood, and another beam of
unnatural light shot down from the sky and surrounded it. Mumm-Ra recognized it as the same energy that
transformed him, the power of the Ancient Spirits of Evil. The light grew brighter as it engulfed the
dead form, blinding him for just a moment.
When his vision readjusted he could see the figure clearly. Instead of bare bones covered with desiccated
patches of decayed flesh, he saw that she now had a form of supernatural skin
covering her body. It was a sickly pale
purple color, much like he imagined it would be for one of her people if they
were in the throes of great illness or just after a lingering death. Her hair was restored to her body as it had
been when she had died, long and gray like Alluro’s, falling to her waist in
length. Her skeletal horns were also
restored, as was the moon birthmark upon her forehead, although the crescent
now glowed an eerie and sinister red, as did her eyes. Torlei’s clothing was the same as she had
been buried in, repaired from its worm-eaten and tattered state from being in
the ground so long. It was a navy blue
dress with loose sleeves and a long hem that came to the ground, giving her a
similar look to Mumm-Ra in his mummy form without the hood. At her waist was her lightning bolt
medallion, hanging from a chain of thick silver links that encircled it like a
belt. She could have almost passed for a
living Lunatac if it were not for the unnatural glow of her eyes and birthmark,
and the appearance of subtle fangs in her mouth.
Mumm-Ra
noticed them glistening in the shadowy darkness of the Forest of Mists when she
laughed a deep, evil laugh not unlike his own, except for the feminine
tone. She immediately turned toward the
sky and spoke. “Ancient Spirits of Evil,
your eternal servant Torlei has been awakened!”
She then noticed Mumm-Ra bearing witness to her resurrection, and
immediately her expression changed from one of wicked delight to one of annoyed
suspicion. “I was summoned back into the
physical plane by Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living?”
The
ever-living mage ignored the young immortal’s rudeness. “Yes.
I was sent here by the Ancient Spirits of Evil to raise you and take you
back to the Black Pyramid to be my bride.”
He spoke without emotion, as if he was discussing a mundane matter of an
attack plan to a Mutant.
“Your
bride?” Torlei snapped back disgustedly.
“You must be kidding.” She
had not thought much of Mumm-Ra in her mortal life, and even though they now
served the same masters, she did not find that her feelings toward Mumm-Ra
himself had changed much. Like the other
Lunatacs, she still held him in contempt for destroying their ship and trying
to force them into servitude. They had
only worked for Mumm-Ra at all in those days because they had no choice, but
they certainly never enjoyed it. Torlei
herself resented Mumm-Ra almost as much as she did Luna from the memories of
her living days.
Mumm-Ra,
meanwhile, quelled the urge to knock the arrogant resurrected Lunatac down a
peg with a blast of red lightning.
Satisfying as it might be, he knew that the Ancient Spirits of Evil
would not approve. Omnipotent bastards, he thought resentfully. They probably
get a sick thrill out of this.
Instead all he said was, “They feel that I need a partner in my evil
existence, and they chose you for me.”
His eyes glowed brightly for a moment before adding in a decidedly sarcastic
tone, “Believe me, I’m just as pleased with this arrangement as you are.”
Torlei let out a low growl, as the Ancients had not warned her of this particular quirk in her fate, but she was as powerless to do anything about it as Mumm-Ra was. Defying the Ancient Spirits of Evil was not an option. She let out a melodramatic sigh and forced herself to look at Mumm-Ra as a partner and mate, distasteful a thought as it was to her. “Lucky me,” she said without bothering to mask her feelings on the matter. “So we’re to be bonded then, Mumm-Ra? Why you, and why me?”
The
demon priest of Third Earth gave an ambivalent shrug. “The Ancient Spirits of Evil have decreed it
so. If I don’t comply, they’ll take away
my power, and you must comply or they’ll return your body to the grave it came
from and your spirit to a ghostly state.”
“Which
is effectively useless,” she said sourly, and joined Mumm-Ra’s side. “So be it then. Lead the way to our home, darling.”
“As
you wish, dear,” Mumm-Ra replied in a
similarly sarcastic manner, and flew with her back to the pyramid.
* * *
Lynx-O
tapped at the keys of the Braille board in the
“What
is it, Lynx-O?” asked Pumyra, as she, Lion-O, Bengali, Panthro, and Cheetara
all entered the control room.
“No
trouble I hope,” said Panthro. “We just
got here to pick you up for the Berbil Harvest Festival tonight. I wouldn’t want to miss it. There’s gonna be a lot of good food.”
Frowning,
Lynx-O told them, “I’m picking up some strange energy readings emanating from
the
“You
can’t get a fix on the signal?” Bengali asked.
“Only
within a small area, and I can’t bring up any images on the monitor.”
Cheetara
joined the lynx at the console, her sixth sense beginning to tingle as she
pondered the situation. “Odd… my sixth
sense is warning me about something. I
can’t tell what, but it seems like something bad. Very bad.”
“Then
I wonder if the Sword of Omens knows anything,” Lion-O said, concerned, and
lifted the sword up to his eyes. “Sword
of Omens, give me Sight Beyond Sight!”
The image of Mumm-Ra with Torlei at the gravesite was shown to him. “Oh no,” he said, his voice almost a groan.
“What
is it? What did you see?” asked Panthro.
Lion-O
lowered the sword once the vision ended, and re-sheathed it in the claw
shield. “It seems that Mumm-Ra raised
someone from a grave with similar powers to him. She spoke with him and they flew off
together. I think she’s another avatar
of the Ancient Spirits of Evil, perhaps an apprentice.” He eyed the others with worry. “Oddly, she also looks like she’s a Lunatac,
or at least she was once upon a time.”
“Another
undead enemy?” Pumyra said incredulously.
“Mumm-Ra’s powerful enough on his own.
Now we have to contend with two of them?”
Sighing,
Cheetara said, “That explains the ominous feeling my sixth sense gave me when I
concentrated on it.”
“I
wouldn’t have thought there’d be a dead Lunatac here on Third Earth,” Lynx-O
mused. “They’re alien to this world,
originating on the Moons of Plundarr. I
thought the Lunatacs of Skytomb were the only ones here. Did one of them die?”
Bengali
let out an uneasy growl. “It’s not
Luna’s grandmother again, is it? She was
on Third Earth; that’s how Mumm-Rana wound up with her belt.”
Pumyra
shook her head. “Mumm-Rana exiled her
back to the Third Moon of Plundarr, where she was originally from. I’d guess she died there since she never came
back to Third Earth.”
“Besides,
this new friend of Mumm-Ra’s doesn’t look at all like Luna. If I had to compare her to any of the
Lunatacs we know, I’d have to say she looks the most like Alluro. I think she’s the same race. I also got the impression that she’s been
dead for some time, probably since before Mumm-Ra entombed them in lava on
DarkSide way before we ever came here.
Her grave looked like it’d been there a while.”
“There
must’ve been more than just Luna’s current crew when they came to Third Earth
then,” Cheetara guessed.
“Regardless
of whether she’s a Lunatac or not, it still means trouble for us if Mumm-Ra’s
involved, you can bet your claws on that,” Panthro said, and looked to
Lion-O. “We better find out what he’s up
to.”
While
listening to his peers, Lynx-O continued to monitor the Braille board for more
information. “There’s a shift in the
energy,” he informed them. “It’s more
focused. I think the atmospheric conditions
in the
“Then
I think we should go and find out exactly what Mumm-Ra’s up to,” Lion-O said
decisively. “Lynx-O, stay here and keep monitoring
the energy fields. Let us know of any
changes, and let the others at the Lair know what’s going on.”
“Will
do, Lion-O.”
Lion-O
turned to the others. “The rest of us
will go to the Black Pyramid and find out exactly what is going on with Mumm-Ra
and this dead Lunatac.”
* * *
In
the desert of sinking sands, Mumm-Ra and Torlei returned to what was now their
pyramid. As soon as they touched down on
the ancient stone floor, Ma-Mutt rushed to their feet, barking excitedly. He ran in a circle around the two of them,
and after a cautious sniff in Torlei’s direction, barked a greeting at
her.
“A
dog, Mumm-Ra?” Torlei asked with amusement.
“How very domestic of you.”
“He’s
some company I conjured up a while ago.
Every sorcerer needs his companion animal,” Mumm-Ra informed her.
“I
believe the magical term is ‘familiar’ is it not? He’s truly grotesque. He suits you.” It was not clear whether she was being
sarcastic or not, but Mumm-Ra did not care either way.
“Enough
small talk. Let’s get this bonding
ceremony over with,” he said gruffly.
Torlei’s
eyebrows rose at his rudeness. “How
romantic. No wonder you’ve been single
for thousands of years.”
Mumm-Ra
ignored that remark as well and instead went over to the platform by the pool. “Join me,” he commanded, beckoning to
her. She walked over and stood next to
him, peering down into the murky waters of the cauldron. She had seen it before, of course, in the
past when Mumm-Ra had summoned her and the other Lunatacs into his pyramid, but
that perspective was new to her, and fascinating. Meanwhile Mumm-Ra began the ceremony. “Ancient Spirits of Evil, hear your servants
Mumm-Ra and Torlei, who have come before your mighty presence to be bonded for
all eternity!” Upon hearing his supplication
to their masters, Torlei also snapped to attention and waited alongside him for
their answer.
They
were not kept waiting long. The statues
rumbled and came back to life, aglow with dark power. “Mumm-Ra, we have heard your call and will bond
your souls in darkness for all time, so that your powers may unite and work to
each other’s benefit, and that you may never be separated and reign eternal in
evil.” Their attention focused solely on
Mumm-Ra. “Do you, Mumm-Ra, take Torlei
to be your ever-living companion with whom to plot and scheme in evil triumph
or humiliating defeat, power or weakness, to never be separated in power or
spirit, until the end of time?”
Glancing
at his wicked fiancée, Mumm-Ra grimaced slightly and resigned himself. “I do.”
The
Ancients’ attention turned to Torlei.
“Torlei, do you take Mumm-Ra to be your ever-living companion with whom
to plot and scheme in evil triumph or humiliating defeat, power or weakness, to
never be separated in power or spirit, until the end of time?”
Torlei
looked at Mumm-Ra and questioned whether or not this would be the biggest
mistake of either life she had known, but she wisely refrained from pressing
her luck by stating such or hesitating.
“I do,” she replied with about the same enthusiasm as Mumm-Ra had.
As
soon as she verbalized her consent to their bonding, a clap of thunder crashed
so loud it seemed to be within the black pyramid itself. The statues’ eyes glowed a bright scarlet,
and they focused their evil energies on the undead pair. Their voices echoed in unison and filled the
chamber as they spoke the words that finalized their dark spell. “By all our powers of darkness, we now
pronounce you mummy and wife.” A
supernatural beam of energy burst forth from each eye of each statue, striking
in the dead center of their alignment to form one massive beam which then
surrounded the two undead beings, drawing them together and intertwining
them. Both could feel something changing
and mingling in their aural energies, a force that would connect them
permanently that could never be removed.
When the spell completed, the statues reverted to their inert form and
the magical energy dissipated into the musty air of the pyramid. Mumm-Ra and his new bride were left alone on
the dais with Ma-Mutt at their feet, wagging his tail.
The
two stared at each other for a long moment, until Mumm-Ra took a steep closer
and leered at her. “Every groom is
entitled to a kiss from his bride.”
The
undead Lunatac looked back at him and his rotting mouth with revulsion. While she was no better herself, her mortal
memories were still fresh enough that the notion turned what would have been
her stomach had she been alive. Even
when she had been among the living, she had been a willing spinster, and a man
like Mumm-Ra was hardly her type even if she had been so inclined. She took a step backward. “Er, Mumm-Ra, I don’t—”
Fortunately
for Torlei, their “moment” was shattered when a slew of Thundercats charged
into the black pyramid with their weapons drawn. Lion-O, Panthro, Bengali, Pumyra, and
Cheetara faced the two of them ready to strike.
“Whatever you’re up to, Mumm-Ra, you’re not going to get away with it!”
Lion-O announced, holding the Sword of Omens in front of him in a threatening
pose.
“Thank
the Ancients for small favors,” Torlei mumbled, until she took note of the
identity of their intruders.
“Thunderians? Why would
Thunderians be here on Third Earth?”
Mumm-Ra
on the other hand let out a roar of outrage.
Not so much that he missed his post-nuptial smooch, but mostly because
the Thundercats had broken in and he had missed any warning signals that his
home had been invaded by the enemy due to his preoccupation with the bonding
ceremony. “They are the Thundercats,”
Mumm-Ra said contemptuously. “Their own
Thundera was destroyed, and they came here to my world to infest it instead,
preaching their infernal Code of Thundera and interfering with my evil
rule. They are our enemies, ones who
would prevent our rule in ultimate evil, the very ones the Ancients brought you
to me to aid me in destroying! Let’s do
it now!” He shot a deadly burst of red
lightning in the Thundercats’ direction.
Predicting
the attack, Lion-O leapt backwards and swung the Sword of Omens to deflect any
stray charges of evil energy. With a
loud cry of “Ho!” he in turn shot at Mumm-Ra with a powerful beam from the
Sword of Omens, which Mumm-Ra dodged by leaping backwards, while Torlei darted
to the side.
“You
have nerve, Thundercat! You’ll not get
away with breaking into our pyramid and shooting at my dear husband,” Torlei
snarled viciously, and advanced toward them as she drew on her telekinetic
powers. She could feel the Ancient
Spirits of Evil’s power flowing through her, and a vast pool of dark energy
available for her to draw on beyond anything she had ever felt while alive,
even after taking hold of the Dark Orb of Power.
The
Thundercats meanwhile exchanged stunned looks when they heard what she
said. “Your what?” Panthro repeated in
disbelief.
“Did
you say ‘husband’?” Pumyra gasped at the same time.
Glowering
at them, Torlei raised her hands, spreading her fingers as the tips began to
spark. “The Ancient Spirits of Evil have
bonded us for all eternity. Say hello to
the new ever-living empress of Third Earth—Torlei, partner of Mumm-Ra,” she
announced haughtily, and released the energy she had been channeling with a
violent blast. The force was great
enough to knock the Thundercats backwards, and with a second flick of her
wrists, a force field grew around them, trapping them inside unable to
move. The web-like energy was the same
she had once used on Luna and her crew just before her death, only stronger. She smiled with evil satisfaction. The power of the Ancient Spirits of Evil was
delicious, and addictive. It was worth
putting up with Mumm-Ra for, she decided, very much so.
Bengali
grunted under the stinging force of the energy.
“Ugh. What a—”
“She’s
Mumm-Ra’s type all right,” Cheetara muttered as she struggled fruitlessly
against the telekinetic field. “Evil,
mean-spirited, and undead.”
Pleased
at his bride’s performance, Mumm-Ra stood over them and sneered. “I’m so glad you decided to crash our little
wedding reception, Thundercats. What
better gift could there be than the chance to destroy our enemies right here
and now?” he asked, laughing, and put an arm around Torlei’s waist.
Unimpressed,
Panthro groaned in disgust. “Well save
it for the honeymoon, if you make it that far, you undead bag of bones!”
Torlei,
meanwhile, was also not impressed by Mumm-Ra’s possessive display, and turned
toward him with a sour look. “Well it’s
nice that you’ve gotten what you
want, Mumm-Ra, but I haven’t. The Thundercats mean nothing to me. They’re your enemies. I captured your foes, but you haven’t
returned the favor.”
Mumm-Ra’s temper flared. “What foolishness is this? We are partners, my dear,” he snapped angrily. “My enemies are your enemies. Besides, who could we possibly need to destroy more than the Thundercats?”
“I
still have a bone to pick with Luna,” Torlei replied with narrowed eyes. “She killed me, and I will see her pay dearly for it. The way I see it, you owe me my enemies’
heads on a platter the same way I got you yours. Either you fetch me her for my revenge, or
I’ll let these feline pests go.”
“What?”
Mumm-Ra exclaimed in outrage. “You would
dare cross me that way? We are partners,
upstart, and don’t you forget it!”
A
half-smile of sarcastic sweetness crossed her lips. “Watch me.”
Mumm-Ra
saw the Thundercats taking in the exchange with rapt attention and knew that
they would spring loose the second she gave them the opportunity ready for what
they had to dish out, and while he remained confident that they could be
handled, he did not want the hassle.
Torlei had the advantage of surprise on her first attack, but the
Thundercats were quick learners and not to be underestimated. Having them captured and incapacitated was
too advantageous to allow her tantrum to ruin.
He grimaced as he responded. “I
see loyalty is not one of your better traits, but I should have known that from
the circumstances of your death. Very
well, have your way then. I will humor
you and capture Luna, but only
because I want the Thundercats destroyed and they’re so conveniently packaged
as it stands.”
“No,”
Torlei interrupted, her eyes gleaming red in the darkness. “That’s not good enough. I don’t want just Luna. I gave you five, so you give me five.
Bring me Luna plus four of the others, at least.” She eyed him evenly. “Prove yourself that worthy of my company,
Mumm-Ra, and I’ll be quite an agreeable wife to you.”
Livid
at her arrogance and pushiness, Mumm-Ra considered blasting her on the spot
with his own powers, but he refrained knowing that it would only be
counterproductive to his own goals. “I
raised you from the dead! Isn’t that
enough for you? You should be groveling
in gratitude for the favor I gave you.”
“Do
it,” she pressed, “or I might just get distraught over our little quarrel that
I lose my concentration, and with it, the hold on the telekinetic field they’re
in. Then they’d get away… oh my,
wouldn’t that be a shame?”
Her
sarcasm simultaneously disgusted and enraged him. “Oh, fine!”
He shot the floor between them with a red-hot beam of energy that singed
the stone floor in lieu of hitting her.
“Have it your way, then, you miserable woman. I’ll go and get those damnable Lunatacs for
you.”
Torlei
grinned, a manipulative and vindictive smile that Mumm-Ra knew already he would
hate for years to come. “Thanks, honey,”
she purred in the condescending tone that seemed sharper in her native Fourth
Moon accent, the same shared by her brother.
Not surprisingly, Mumm-Ra’s only response was to curse at her in at
least seven different dead languages under his breath as he flew out of the
pyramid.
Bengali
whispered to Panthro, pinned beside him in the force field. “I think he was better off as a
bachelor.”
Panthro
and the other Thundercats muttered in grim agreement. They were in big trouble, and they knew it.
* * *
After what felt like an eternity to them but was in truth only a matter of hours, the Lunatacs were finally able to restore power to Skytomb and had a chance to take a break. Luna returned to the company of the others after the power had come back on and after she finished attempting to de-frizz her hair. She was still on the other side of the common room that served as Skytomb’s equivalent of a lounge or living room with Amok while the others lounged about on seats and couches at the far side of the room. Chilla was still fuming over the way Luna had bitched at her earlier, and was ranting about it quite fervently to the others, who had already grown bored and were half tuning her out. “How dare she scream at me like that just because I said Torlei’s name? It’s not my fault she was in a bad mood because she was dumb enough to shock herself senseless.”
RedEye
shrugged. “Luna’s been screaming at us
for years. You should be used to it by
now, Chilla.”
“Besides,
you know how she feels about Torlei. You
should have known better than to say anything,” TugMug added.
“Well
she asked, didn’t she?”
Sprawled
out on one of the couches with his feet up, Alluro frowned. “You didn’t need to spell it out. I managed to avoid saying anything, and I’m
the one who went to…” he sighed again, and decided to drop the subject. “Never mind.
All you managed to do was give her a license to badmouth my sister for
days. I’d rather remember her the way
she was before her insanity, not rehash her final moments through Luna’s eyes,”
he said grouchily.
“Your
sister tried to do us all in, including you,” Luna said coldly as she joined
the others, sitting upon Amok’s back with a towel wrapped around her head. “We would all be dead if I hadn’t stopped
her. Of course, you forget that part,
don’t you, when you reminisce about the ‘good old days’ with that traitorous
witch.”
Alluro’s
only response was to cast an angry glare at Luna, while the others grumbled
under their breaths and rolled their eyes, a typical reaction after having
lived with her for so long.
Even
Amok had enough of the conversation, and the usually silent brute growled a
quiet but distinct, “Stop it.” The other
Lunatacs cast a surprised look in his direction, for Amok so rarely said
anything at all that whenever he did, they usually listened. The brute’s face retained its usual
expressionless countenance, save a somewhat weary look in his eyes. “No more talk.”
“Amok
is right,” Alluro agreed. “Drop it.”
“Fine,”
Luna grumbled, although her tone made it clear that she wanted to do anything
but.
Chilla
cast a curious glance at the towel wrapped around their tiny leader’s head like
a turban. “So how’s your hair?”
Luna
pulled the towel off and ran her stubby fingers through the damp and unruly
purple and white strands. “It’s wet from
trying to get the static out, and charred at the ends from the electrical
burns. I had to cut off two inches.”
TugMug
snorted in amusement at Luna’s vanity.
“I don’t see a difference; your hair is still as big as ever.”
“And
you’re still as ugly and stupid as ever,” Luna retorted nastily.
“And
you’re all my prisoners!” Mumm-Ra’s voice boomed as he crashed through the
outside wall of Skytomb and into the room.
Debris from the mage’s dramatic entrance flew everywhere, and the six
Lunatacs instinctively ducked or took cover behind large pieces of furniture
before turning to see what had happened.
When they did, and the dust began to settle, the Lunatacs’ shock changed
to outrage when they saw that their “ally” had just done them extensive
property damage.
Luna
and Amok charged forth and confronted the undead devil priest. “Mumm-Ra!
What in the name of the Moons is the matter with you? You just broke our wall!” she screeched.
TugMug
hopped angrily and shook his fist as he joined Luna and Amok’s side. “You’d better fix that, you worthless bag of
bones!”
Mumm-Ra
did not even bother to dignify TugMug’s insult with a reply, and instead he
addressed them all with his arms raised and ready to attack. “I’m taking you all as my prisoners as a gift
to my new bride.” He let out a dark
laugh.
His
announcement shocked the Lunatacs more than his stated intent to capture
them. “Your wife?” Chilla repeated,
stunned. “Who on Third Earth would be
stupid enough to marry you?”
Mumm-Ra
cackled once more and his eyes glowed a malignant red. “You all knew her very well in life,
Lunatacs. In fact, I believe this is the
anniversary of her death.”
Alluro
stared at Mumm-Ra in complete horror and disbelief. “Torlei?
But she’s...”
“Dead?”
Mumm-Ra cut the psi off. “Not anymore,
Alluro. Not since she became the bride
of Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living, and gained the gift of immortality from the Ancient
Spirits of Evil. Now she lives just as I
do!” He advanced toward them, smiling
cruelly. “And she has plans for you,
Luna, as well as the rest of you. She
only wanted four, but I think she’ll be quite, heh heh, appreciative if I give
her a complete set.”
“You
can give her this,” an unimpressed Chilla hissed back, and she spat a lungful
of ice at him. Mumm-Ra predicted the
icewalker’s attack and blasted her in return with a blast of red lightning. It struck her in the chest, searing into her
cold flesh, knocking her down immediately, clutching her body in pain.
As
she witnessed the attack on Chilla, Luna was reminded of the first time Mumm-Ra
had gotten the better of her and crew, and she was determined to do all that
she could to stop it from happening again.
The lunar woman held on tightly to her brute’s horn, and she and Amok
charged Mumm-Ra from one side. TugMug
took the opportunity to charge the devil priest from the other side hoping to
overwhelm him with a double-sided simultaneous attack. He fired heavyweight gravity beams in
Mumm-Ra’s direction, but the mage’s reflexes were as quick as the magical
lightning he had struck Chilla with, and he deflected the graviton’s attack
with ease. Instead of their intended
target, the first beam hit Amok, slamming both him and Luna into the floor and
pinning them there before the brute could even get in the first swing, while
the second bounced back and hit TugMug himself, stopping him dead in his
tracks. He landed on his side on top of
his carbine, making it a laborious and difficult chore to discharge a beam to
counter it under the weight of the force field.
RedEye was right behind his fallen fellow Lunatacs, and his sidewinder
shot into the fray only a second after Luna, Amok, and TugMug fell, but Mumm-Ra
saw that coming as well and ducked in time for it to do no more than clip his
shoulder before colliding with the destroyed wall behind him.
Alluro
used Mumm-Ra’s distraction for a last ditch effort to overcome him with his own
powers, although his confidence was shaken as Mumm-Ra had always been resistant
to being thralled and watching the other Lunatacs fall one by one only made it
worse. Still, his arrogant demeanor did
not convey the apprehensiveness he felt, for the spite and loathing he had for
Mumm-Ra made a perfect cover of defiance.
“Give up, Mumm-Ra,” he said, projecting his will forcefully into his
voice as the orb from his psyche club flew into position above Mumm-Ra’s head. “You cannot resist. You will release us and leave. You know you don’t stand a chance at
overpowering us.”
Mumm-Ra
let out a derisive burst of laughter.
“Don’t I? I defeated your friends
in mere minutes, and you’ll go faster than them, foolish Lunatac. You ought to know by now that your worthless
mind powers only affect the living.” He
reached up and grabbed Alluro’s orb from where it hovered above him and
channeled his own energy into it before hurling it back at the hypnotist. Alluro was not fast enough to duck or dodge,
and it hit him hard in the torso, electrifying him with the mage’s damaging
electrical energy on contact. With
Alluro taken care of, Mumm-Ra turned to RedEye, sneering. “Pathetic.
That was even easier than the last time I defeated the lot of you.” He then blasted RedEye as he did Chilla, and
laughed viciously at the incapacitated Lunatacs while he summoned a magical net
to entrap them. Once they were bound, he
picked the net up and flew through the broken wall into the sky and back to his
pyramid.
When
he arrived, Mumm-Ra dropped the net full of captured Lunatacs right at the feet
of his finicky partner. “There,” he said
with flat impatience and more than a bit of sarcasm, “just to please you, I
captured all six of them. I do hope that
you’re happy now?” Torlei’s red eyes lit
up with wicked glee as she eyed up the captured forms of the Lunatacs she had
once lived with, and though she did not say anything, Mumm-Ra could see that
she was pleased. That in turn pleased
him, for it meant that they could get on with what he wanted most, which was to deal with the Thundercats. “Now
can we move on and destroy the Thundercats?
Or would you perhaps like a diamond ring first?”
The
smile on Torlei’s face faded at his mockery.
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Then
don’t delay me any longer with your whims,” he snapped back.
Panthro
watched the interchange with an odd mixture of dread and puzzlement. “This couldn’t get any stranger if it tried,”
he muttered. “Mumm-Ra took the Lunatacs
prisoner along with us.”
“Whatever
they’re up to, it can’t be good,” Bengali growled in a whisper.
Cheetara
nodded along with them, about the only move she could manage trapped as they
were by Torlei’s telekinetic magic. “We
have to get out of here and stop them.”
She grunted with fruitless exertion.
“But I just can’t move under this force field.”
“If
only I could reach the Sword of Omens, I could call Tygra, Lynx-O, and the
Thunderkittens,” Lion-O lamented. “But
I’m not sure I could even hold it if I managed to call it. In this pressure I can’t budge an inch.”
Ignoring
the Thundercats in favor of the new captives, Torlei strode over to the
Lunatacs and stared down at them. “Hello
Luna dear,” she greeted her former leader with false sweetness. “I bet you didn’t expect to see me here, did
you?”
“Actually
I did,” Luna retorted contemptuously.
“Mumm-Ra gloated to us about your little marriage. It’s a perfect match if ever I saw one. You two truly deserve each other.”
Alluro
was less hostile and more in shock seeing his dead sister alive and walking
before them. Words failed him for
several moments given the conflicting array of emotions it stirred in him, but
finally he managed to speak to her.
“Torlei… sister, is that really you?”
She
turned and glowered at him. “I’m
standing here, aren’t I, brother?”
The
venom and hatred in her tone made him wince, although he supposed on some level
that he should not have expected otherwise given the terms they had parted on
prior to her death. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.
The
undead psi woman’s lips turned up in a sneer.
“Being murdered tends to bring out my vengeful side, Alluro. And you all standing around watching while
she did it makes you just as guilty of betrayal as she is.”
“I loved
you,” Alluro retorted, heartsick at the biting edge in her voice that he
remembered from that fateful confrontation all those years ago. Time had dulled some of the unpleasant
details from his memory, and he wished that they could have stayed buried as he
had forgotten just how painful they were.
“I mourned your death for years.
I’m still mourning it. I visited
you at your grave. Surely if your spirit
was still here you remember that? You
must understand—”
It
seemed for the briefest moment that his words sparked a glimmer of affection,
but the rage in her soul and the influence of the Ancient Spirits of Evil
vanquished it quickly. “Understand
what?” she hissed back at him. “That you
betrayed me and watched me die?”
Alluro
turned away, unable to stand the burning hatred in her eyes that pulsed with
the powers of Mumm-Ra’s masters. “I
never betrayed you.”
His
answer did not amuse her, and she shot him in the neck with a stinging charge
of telekinetic energy that made him cringe in pain. “Liar!
Who refused to side with me when I came to you with my plan for taking
over leadership from Luna?” she challenged.
“Who called me crazy and tried to steal my orb? Who didn’t stop Luna when she shot that
blaster at me?” she roared in fury, and shot him again, that time making him
yelp.
“You
tried to kill us!” Alluro snapped back at her, feeling the same miserable surge
of anger and guilt as he had the first time around.
“You
chose her,” Torlei screamed, and shot
the net-full of the Lunatacs with another burning beam of energy enhanced by
her newly granted powers from the Ancient Spirits of Evil. “Luna.” She spoke the name as if it were a
curse. “You sided with Luna, dear
brother! And you have the absolute gall
to claim that you didn’t betray me?” She
thrust both hands forward, and the entire group of them rolled roughly
backwards and slammed into the base of one of the giant stone statues. “All I wanted was for you to recognize me as
the leader. I was always smarter, more
organized, and I even treated you all with more respect than Luna ever
did. If she’d accepted quietly, I’d have
even let Luna stay in the group. But no.
You chose her!” She walked over to where
Alluro lay and stared down hard at him.
“Why is that? Was Luna better for
you? Did she satisfy some sick fantasy
of yours that I never could?”
Despite
their own dire situation, the exchange between Torlei and the Lunatacs now had
the Thundercats’ full attention as well.
Insight into the enemy was not only useful, but fascinating. Until that point, none of the Thundercats knew
anything about others that they had once associated with, and in fact they had
known little about the personal lives of the Lunatacs at all. They certainly had not known that Mumm-Ra’s
new bride was Alluro’s sister or that Luna had killed her. It struck them as strange to see the Lunatacs
in the light of being individuals with families or personal connections that
meant something to them when they were used to thinking of them in terms of
being raiders motivated only by greed and personal gain.
Alluro
meanwhile blanched at Torlei’s implication of him having anything to do with
Luna in such a way. “Never, Torlei. You know I always felt that blood was thicker
than water… but the power in that orb twisted you. It made you irrational, destructive, and
dangerous.”
“He’s
right,” Chilla spoke up from where she lay.
“None of us would follow you because you’d have gotten us all
killed. That black orb thing you had
messed up your mind and your judgment.”
“And
that’s why I tried to get it away from you,” Alluro finished.
Disgusted
with their excuses, Torlei blasted them all again. “That ‘black orb thing’, as Chilla so
eloquently put it, was the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s what gave me the knowledge and power
that allowed me to overcome my mortal limitations and tap into the very power
of the universe that only accomplished mages could channel. It’s what allowed me to cheat death, and put
you in your places… then and now.”
“All
it put you in was in your grave,” Alluro said bitterly.
“Not
another word out of you, brother!” Torlei’s voice was full of raw rage and
emotion. “It’s you that hurt me most of
all, you and your precious Luna. I
sacrificed years of my life caring for you.
I raised you after our parents died, you so young you barely remember
their faces or the sound of their voices.
I was but a child myself but still I stole, demeaned, and even sold
myself to take care of the two of us.
And how did you repay me? You
lied to me, you schemed against me, and sided with Luna. How do you think that made me feel?”
Alluro was stung on multiple levels by her accusations and her twisted take on the events that transpired the day she died at their old base on DarkSide’s Moonfire Peak. “That’s not how it happened. You weren’t in your right mind then. You aren’t now.”
“You aren’t kidding. You’d have to be missing a few screws to join with Mumm-Ra,” Bengali growled from across the room.
“What
do you know; even Thundercats can get something right sometimes,” Luna
remarked.
Torlei
glared in the tiger’s direction briefly before giving Alluro one final
threatening look. “I’ll deal with your
betrayal later. But first I want revenge
on the one that delivered my fatal blow.”
She turned to Luna, who despite being stubborn enough to not want to
give an enemy the satisfaction of seeing her squirm, had a look of genuine fear
in her eyes. Amok could feel it, and he
grunted and struggled in the magical net, but he could not move enough in it to
help Luna, especially since the strangling strands shocked him harder the more
he fought against them. Torlei used her
powers to part the net enough to reach Luna and sneered at her. “Now Luna, we’ll see just how tough you are
without Amok to save your neck.”
“Wait,”
interrupted Mumm-Ra as he joined Torlei’s side.
He had been allowing his new bride a moment or two to gloat in victory,
but he had his own ideas for what would be done with their prisoners. She favored him with a venomous stare, which
secretly pleased him after she had interfered in his personal revenge on the
Thundercats earlier. Payback was only
fair, and in combination with being evil, it was downright delightful. “I have a better idea, my dear. One that will allow us to have a little more
fun with them. Let’s put them aside and
‘save’ them for now as a souvenir of the day we conquered Third Earth. If we seal them in molten rock they can serve
as a warning to those who would cross us, at least until we think of something
suitably painful and torturous enough to do to them when we decide we’re
finished with them once and for all.” He
grinned, eyes alit with malicious intent.
“As statues they might as well be dead.
We’re the only ones who know how to release them, except for those
incompetent mutants, but they can’t even lace their loincloths, much less undo
a magic spell without our aid. If we
were to simply kill them now, the fun would be all over with too soon, and the
death of a hated enemy is a terrible thing to waste.”
Upon
hearing Mumm-Ra’s plan, RedEye let out a snort of disgust from inside the
net. “Molten rock again? How original of you, Mumm-Ra.”
Panthro
could not help but laugh at the Lunatac’s remark. “He never was much in the creativity
department. He has about five basic
attack plans that he alters slightly, thinks he’s brilliant when he does so,
and then when he’s defeated, wonders why.”
Mumm-Ra
roared in outrage and shot red lightning from both hands at the panther. “Silence!
Do not dare to mock me, Thundercat!”
Torlei
meanwhile considered his plan. “I
suppose if we entombed them in stone, we could think of tortures to subject
them to at our leisure… and prove that furry fool wrong about our ingenuity.”
“Excellent,”
Mumm-Ra said with a grin. “Let’s take
our prisoners to the proper site for the spell, then!” He nodded to Torlei, and the two of them
lifted their helpless captives into the air and flew with them to the largest
active volcano on Third Earth.
* * *
It
did not take Mumm-Ra and Torlei long to prepare their spell and victims for the
entombment. The undead newlyweds stood
upon the rocky rim of the volcano with the Thundercats and Lunatacs secured
several feet away in one large Thundrainium cage attached to a pulley setup
that would lower them slowly into the volcano while Mumm-Ra and Torlei cast the
spell. The Thundrainium rendered the
Thundercats as weak as kittens, and while it did not affect the Lunatacs, they
were still trapped without their weapons so there was little they could do but
languish beside their incapacitated adversaries. Adding to the indignity of the situation was
the fact that they could see all of their weapons piled up in a heap out of
their reach. Though Mumm-Ra and Torlei
did not need the weapons, they both enjoyed knowing that their prisoners would
feel even more wretched being able to see but not use them to escape their
demise.
“I
don’t believe this,” grumbled Panthro.
“Of all the ways to end it, I never pictured it like this, imprisoned in
a Thundrainium cage with our enemies, about to be sealed up in rock by two
corpses practicing black magic.”
“The
most disgusting part of it is that it’s our so-called ‘ally’ doing it to us
again,” RedEye said irritably.
Luna
sat sullenly upon Amok’s back and looked over at the weakened Lion-O, who was
sprawled out with the other Thundercats on the floor of the Thundrainium cage,
barely conscious. “Lion-O, why doesn’t
your ‘all powerful’ Sword of Omens get us all out of here?”
“They
took our weapons, Luna.” Lion-O replied in a voice little stronger than a
whisper.
“Well
can’t you call your stupid sword? It
works every other time you’re imprisoned,” said TugMug.
“I
don’t have the strength to call for it loud enough for the Eye to hear me,”
Lion-O answered, his voice so fatigued it seemed that he might pass out at any
moment. “Thinking and wishing and even
whispering for it to come hasn’t worked so far.”
Pumyra
struggled to sit up, and grimaced as the Thundrainium burned the palms of her
hands which she was using to support her weight. “There must be some way out of here, some way
to stop them.”
“How?”
Chilla hissed from where she leaned against the bars. She felt almost as weak as the Thundercats
looked from the volcano’s oppressive heat.
“You Thundercats can barely move!
I’m the only one of us here with any kind of weapon, and this heat is
killing me.” She panted and wiped her
forehead, which came away unnaturally moist for an icewalker. “And even if it wasn’t, I can’t spit enough
ice to put out a volcano.”
Cheetara
looked over at Alluro. “I have an idea,”
she whispered hoarsely.
“What
is it?” asked Lion-O.
“Alluro,
Torlei’s your sister, right?”
The
psi regarded the cheetah with a frown.
“Yes. She was, anyway, in another
lifetime. I have no idea what she is now
that Mumm-Ra’s twisted her.”
“Maybe
you could use that. It’s obvious she
remembers you, and you are her kin. Part
of her must still care about you,” Cheetara suggested.
Alluro
let out a hollow chortle. “I know you
Thundercats are slow, but I think it’d be obvious even to you how she feels
about me. She made that quite clear back
at Mumm-Ra’s pyramid.”
“Not
necessarily,” argued Pumyra. “Of any of
us, you’d have the most chance of reaching whatever good,” she paused, and
amended as she reconsidered her words, “whatever mortality still might exist in
her.”
TugMug
snorted with amusement at the Thundercat’s slip. “Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look. At least you don’t think we Lunatacs are cut
from the same goody-goody cloth that you are.”
Pumyra
ignored TugMug’s remark and continued to talk after taking another labored
breath. “You’re not only a hypnotist,
Alluro, but as her brother you could sway her with both emotion and your
powers. You might be able to get through
to her. Maybe if you remind her of your
past together, your connections and happy memories—”
“That
she’d renounce Mumm-Ra and let him out,” Chilla finished for the puma, and
turned toward Alluro as well. “It might
work. Of any of us, she was closest to
you.”
Cheetara
nodded, glad that the others understood what she had been thinking but had not
had the energy to explain thanks to the Thundrainium. “Then you could let the rest of us out of
here.” Although she did not like the odds
of trusting a Lunatac to play savior to them, it was the only chance they had,
and it was not out of the realm of possibility that the Lunatacs would aid them
solely to spite Mumm-Ra.
Luna
meanwhile scoffed at the notion. “It
won’t work. Torlei had no compunctions
about trying to kill Alluro along with the rest of us the day I killed her, and
that was more a lucky shot than anything.
Thank the gods I could reach that blaster and shoot the traitorous
witch, or we’d have all been dead that day.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Funny
thing is I never expected the shot’d be enough to kill her. I intended to have Amok deal with her when we
got out. But what’s done is done.”
Bengali
growled. “Only you could talk about
taking life in such cavalier terms.”
Frowning
at the tiger, Luna retorted, “Killing to save myself, not to mention the
others—which I’d think you Thundercats might call honorable if it was another
Thundercat doing it—might not seem noble to you, but you’d be surprised at what
you’d do if your life depended on it, boy.”
She tapped her boot against Amok’s horn.
“But my point is that Torlei doesn’t care about any of us. The woman bound herself to Mumm-Ra, for
crying out loud! There’s no goodness to
reach in her. You’re fools if you think
there is.”
“I
can’t believe that,” Lion-O argued, grunting with effort to get on his
elbows. “There’s some goodness in
everyone, even the most hard-hearted souls.”
He looked pointedly at Luna.
“Even you.”
“Hah,”
was Luna’s only response to that.
“Yes,”
pressed the Thundercat Lord. “If no one
else, you care about Amok… or else you wouldn’t have apologized to him after he
threw away your grandmother’s belt.”
“Shut
up, fool. Don’t make presumptions that
make you look more foolish than you already do.”
RedEye
groaned, irritated at the continued bickering in the face of their impending
doom. “This is pointless. If you have a plan, you ought to try it now. Those two are chomping at the bit,” he said,
gesturing to the undead pair on the volcano’s rim.
Looking
from Mumm-Ra and Torlei to the bubbling lava awaiting below, Bengali
shuddered. “How badly does it hurt?” he
asked the Lunatacs with an overwhelming sense of dread. “He did it to you once already.”
“It’s
not so bad,” Alluro said with smooth sarcasm.
“Just imagine someone pouring concentrated acid over every part of your
body, burning with a painful sensation that pales in comparison to anything
else you might’ve felt, until you go numb, blind, and lose your awareness
altogether from pain and oblivion.” A
sick smile crossed his lips. “And it
feels the same in reverse when you’re freed, too.”
The
description of an ordeal he would have liked to forget ever happened the first
time rattled TugMug enough that he pulled furiously at the bars of their cage
again. He was strong, but not strong
enough to break the Thundrainium bars the cage was built of. “Screw that.
I’m not going through that again!”
“Doesn’t
look like we have much choice,” Panthro said with a low growl.
“Unless
we take the long shot,” said Cheetara as she eyed Alluro expectantly. “At least try
to get through to your sister.”
Alluro
frowned. “Much as it galls me to say
Luna’s right, she probably is.” He
looked at Torlei in the distance at Mumm-Ra’s side and tried to reconcile the sister
he had once known to the creature that called herself her now.
“You
have nothing to lose by trying,” Lion-O urged.
Sighing,
Alluro gave a small nod of consent.
“Understand that we’re grasping at straws here. Even though I’m the most powerful hypnotist
on this or any other planet, mind powers don’t work well on beings such as
Mumm-Ra.”
“Then
speak from your heart. I’m sure you
Lunatacs have them, even if you don’t use them much.” Cheetara offered a half-smile of
encouragement to the psi.
Alluro
did not respond to either Thundercat, or to the muttered derisive remarks he
heard coming from Chilla and TugMug’s directions in response to the
Thundercats, but instead went to the part of the cage that most closely faced
Mumm-Ra and Torlei. “Torlei!” he called
out, his tone forceful but without anger.
The
undead psi whirled around at the sound of his voice and glared at him. “What?”
“Please
don’t do this, sister,” he said in a lowered tone full of heartfelt sincerity.
Unimpressed
with Alluro’s last moment plea for mercy, Mumm-Ra let out a jeer while Torlei
strode closer. “Give me one reason not
to,” she challenged hatefully.
Steeling
his resolve, Alluro replied, “I understand why you’re so angry. Of course you are. I know how it must seem from your standpoint…
but you must understand. Luna never meant to kill you.”
“She
meant to wound me then?” Torlei scoffed incredulously. “Cause me agonizing pain? Is that pathetic defense supposed to make me
want to spare you?”
“No! It was a misunderstanding. Nobody wanted you dead. Luna shot to snap you out of it, not kill
you. I know it’s no consolation and it
can’t be undone, but I swear to you it’s the truth. None of us wanted you to die, especially
me.” He stared intently into her eyes,
sickened by the malevolent red glow in them instead of the pale yellow she had
in life. “You’re my sister. I loved you.
I still do.”
Torlei
advanced toward him, her expression hard as ever. “Your intentions mean nothing, and regardless
of Luna’s supposed intentions, I still wound up dead,” she countered
viciously. “Maybe things would’ve been
different for you if you’d stayed loyal to me, or if you’d at least tried to stop her from killing me, but
you didn’t.” Her scarlet eyes
narrowed. “No, brother dear, I’m afraid
your half-baked words of sentimentality aren’t enough to wipe the slate
clean. Actions speak louder than words
and you proved where your loyalties lie back at Moonfire Peak, so now you can
pay the price with your chosen allies along with your enemies. As far as I’m concerned, I have no
brother. Mumm-Ra and the Ancient Spirits
of Evil, the ones that restored the life that Luna took from me, are my family
now. You’re nothing and you mean nothing
to me, Alluro.”
Using
what strength he could muster, Lion-O crept closer to the side of the
cage. “I don’t believe that,” he
said. “There’s a part of you that still
wants to care about your brother.”
“What
do you know, feline?” Torlei hissed resentfully in the lion’s direction. “Don’t dare to assume you know anything about
what I feel, Thundercat.”
“Keep
going,” Cheetara whispered from behind Alluro.
“Remind her of good times you had with her.”
Brushing
aside the thought of how odd it was to have Thundercats offering familial counseling
advice, Alluro pressed on with the arrogant thought that he did not need them
telling him how to approach his sister when he was the master of the mind and
persuasion. “Sister, listen to me. I thought about what you said back at the
pyramid. You were right—you did so much
for me over the years. I must seem
rather ungrateful… and I’m sorry.” He
paused a moment to let his words sink in.
“For so long you were all I had.
You raised me when you were but a child yourself, only six years older
than me. I know what you went through to
keep us both safe when you could’ve just left me behind to fate. I’ll always love you for that, and for the
times we shared during and afterward. We
were all each other had for so very long, long before we even knew Luna and the
others.” He smiled wanly. “Remember what that was like? When we would go from city to city conning
the wealthy to get what we needed, and perhaps a bit extra for fun? Or what you taught me about using my own
powers above and beyond the lessons we got from the temples and tutors? You always said I was like our mother, that I
had her powers, even though I don’t remember her.” He watched as glimmers of recognition
registered on her harsh features, and smiled more confidently.
“Remember
how we’d laugh at the stunts we pulled?
Like the time I hypnotized that puffed-up little worm Zymachus to moon
the mayor after he crossed us? I thought
you’d collapse on the spot you were laughing so hard. How about when we met the rest of them all
those years ago in the capitol?” He
gestured to the Lunatacs imprisoned with him.
“Remember how it felt to bring our enemies to their knees as a
team? Even that dreadful mad dash out of
the club that brought us here to Third Earth was a rush. The Moons still must have our names down in
the history books as a gang not to cross.”
His smile faded. “Tell me, can
you truly forget all of those good times, and let one terrible misunderstanding
and that wretched mummy to torture and kill me now?” His voice grew shaky. He was no longer drawing on his hypnotic
powers at all, though his words were charged with enough emotion that they
carried a sway of their own.
She
remained silent as she listened to him speak, but a faint echo of wistfulness
and regret flashed across Torlei’s features as she remembered the times Alluro
spoke of, as well as others he did not, before the incident with the orb back
on Moonfire Peak. Still wary, she
searched his eyes for the slightest hint of deceit, but found none.
“It’s
working...” Pumyra whispered.
Lion-O
seized the opportunity that Alluro had provided for their escape with his
distraction. The renewed hope of having
a plan had given Lion-O enough of an adrenaline surge to provide the strength
he needed to call on the powers of the Eye of Thundera. Mustering every bit of energy he could, he
called out forcefully, “Sword of Omens, come to my hand!” His voice cracked on the last word, and it
ended in a half-cough, but it was enough to wake the Eye nonetheless. The mystic gem flashed red, and the blade
magically rose from the inert pile of weapons and flew in his direction.
When
he saw what was happening, Mumm-Ra let out a furious shout. “Oh no you don’t!”
It
was too late, and the sword fell firmly into Lion-O’s grasp, while Torlei’s
face twisted back into its hateful rage as she realized that she’d been
had. “You’ll sink to any level to save
your own hide, won’t you, Alluro?” she hissed with unbridled contempt. “You used our past distract me so your enemy Lion-O could free you all!”
“No! That’s not what I was doing,” Alluro
protested, furious at the Thundercats’ timing to make it seem like he had
betrayed his sister yet again. Although
his aim was to get out and survive, his words to Torlei had been sincere, and
he hated Lion-O as much as he did Mumm-Ra for turning her further against
him.
Torlei
scowled. “You almost fooled me,
brother. I almost believed you actually
cared about me, and that I might’ve been wrong in wanting to see you dead along
with Luna and the others. But you’ve
proven yet again that brother or not, you’re not worth it, and that family will
stab you in the back just as soon as anyone else,” she said venomously. “All you care about is yourself, and what you
can get. Well you’ll get what you
deserve as Luna’s little second banana—to fry alongside her and the rest of
your friends. Burn, all of you!” She spoke a spell invocation that caused the
chain on the cage to begin lowering into the lava.
Fortunately
for the prisoners, the Sword of Omens revitalized Lion-O’s
Thundrainium-weakened body, and he raised it as high as he could through the
bars. “Not this time we won’t. Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats—Ho!” His powerful battle cry echoed to the heavens
and the Thundercat signal burned its image into the ashen sky. The power of the Eye of Thundera quickly
restored the strength of the other Thundercats while Lion-O sliced open the top
of the cage. Everyone inside, Thundercat
and Lunatac alike, leapt out of the prison onto the rock ledge before it fell
into the bubbling lava below. When he
landed, Lion‑O pointed the Sword of Omens at Mumm-Ra and Torlei and let
out a resounding shout of “Ho!” A blue
beam shot from the Sword of Omens, stunning the undead pair, allowing the rest
of them time to collect their weapons.
Mumm-Ra and Torlei recovered quickly and fought back, resulting in a
stalemate between them and the Thundercats and Lunatacs that lasted until the
Thunderstrike arrived to turn the tide of battle. As always, the other Thundercats had seen the
cat signal and came as soon as they could to aid their Lord.
Lynx-O,
Tygra, and the Thunderkittens were in top form and came in with the
Thunderstrike’s guns blazing. Manning
one of the pods with his sister behind him, WilyKat locked on the smaller and
unfamiliar form beside Mumm-Ra and fired while Tygra attempted to target
Mumm-Ra from the other pod. Tygra’s shot
missed, but WilyKat’s was spot on, and the blast hit Torlei squarely in the
back. The impact sent her over the rocky
ledge and plunging right into the heart of the volcano she and Mumm-Ra intended
to seal the Thundercats and Lunatacs in.
She let out an unearthly screech as she fell, and then vanished. Despite all that had happened, Alluro still
saw the sister he almost had back rather than someone who had just tried to
kill them all, and he ran to the edge shouting her name. When he reached it, he saw nothing but the
fiery pit below and no trace of her.
While
that happened, Lion-O blasted Mumm-Ra in the chest with the Sword of Omens,
knocking him backwards. Realizing that
he had lost and that his partner was gone, he had no choice but to retreat and
regroup. He reverted into his mummy form
cursing the days that each of his foes had been born, and flew back into the
air to return to his pyramid. He did not
sense Torlei’s presence, and he supposed that she had met her end when she fell
into the volcano. Immortal or not, he
knew that young immortals were considerably weaker than ones as old as himself,
and if her body was too damaged to reconstruct itself then she would not be
able to survive. It left him with a
disturbing sense of regret, for another plan failed and another battle lost,
and perhaps a very tiny bit for the loss of a partner whose potential he had
never had the chance to truly explore.
Back
on the volcano’s side, Luna dug through Amok’s saddle pouches until she found a
remote controller that could summon the Lunattacker to come to them. “Thank the gods that the most convenient
volcanoes are on DarkSide,” she muttered as she watched the Thundercats gather
around the landing Thunderstrike now that Mumm-Ra had gone. Her own group was more scattered; TugMug and
RedEye were close by, and Chilla was lingering behind them walking a bit slower
due to the volcano’s heat. Alluro was
still at the volcano’s edge, staring down at the lava seemingly
transfixed. She was about to shout to
him to snap out of it when the Lunattacker arrived. RedEye and TugMug wasted no time in getting
in, while Chilla paused by Luna’s side.
“Where’s Alluro?”
Amok
pointed to the volcano edge, and Chilla sighed irritably. “It figures.”
“Tell
him that if he’s not in here in two minutes we’re leaving without him. I don’t want to stay here and have the Thundercats
decide we owe them some favor for their part in saving us, or try to get the
better of us to ‘rehabilitate’ us while we’re vulnerable now that they think we
have redeeming traits or something ridiculous like that,” Luna said with a roll
of her eyes.
Chilla
nodded, not bothering to argue the point that as an icewalker, the last place
she wanted to go was closer to the lava.
However, the heat was more tolerable to Chilla than more of Luna’s hot
air, so she went anyway. “Alluro, get
up,” she said as she approached. She
grabbed his shoulder and shook it, and when he did not immediately answer, she
yanked him to his feet away from the volcano’s edge where the heat had her
sweating rivers of cold water onto her dress.
“She
died, again, and I didn’t stop her.
Again,” Alluro lamented as Chilla dragged him further down the
hill.
Chilla
stopped only long enough to forcibly turn him toward her. “There’s nothing you could’ve done. She’s gone.
Dwelling on it won’t change anything.”
Giving advice and sympathy did not come naturally to Chilla, and it
showed in the rare occasions she attempted to deliver it, such as that moment,
although the oppressive heat made her words terser than they might have been
elsewhere. “Listen to me,” she said,
lowering her voice and pulling him along again.
“Torlei wasn’t really alive, not like us. It was just some spell of Mumm-Ra’s or his
masters. Now let’s get out of here
before the Thundercats decide to kick us while we’re down.”
Alluro
remained silent, but listened to her, and picked up his pace alongside her.
As
their walk changed to a slow run, Chilla added, “Just let her go. You don’t
want to remember her like that.”
“No,”
he said finally. “Pretty much everything
that happened today is best left in the past.
Let’s get out of here.” The two
of them reached the Lunattacker and climbed in, and it wasted no time in
speeding off back toward Skytomb.
The
Thundercats stopped talking long enough to take note of the Lunatacs’ hasty
exit. “Hmph,” WilyKat remarked. “The least they could’ve done is thank
us. We did save them too.”
“Thanks
isn’t anything I’d ever expect from one of them anyway,” WilyKit said with a
shrug.
Tired
from the events of the day, Lion-O leaned against the Thunderstrike’s
door. “Well, I have to admit that it was
a joint effort getting out of there. If
they hadn’t distracted Torlei, I’m not so sure I’d have been able to call the
Sword of Omens without them stopping me.
That Thundrainium had us all really wiped out.”
“Thank
Jaga that it’s all over with,” Cheetara said with a weary sigh. “I don’t think I like the idea of Mumm-Ra
having a partner like him on a permanent basis.”
Pumyra
frowned. “Hey, what do you think
happened to her? If she was Mumm-Ra’s
bride and ever-living like he is like she said, then she might still be alive,
right?”
Panthro
frowned, and then shook his head. “Even
if she made it, she’s got to be an ever-living charcoal briquette after
that. I don’t think we’ll have to worry
about her anytime soon.”
Tygra
climbed back into his seat in the Thunderstrike. “If she could’ve come out, we’d probably have
seen her by now.”
Nodding
along with the other tiger, Bengali took the back seat of the Thunderstrike’s
main cabin. “I agree. And on that note, how about we discuss this
back at the Tower of Omens… where there’s air conditioning?”
Lynx-O
chortled. “Indeed. Not only is the heat miserable, but the
volcano smells terrible to someone with enhanced senses.”
“Kind
of like WilyKat after he eats too many of Robear Roberto’s tacos!” WilyKit
teased her brother.
“Shut
up! Like yours doesn’t stink,” he
quipped back.
Tygra
laughed and gestured for the Thundercats to all squeeze in. There were not quite enough seats in the
Thunderstrike for all of them, but they could fit in for a very cozy ride. “All right, we’ll continue this debate back
at the Tower too. I’ll fly,” Tygra
volunteered. The Thundercats squished
themselves into the Thunderstrike and took off into the darkening sky, bound
for home. As they left, no one noticed
two small hands grip the edge of the volcano, one after another, and a
frail-framed, navy-blue clad figure climb out.
* * *
Many
hours later, long after night had fallen across Third Earth and an ominous full
moon shone in the starry skies above, Mumm-Ra half-asleep in his
sarcophagus. He was about to slip into
another deep death-like rest to recharge his powers and ponder the best way to
strike back at the Thundercats when he heard a noise that stirred him back into
full alertness. “Ma-Mutt,” he called
out, “is that you?”
A
whine at the foot of the sarcophagus confirmed that it was not. Frowning, Mumm-Ra pushed the stone lid open
and peered into the darkness of his chamber for any sign of the intruder.
A
pair of blazing red eyes met his own.
Mumm-Ra stepped closer and recognized the outline of his undead bride
approaching. She moved slowly, and as
she drew nearer he could see that she was somewhat burned, her hair and clothes
charred, but not all that worse for the wear considering where she had
been. “Hi honey, I’m home,” Torlei
greeted him, and let out a bone-chilling laugh.
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