Lion-O marched at the head of his rag-tag column.  He was happier than he could remember being in a long, long time.  Some thirty Tabbots of various ages and callings had volunteered to join his excursion.  They had all scrabbled together what armor and weapons they could find.  The captain of the guard, Falstaff, had been notably absent during this requisitioning.

Lion-O himself had been pleased to find a breast-plate that fit him.  It had heavy, metal shoulder plates and a three piece wrap around waist coat that provided him with decent protection.  He had crushed his wild mane down under an iron pot-helm with a spike on the top, and so now, but for size differences, he looked much like the rest of his ad hoc army.

He carried a heavy broadsword that had been designed to be weilded with two hands,  but Lion-O's strength was such that he could use it fairly nimbly with one hand.  He had it out of its scabbard now, and he was playing with it, twirling it from side to side as they marched.  All the pigs were suitably impressed by his swordsmanship, and the lightness of his step despite wearing
the heaviest siege armor the village could produce.

It had only taken a few hours of steady marching for the terrain to begin to change.  The ground became more barren and broken with every step, it seemed. They were nearing the blasted, cursed portions of Third Earth where the mutants were known to live.  Few Tabbots had ever dared to venture this far into mutant territory, and those that had never came back to speak of it.

Lion-O was much more familiar with the area.  He'd spent alot of time winding his way though the rocky area.  All the trees were blackened and dead, but they never seemed to actually fall over.  He could swear some of them had even grown since last time he saw them.  Strange to think about it, a place where dead things grew.

And it was always quiet.  Not even insects buzzed in the deadlands.  Lion-O had meant to stress to the Tabbots how important surprise was to their plans, and how it was vital that they all remain as quiet as possible as they neared the castle.  He hadn't needed to.  As soon as they came inside the low, clinging mists they all fell into a silence as deep as lifeless earth around them.  It was the only natural thing to do in this unnatural place.

Lion-O felt a hard breeze blow past him.  He held up a hand to halt his army, and craned his head around.  Something was wrong.  He'd never noticed until now, but he had never actually felt a breeze inside the deadlands.  Something about this fact made his fur bristle.

It grew darker.  It was as if the sun was going down, or clouds had formed overhead, but there were no clouds, and the sun still shone.  It was just dimmer somehow.  The deafening silence was finally broken by the nervous snorting of the Tabbots.  They too could feel that dark magic was brewing.

Finally Lion-O caught sight of a lone figure before them.  It was very tall, perhaps eight feet in height.  It was painfully slender, which only served to make it look even taller.  It looked to Lion-O like an animate skeleton, but the bones were charcoal black, and slick red veins wound their way around the putrid joints.  A mask of white had been painted onto the black skull and teeth, which only served to draw attention into the gaping holes that existed where it should have had eyes.  No glow eminated from the holes, but still they seemed to stare, and cast the illusion that there was no bottom to the blackened sockets at all.  From the top of the skull sprang two, long antler horns.  And from its wrists grew two long tusks...or perhaps they were blades. They rested along its bony underarm and stretched up beyond the thing's shoulders like twin scythes.

Lion-O raised his sword before him and opened his mouth to shout a challenge. There was a whistling sound and Lion-O's broadsword snapped in two with a clink.  His head darted back as quickly as he could, but he could feel a thin line of blood trickling down his throat.

He heard the whistling sound again and moved, as fast as he could.  He leapt backwards, flipping over behind most of the Tabbots.  The ebony monster lurched forward into the pigs.  Its jawbone dropped open and bloody veins lanced out like striking adders, lashing the front rank of Lion-O's Tabbots. It swung its arms and blood and limbs fountained up from the squealing mass of pigs.

Lion-O backed away in mute horror.  He saw the red tendrils along the monster's limbs strike out, punching tiny holes through flesh and armor alike, and he paled when he saw the penetrated victims collapse down into gaunt shadows of themselves after a slurping, sucking sound.

Lion-O stumbled backwards a few more steps.  He watched the whirling scythes in terrified fascination.  They seemed to move so slowly, but everything else was simply still compared to them.  He watched in exquisite detail as the point of one caught a Tabbot right under the chin and slipped down across its gut, spilling its intestines out onto the ground with a plop.

Lion-O turned and ran.  He could hear his heart pounding inside his ears as his feet stumbled and scuffled across the broken ground.  Occasionally a faraway scream broke over the sound of his heart.  They were dying, all of them.  And he was running.  But he knew with absolute certainty that if he stayed to fight, he'd be just as dead as they were.

*Coward coward coward!* he screamed at himself as his feet pounded across the ground, but he wouldn't turn around.  He wasn't ready to die, and that is what was behind him.  Certain death.

He didn't stop running until he was back in Tabbot village.  The sun had truly set now, and no one noticed the heavily panting Thunderan as he skulked back into Falstaff's smithy.

"What happened?" came a soft voice of concern.  Flastaff.

"They're all dead!" Lion-O nearly bawled.  Tears streaked his face.  How could this have happened?

"But you're not."

"No...I ran away.  I left them to die."

"Could you have saved them, lad?"

"No," he stuttered, wanting to add more somehow.  What was happening to him?

"So you did all you could do, you saved your own skin.  Is that so dishonorable?  Does your concept of loyalty demand that you go die now, just because your comrades did?"

"I don't know!  Leave me alone, Falstaff, now is not the time for your damned word games!"  Lion-O sat quietly for a few minutes, and then looked back up to the Tabbot.  "What am I going to do, Falstaff?"

Falstaff sighed and shook his head.  "You're going to run.  There's no place for you hear anymore.  It is your fault that all those men died, and the village will loathe you for it.  Run out into the wilds and make a life for yourself there, Lion-O.  It's over."

Lion-O sucked in his lower lip and stood.  He nodded goodbye to the obese pig, and Falstaff grimly returned the nod.  Without another word Lion-O fled into the night, with only his own shame to accompany him.