Lion-O had spent most of the day formulating his plan.  He now lay on the cool grass of the glade staring through the sparse tree blanches at the black night sky and the dancing, winking flecks of white scattered throughout it. Up there, thought Lion-O as he looked at the stars.  Up there, somewhere, were the Jaguars, and the remains of Thundera's population.  Up there was where he needed to go.  But before he could strike out at the stars, he would need to secure the planet.  Not an easy task for one man.

Not a particularly hard one, either.  There were so many factions here, so much power, just begging to be united in a common cause.  All he had to do was pull them in and provide the cause.  Keep the wooden chips under the water. Simple enough, if only he could get the water moving.  Castle Plundarr was the key to that.  The mutants had attacked just about everyone on Third Earth, and so about the only thing everyone on the planet could agree upon was that they wanted the mutants destroyed.  Previously Lion-O had viewed the mutants as enemies at the best, and annoyances at the least.  Now he viewed them as opportunities.

But the mutants were protected by Mumm-Ra.  He needed to do something spectacular to get the others to take notice of him, and to redeem his earlier failure.  The mutants alone he could handle on his own, but Mumm-Ra's monster....

He needed a weapon.  For the first time in weeks he found himself longing for the Sword of Omens.  He quickly quieted the urge.  A minor fear nibbled at his mind that if he longed for the weapon too much it would only open a door to Jaga to creep back into his mind.  He cleared his mind, letting his thoughts settle back to the familiar, flat black.  The image of the blade in his mind glistened against the darkness.

A quick flash across the sky brought Lion-O out of his reverie.  He just caught streaking tail of light with the edge of his vision.  A shooting star. An old Thunderan legend occured to him.  If you wished upon a shooting star, it was supposed to come true.  He let out a soft laugh.  Too bad he'd missed it.

The night sky brightened as another star fell across the sky.  Lion-O toyed with making his wish for long moments.  By the time he decided it wouldn't hurt to give in to fanciful superstition just for fun, the streak of light had faded out.  "Ah well," he grinned.

The sky lit up with arcing lights, flaring brightly as the tiny objects burned up travelling through Third Earth's atmosphere.  A full meteor shower. The stars fell like rain, and Lion-O basked in the light of it.  "I wish I had a weapon!  A tool to defeat Jaga, take my revenge, and forge my kingdom!" he called out to flashing night sky.

He didn't expect the sky to answer, but it did.  One of the stars in the sky that was not falling flared brightly.  It took Lion-O a few long seconds to realize that it was falling, it just didn't look like it because it was falling straight towards him.  He ducked instinctively as an object roared overhead and crashed into a stand of trees far behind him with a tremendous thunderclap.  It had landed very near him, and the concussion wave still knocked Lion-O off his feet.

Within moments he was up on his feet and running towards the point of impact. A few downed trees and a canopy of flaming leaves marked the exact landing zone.  Lion-O's mind blazed with the possibilities.  All the other meteorites had burned up in the upper atmosphere.  If this one had gotten through, it was because it had been either very large, or very, very hard.

Only a small crater and somce scattered, upturned soil marked the spot where the object had fallen.  If the trees nearby hadn't caught fire Lion-O might not even have been able to find it.  It was too hot to approach the crater too closely.  Lion-O burned with anticipation and curiousity, and found himself wishing the meteorite would cool down quickly.

The heat dropped off dramatically very quickly.  Lion-O licked his lips andwalked to the edge of the small impact crater and peered in.  It didn't look like much at first.  It was just an oddly angular, blackened and pitted chunk of rock.  Lion-O reached down to take ahold of it.  It was still hot, and lightly seared his hands, but he barely noticed.  It was heavy for its size. Extremely heavy.  Denser, harder, than any metal found on Third Earth.

Unbeckoned, an image flooded into his mind.  The murky surface of the meteorite brought him back to visions of the inky darkness he dreamt in, and the bright blade that stood against it in sharp relief.  Like an artist that sees a finished sculpture trapped inside a piece of granite, Lion-O saw a blade in this rock from the heavens.  All he had to do was forge it.

He cradled the meteorite in his arms like a lover and stole back towards Tabbot village as fast as he could.  He went to great pains not to be seen by anyone.  He was no longer popular here, and it would not do at all to be spotted by any Tabbots, not until he had completed the first phase of his plan.

Lion-O crept into Falstaff's stall and began stoking the bellows.  It was a noisy process, but hopefully Falstaff had followed his usual nightly routine of drinking himself into unconsciousness.  The fires built, as hot as they could get, and Lion-O deposited his precious meteorite inside the smelter, silently praying that the heat would be enough to melt the metal.

Minutes later the metal wasn't even reddened.  A few bits and peices here and there had turned molten and drained away, but that must have just been a few impurities.  The rock itself remained dull and undisturbed.  Lion-O grew momentarily desperate.  He had within his grasp the material to make a fabulous weapon, but it would be useless to him unless he could first liquify it.

"Burn," he said suddenly, coming to a realization.  "Burn!" more forcefully this time.  He directed his will towards the stubborn rock.  "Burn," he commanded it with a shallow snarl.  The rock began to glow red and soften. "Burn," he whispered lovingly.

And from behind, in the corner, Falstaff watched with a mixture of wonder and fear.  His eyes widened as he watched the molten liquid pour from the bellows, and spin itself into a boiling ball between Lion-O's hands.  Falstaff shivered at the way Lion-O laughed.

Soon enough he saw that the metal was cooling, and Lion-O was hammering away at it, as much with his mind as with any tools available from the workshop. It sparked and clanged and gradually began to take a shape, as if it had been poured into a mold that had been made for it in Lion-O's consciousness long ago.  It began to look like a long, double edged blade, with a stubby, squared off base to attach a hilt to.  Not that Lion-O ever would.  The base itself seemed to call out to his hand already, and he could imagine no more comfortable hilt than simply the cold, hard metal that made up the blade itself.

Lion-O took his cooling masterpiece over to the grinding wheel and began to sharpen it furiously.  The wheel itself had no effect on the metal, but yet it grew sharper and sharper.  Falstaff found himself wondering if all magic blades were forged with this same strange intensity, or if calmer, more gentle hands created them.  But he had no doubt in his mind that was exactly what he was witnessing, the birth of one of those special blades.

Finally Lion-O stood back from the grinding wheel, clasping the completed blade in his hand.  It was beautiful.  It was flawless.  He swung it down into the anvil.  The blade sang as it sliced through the air, with a loud, ringing noise that sounded almost like a bell it crashed through the slab of iron, cleaving it into two neatly separated peices.  Lion-O drew it back and grinned at his reflection in the polished surface of his weapon.  "Hello Falstaff," he greeted the hidden spectator.

"Hello, my lad," Flastaff replied warily, nervously stepping out from behind his hiding spot.  Lion-O nodded to him and began to make his way out of the stall.  "Wait...wait Lion-O!  Where are you going?"

"Castle Plundarr," Lion-O replied calmly, without even turning back to face the hog.

Falstaff scurried after the longer legged Thunderan, trying to keep up with him.  "Castle Plundarr?!  Why in the name of Money would you want to do that!"

"I have a promise to keep."

"A promise to keep?"  Falstaff stopped and stared at the retreating figure. "Lion-O, don't be daft, boy!  You can't take the entire castle by yourself, and no one will help you after what happened before!  It's not worth dying over!  Promises don't mean a thing!"

"To an old, fat, pig like you, they don't.  But I am not like you, Falstaff. Your lessons taught me much, and if I heeded them I would become quite a successful old  fat pig.  But I am a king, and a king's word is his life's blood.  All the virtues you so despise are the currency of leadership, and so I must embrace them."  Lion-O halted for a moment and turned back to face his former mentor.  "Thank you for your lessons, Falstaff.  Goodbye."

"Goodbye bo...young king," said Flastaff softly, with a hint of regret and defeat in his voice.  He watched Lion-O disappear into the woods.  "And good luck to you."  He knew that win or lose, he would not see Lion-O again.