Cold wind quietly cut through Lion-O's tangled matte of wild red hair, and then suddenly died out.  He found himself suddenly shivering.  It wasn't that the temperature had actually dropped, he just felt colder.  The 'natural' sounds of the deadlands seemed to drop to the ground like autumn leaves.  He felt his heart begin to thump in his chest with increasing fervor. It was the same broken ground, the same deadened hills, where his ad hoc attack force had met the monster.  And he just knew the beast was still here, waiting for him.  It hadn't chased him because it knew he must eventually come back to face it.  True evil was patient.

He forced his feet to plod forward on the path towards Castle Plundarr.  This time there would be only two possible outcomes.  He would succeed in phase one of his strategy, or he would die trying.  Scraps of chewed, discarded armor now cluttered the barren hills, and the smell of death and decay was thick here.  He choked it down and exerted his will towards lifting his feet and shuffling them forward, one at a time.  His steps seemed so short, so slow. He stopped.  He saw a massive, black figure in the trail ahead, bent over the corpse of a rotting pig.  Its white jaws ground silently, pulling grayed flesh off of the bones of a long dead Tabbot in long, sticky patches, sucking the gory bounty down into its mouth.  It halted in its foetid feast and turned slowly to gaze at Lion-O with its empty sockets.

Lion-O froze as the non-eyes locked onto him.  His heart was beating faster and faster, thumping in his broad chest in a furious frenzy that he could feel in his throat.  He couldn't breathe.  He felt cold terror sweeping over him, he had to run, he had to escape!  He planted his feet in the ground and brought the blade he had forged out from behind his back, and pointed the tip at the beast in challenge, even as his mind screamed at him to flee. The guant figure rose to its full height, its long arms dangling down towards the ground, the long, wickedly curved blades stretching up from its wrists. It cocked its head and began devouring the distance between itself and Lion-O in quick, long strides.  Lion-O felt strangled.  Pure irrational fear seized every fiber of his being as the dark shape lumbered toward him.  He kept the tip of the blade pointed at the thing.  The cold, hard feel of the metal in his palm was so reassuring.

The air boiled and sizzled as the two blindingly fast strikes came from the creature's blades.  Sparks flashed in the air as the two hissing blades were met in mid attack by something hard, sharp, and unyeilding.  The stiff skeletal face of the monster didn't register surprise, but its body language did.  Lion-O still stood before it, his terror diminishing.  He was untouched, and the blade was held at an angle across his chest now, recovering after parrying two blows so quickly.

"For the Tabbots," said Lion-O in as loud and strong a voice as he could muster.  It sounded far away, muffled, but it broke the silence like a spell. His fear was evaporating.  The blade ached to cut something, it begged him in his mind.  He gave in to its lust. The silence shattered like glass as Lion-O propelled himself forward, swinging the blade quickly in both his hands to lash out the monster that had haunted his mind.  The sharpened edge bit through the air hungrily, nipping at the beast from one angle, then slicing around to attack from another.  Each time it was met by the solid, clanging metal of the creature's wrist blades. It was a blur, a whirlwind of sharpened metal, buzzing around each of the combatants.  The metal of each was in constant motion, thrusting, retreating, meeting hard resistance each time one tried to cut into the other. Suddenly the creature's jaw opened and coils of black viens erupted from the bony mouth like a shower of serpents.  Lion-O's weapon spiraled in front of his face as he faded backwards, slashing the veins into peices.  Black blood spurted out of the sliced chords, but even those scattered droplets were blocked and deflected by the furious motion of Lion-O's sword.  Every singly drop.  Lion-O wasn't even grasping the blade anymore.  It just touched against his palm, dancing around his fingertips with a frantic speed fingers and muscles couldn't hope to produce.

The spraying vessels retreating back into its mouth, whipping around like out of control hoses.  It clamped its jaw down tightly, but still the black fluid oozed from between its teeth and dripped down its jaw.  More vessels shot out at Lion-O from various parts of its body, striking at him like threaded needles.  Each was diced into bits as it came within the reach of Lion-O's sword tip.

The creature recoiled as its foetid life-juices seeped down its sides.  Lion- O wondered for a moment what it was thinking now.  Was it as terrified now as he had been?  Was it angry, shocked, defiant, pained?  Its skeletal face showed no emotion, but did that mean it was beyond feeling?  Lion-O decided it didn't matter.  He gripped the blade tightly with both his hands and sliced it across the creature with all the power he could muster.

It threw up both its blades to block, and a ringing sound echoed through the air as the blade sliced neatly through both of them.  And the skeletal creature's body.  And the rock behind it that should have been beyond the blade's reach.  And the tree beyond that.  Each of the objects toppled over onto the ground, the monster slowly deflating into a pool of thick, black gore.

Lion-O held up the blade, and noticed for the first time that there wasn't a drop of blood on its entire length.  He reversed his grip on his beloved object and shifted it behind his back, so the flat rested along his muscular forearm.  The hungry, pointed tip of the weapon could just be seen above his shoulder from the front.  Lion-O turned and continues along the path to the
castle.  He almost pitied the mutants.

And distant, ruby eyes watched the scene through the reflection of a bubbling cauldron.  Clammy, undead hands wrung together in nervous agitation.  Mumm-Ra was uncertain what to do.  He could summon forth more monsters to be destroyed, as his poor Mr. Bones had been.  But was that truly necessary anymore?  The aged demon shrank back into his crimson cape.  He would watch and wait, he decided.  Despite his endless existance, he was nothing if not adaptable, and the winds of poer on Third Earth were changing.