He was in the main elevator on a direct route to the deck in which their personal quarters were when it stopped on the main floor. Luna and Amok joined him in the lift. In Amok’s hand was a large and lumpy plastic pack of some sort. The first few moments of the ride passed in silence until Luna spoke. "Chilla is worse," she informed him flatly. "If I were to give an opinion, I would say I would be surprised if she survives through the night."

Alluro eyed her coldly. "Then don’t give an opinion."

They lapsed into another tense silence, and finally the elevator door opened. Alluro stepped out first, and Luna and Amok followed him out. "I’m only telling it as I see it, Alluro," Luna said as Amok attempted to keep in step with the other Lunatac. "She lost consciousness about two hours ago."

Alluro didn’t break his stride. "She’s probably just sleeping. I’m sure her body is quite overstressed by now."

"No," Luna said. "Her fever is up another degree last we checked, and when RedEye tried to rouse her she did not awaken."

This time Alluro paused. "How hard did he try?"

Luna met his eyes with a deadly serious gaze. "Hard enough."

Alluro mulled that bit of information over for a moment. "And what about TugMug?"

"He’s still alert, but he says he’s in a lot of pain. His body keeps convulsing like it’s trying to get something out."

"Dry heaves?"

Luna nodded. "Similar, only much worse. Each time it happens it gets more violent and to hear him, more painful. It looks almost like a seizure of some kind. RedEye went to check on him a few moments ago. I’m tending to Chilla. Since the medicines aren’t working to bring down her fever, I thought perhaps ice packs might."

"At this point, anything is worth a try," he agreed.

Luna eyed him carefully. "I take it from your tone that you didn’t find out anything of use from Mumm-Ra?"

He shook his head and made a noise of disgust. "No. Mumm-Ra made it clear that he would rather get his kicks out of insulting me and watching us suffer than actually aid us, his so-called ‘allies’. I should have known better than to expect anything else from that worthless bundle of bones. Ironically the only ones who were of any use were the Thundercats."

"The Thundercats?" Luna asked incredulously.

"Tygra and Pumyra were there to confront him for similar reasons. I ran into them on the way out of the pyramid. Apparently some of their own have taken ill with the same affliction that struck Chilla and TugMug, and like them, they were also changed to stone and back yesterday by Mumm-Ra’s magic. So did one other, Willa of the Warrior Maiden tribe. She succumbed to it last night, apparently."

"So it killed Queen Willa?"

"Yes," Alluro replied. "Not much help in the way of finding a cure, but it does make it clear how serious it is." An agonized groan of pain from the direction of TugMug’s room made both Lunatacs look down the hallway in the direction of the sick ones’ quarters. Alluro wondered just how much time the two of them had, and felt a certain urgency to do something. "Luna, you said you were going to see to Chilla, right?"

Luna nodded a yes.

"Good. Go and apply the ice packs like you planned and alert me to her condition. I’m going to my lab to see what, if anything, showed up in the blood analyses I ran this morning."

Surprisingly Luna did not challenge his somewhat authoritative tone. "All right." The tiny Lunatac leader then prodded Amok, and her steed carried her down the hall.

Alluro returned to the elevator and headed for his lab. When he got back he was pleased to see that there was a printout on the analyzer he’d used. He pulled the sheet off and gave it a quick read. The only thing he noticed immediately was that the white blood cell count was high, which didn’t tell him much. Frowning, he went over to the computer to check these printouts against the ones on record from their last blood work. Luna had always insisted that they have physicals done every once in a while in case one of them was injured, but it had never really been necessary until now.

First he looked at TugMug’s. It was as he suspected, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, except for the elevated white blood cell count. So it is an infection of some sort, Alluro concluded, but an infection of what? He remembered the stone RedEye had showed him that he’d supposedly thrown up. Is it possible to be infected by stone?

With that strange thought on his mind he then checked Chilla’s records. Not surprisingly, her white blood cell counts were also high, even more elevated than TugMug’s. That stood to reason as she appeared much sicker than he did. As he compared her records however he also noticed something else—her hormone levels were significantly changed. A few seemed lower than the norm but some were much higher. At first he dismissed that as simply female physiology, but then he remembered something else. Queen Willa was the only other woman afflicted with this ailment, and she was now dead from it.

"So whatever this is, it affects females more strongly," he mused, speaking his thoughts aloud. He glanced at the paper again, then set it down in disgust. "That was a big help," he grumbled, shaking his head. "I could have figured that much without wasting all this time running a test."

He sighed, and examined the stone that RedEye had given him earlier. It was smooth, rounded, lightweight, and slightly porous in texture. He eyed it carefully, as if studying it for an answer. He wondered again how it might have gotten inside TugMug. He had some strange tastes in food, but rocks? And if he didn’t eat it, how did it get there? Did Chilla have them inside her too? Was that what was causing the infection? A little stone? It looked so benign, so harmless…

Alluro curled his fingers around the rock, moved to a different bench, and pulled out a microscope and a saw. There was only one way to find out.

It was late afternoon when Tygra and Pumyra returned to Cat’s Lair. They were greeted by a worried Snarf, who became even more upset when he saw Tygra’s injury. "Snaaaarf! What did Mumm-Ra do to you?"

"It’s not as bad as it looks, Snarf. I’ll be all right," Tygra assured him.

Pumyra nodded. "It’s just a surface burn, some salve and a bandage will take care of it for now."

Cheetara joined them as they descended the stairway leading to the med room. "I thought I heard the Thunderstrike land. What happened?"

"Mumm-Ra wasn’t very helpful," Tygra answered, offering a wistful smile that would let her know that he was all right so she wouldn’t worry when she saw the injury as Snarf had. "He didn’t tell us anything other than that our ‘ignorance’ in destroying the Norvog Nage was responsible for their conditions, and we wound up in battle with him. As you can see, we lost."

Cheetara lowered her head. "I’m sorry," she said sadly. "We need some lead to a cure very badly. I hate to say it, but Panthro seems worse, and Lion-O isn’t doing much better. Panthro keeps having convulsions, like he’s trying to throw up, and nothing comes out. And WilyKit said that Lion-O—this is really strange—expelled a stone earlier in a fit of his own."

"Expelled? How?"

"He threw it up," she answered, a perplexed expression on her face. "I don’t know how or why he might have swallowed it, though."

Pumyra frowned. "That reminds me of something Mumm-Ra said."

"What?" asked Tygra, searching his memory.

"Remember when I said to him that we defeated his evil magic and changed them back? He had a strange answer for that, he said ‘or did you change them back?’ or something along those lines. Maybe he inadvertently gave us a clue there. What if most of their bodies changed back, but not everything?"

Tygra thought for a moment. "You mean that you think some tissue or organ might still be stone?"

Pumyra nodded. "He said that when we destroyed the Norvog Nage we destroyed our chance at reversing the damage cast by the first spell, hinting that there might have been a counter-spell in the book that we destroyed. I’ll be the first to admit he was probably right in that we are naïve in the workings of spells, but is it possible that in destroying that book, we interrupted a spell in process and in turn left some kind of lasting side effect? Like leaving stone in their bodies that the Sword of Omens was unable to fully reverse with its own healing powers?"

"Wait a minute," Cheetara interrupted. "I’m not a medical expert, but if some vital organ of theirs was not changed back, wouldn’t they have gotten sick or died almost instantly?"

"Not necessarily," Tygra corrected her. "If would depend on what it was. If we were talking the brain, the heart, the lungs, yes, they would have of course shown the effects almost instantaneously. But if it were something else like the liver or stomach…" his voice trailed off as he recalled that being the main complaint of pain from those afflicted, "then it might be more delayed."

"Stone in their bodies would also explain their symptoms of infection, including the fever. The body would see it as a foreign tissue, an invader, and attack it," Pumyra continued.

Snarf bounced up on his tail, now even more distressed. "So what can we do? If it is an infection of stone, then we have to get rid of it somehow. We know it’s deadly, snarf snarf. It killed Willa, and from what I saw the last time I was with Lion-O, he and Panthro aren’t far behind! We can’t let them die!"

"They won’t die, Snarf," Cheetara said determinedly. "We won’t let that happen."

Tygra’s eyes lit up with a glimmer of hope. "You just gave me an idea that might be the answer to this, Snarf."

Snarf blinked. "I did?"

Tygra nodded. "Willa. She succumbed to this terrible illness, but she may have the answers we need. Perhaps if I get in contact with Nayda before her funeral rites, I could ask if she would allow me to do an autopsy to determine what exactly killed her."

Cheetara looked out the window hesitantly. "Do you think Nayda would permit that? I’m not sure what the Warrior Maidens’ beliefs and rites involving death are."

"I don’t like the idea any more than you do, Cheetara. I cared very deeply for Willa and I can barely stand the thought of treating her earthly body like some dissection… but what choice do we have? If it means saving the lives of those who might die if we don’t, I’d like to think that Willa would understand."

Cheetara nodded. "I’d like to think that too."

"Well there’s only one way to find out. We have to go there and ask Nayda," Pumyra said.

Tygra started for the door. "I’ll go right now. In the meantime, I want you all to treat whatever symptoms you can to keep them comfortable, and examine them for any sign of a blockage or obstruction or anything that might indicate some sort of stone or rock inside them without causing them additional pain. And take care in how you explain the situation to the kittens… I would hate to see them unnecessarily alarmed."

"Snarf snarf, of course we will. Good luck, Tygra."

"Thank you Snarf." The Thundercats then parted company. Cheetara, Pumyra, and Snarf all went upstairs to check on Lion-O and Panthro, while Tygra headed in the opposite direction and returned to the landing bay. He was still weary from his battle with Mumm-Ra and he hoped that his trip to the Tree Top Kingdom would prove more worthwhile than the fiasco at the Black Pyramid. Taking care not to irritate the bandaged wound on his back, he climbed into the Thunderstrike and set course for the Warrior Maidens’ home.

Though it was not a long ride, it felt like an eternity had passed by the time he landed in the heart of the Warrior Maidens’ territory. He was greeted by two scouts, who had seen his craft land and recognized it as a friendly one, and even though they were friendly he could see that they had an aura of sadness about them that was doubtless due to their beloved queen’s passing.

"Welcome, Tygra," one of the scouts, a teenaged warrior named Almika greeted him. "What can we do for you?"

"I heard the news of Willa’s passing this morning. I’m very sorry for your loss."

The other scout, named Liseti, nodded solemnly. "Thank you. Did you come for the ceremony of passing? It takes place in a short while and I’m sure that Queen Willa would have been honored by your presence."

"Thank you for the invitation, but first I must speak with Nayda if at all possible. Two of my people were afflicted with the same ailment that struck Willa, and I need her help to save them."

"Oh no," Almika said. "In that case, we’ll take you to her right away."

"Follow us," Liseti added. She gestured for him to follow, and the three of them headed to a large tree that had one of the settlement’s larger structures built into its lofty branches. Almika pulled on a rope that lowered a lift, and the three of them climbed onto it. Liseti let out a shout that was a signal to those up top, and a maiden standing upon the balcony operated the lift to pull them up quickly. Once they were up, the two scouts hurried to a door and knocked upon it. A voice from inside gave them permission to enter, and they walked in to find Nayda there, accompanied by an older warrior with long locks of graying hair.

"Tygra of the Thundercats wishes to speak with you, Queen Nayda," Almika told her leader.

"Tygra!" Nayda exclaimed, a fleeting smile crossing her face. "It’s good to see you." She signaled to Almika and Liseti that they were dismissed, and the two of them said a quick good-bye and left them in private. "I’m glad you came," she said as she walked over to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"I wish I came under better circumstances," Tygra said with a sigh. "Snarf told me about Willa. I am very sorry. She was a wonderful woman. I speak for all the Thundercats when I say that we will all miss her very much."

Nayda nodded. "So will we."

"And that makes this that much harder," Tygra took a deep breath as he struggled to put his request into kind words. "Lion-O and Panthro have fallen very ill, and I have every reason to believe that they have the same illness that killed Willa."

Nayda gasped. "Oh no! That’s terrible!"

Tygra gave a brief nod and continued, not wanting to drag out the awkwardness of what he had to ask. "Nayda, I need to ask a very big favor of you, one that is not easy for me to ask and won’t be easy for you to grant."

"What is it?"

"I… I want to examine Willa’s body and perform an autopsy."

The older warrior in the room narrowed her eyes. "Examine her? How?" she demanded in a suspicious tone.

"On Thundera we called it an autopsy. It’s a procedure in which we probe and examine the body with surgical instruments to determine exactly what killed the individual, and we would apply that knowledge in this case to save those who are still living from meeting the same fate."

Nayda paled slightly. "You want to cut her open?"

The older maiden stormed toward Tygra angrily. "What you ask is unspeakable," she said angrily. "She suffered enough in the last hours of her life and I will not stand for you to desecrate her after her death!"

"Calm down, Prieta," Nayda urged her elder. "I don’t believe Tygra means her any dishonor."

"You know how the gods look upon disturbing the rest of the dead. It is the reason we burn our dead within one sun of their death, so that their bodies are saved from desecration by the scavengers of the forest. I have been the priestess of this kingdom since you were a tiny child, Nayda, and I cannot believe that you would consider allowing this male outsider to defile our Queen in such a way."

"I did not know that it was against your custom," Tygra interrupted, "and for my ignorance I am sorry… but I beg you to reconsider. The lives of two dear friends of mine are at stake. I swear to you on my honor as a Thundercat that I would treat Willa with every respect possible. You know that, don’t you Nayda?"

"I know that, Tygra," Nayda said, looking away from the both of them for a moment to keep her composure before she faced him again. "But it has long been our belief that tarnishing the bodies of the dead brings evil to our kingdom. Scavengers that thrive on that which nature has left for waste have always been omens of darkness and destruction. Is it coincidence that two of the most vile creatures to ever taint this planet, the ones you call Mutants, are hideous man-breeds of a jackal and vulture, both creatures that feast upon dead flesh?" She looked away again. "I realize that is not your intention, but to ensure that our village does not attract the attention of evil spirits, we do not allow the dead to be touched except to be transported and dressed for the ceremonial burning."

"And certainly not touched by male hands," Prieta added contemptuously.

Tygra sighed. It was clear that they were not going to break their tradition, even for him, and he supposed he shouldn’t ask them to and push the issue, lest he wind up costing the Thundercats their friendly alliance with the Warrior Maidens.

Nayda laid a gentle hand on his arm again. "Please understand Tygra… we just can’t. You know my heart goes out to you and Lion-O and Panthro, but…" Her large brown eyes brimmed with tears. It was clear that she was torn by her decision. "I cannot allow you to take Willa, but I can allow you to attend the burial ceremony. If simply looking at her can help, then you may, but you must not touch her."

"A male in our ceremony?" Prieta said, raising an eyebrow. "The Thundercats may be our allies, but you know that only males related by blood to the deceased may attend a burial."

"In this case, I think there should be an exception," Nayda replied firmly. "Tygra and his friends have saved us from countless attacks by Mutants and Lunatacs. If we cannot grant him the favor he asks the least we can do is allow him at her burial."

Prieta was obviously not pleased, but she did not argue further. "As you wish, my Queen."

"The ceremony begins at sundown. Please say you will stay."

Tygra considered whether he should, but it was his only chance to see one who had died from the sickness that struck his fellow Thundercats, and he figured that if an emergency arose in which he was needed back at the Lair immediately he could always return. Besides, if it was as high an honor as Prieta made it seem to allow him to be present, he felt he owed it to his departed friend to be there on behalf of all of the Thundercats. He just hoped that Lion-O and Panthro’s conditions would not worsen in the time he was out. He smiled weakly and gave Nayda an affirmative nod. "Thank you for the invitation. I would be honored to stay."

Nayda smiled back. "Wonderful. You may wait here until the ceremony begins. I will send for Almika to tend to anything you might need and to keep you company until then. In the meantime Prieta and I must prepare for the ceremony. I look forward to seeing you there."

She and Prieta then left the hut, leaving Tygra there by himself. He pulled out his hand communicator and contacted Cat’s Lair to let them know what was going on.

Cheetara answered the call, and she told him to do exactly as he was doing—to stay and say goodbye to Willa for all of them. She also updated him on Lion-O and Panthro’s conditions. Lion-O was about the same, and had not thrown up any more rocks, though he was still having the convulsive fits. Panthro on the other hand had taken a turn for the worse. His fever had risen another degree and he was losing his ability to maintain coherent speech. She also said that WilyKat noticed what appeared to be flakes of rock in his vomit shortly after he had left. Still, Cheetara urged him to stay, saying that there was not much he could do there that could not wait an hour or two, and that Pumyra could handle things until he returned. He told Cheetara that he hoped she was right, then closed the connection and waited.

Not long thereafter Almika joined him and brought some food and drink. He didn’t feel terribly hungry, but he had some anyway, since he’d neglected to eat throughout most of this ordeal and he knew he needed to keep his strength up. He talked with her for a short while, until another woman whom he did not recognize came to the hut and informed them both that it was time for the ceremony.

Tygra followed the two of them out of the hut and down the tree, and then up a path leading into the forest toward the northeast. The walk lasted approximately ten minutes, and ended when they reached a clearing in which what appeared to be the entire population of the Tree Top Kingdom was gathered. They made their way toward the front of the crowd, and Tygra was not surprised to hear whispers and murmurs of surprise and shock at his presence at the ceremony.

Almika and the other scout soon took their place on the inner edge of the crowd and gestured for Tygra to step between them. When he did he saw a large dirt-lined pit, at least ten feet in diameter and by his guess four or five feet deep, hollowed in the center of the circle that the warrior maidens had made around those guiding the ceremony. Inside the pit burned a low fire of orange-yellow flames that were no doubt soon to consume Willa’s remains. On the left side of the flaming pit Tygra could see Nayda standing, wearing an animal skin shawl and holding a large bowl in her hands. He saw the woman he recognized as the priestess Prieta standing behind Willa. She too was dressed in an animal skin painted with what he guessed were ceremonial symbols.

About five minutes later, Prieta called out a word he didn’t understand—something from another dialect or language of the planet that he was not familiar with, he guessed—and the crowd fell silent. She paced around the circle, making eye contact with those gathered there, speaking faster and with more emotion in the foreign tongue. When she passed by him, he could have sworn that she glared at him with the same contempt she displayed for him earlier, but he did not react. He felt he owed it out of respect to Willa to not disrupt the ceremony.

When Prieta returned to her original spot, the crowd parted and two warrior maidens carried in Willa on a makeshift bed made of cloth and bamboo handles. They stopped in front of Nayda. The new queen of the tribe bent over her lost sister’s body and touched her face lightly, but with clear love and sadness that gleamed in her tears. She murmured something that only one as close as Willa might have heard, then stood back up and lifted the bowl she held. She carefully dipped her hands in it, and when she brought them out they were cupped and coated in a dark-colored liquid that she carefully dispensed over Willa’s chest by slowly flattening and spreading apart her fingers. After she finished, Prieta walked to the other side of the cot and dipped her hand in as well. She said a few more words, a last rite by Tygra’s best guess, and when she finished she turned to the crowd, gave a silent nod, then stepped aside.

All at once the gathering of mourning warrior maidens formed into a procession and lined up to do as Nayda and Prieta had done. When Almika joined in the line, Tygra stepped in behind her. No one got angry or pushed him out of the way, so he assumed that what he was doing was all right by them. Tygra waited patiently as one by one the mourners carried out the rite until it was his turn. As he approached Willa’s body he realized that this was his likely his last and only chance to see her remains up close before cremation.

Somewhat to his surprise her body was stripped of all clothing, with nothing but fresh leaves and flowers laid carefully around her form as decoration. The liquid in the bowl Nayda held, a fluid that was dark maroon in color and smelled strongly like wines he’d tasted before, now covered stained the skin and hair over nearly all of her body. As he dipped his hand into the bowl, he studied her still form. To his dismay he was not able to see anything that might explain what had caused her untimely death.

When it was clear he could stall no longer, he brought his large hand, cupped and filled with the wine, and sprinkled it carefully over the length of her body, starting at her forehead and down to her toes. "I speak for all of the Thundercats when I say that we were lucky to have known you and that you will be deeply missed," he said softly. Nayda smiled at him silently from the other side, and when his handful was dispensed, he moved aside to allow the woman behind him to have her turn, then followed Almika to where they were to wait until everyone present had gone.

Finally the last young woman stepped up to Willa’s side, performed her rite, and rejoined the crowd, which had once again formed the circle it held before it had started. Prieta walked up to the very edge of the flames. She raised her hands wide, let out a shout that was echoed by many of those gathered, and then stepped aside as the two carrying Willa’s body strode up to the side of the pit. They nodded in unison, and then hurled the wine-soaked bedcloth that held their departed queen into the center of the flames. The fire blazed and crackled as it landed, sparking and roaring brilliantly as it burned the alcohol coating her body, and quickly consumed Willa’s remains until it was all but ashes. Prieta led the crowd in solemn singing and humming as the cremation took place.

Tygra was numb as he watched it all happen. He was still in shock over the fact that Willa was really gone, and he was fighting off a nagging sensation of guilt for taking the time to be there when his own people, still living but not necessarily for much longer unless he found a cure, were at home suffering and fighting for their own lives. He now felt deep regret for not insisting harder that Nayda allow him to examine Willa, but at the time it had not seemed right. Now it was too late, and what might have been their last chance was now up in smoke.

He was so caught up in his distressing thoughts that he barely noticed that he was among the last to leave, and might have stood there longer, staring at the now dying flames, until Nayda tapped him on the shoulder. "Tygra?"

The tiger blinked and looked up. "Oh, Nayda…" his voice trailed off as he didn’t really know what to say.

"The ceremony is over now. I didn’t want to bother you, but I wasn’t sure you realized… well most of the women have gone back to their trees now."

Tygra glanced at the darkening horizon that indicated to him that he had been here for several hours now. That alarmed him, as he knew all too well that Panthro or Lion-O might have taken a turn for the worse in that time, but then he realized had that been the case that one of the others would have contacted him. "Yes," he replied, "I was just trying to take it all in, I guess, and I lost track of things for a bit. But you’re right, I should go back. Thank you for letting me stay, Nayda."

Nayda nodded sympathetically. "Of course, you and your friends are always welcome here." She glanced at the pit. "I’d offer to walk with you back to your ship, but it’s now my duty as Willa’s closest relation by blood and age to gather and spread her ashes."

"It’s all right," he said with a sad smile. "Take care, Nayda."

"You too, Tygra."

Tygra then turned and headed back down the path toward the main village, when he heard a horrified gasp from Nayda’s direction. Immediately he spun around to see what had alarmed her so. He saw her standing from halfway down into the pit, frozen in place. He was back at her side in a flash. "Are you all right?"

"Look," she said, pointing at the area where the fire had been. Tygra shifted his gaze toward the center of the pit and felt a sickening tightness in his stomach.

In the blackened dirt and ash lay a pile of several large and irregularly shaped rocks.

"I watched them dig up this ground this morning," Nayda explained in a shaky voice. "And I saw the fire lit myself. There were no stones that size in there when it started. All the rocks were cleared." She looked up at him. "How did they get there? What kind of omen or magic is this?"

Tygra felt his own heart skip a beat when she asked that question. "The evil magic of the Norvog Nage," he whispered with a rising feeling of dread.

"If they weren’t there when it started, and no one put them there, how did they get there? I thought the Norvog Nage was destroyed!" she said, her own panic escalating. Her people had guarded the tome for ages, and she knew how truly evil its power was.

"It was," Tygra told her, "but the effects of the final spell used from it lingered on. Pumyra and I confronted Mumm-Ra earlier today. He gloated to us that we destroyed the only true counter-spell to the damage it had done and that the Sword of Omens was not enough to cure those who had been changed to stone and back. After Lion-O expelled a stone from inside his body, it led us to believe that somehow an infection of stone still lingered in those who were affected, your sister included. That was why I wanted to do the autopsy, to find out what exactly was stone inside her, so that I could remove or cure it from Lion-O and Panthro in time." He closed his eyes sadly for a moment. "I guess I now have my answer."

Nayda looked at the pile for a moment, then laid a hand on Tygra’s forearm. "Do you want to take those stones and study

them, Tygra?"

He blinked and looked at her in surprise. "You would be willing to let me do that?"

Nayda nodded. "The stones are not my sister’s remains any longer. She has been burned and set free, and the danger of inviting scavengers and their evil has passed." She shivered a bit and looked at the stones again. "And to be honest, I’d rather not handle anything that might be tainted by the magic of the Norvog Nage."

"I can’t blame you on that count," Tygra said with a slight shake of his head. He took a deep breath and walked to the center of the blackened pit. He picked up one of the rocks and studied it in what little daylight was remaining. It had a curious texture, roughly shaped, lightweight, and with a porous surface. There were strange patterns on the rock and irregular protrusions all over it. One section looked almost like the exact texture of the skin of a candy fruit. Then it struck him. In an odd way the rock reminded him of fossilized puke.

Her curiosity overriding her fear for the moment, Nayda joined his side and eyed the rock in his hands. She had a similar observation to his own. "That’s strange," she remarked, "it looks like almost like a rock version of the stuffed candy fruits we were eating yesterday morning."

"Food," Tygra murmured thoughtfully as a theory formed in his head. "That would explain a lot—the stomach pains, the heaving, the expelled stone, even the delayed onset. It wasn’t an organ turned to stone, but the food they ate."

"How could that be?" Nayda asked, puzzled.

Tygra began to pace as he worked out the details of his theory aloud to Nayda. "When they were changed to stone, their entire bodies were transformed from flesh to stone, with only their clothes and possessions remaining unaltered. Now the direct counter-spell to that would have been to use the passage in the Norvog Nage that changed stone to flesh, right?"

"Yes," she said, carefully listening.

"But as Mumm-Ra said, we didn’t use the Norvog Nage, and therefore we didn’t use the direct counter-spell. It was only the restoring magic of the Sword of Omens. What if in its restoration, it only restored their bodies, that which was comprised only of their own cells, and did nothing to reverse the condition on something non-living—like the food in their digestive systems, for instance?" Tygra then somehow just knew that he’d hit the answer and continued, a smile of relief breaking across his face. "If the food in their now restored systems remained these large chunks of completely indigestible stone, their bodies would try their hardest to rid themselves of the unwanted matter, hence the cramping and stomach pains. If it irritated the wall of the gut and created lesions, infection could set in and that would explain the fevers and pains and wild immune response. And of course the more stone that would be present in the system, the more serious the results and dire the consequences would be for the afflicted individual."

"Then it was this stone that killed Willa. She’d had a very large meal that morning. We had a lot of ripe candy fruit available so we made a large batch of stuffed candy fruit for ourselves. I even remember now Willa saying that she was stuffed and wouldn’t be able to eat another bite for hours," she said, fighting back a sob of grief.

Tygra squeezed Nayda’s hand sympathetically. "It would explain why she was affected so badly, yes. I’m sorry. I wish that we could have found this out in time to have saved her."

"Me too," Nayda sniffled. "But at least now maybe everyone won’t die from it."

"Not if I can help it," Tygra assured her. He glanced at the path that led back toward the Thunderstrike with a renewed sense of urgency. "I hate to have to leave you now Nayda, but I have to analyze these and make sure—"

"I understand," she finished. "Go on home, and good luck. I’ll be fine, once I take care of my final duty to my sister." She watched him gather up the stones, and then pulled out the pouch in which she was going to collect Willa’s ashes. "And Tygra, please, let me know how things turn out."

"I will. I promise," he said earnestly, and then headed back for the Thunderstrike.