Thunder.

Lightning.

The earth shook and when there was silence once more the faint, distant sound of the light drizzle echoed throughout the stone vaults and passages of the Black Pyramid. The crypt chamber was itself dark except for the red torches that adorned engraved, picturesque walls. The tomb was open, the lid upright on the side of the sarcophagus.

A leopard was upon a stone altar. The animal was chained across the neck and the limbs. The legs were kept spread far apart and flat on the tabletop in a position that was both unnatural and severely uncomfortable. The cat tried constantly to break free from the restrains but that was in vain and in the course of the long evening it had only managed to weaken itself. The poor beast whined in pain but he was not moved, he did not care -- he had work to do that was more important.

Ma-Mut was perched under the altar watching -- he was tired and tried to go to sleep but the excitement of the day had not yet passed.

He hovered over the pool of boiling, brown water. "Ma-Mut," he said to himself aloud, "Ma-Mut, Ma-Mut. I’ve tried so hard and I’ve failed so miserably time and time again. Why is that? Is it only because I am evil? and who said that good had to will all the time? This is the real world, not a fantasy."

With a large, wooden ladle he spooned up a large volume of that ethereal liquid -- it was lighter than air and floated in the basin of the flat cup. Smoke and gray fumes poured out of the boiling mass. Little bits, little chunks of red flecks floated in the oily slick.

He walked to the restrained leopard -- in the dim, red light its coat was nothing more than a weak tint of black and gray, its spots were distorted and invisible in the ambiance.

"Happiness, joy," spoke the devil priest, his words resounded in the immense vault, "beauty." He wanted to say one word more but he stopped himself in time. He put the ladle down on the table next to the beast’s head, its open, gaping mouth was dry in exhaustion, its tongue hung limp over its lips. He pressed his hands tight against his ears, invisible under the mass of bandages that covered his body, as if to squeeze out of his head the images that had formed in his mind. He wished so desperately to erase those words from memory -- no -- to destroy them from reality.

Was that not his duty? What that not his job, he, the ever-living source of evil?

"I look around this dreadful planet and what do I see? Green forests and teeming jungles, great flowing bodies of crystal-clear waters. Pure waters, unpolluted and unfouled. Bright, blue skies open to infinity." He lunged his arms up into the air and shook his clenched fists in defiance. "I’ve had about enough of that!"

Thunder reverberated through the walls upon which shadows danced torturously -- the red flames of the torches flickered, quivered in terror. The ground, too, shook but in a moment the world was calm once again. Silent.

He picked up the ladle. The leopard tried one last time to free itself. Ma-Mut, in the panic of the frenzied roaring bolted from under the table to the open darkness of Mumm-Ra’s tomb.

"I pity you," the devil priest spoke, "you don’t have much longer for this world."

He poured the liquid onto the white underbelly of the leopard. The oozing, blob caused intense pain while it soaked through the fibers of the coat. The red flecks and accreted into small, little balls that clung to the fur and turned it black in smoldering in flames. One of the legs broke in two parts, mangled in a dire attempt to break free, severed arteries gushed blood into the air and onto the floor.

While the creature was still alive he took out a knife and cut a rent into the stomach from the end of the ribcage to the midsection. He tore the flesh apart with his bandaged hands to reveal the internal organs -- only one was he interested in. Under the folds of collapsed lungs the heart continued to beat and he smiled his work to see. He removed the heart, blood vessels dangled from the upper valves and dumped the organ into a metal basin.

The leopard continued to bleed heavily until the open abdomen turned into a noodle soup, a deep pool of blood and severed body parts. Worms and maggots that evolved from the red particles began to consume the flesh -- even on the heart, which was consumed in a matter of minutes.

At the end there was nothing left of the heart but dry, crisp dust. Then even the worms and maggots died, overstuffed in that digested meat. He took a pistil and ground the decaying substance into a fine powder.

Ma-Mut whimpered around the carcass of the leopard, the maggots on it had reduced it to a hide-covered skeleton. The dog watched in awe while the vermin steadily crawled back to the pool of boiling water from whence they came.

"Now the hard part, my pet, now I have to bring the powder to Cat’s Lair." He looked down on the dog. "I’ll have to do it myself, the magic is far too dangerous for you to handle."

He laughed and smiled at the image that gradually painted itself in his mind.

"They’ll never know what hit them."

Outside Cat’s Lair the sky was dark for the sun had set already. The clouds were sparse and the rain that fell from the was thin but cold, bitterly cold. A strong breeze came down from the north and they shivered, they, Tygra, Panthro and WileyKit. The three stood around the main entrance watching while Liono and RoberBill walked out past the extended bridge into the surrounding forests.

"It’s not fair, I wanted to go into the village with Liono," she yelped.

Tygra looked down on her: "You have work to do, remember, homework?"

"Homework! But it’s the weekend! I’ll have all day tomorrow to do it."

"But if you did it now then you’d have the next two days free."

"Tygra is right, WileyKit, you shouldn’t be out fooling around with the adults. Why can’t you be more like your brother --"

"What?" her jaw dropped.

"At least he’s in his room studying," Tygra added.

"Yeah, right!"

"WileyKit," the panther spoke.

She was about to respond but pouted instead. The adults rolled their eyes and walked away, back to the lair. When they had their backs to her she looked up to the skull. A bright, small bird had swooped down from the thin air and landed, perched on the right ear.

Its eyes sparkled red but she took little notice.

"What a cute-looking bird," she said, "I think I’ll go up and get a better look." WileyKit sprinted past the two adults and beat them to the open door. Within the lobby the light was bright and hurt her eyes but she did not let it stop her.

"That must have been some pep-talk we gave her," Panthro said.

Cheetara was in the control room. WileyKit had to be very careful so she tiptoed past the open door into the small side closet. It was a not a closet, of course, inside were switches and electrical parts along with a tall ladder that led up to the mouth of the skull. No one was allowed up there except for the adults and only then to perform maintenance.

The ladder was a hundred feet high and was cast in shadowy darkness. She could not tell where the next rung was even when her eyes had completely adjusted. For a while she was scared -- especially afraid of what the others would say and do if they learned what she had been up to. No, she reasoned, it was too late, she had to go through with it to the end.

At the very top she hit her head on the metal hatch. The pain was so sharp that her first reaction was to wrap her arms around her temples. But that would have meant loosing her grip on the ladder and she would have fallen. The very thought of that sent adrenaline rushing through her body, her fingers, her hands, she trembled. Slowly she reached up and began to open the hatch. It was rusty and it made quite a sound when she slid it away.

The cold air hit her, the wind blew her red mane a little. Wetness -- the rain had greatly strengthened. She was inside the mouth of the skull, it slopped down gradually to the front fangs. There was no tongue, she had forgotten that.

Because everything was wet she did not want to venture out far from the safety of the hatch. There was a deep pool of water and her feet slipped. She was fast enough to counteract the fall but she dropped on her back anyway, she did not advance further.

Her heart raced and she wanted to scream.

"Why do I always do this to myself? Why do I always keep getting into trouble?" She started to whimper but then -- the inside of the mouth was lit in a faint, red glow. The strange bird was in the skull with her, waddling to her side. "Oh, you’re still here! I’m so happy, at least what I’ve done wasn’t a waste of time."

The bird was very friendly, much more friendly than bird usually where. The creature showed no fear, it was next to her leg, close enough to her that she could see it better. She noticed that there was a crystal ball around its neck. It looked heavy. There were black stripes on the surface and within there seemed to be a glittering, sparkling substance. She reached out and grabbed the pendant -- the bird bowed its head and the object was free from around its neck.

WileyKit held the ball in her hands. It was so delicate and fragile, it melted in the warmth of her hands. A gentle current let in hard rain and the ball was quickly covered in slippery water. She held it a little harder than he should have -- it cracked and burst in a puff of thick smoke. The grainy, glimmering particles covered her hands. A liquid that was even lighter than air hung over her legs, it sailed around the air until it hit the inside of the skull and dissipated, absorbed entirely into the concrete.

The shards of the glass of the ball had spread around her lap decayed into a clear salt that clung to her fur.

"I’m sorry," she said, "I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to --"

The bird was gone, the red light had vanished.

There was so much of that salty dust that it was impossible, it was amazing that it could have all been in that small object. The chalky substance came off onto the hatch, the rungs of the ladder, the door of the utility closer, around the open passages within Cat’s Lair, on everything everywhere that she even slightly touched or rubbed against.

In her room her brother was on the floor reading a history book. It was First-Earth history about what life was like in ancient Egypt. He did not notice her arrival -- she headed straight to the bathroom, removed her clothes and sent them down a laundry chute. The crystallized salt clung to her fur so completely that it was impossible to remove the small chunks without causing a lot of pain. She stood under the shower head and let the hot water remove the dust.

"Now it begins, my pet," he stood over the circular pool. Within he saw the image of WileyKit in the shower, it changed quickly with the wave of the hand to the scene in the control room. "My small accomplice has done her job well, don’t you think so? I can always count on those two troublemakers to help me in my mischief."

"What is that dreadful racket?" Panthro complained when he entered the control room. Cheetara and Tygra looked back stunned though caught in the act. "Has some alarm gone off?"

"No," the tiger answered, "we weren’t --"

"Did you hear something?" Cheetara asked having cut him off.

"Pounding."

Cheetara was silent and then: "Pounding!" she shouted. The men looked at her while she spun around on her feet so fast that for a few moments they could not see her. "There’s great evil here, here everywhere. We must find the kittens."

"WileyKat and WileyKit. Why is it that when something goes wrong it’s always those two?"

The pounding that Panthro had heard when he was in the utility closet became louder and more pronounced. "See," he said, he pointed and then he looked at his finger. "Where did that dust come from?" He rubbed the dust off of his palms. The melted salt fell onto the floor where it disappeared between his feet.

A red light went off along with a loud, piercing siren. Tygra pressed some buttons quickly and everything was silent and dark -- the power failed, he announced. And then a low, dull hum resonated from deep within Cat’s Lair.

"What is that?" Cheetara asked. She was in Panthro’s arms, she had come out of the trance too abruptly but he was there to catch her in time in the darkness.

"It’s not the power generator. I don’t know where the electricity is coming from."

"Maybe the instruments aren’t working right, I mean, there’s not much power to begin with."

"Yes, they might be too weak to detect what’s going on." He looked at the others. "We’re going to have to go ourselves to see what’s going on around here."

"Cheetara, are you feeling better?" Panthro asked her.

Her eyes could barely open. "Yes, I’ll be fine, if I could just --"

He helped her to her feet but she was still a little weak and held on to his arm.

Tygra looked at his fingers -- his palms were covered in blood. "What? By Jagga!"

"Are you bleeding?"

"No, it’s not from me." The gaps between the multicolored buttons began to ooze that thick, red substance. The buttons, too, had transformed from a hard plastic to something that was soft and mushy. The panels had no functions any longer and when he pressed one of the switches too hard it burst -- it popped in a white, yellow puss that squirted into his eyes.

"What is it? What is it, Tygra?"

"I don’t know but I think I’ll be all right."

"We have to go get the kittens," Panthro said.

He and Cheetara began to walk to the door. Tygra was behind, rubbing his eyes, the dense liquid had melded with the blood and had begun to coagulate.

There was a bad smell, too, but now it seemed to be coming from everywhere -- from the walls.

In the hall he stopped the others: "Look at the walls," he said under his breath in disbelief.

Cheetara was feeling a little better, she reached out and touched the wall. It was not cold, it was hot to her touch and not entirely solid. It was soft and pulsated softly. The surface was wet. "It’s sweating, the walls are sweating!"

The pounding from below came even louder.

"It’s only going to get better, my pet, wait until they see what’s in store for them down below! My plan is working perfectly." The devil priest wrung his hands together. The sound of his knuckles cracking echoed violently in the stone chamber. "If I had a psychiatrist, he’d be a rich man by now!"

The kitchen was cast in shadow but the lights managed to strengthen in their presence. The sounds that Panthro had first heard came from there -- from the cabinets violently closing and opening. All over the floor were broken plates and cups, cookware and utensils, even whole drawers had been spilt out.

A grayish net or webbing had formed over a small pile. Panthro studied it closer. The membrane was tougher than it looked. A thick goo seeped from between broken plates.

Meanwhile Tygra and Cheetara tended to the spasmodic cabinet doors. She saw that where the hinges had once been there were now red strands whose ends were capped by white hand-like ligaments. She reached out and grabbed the cabinet nearest her. It was hard to hold on but with Tygra’s help she stopped the violent motion. In so doing, though, the door broke in their hands -- it fell to the floor, bleeding from holes where the ligaments had been attached to. The red strands remained, hung limp over the edge of the open cabinet, twitching. Large veins and arteries drooped next to it. Cheetara examined the twitching strands and recognized it immediately -- it was muscle.

Tygra opened the faucet and to his horror blood poured from the tap. He tried to close the spigot but the valve would not turn no matter how hard he twisted. Someone screamed and he looked back.

Over on the floor Panthro had uncovered Snarf’s body, or what was left of it. The flying pots and pans had pummeled him to death -- his head had been smashed in and open wounds exposed parts the small brain. A densely textured slime had formed over the corpse from the floor, green acid trickled from little black nodes that dotted the organic meshwork.

"It’s digesting the body, I don’t believe it."

"What is? What is eating him?"

But there was no answer, there was something else more important.

The walls had deformed under the immense weight and pressure of the building and sweat flowed loudly from large pores that had carved themselves into the concrete. Deeper in the lair the air was brutally hot and dense. Humid and hazy. The air then began to circulate. A strong wind would blow from one end of the passage, stop and then blow from the other end. The breeze was accompanied by a low groan -- the building’s support structures were tensing and compressing but there was no way to tell for sure what was happening from inside

A loud, steady rhythm emanated from the kitten’s bedroom. The Thundercats knocked on the door but it was not solid and sound of the timber was wet, inaudible.

"WileyKat! WileyKit!" Cheetara scolded but there was no answer. Panthro tried the door knob and when it did not work he punched a whole through the door. The metal had the consistency of wet bread. He tore through it producing some of the most vulgar sounds yet, the sounds of flesh tearing. He was covered in blood when he was through for there were vessels in and behind the door.

A clear, globular substance was excreted from the scars of the tears of the busted-open doorway but no one took notice of it.

Within the bedroom was surprisingly well-lit. The bathroom door could not be opened and because no sounds came from there it was skipped. The walls of the chamber were coated in a dense meshwork of ligaments and pulsating arteries that twitched and responded to their presence. The air was also unbreathable and they kept coughing, kept getting dizzy and lightheaded. The floor was soaked in blood and felt like a trampoline, a gooey flesh that would break apart under them at any moment.

The sounds came from the main part of the room. WileyKit was on her bed, naked. At first no one knew better so the Thundercats rushed to her side -- they screamed when they realized what they found. WileyKit had melded with the bed and with the wall behind her. Large veins and arteries grew out of her head -- the grafting was so perfect that there was no seam, there was no line that marked where her body ended and the vessels began.

Her body expanded, she grew three times her normal size and then contracted to the point where they could see her bones. Tygra leaned in closer -- he could hear fluids gushing within her.

"She’s the heart," Panthro said, the tiger nodded.

"Can we save her? Is she still alive?" Cheetara asked.

"I don’t know."

Tygra inched over to WileyKit’s face. He pried open one of the eyes. The youngster reacted quite unexpectedly. She screamed -- she opened her mouth and a stream of blood sprayed out. She turned her heard, or tried to. She had to angle her massive, bloated body toward the others. She reached out with one of her arms that like her body expanded to the point of bursting and the contracted. She pointed to a wall at the other side of the room where something seemed to be growing out of the wall.

The Thundercats were stunned silent and only gradually tiptoed to where WileyKit had indicated. The mass was pulsating, a node five feet above the ground. Something appeared to be moving within. Instinctively Cheetara thought it was WileyKat. She tore into the strange flesh with her claws. A thin, runny puss poured out and streamed onto the floor. A book, half-digested, flopped out soundlessly. If she had paid more attention she might have recognized it.

Slowly, after more digging, WileyKat’s outline became distinctly visible. The others then began to help her. The last layer of the flimsy tissue was removed and the boys upper body was in view.

He was choking and a white liquid came out of his mouth. He had a thin but raspy voice: "Help me! Help me! I can’t get out of here," he said.

"Hold on, kid, you’re almost free," Panthro assured him. He pushed the others aside and hammered into the wall with his fists. He tore into the mushy substance and peeled it back to his horror. It was WileyKat to be sure, but only from the chest up. Everything of him below the waist was gone, replaced by large veins and arteries and a greenish-brown, shinny organ Tygra recognized was a liver, grotesquely exaggerated.

WileyKat could not be saved but he had no way of knowing that.

"Come on, come on!" he shouted, his arms flailed in the air. "Get me out of here already you guys, this isn’t funny."

Panthro tried in vain to search for WileyKat’s legs but -- Tygra held him back. "There’s nothing we can do," he whispered to the panther. The men looked to the side, Cheetara was already at the door.

Cat’s Lair began to move.

"Get me out! Help me! Help me! Hey! What’s happening to my sister!" A large burst, a fluid-like explosion, a screaming wail followed that -- it was the last the adult Thundercats heard of WileyKat and WileyKit for they were running down the hall at top speed.

He was bent-over laughing. He held onto his sides, his chest ached in glee. "So much for the Code of Thundera! I really have to give it to providence for that delightful feast of horror. In a thousand years I could’ve never come up with something that gruesome."

In the waters of the circular pool he saw the scene that was left of the kittens bedroom. WileyKit had expanded so much that she exploded like a water balloon. The walls, ceiling and floor were sprayed and covered not only in blood but of what was left of her shredded body parts. Oddly, only the head remained intact, still connected to the blood vessels from the wall. The eyes were blinking, the mouth was opening, closing, the tongue quivered though in speech.

"Tygra should be quite proud of himself. They certainly don’t make Cat’s Lairs like they used to!"

"The door, go for the door!" Panthro shouted.

The stairs that opened to the rest of the building heaved and pulsated. Corridors and passages were squeezed tight and impassable. The lobby itself was slowly collapsing.

The main doors had melted together into a single, coherent flesh. The three Thundercats clawed through it, punched holes through it -- it was thicker than before and was not soppy, nor was there much blood although Tygra was sure that he felt a large vessel. At the end, at the very end came a thin film of mucus then a fuzzy layer that when broken completely exposed them to the air outside.

They heard a sound, a cry of pain and Cat’s Lair shook violently. They tore open a hole large enough for them to go through one at a time. Panthro was first, he helped Cheetara through. Tygra was last.

Outside the sky was black -- there was a moon out but the clouds were thick and they could not see it. There were plenty of other, softer lights around, though. They saw that the building was coated in a layer of soft fur. The outer surface was collapsing and expanding, rising and falling -- it was breathing. They heard a scream and looked up -- the head was moving on its own, side to side at first, then it slowly made its way down to them.

Tygra gasped -- one of the red eyes blinked. He and the others bolted across the bridge that only then was beginning to withdraw. At a safe distance away they looked back. The arms of Cat’s Lair began to flail, fully separated from the rock of the mountain. The upper body moved from side to side, freeing itself from the foundations. The mouth opened and closed, a tongue licked the air and saliva trickled to the shaking ground where blood had collected. The hole from where they had escaped from was bleeding, the loose skin was flapping in the air.

One of the arms was thrust out, extended over the chasm and Cat’s Lair pushed itself across, scrapped itself across over the rift and onto the meadows and clearing that bordered the forests.

They could hear the sounds of iron supports snapping, breaking. Cat’s Lair began to roam around the open field looking for god only knew what. It had arms and a chest but no legs, no lower body. Organs and blood vessels of unbelievable sizes drooped out of the jagged back end.

Tygra, Cheetara and Panthro scurried around in the dark through the trees. Just then the skies parted and the moon was revealed. Cat’s Lair loomed before them, its arms were pressed down perpendicular to the ground, holding its body up from the ground of the clearing a good ten, twenty feet. The internal organs that it had formed from the concrete and mortar and metal drooped down a little, some of them actually lay across the grass. Its mouth opened and it roared into the air -- it began to swing its head down to the terrified onlookers.

"Now, my pet, to undo the spell." The dog growled in answer. "You’ll see why, you just watch!" The mummy rubbed his fingers over the boiling, purple waters. A blue, sparkling salt trickled down into the pool. Ma-Mut looked on enthralled by what his master had so painstakingly planned. "What genius, what brilliance! Who else but I, Mumm-Ra, the Ever-Living could have conceived of this?" His cackle resonated with the pangs of distant thunder.

Cat’s Lair stopped moving, its loose flesh became rigid. The fur fell off and decayed into dust on the soil. The mouth, the hole head remained where it was, fixed, motionless. The building began to rock back and forth in its precarious balance.

"It’s going to collapse!" Cheetara screamed. She and the others sped away, further into the safety of the forest.

Cat’s Lair had become a building once again and it toppled over to the side. The concrete collapsed, the steel skeleton was mangled and it crashed so loud that everyone on this side of the world could have heard it.

The head remained whole for the most part. It rolled unstoppably toward the chasm and in the canyon fell to its doom. The rest of the body was destroyed and nothing was left of it but a pile of bleeding rubble.

"Mwahahahaha, mwahahahahahahahahaha! Hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha! Look at their faces, Ma-Mut! Look at how they stare in disbelief! Hahahahahahahaha!" He fell to his knees. "Ha hahahahaha ha! I broke the Litter Box! I broke the Litter Box! Nananananana! Mwahahahaha!"
 
 

Lightning.

Thunder.

"What? What!" he opened his eyes to darkness. "What?" The air was cold, stale and dusty. He was cramped in, his arms bent over his chest. He banged his head against the inside of the tomb. "No! No! No! It couldn't! It just couldn't!" He sobbed. "It was a dream all along!"