Gregor and the Prophecies of Deception

Chapter 1

Sorry for taking so long to write again ppls who read this. I kinda got discouraged from no ideas and also by school. 

I just updated/edited this chapter as of 10/13/2020. I added several changes to the plot, setting, etc, so please reread this before going on to chapter 2 and so forth! Thx for your attention. (Btw, you can stop reading this note now... ) (U don't have to read this either but thx if u did).

-Actual Story-

Gregor woke up with a start. It was early summer, the weather still cool, but he took a look at himself and found himself sweaty and shivering. He had the same dream about Ares several times now - Ares diving in, the Bane lunging at him, Gregor not being able to stop him. At the end, there was always blood everywhere, on the walls of the cave, on the floor, on poor Ares.

"Did you have bad dreams again?" asked Lizzie. She appeared from out of nowhere and was in front of the door. Gregor blinked twice. No, his sister was not in front of the door, and there was no voice. It was all in his imagination again.

(Gregor's thoughts):

I had revealed the fact that I was having bad dreams about Ares and the Underland to my family, maybe thinking they would reassure me, but only Lizzie treats me normally, and she went off to camp like all the other 3rd graders did. My mom and dad are both healthy now, but they look at me like I'm an interesting specimen at a science lab. I can tell they are worried about me, but I strangely don't like it. It's so strange to spend so much of my time in the Overland now, as the Underlanders called it. 

He had started to use regular grammar and words now, instead of the formal speech of the creatures in the Underland.

By now, Gregor realized that he probably was not EVER going back to the Underland again... It had started fading away from his memories, too. But there was two faces he could never forget, Luxa, and Ares, too,  poor Ares.

    He had done so much for Gregor, saving his life more times than he could count, and yet, Gregor had failed to save him in the end. WHY? It still didn't feel real. That dreadful day. The dreadful Bane. If anyone in the Underland deserved to live, deserved to grow old, live in luxury, and be crowned as a hero, it was Ares.

He could never erase the face of those two. They were two important to forget, too big a portion of his life. And yet, all those memories started fading. Gregor still couldn't erase the memory of Ares and the Bane. Ares diving in and getting killed. Gregor's eyes started to singe with tears. Memories flooded in. Those of bloodied battlefields, corpses everywhere.

   Memories of Twitchtip, Tick, all those nibblers, all of those wrong deaths.  He was just, stuck in those memories like they were real, and he knew what horrible things would happen, but still. He just, couldn't deal with it. All the killing in the Underland. When first siding with the humans, he thought it was a good versus bad battle, but truely, the humans weren't right either... No one was! All of those who sacrificed themselves... 

Gregor pushed those thoughts away and focused on the present, at least tried to...

Moments later, he was back to thinking about the Underland.

He realized what Mrs. Cormaci said was right. It had already been months since Ares death, and more than months for the others, but... the dreams about the wars, and quests, were still coming.... each one being more brutal, scary, and just plain horrific. What would've happened to him if someone else he loved died there. Howard, Luxa, Vikus, would would happen to HIM?

Lizzie had grown up a lot, now less frigid and fragile, and with more friends, but now, Gregor was the one "fragile". He felt like another one of those dreams could break him completely. He just had a feeling he had to go back to the Underland, to check on his friends, spend some time around Luxa.  Note: (You guys know what that's gonna lead to... *wink) Maybe being reassured that the living were fine could help him. He almost didn't know anymore.

  He fully woke himself up, shook himself, brushed his teeth with Boots, ate his portion of breakfast, and started off for school. Even his friends, Angelina and Larry started looking at him like he was a nerd or a weirdo that picked his nose during class. Not like they had to go to the Underland. Not like they had to live through quests and prophecies and wars.

  School was horrible. He basically spaced out during class, had daydreams, and barely learned anything. There was just, something wrong with him... He was... different than he was... before he went to the Underland. 

   Something about him completely changed. It wasn't his sword skills. It wasn't him being the warrior. It wasn't him making new friends with crawlers, fliers, and Underlander humans, it was completely something else. He just couldn't get what it was...

 And he was afraid of what it was. He kept having, strange.. visions, at times. Visions of him being in darkness, surrounded by strange people, one with him being trapped by the spinners, and more. Was it courtesy of staying around Nerissa? Or being in the Underland? All of the dreams ended in bad events except one, and a couple of the events already happened... Was this what Nerissa saw everyday? 

   He was so confused. One had him slipping off a rock, another at council with Underland spinners. Some of them showed happy events, he thought, but nevertheless, the visions freaked him out a little bit.

What if they were going to turn true? What if he was going back into the Underland. 

He tried to stop thinking about it, and like a miracle, he did. 

He picked up Lizzie from school on his way back to the apartment, dropped her off at the foot of the stairs, and went for the evening walk in the cool wind that he really needed just to stay in a relaxed state of mind.

All was well as he walked into Central Park, the lights just starting to turn on. He walked around a little bit more around the park, bought a new puzzle book for Lizzie, some cough medicine and diapers for Boots, and was on his way back at around dusk when a glint caught his eye.

He blinked, not sure what it was at first, looked around for what caused the sudden light, and saw a strange hand-mirror lying on the ground, a couple feet away. He walked to it and picked it up. In the setting sun's rays, he could pick out a delicate pattern on the side.

He was putting it away in his pocket as he couldn't help as a flashback drove it self in his brain, back when the Prophecy of Blood was still unraveling itself.

"Oh shoot, here we go again," - the mirror was the one that Gregor had used to read the prophecy.