Gregor and the Prophecies of Deception

Chapter 5

  Whoosh

  Gregor felt a strange shiver of familiar adrenaline race through him as he fell through the darkness. He hadn't felt a feeling like this so long. The fresh, Underland air raced through him as he felt a sudden change in atmosphere. It was as if there was a definite line between New York City and the Underworld. As soon as he fell through that imaginary line, he felt stronger, sharper. He took a deep breath and relaxed as he fell, which might have been a very fast pace normally, but strangely felt very slow.

  As he fell, he turned on his flashlight and peered at the walls of the cavern, which he never bothered to look at before. They were covered in pictures of simplistic paintings of large, presumably Underland bats and humans standing next to them. 

  The images went by too fast to be able to be fully comprehended, but there definitely familiar signs of war flew by.

  Gregor kept watching these paintings as he fell, also taking notice of the time. He guessed it might've been around 2 minutes already.

 Another minute passed...

 That was two...

  That was thr--

As soon as he counted the third minute, he felt a sudden gust of wind, and then he was slowly dropped onto the ground. 

  Thump

  Brushing himself off, he started standing up when a group of bats landed on the ground near him, a little bit too close for comfort. He could tell that there were 6 bats in total, so most likely there would be the same number of Underlanders.

  "Who are you? What are you doing here? State your business! " a husky figure said in a gruff voice. He wasn't wearing the usual Regalian clothes, and Gregor didn't really recognize any of the group. Excluding the gruff one, there was two middle-aged men, a women in her twenties, a strange girl in her teens, and a child around 7, who reminded him of Lizzy. 

 Without warning, the kid suddenly launched herself at Gregor, surprising both Gregor and the group of people.

  "Are you the warrior?" asked the kid.

 The first woman, maybe the kid's mother turned to me and apologized about the kid's behavior and told her "Liz, the warrior already died, remember? So there is no way he is the warrior!"

  "How old are you?" Liz asked.

  "I'm about to be 13 next month" answered Gregor.

  The redhead teenager made a face at Liz and told her that if he was the warrior, she was the queen of the Underland itself. 

 Gregor was slightly annoyed at this, but decided to keep silent.

  He asked where the group was from, and the slimmer man responded that they were traveling when one of their bats smelled a newcomer, so unless they wanted to be partially responsible for the death of an Overlander, they would have to save him.

  Then he started by introducing himself and the others.

"I'm Ben, this hulk of a guy is Jake who kind of is just the guy that does the heavy lifting and hard stuff, the girl is Liz, as you probably figured out if you have a head or a brain. She's an orphan, and I'm not really sure Matilda, her caretaker, and that's the crazy one over there, no doubt about her being dropped on her head when being a kid, hell I'm not sure if she got dropped on. her head twice. Don't even try logic on Nicole. Oh, and never call her that unless she knows you really well. I did that once and she nearly killed me. Call her Nicky or she'll dice you up and throw you into a cooking bowl. Also, never give her anything sharp, even a stick would be dangerous."

Gregor raised his eyebrows at that description of the teenager. Seemed about right, however, as he watched her play with a bracelet, stomped her feet, murmured to herself, and told Ben to "shut it" as she got out a dagger. 

He then watched her chased Ben until he was panting and got onto his bat. Soon, the bat was 10 feet above and "Nicky" was just waving her dagger around, jumping to unbelievable heights. 

"Geez.. She... is too much. See all that jumping power? That's from the coffee she "got", codeword for stole. Don't ever give her coffee. It will be your demise and it's your fault, so I won't even try to get in the way.

Jake ran up to Nicky, grabbed her around the waist from behind, took her dagger, and tied her to his bat. 

"Problem solved. It shouldn't be that hard to stop a teenager. If I weren't your friend I would call you useless. Oh, and also, it would be good for us if we could bottle up and use your butt gas, but we can't so save it for later." 

Jake was definitely the leader of the group, as he asserted his dominance over Ben, who was failing in his attempt to try to make himself unseen. 

"What's your name, Overlander?"

"Gregor" he answered.

He could tell that Jake was trying to hide it, but his eyes widened a bit at the mention of the name.

He glanced around them and said, "Alright, Gregor, it isn't safe here, so we have to take you back to Regalia."

He agreed, got onto a bat that looked like Pandora, which shocked the others, and took off before they even did.

He didn't feel like being restrained, not on his first day back, and the fact that he still knew the Underland very well helped. 

Soaring through the sky, wind rushed through his hair and clothes. Looking backward, he saw the others get onto their respective bats, and decided it would be fine to go ahead a bit. He felt absolutely amazing as he flew onward into the familiar land of Regalia.