It took only a few minutes for Vikus to finish reading the rest of the book, craving the information that was so secretive. As he finished, he carefully closed the book, and laid it softly on the table. His face reflected his state of mind, which was deep, almost philosophical contemplation. "What do you think of this, Gregor?" he asked pointedly.

"It means we have to go on that quest as soon as we can. Matthew clearly says that I must find this sword, and I have a hunch where it is." Gregor said, sitting at the tale and loading a plate up with burgers and fries.

"So where do you think it is?" Kevin asked, hoping to have an excuse to get his airmail and get moving.

"The Lost City." Gregor said. "It seems too perfect for Sandwich to pass up to me. He is a man that loves satirical irony."

Vikus smiled wryly. "Indeed he does. I, too, believe that it is within the Lost City. However, it is probably well hidden." Gregor nodded in agreement.

"He would never make this easy for us, that's for sure." Vikus chuckled.

"Alright, then if we're going on this quest soon, then we better get me this new arm huh?" Kevin said, standing up from the table.

"We had some warriors go and collect the pieces of your ship, there is enough left to rebuild it and for us to fashion you a new arm." Vikus said "You will be given the new arm the day before Gregor decides he wants to leave."

"Gregor, we had scouts go to recover information on the location of the Lost City, it's," Vikus hesitated.

"What is it, Vikus?!" Gregor exclaimed. Vikus choked down the sadness, and the inevitability Gregor would share it. "It's beneath the Plane of Tartarus. It's where you fought the Bane."

Gregor was frozen from shock, as he sank back into his seat.

"No, it can't be." Gregor said. "It can't be!" he screamed, flipping the table over in front of him, sending the diary of Matthew and all of the food fying. "It can't be!" he repeated, lifting the couch off the ground and throwing it against the wall, a satisfying noise of damage emerging from it. Gregor then took his rant to Vikus.

"Vikus, this can't be true." Gregor said, kneeling before the old man, starting to contain his upset attitude. "Please. Tell me it isn't." Vikus looked at the young man on the floor in front of him. Was it really only a year that Gregor was in the Underland? To Vikus, it felt like he had watched over Gregor since he was born. Seeing him now, broken and begging on the floor, it took all Vikus had to not break down with him.

"Hey, it'll all be fine, we'll go to the city, we'll fight Bane, and all will be well again! You just have to keep a smile on your face, like this!" Kevin said, as he, Donald, and Goofy began to smile goofily at him, making Gregor begin to laugh.

"How?" Gregor asked, turning his eyes up to Vikus, imploringly. "You know I have to go there now, Vikus. Whether I like to or not. It's not like I can just sit here and watch people die, knowing there was something I could have done to stop it!"

Vikus caught his breath in his throat. There was nothing he could do to help the boy but be there for him now. It would hurt Gregor to go to the place where his bond died and retrieve a weapon to kill more, and risk being killed, rather than do nothing and be fine for the time being; but then watch as innocent and loved ones were being hacked down by a sociopathic race.

"Gregor," Vikus said. "I know this is hard for you, but it is of utmost importance that you listen." Gregor quieted himself down to hear what Vikus had to say. "I believe there is someone you need to see. Come now." Vikus stood and beckoned Gregor and the group to do so as well.

The group found themselves in the infirmary, more specifically where Luxa was lying in her hospital bed.

"How is she?" Gregor asked concern on his face.

"It's impossible to know now; all we can do is wait." Howard said, who was tending to his cousin.

Gregor sat down at the foot of Luxa's bed, where he began to write a note to her.

"Kevin, your surgery is about to begin, you should spend all of tomorrow resting so you Donald, and Goofy can go on the quest." Vikus said.

"I'll take you to the surgery room, I have to warn you though, the surgery is a very painful process, and we can't dull your nerves while we connect the arm mail" Howard said, as he led Kevin down to the surgery room.

-LOK-

Larry gave up on his trials for escape, lying uncomfortably on the hard, dark cavern. Shivering, Larry rolled over to his other side, as he had done for uncountable hours. Somehow, the temperature was dropping in his prison, driving him more and more insane. There were holes in the ceiling, tool rank water dripping down upon his body. Should it hit the floor, the water made a horrifying dripping sound, puddles accumulating around the room.

It wasn't necessarily the sound that drove Larry mad, at first. It was the consistency of the drops, falling every three to five seconds. In the beginning, he used it as a way to keep his mind straight, to time the intermission period between drops, but it had only worked for so long. As if the water was a person, it continued endlessly, to keep him as far from calm as possible, with an impressionable effort.

"I will drown if it keeps going like this." Larry thought. "If hunger doesn't get me first."

Although, in an unusual stance, the fact of the matter continued to be time. Every question that could be mustered in Larry's now altered state had to do with time.

What time do I get out? What time do I die? How long have I been here? All of the questions that mattered. It had to have been days now. That is the only feasible amount of time that could've passed in Larry's universe.

Vague sensations of a word now lost to his mind flashed through his eyes; walks through Central Park, lunch at school.

Freedom! Oh, yes, that was the word! Larry chuckled, trying to drag his soaked face out of the polluted puddle of water it was capsized in, Hah! What a nonexistent fairy tale that was, freedom!

No, down here, miles below the surface of the Earth, trapped in a God forsaken hole, there was no concept of "freedom". The traumatic experience seemed to give Larry a satirical perspective on his whole existence instead of just his current predicament.

Larry could feel it. The rationality, he believed they called it. It was leaving him, the rationality, as they had called it. An aspect he had taken for granted his whole entire life was seeping through his fingers, and all he could do was watch, spectate his own downfall; though he was not very high in the first place, so there was not far to fall. As Larry overlooked his brain, perched from an invisible cliff, he saw the darkness coming. Darkness even light could not combat, though it tried. It scared him, the darkness. The unknowing feeling when he saw it. The terror of everything around him, the loss of sight, leaving him to only guessing when his enemies lie around the corner.

Light was fewer now. Even so, Larry was calm, curious even, as to what would happen with no light. Would he die? Was it a dream? Would he awake in the sulfurous puddle or sit up in his bed? Whether he wanted to or not, it was inevitable he find out. As the last light began to sprinkle away from being, he realized something: the light was too bright.

It was always like this, the light. Making you shield your eyes, even though people believe it to be majestic. Majesty is something that should be seen with the eyes, or comprehended with the mind, correct? Light prohibited both of these, yet, it is still considered a value, a bar to be raised. Why bother, when the darkness is there?

There is always darkness where there is light that is indisputable. Always a tit for tat, a yin for yang. Balance.

"I personally don't understand it. Why you all work so hard." Something said, next to Larry. Quickly looking over, Larry saw a shadow. Humanoid, but with nothing but an outline. "Why bother, when you know you are bound to fail eventually?" it asked. "If it were me, I would stop. Maybe then you and your people can continue what you call 'progress'." Larry looked over at the entity, in confusion.

"What are you talking about?" Larry asked, intrigued.

"The Darkness and the Light." The Shadow responded. "Why bother, when one is worlds easier?"

Larry thought about that for a second, and found out that it was hard to find an answer. "Because it is the right thing to do." Larry said. The Shadow laughed.

"Bah! Have you any idea what hypocrisy that is?" it asked. "You put yourself on thrones, act like you have values, when one small crisis would send you to barbarism!" Larry shook his head. "What are you talking about? We have values!" The Shadow wasn't laughing anymore. "Then, Larry, I will ask you two questions. If you answer these without lying, I will concede to being wrong. Deal?" Larry furrowed his eye brows.

However unusual this may be, when would he get a chance to do it again? "Deal."

"First." The shadow said. "What are your values?" Larry was a bit taken back by the simplicity. "Help others in need." He started. "Don't lie, cheat or steal. Don't hurt other people, and be there for others." Larry said. "These are the basic ones, I guess." The Shadow nodded. "Very good. Now, can you tell me when you have actually followed through on your values when opportunities were presented to you?"

Easy. Larry thought. It was everything but easy, however, as Larry could not find one. "Couldn't remember, huh?" The Shadow said. "Don't take it so hard, you're just 'normal' by basic standards. There are others far worse." Larry returned a confused gaze at the seemingly supernatural Shadow. "What do you mean, 'far worse'?" The Shadow moved its head like shape back to the darkness. "Look." It said as it waved its hand slowly over the scene, causing it to ripple and change.

As the ripples cleared, Larry gasped in abject horror. Before him lay thousands upon thousands of people, screaming in grave pain, in a place that could only be one, anywhere across the universe. "Hell." Larry said under his breath. There was just flat land as far as he could see; desolate, red land, permanently scorched from the fires that plagued the land, burning on nothing. What was the most appalling of all, however, was the fact that the people were being submitted to heinous torture, in the most grotesque of ways.

Larry could not tear his eyes from the scene of a man who was impaled by stakes to the ground, and was slowly having his skin flayed off his back by a cloaked figure. Larry stood up abruptly and turned away, beginning to shake in fear. "I can't watch this!" he cried. "This is inhuman!" The Shadow regarded him, still sitting with his feet swinging of the edge of the cliff, leisurely reclining. "Yes, indeed it is." Larry spun around and screamed at the mystical form. "Then why are you showing me this?!" The Shadow tilted his head back so it was looking at Larry upside-down.

"You need to watch this." It said. "It is more important than you know." Feeling a strong pulse inside of him, Larry , against his will, complied and sat back down, next to the Shadow. The man's entire back was gone now, and the cloaked being began removing the stakes from the man's body. He screamed in pain as they were being removed, turning his muscles inside out. The cloaked figure then waved his hand, and a fire was started near them. "No!" the man said, quietly at first. Then, it became louder as the realization set in. "No!" the man started to scoot away, the ground clinging to his ripped of back. "No! No! No!" the screaming got louder and louder.

There was nothing Larry could do but watch as the cloaked figure lifted his human test subject, and placing him on the fire. The man screamed in agony, slowly, being cooked to death. It didn't end there, however, as the cloaked figure skinned the man's legs as well, slowly moving up his body. There was a particularly large scream as the man was castrated, but the bloody surgeon continued, up and up his body. Finally, he reached the face, and the man was barely alive, the light not nearly evident in his eyes as it was not a single minute ago.

"Please," he asked. "Just end me, please. Give mercy." The cloaked figure did something unexpected. He laughed, throwing his head back as he did so, maniacally shaking and swinging his long, dull, surgical knife around. "I have had many like you," the cloaked figure said, pointing with his knife. "Who have begged me for mercy, for a relief out of this miserable, labyrinthine existence that we have enthralled ourselves into somehow. My question to you is: why do you think I would give you such a privilege among others who have begged me?"

The man began to cry, the tears clearing a line down his dirty face, containing the only shred or epidermis on his body. "Please. Just do it. Please!" The surgeon swung his tool around his fingers, flipping it around, strongly familiar it. "You know," he said, touching the knife to his masked face. "When I was alive, about, twenty years ago, I was a kinder, gentler man. Especially to my wife; she was beautiful, even in her old age. Her eyes seemed to glow and sparkle, even in the darkest of times."

"You know, there was one day, which I remember with her; that I always will. The day was a beautiful day, the sun was shining bright, and there were no clouds in the sky. Birds were chirping in the trees outside. We lived in the nicest little place in the country. Very green, very nice, very nice. But, I was in a bad mood, as men get. She walked into the kitchen, where I was chopping up the vegetables for dinner. Somehow, she managed to make my mood even worse by being joyful, whereas I was not. Her mistake was collecting the vegetables that I was still cutting! Stupid woman!"

"I managed to move the knife away; avoiding cutting off her entire hand, but, it was not so far away as I nicked her finger. Just barely, tiny scratch it was. She recoiled and was yelling at me for cutting her, cleaning off the blood. That blood, oh, that blood," the man paused as he recalled the picture. "Was so vivid, and beautiful; the red flowed amazingly, and brought back founder memories of back in Germany, at Auschwitz."

At that moment, Larry's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Impossible!" he mumbled. "It can't be!" The Shadow had an attitude that implicated it was smiling.

"Oh, but Larry, it is. The famous surgeon himself, that tested on thousands of people, in hopes of changing hair, eye color, sexual orientation, in the hope of saving the Earth from who we know as the Jews."

"Josef Mengele." Larry said. "The Surgeon of Birkinow." The Shadow placed a hand on Larry's shoulder. "You can do it." It whispered.

"Do what?" Larry asked, moving away a bit.

"Kill him. Destroy him. Annihilate him." The Shadow replied.

"What?" Larry exclaimed. "I wouldn't do that!"

"But you would." The Shadow replied. "And you want to, oh, you want to so bad!"

Larry lifted himself to his feet, towering over the Shadow. "How did you know that?"

The Shadow turned and looked at him. "Because I can feel it."

Larry gave an angry, albeit confused look. "What? You can't do that! You're not even real! You can't be real! You're just a shadow!"

Then the Shadow laughed. It laughed long and hard, nearly falling backwards as it did so.

"What?" Larry yelled. "What's so funny?" The Shadow regained it's composure, answering.

"Your naïve attitude, Larry. You've always been that way." Larry threw up his hands in frustration.

"How could you possibly know that?" he asked. The Shadow stood up, and as it moved towards Larry, the Shadow began to become more and more detailed, until the point where a face became visible, one that was very familiar.

"You asked who I am." The Shadow responded, the last of it's shroud of darkness peeling off, revealing Larry's face. "I'm you, you fool!"

-LOK-

After two hours of intense pain, Kevin was wheeled out of the surgery room, a metallic arm was now attached to his right side. Where the nub that his arm used to be was now occupied by the shiny, metallic arm. It was designed to look exactly like an actual arm, only that it was silver and reflected the light around him.

He was put into a room like Luxa's, except the bed was propped up so he could relax, and he had a stack of books near him so he could study the adventures of the Warrior, and so he could study the history of the Underland.

-LOK-

Two days later, Kevin had trained fighting with his arm, and had gotten hold of it. He now stood, in new traveling clothes. He had light chain mail armor on which was covered up by an Underland shirt, which was a brown tank top with a slight V-neck; he wore a backpack from the museum to hold all of his gear in, he wore dark Underland jeans, and the sneakers he had on when he arrived.

It was before the Underland version of morning, and the adventurers stood on the platform that was used to fly the bats off of.

The adventurers that stood on the platform, Gregor, Kevin, Donald, Goofy, Howard, Ripred, and the bats Perdita, Nike, Andromeda, Polyhmnia, and Anthropos.

"Is everyone ready to head out?" Howard asked, looking around at the group.

"Depends, did you pack the shrimp and cream sauce?" Ripred asked Kevin, licking his lips.

"I packed the shrimp, burgers, fries, salads, and all the other foods, and of course water." Kevin said, patting his back pack.

"alright, let's head on out." Gregor said, running and jumping off the platform.

Kevin, Donald, and Goofy looked at the group strangely, until they realized that the bats were supposed to pick them up.

"Geronimo!" Kevin shouted as he leaped off of the platform, the wind rushing through his hair and making a roaring sound in his ears.

Donald and Goofy quickly caught up with him, and suddenly they felt a mass of fur come up from underneath them.

"Thanks! I'm Kevin what's your name?" Kevin shouted over the wind.

"I am called Perdita; I will be caring you across this journey." Perdita replied.

"Well, thank you for catching me; I thought no one was going to for a second." Kevin chuckled.

"I wouldn't dream of it." Perdita said.

"Kevin try to get some sleep, I doubt we'll be there for a while." Goofy said, as he reclined on the bat's back.

Kevin shut his eyes, and slowly, he fell asleep.