Thanks to everyone for the reviews and the names, much appreciated. (I think I used one of the ones Regina (guest) gave.) The names will probably appear somewhere in this story, depending on how badly I need them.
"Everyone wake up!" Pat's voice knocked Gregor out of his sleep. Immediately, he could 'see' the rats coming towards them.
Of course it had to be the rats. Gregor thought as he snapped his eyes open. Everyone had turned on their flashlights, but Lizzie had run to the bags to get the big flashlight on. Lizzie wasn't much in a fight, but she at least had some sense.
"Pat, the knife!" Gregor yelled, cursing the fact that he had given it to anyone at all. She kicked it to him, already using both arms to swing slightly blindly at the oncoming rats. She wasn't very accurate, but it slowed the rat down to duck the book.
Gregor grabbed the knife and jumped up at the oncoming rat. His blood started pumping. He could feel himself slipping, raging, his eyesight narrowing down until all that existed were his blade and opponent.
"A rager!" He heard in the back of his brain.
"Fall back." Another rat snarled. "We don't want to hurt anyone too severely."
"Gregor." Lizzie. That was Lizzie's voice. "Stop! Gregor, stop!"
Suddenly, there was no opponent, nowhere for his blade to hit. Gregor started to calm down, the buzz of raging stilling.
"What?" Gregor blinked a few times.
He clicked once, and saw three rats hanging back. But why aren't they attacking?
"Gregor, they don't want to hurt us." Katie said from behind him.
"What?" Gregor stared.
"If you'd listen to your friend, we were sent to fetch you, not kill you." The rat in the center growled.
"Fetch me to where?" Gregor asked uncertainly.
"Regalia, a human city here." The rat on the left–a girl, by the sound of her voice–said.
"Regalia?" Gregor was still dumbfounded.
"They are taking us to a human city." Sam said. "Good enough for me." Sam started over.
"Wait, why are you taking us to Regalia?" Gregor asked, stopping Sam. "It could be a trap." He muttered to him.
"Because those were Ripred's orders." The one on the right drawled. "And apparently they came from the Queen herself, so there's no way we'd ever kill you instead. And what would we do with you if not to give you to your own species?"
"Well, you could hold us hostage and force us to make things for you." Lizzie said drily. "And quite a few other things."
"We don't do that anymore." The one in the center said.
"So you used too?" Pat asked incredulously.
"Can we get along?" The girl asked impatiently. "We don't do that anymore. Let's hurry up, shall we? I want to get home in time for dinner."
"It's not like we could get there before dinner." Gregor said. He had figured they were telling the truth.
"How do you even know that?" The one on the right wondered.
"I've… I've been here before." Gregor replied. "Underland, I mean."
"What?" The girl took a few steps forward.
"An Overlander who's been here before…" The right one said in awe.
"Not just any Overlander, it's the warrior!" The girl said. "The warrior has come back."
~0~
"For the last time, I'm not the warrior." Gregor said, exasperated. "The warrior is dead."
"But you were the warrior." Witwyn, the female rat of the party who had found them, replied. One of the males had gone ahead to tell everyone that they had been found, and the other one, Flyfur, who seemed to be the leader, was in the front, leading. Gregor and Witwyn were at the back of the party.
"Well, yes, but I've…" Gregor hesitated. 'Changed' seemed like lying. He hadn't changed, not really. In fact, if anything, he had stayed the same Gregor as he had been before. Just maybe more mature. "I'm not the warrior anymore." I do no harm. Hamnet's voice resonated in his skull. I do no more harm. Maybe Gregor's parents had been right to take him away from the Underland. It made him more bloodthirsty. "I don't try to hurt people anymore. Not the way the warrior had been."
"You seemed pretty keen on fighting us earlier." Witwyn pointed out.
"That was different."
"How?"
Gregor stopped walking, turning to look at her clearly. Well, 'look,' since he still wasn't using a light (which had baffled their new rat companions).
"Well…" Gregor spoke slowly, unsure. "You're rats." He finally said.
"I always heard the warrior wasn't biased because of your species. That's what I was told when I was a pup." Witwyn's tone wasn't completely accusing, but more curious. She was probably wondering how much she had heard were rumors, stories exaggerated as they were passed on, and which ones were true.
"Oh." Gregor hesitated, and started walking again, feeling embarrassed. "Well, I guess that could be true, but… I mean, I did fight a war against the rats."
"Yes, but you had rat friends, did you not?" Witwyn cocked her head. "I don't understand."
"My entire time in the Underland, the rule was that all rats would kill me unless they had been introduced and deemed safe by Ripred. And Ripred was both as likely to kill me as the rest of them, and also as likely to save my life. It all depended on how long he needed me, which seemed to be as long as I was down here. I left before there was any time for him to not need me, so I'll never get to see what he'd have done to me."
"What are you talking about? Ripred is a wonderful leader who cares about us all. I was told he was like a father to you, and that he cared for you just as much."
Gregor tripped.
"Gregor?" Lizzie turned around, shining a light on the two of them. "You okay?"
"Did you just trip on nothing?" Witwyn asked sarcastically. "It certainly wasn't my tail. You have changed, haven't you?"
Gregor stared up at her, alarmed.
"Was it something I said?" Witwyn suddenly was very small, very scared-looking.
"Ripred a wonderful leader who cares about you all and was like a father to me?" Gregor asked in horror. "And cared for me just as much?"
"Well, yes." Witwyn sounded surprised. "Wasn't that obvious?" Gregor slowly got up.
"He was nice to me because that was the easiest way to make me do what he wanted me to do. He was soft to me when he knew I was hurting because that was the only way to keep me from screaming at him, especially when I thought it was his fault. He told me whatever I needed to hear to keep going. He tells everyone what they need to hear to keep them going, and going in the direction he wants them to go."
"He was a father to me." Lizzie offered. "I mean, sure, Dad was great and all, but to be honest, Ripred was just as much a father to me then as Dad was. And he loved me like I was his daughter."
"Lizzie…"
"He's capable of love, Gregor." Lizzie looked straight at him. "And he loved you too. Not as much as he loved me, but he did love you too. He just knew you enough to know that sometimes you need a push to get going. He knew he had to be hard on you to teach you the things you don't want to learn, or were too hard. He was soft on you because he knew you deserved it. Gregor, maybe in the beginning he was using you, but sometimes he really did act differently towards you because that's what you needed at the time. Not so that you'd do what he wanted you to do, but so that you could continue on with your life."
"You know what he told me, once?" Gregor replied coldly. "He told me that mutual need was stronger than anything. Stronger than love."
"Then he obviously cared about you much more than me. He loved me, but he needed you. More than he needed me."
"But he loved you more. Even in the beginning."
"He was softer on me. Sweeter. That could be either because I had always given him food, or because that's what I needed. You'd already seen the harsh side of him, you had seen that the world could be violent and horrible. I couldn't handle that yet, so he kept me from seeing it. He sheltered me, was sweet to me so I wouldn't really fear him, so I could work with enlarged animals that could talk and were capable of killing me without much work. Gregor, you have to learn that people like Ripred, like Solovet and those hardened by war and loss, they are still capable of love, no matter how hard they try not to show it."
There was a quiet moment of silence as everyone stared at the two.
"That was touching and all, but let's get going." Flyfur suddenly growled from the front. "We've got a lot of ground to cover and I'd like to avoid flying, if that's possible with you all."
"What do you mean, avoid flying?" Gregor started walking again, and so did the rest. Lizzie kept looking back at him, but he knew she couldn't see him.
"We have groups." Flyfur said, calling over his shoulder. Gregor moved forward more so that he didn't have to yell so loudly. "Three gnawers, two crawlers, three humans, and six fliers. Some groups have spinners or nibblers, too, although those ones usually only have three bats."
"Okay…"
"These are used for various purposes, but mainly for the military. Oh yes, we have a military here." Flyfur added in reaction to Gregor's face. "It's mostly just to train different species to start working together more, trust each other with your life, that type of thing. But we often do work like this, sort of an exploration, to help fill the maps, find people, or protect important people on their trips and such. Not really too important, and not working all that much yet, but the theory is eventually, the species will grow to trust each other with their lives and wars like the last one won't happen. Y'know, so chaotic people are killing one another from their own side, just because they're different species? Anyway, there's usually at least one from each species who has just grown up from pup. Ideally, they're the ones who have less trouble trusting those of other species. That would be Witwyn here."
"Oh. That explains it." Gregor had caught up with Flyfur and was walking side-by-side with him. "She didn't really know much about me, nothing solid, that is, and was surprised at the hostility between humans and rats." It occurred to Gregor that Flyfur had been just a pup when the war had officially started, and must have seen the final fight (not the one between Gregor and the Bane, but the one between the armies), with even his mother out there, fighting.
"I guess it worked for her." Flyfur sniffed. "We're lucky we don't have nibblers. The humans and fliers I can manage, and even the crawlers, but I would be hard pressed to trust a nibbler. Of course, that also means we have to learn to fly."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, since we gnawers are the only ones who actually cannot fly, our group and groups like us are flying groups. We have a boat-like contraption that can hold our stuff and gnawers can sit in, which the fliers then take and fly with. Also, if it's needed, it can float and the fliers could rest in it, just in case. Takes lots of skill and practice, though, I'll tell you that. We kept falling off the first few times, and that doesn't really encourage us to get back on much. But we make deals every time we're out in the field and are expected to make our own decisions. For this one, if we could get out early enough that running won't take too much time, we'll be allowed to run and the bats would carry the crawlers in the contraption instead. And, well, since we have you as well, you'd either be flying or in the contraption as well."
"Oh no." Gregor stopped. Flying on a bat he didn't know? After what had happened? "Would we be allowed to make arrangements to ride on you rats instead?" He tried weakly, walking again, faster this time. They should try to get there in time.
"I don't understand. Rats are not ridden on."
"Well yes, but…" Gregor searched for an appropriate reason they shouldn't ride the bats. "But my companions, they haven't flown before, not on fliers. They could fall, and then the fliers would be too busy carrying the contraption to catch them. But if we ride on gnawers, then if they fall at least it will be shorter."
"Point taken, but they could just sit in the contraption. And there are too many of you to take, if we could even convince Scarsnout to take someone. He's the worst with trusting other species, especially humans."
"Oh. Right." Gregor tried not to think about it anymore.
Behind them, the Overlanders were discussing in whispered tones that they must've thought was quiet, because they were saying not very nice words about the 'terrifying rats' and 'insane Gregor,' who was 'talking to it like it's a normal human being when it obviously was not.' Boots had climbed onto Witwyn and was talking with her casually, talking about what she remembered of her previous trip here combined with the stories she was always told.
"Hey, guys," Gregor called to his three friends. "This is Flyfur, as he said earlier, and as a matter of fact, he's one of the pups of an old friend of mine. Not Ripred," Gregor added hastily at the looks he was given, even by Flyfur, "but Lapblood. She and her mate–" –here he cast an uneasy look at Flyfur– "–Mange went on a quest of sorts to find a cure for a disease. It only hit warmbloods, so the rats, bats, and humans had to band together to get the cure. Lapblood and I got close, in a way." Gregor shrugged and avoided Flyfur's eyes.
"You're friends." Katie said slowly. "With rats."
"Giant rats." Pat added.
"Yeah, Lapblood and Ripred are my closest… ones now." Gregor ended lamely.
"What do you mean, now?" Sam asked uncomfortably, glancing at Flyfur and Witwyn anxiously every so often.
"Well…" Gregor looked away.
"'Ouch is dead.'" Boots said from the back, pressing her hand to her nose. "'Ouch.' That's what I called her. I can't remember her real name, now."
"Twitchtip." Gregor said quietly.
"You were good to her." Flyfur reassured. "My mother tells me you were good to all the rats who did not try to kill you, that if they did not attack you, you were always inclined to assume it were innocent. That's why the Bane lived in the end."
"Pearlpelt. I feel it was all his father's fault, and Twirltongue's." Gregor said.
"He killed the Bane's siblings, did he not?" Witwyn called forward.
"Apparently." Gregor replied, and shuddered. "The Bane wasn't all there, in the end. He lost his tail. I was an idiot."
"I heard his tail was a smart move." Witwyn said.
"He used it like a security blanket." Gregor explained. "Like whenever he was nervous or scared, he'd gnaw on it. It was disgusting. When I chopped it off, he couldn't handle the loss. He killed Twirltongue in the end, and then genuinely thought that it was me and–" Gregor choked. "That it was… me who killed her." He made out.
There was a slight silence as everyone absorbed it.
"You and who?" Katie finally asked. "You and Luxa?"
Gregor almost tripped again.
"No." Gregor turned to her, looked her straight in the eyes. "Luxa was in the dungeon at the time, in order for us to ensure that she would not fly into battle and leave the throne to Nerissa and Howard and his family. Stellovet would've been an awful queen, but at least Howard's not bad."
"Oh. Oh." Katie said, repeating it as she realized something. Gregor dreaded her speaking in front of Flyfur and Witwyn. "She was a princess."
"To be Queen, actually, once she became of age." Gregor looked at her, trying to convey the message that it was not common knowledge that he had loved Luxa and she had loved him in return.
"I heard a rumor that you two had been in an intimate relationship." Witwyn said carefully. Then again, maybe it was common knowledge now. Ripred had known, so there was no saying who he might've told.
"Let's keep it a rumor, shall we?" Gregor turned around and kept walking. "How're they, Ripred and Luxa? How's the bond going?" Behind, Lizzie explained the bonding system to his three friends, which was just as well, because Gregor didn't think he was up for it.
"How should we know?" Flyfur snorted. "We're just soldiers. Never even really met the Queen, although I have met Ripred. He hasn't really changed, not as far as I know."
"So still sarcastic and an amazing warrior?" Gregor summed up.
"Yeah, just about." Flyfur made a right and they all followed him into the open space where the bats were waiting.
Is this okay…? I was sorta half-asleep when I wrote most of this (literally. My eyes were closed.) but hopefully it's not that bad. I haven't exactly got the language of the Underlanders down, but thankfully I only need to write gnawers right now. But, very sorry because there's no way I can copy the language Suzanne Collins gave the Underlanders, although I will try. :)