1 Fantasy and Reality are the Same

The rippled lining of Gregor's bed covers came into focus as he awoke from a fitful sleep. He wondered, as he often did around midnight, how the Queen was fairing. He had found himself wondering more often now. At first, he was sure she was a mess. The pressure of ruling a city in ruins while aligning warring factions together was no small feat. And of course she was now, unnaturally it seemed, separated from Gregor. Worlds apart. How similar their destinies had seemed, and how different they are now. They each had a their whole lives ahead of them, and their whole lives behind them. He found himself distancing himself from her in his thoughts. It nearly brought him to tears to do so.

"The Queen," he thought, "Luxa."

There was a ticking outside his window. The wind perhaps, but maybe something else. He rose up and looked out the window. Nothing. He turned around and was about to get back in bed when he hesitated. No, there was definitely something out there. But what? He felt something on his arm, he looked down and saw a cockroach. It's antenna quivering. "Hi you," said Boot's voice in his head. "Hi, hi, hi," he imagined. What was this little bug doing? He rarely saw cockroaches anymore. He took a cockroach sighting as a good sign. They were among his favorite species in the Underland.

"What do you want, little guy?" said Gregor. He set the roach down on his bed and it scurried in a straight line towards the window. Feeling like he was a stranger in his own body, he opened the window and felt a cool breeze that gave him a new sort of life. A courage that resonated deeply within him. A movement to a natural rhythm that started in his bones and spread to his soul. The roach scampered outside and stopped, turning around to look at him. "Yeah, I think I understand." He was going back to the Underland.

"What's your plan?" said Ripred, in his head.

"I could leave now, but I don't want my family to wake up to me missing. I need to be honest with them. They need that." he thought. "The world will still be there in the morning, and so will Luxa."

He slept that night with assurance that life was going to get better. He slept and slept.

The next morning he woke with a start. "What time is it?" His eyes glanced to his watch on his nightstand, 12:03pm. He put it on and walked to the kitchen, groaning at his late start. It was very quiet for being noon. Something was wrong, usually one of his sisters woke him up much earlier than this. Much earlier.

He went to his parents room and there was nobody. No Boots or Lizzy either. Just space and silence. Panic began to awaken in him, the shock that something might have happened to them was startling, and oddly confusing. What was going on? He went back to his room to put on his jeans and jacket. He heard a clicking outside the window, like the night before. He looked out and saw a big, black bat. The overland kind. It flew away as soon as he looked at it. It flew towards central park.. "The Underlanders, they took my family!"

The ties he had to the Underlanders was always rocky, even in the best of times. He was occasionally ashamed of the atrocities he had been involved in but he fought for his loved ones, not for the Regalian politics. The humans were deceptive, the rats were blood thirsty tyrants, the bats were only loyal to the humans and most bugs hated the warmbloods. Gregor felt tied to the humans at first, as if they were the good guys, but he had seen more than enough brave rats fight for peace as well. In this instant, he wondered how the "bond" between Ripred and Luxa held up. It was more of a peace gesture than anything but Gregor sincerely hoped it was set in stone as the new rule between rats and humans. If it were then why would any of them abduct his family? What was going on down there?

Gregor was all ready to head to the Underland when he grabbed a crowbar and slipped it inside his jacket. His father had done that once. "For the rock," he remembered. Now, Gregor was bringing it for some sort of protection. He didn't know what sort of trouble he'd run into down there. He left his appartment and began his trek towards central park.

It was Spring and the sun was out, but the wind was fierce and there was an odd howling coming from it. Gregor walked briskly and was about to hail a cab when a passerby caught his attention. He looked her in the eyes and saw thar hers were a dazzling shade of purple. A striking quality which was unique to only the Underland humans. The girl quickly looked away and kept walking. Gregor stopped and watched her as she passed.

He stood in the sun as something other than sunlight began to dawn on him. It was like a twitch. He tried to convince himself it meant nothing but the gesture was wide enough for him to hold it in his thoughts. "There's an Underlander.. above ground.. right outside my apartment.. They're watching me!"

Right as Gregor came to this conclusion a loud crash came from across the street, ahead of him. Gregor rushed towards it, now hearing screaming. He turned a corner and was taken aback. Rats, hundreds of rats, the overland kind, were storming across the street causing people to panic and flee. And the rats were coming right for him.