It was like flying over a distant planet. Gregor couldn't ascertain the cavern's length, but it was only about twenty feet high. The ground was desolate, marked with craters, and covered in dusty ash that swirled up in small clouds before settling back down.

It did not seem that anything could survive here, but . . . Gregor squinted in disbelief. Something was very much alive. He could just make out the shapes of the creatures a few hundred yards away. A number of small rodents gathered around a larger gray figure that loomed over them.

At first, Gregor thought they had caught up to the mice and a rat guard. Then the gray figure gave a shake, casting off a layer of ash to reveal a pearl-white coat.

As soon as he spotted them, Thanatos took a sharp turn, and the other bats followed suit. They landed in a small hollow in the wall on their right, barely deep enough to be considered a cave but sufficient to shield them from the rats' sight.

"The dust should prevent them from smelling us," said Howard, throwing an uncertain glance at the Death Rider.

"Potentially." The outcast shrugged. "I've never had to resort to it, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were so."

They were so close that Gregor could hear the crowd of rats talking . . . But there were no angry screams to attack. "I think it works . . . and they must not have seen us either," he whispered.

"No," replied Aurora. "Their eyes are fixed upon . . . upon . . . is it he?"

"Yeah, that's the Bane." Gregor slid off her back, joining Howard and Luxa in peering through the stone opening.

"Gregor, may I have your . . . thing, the one that magnifies?" asked the Death Rider, coming up beside him.

Gregor fetched the binoculars from his bag. "Just . . . please don't break them."

The outcast peered through, mumbling something like, "Remarkable . . . must ask Teslas to make one of these when we catch up to him."

"Let me see too!" exclaimed Boots, lighting up her scepter.

"No, Boots! We need it to stay dark." Gregor quickly confiscated the scepter and slipped it into his backpack. "I'll give it back soon."

Before she could protest, Howard pointed forward, saying, "Look . . . I believe he means to speak."

When Gregor followed his point, he saw that the Bane had leaped up onto a shelf of rock before the other rats. "Gnawers! Gnawers! I beg a moment of your time!"

His voice had matured since the day Gregor had watched him fight Ripred. It had become low and deep, commanding attention. At its sound, more rats appeared out of the wasteland and joined those already assembled, swelling their ranks to maybe a hundred.

And what followed from the Bane's mouth was nothing less than appalling. With just one speech, he not only captivated his audience but also persuaded them to accept all of his untrue claims.

First, he spoke about how unjustly his kind had been treated recently and how they had lost their fright after Gorger's death. Then he spoke about the plague and about their diminished numbers.

"The humans, the humans," said the Bane in disgust. "We knew from the moment they arrived . . . There was always that saying: The Underland has no room for us both."

Gregor's head flew around to Luxa, watching her hands clench together. He suppressed the urge to remark how she had said the exact same thing before—what the Bane was now declaring, what the rats were cheering him on for: There is no room in the Underland for both.

"And we will deal with the humans at the proper time," continued the Bane. "But there are others who must be taken care of first."

And then they listened in horror to the web of lies he spun about the nibblers—the nibblers, whom he apparently held responsible for the plague, whom he placed at the core of his twisted vendetta, which he aimed to rally the rats for.

"Of all the creatures who take pleasure in our humiliation, I can stand the nibblers the least!" exclaimed the Bane, and was met with a roar of agreement. "We have driven them from our lands again and again, but it is never far enough. I say, this time, we drive them to a place that allows no return!"

Gregor stood there, frozen, watching the rats being whipped into a frenzy. Watching the Bane ignite their bloodlust, their thirst to prove that they were the most powerful species in the Underland. "It is the law of nature," he said. "The strong determine the fate of the weak. Are we the weak? Are we the weak?"

And so there would be war, thought Gregor. He didn't know if it had properly sunk in before—that there would be war. That there would be bloodshed. But as he stared at the Bane, towering over his rats and fanning within them the flames of vengeance and bloodlust—the flames of war—he understood.

The battle would be long and bloody, and there would be no easy way out. No humane way to end it—the fire that Luxa had ignited in the embers of the rats' deeds. Then and there, it slammed into Gregor like a brick wall: Nothing would ever be the same as it had been before anymore.

"Are you strong?" roared the Bane.

"Yes!"

"Do you stand behind me?"

"Yes! Yes!"

Gregor only registered that he had begun to tremble when he had to lean back against the wall so as not to collapse.

"Then let our enemies do what they will. No creature in the Underland can stop us!" The Bane tilted back his head and gave a bloodcurdling battle cry.

The rats went wild below him, and Gregor slid down against the wall until he sat with his legs pulled to his chest. "Oh, man." It was all he could say, taking in the sight of his appalled, frozen party. Luxa's and Howard's faces were ashen. The Death Rider had turned to stone, with the binoculars still pressed against his face.

"He is a monster." Howard broke the silence first. "Did you hear his words? Is he insane? How can he . . . blame the plague on the nibblers?"

"The others believed him," mumbled Luxa, and Gregor yet again wondered if she regretted uttering the same saying about the rats and humans earlier.

"I half-believed him myself," said Ares. "He made it seem so logical."

"What will he . . . do to the nibblers?" asked Aurora, and received no response. "What does he mean, to drive them to a place that allows no return?"

"I do not know," replied Howard. "Out of the Underland, for certain."

"Into the uncharted lands . . ." whispered Luxa.

Nobody disagreed, although the Death Rider lowered the binoculars to exchange a glance with Thanatos.

The rats' sounds subsided, and the group fell silent. Gregor stared at his fingernails, struggling to process the Bane's words. He soon realized that it wasn't just the viciousness of the speech that had stunned him, but also its . . . persuasiveness. "Twirltongue must've been coaching him," he mumbled.

"Twirltongue?" The Death Rider whipped around.

Startled, Gregor raised his head; he had spoken so quietly that no one else had heard. "Yeah. Why?"

"Because," the Death Rider groaned, "that is the name of Tonguetwist's daughter. Are you telling me that she is his ally?"

"Tonguetwist . . . she was the rat who turned Dalia," exclaimed Gregor. "Oh . . ." He shook his head. "Oh, that explains a lot."

"I concur," said the Death Rider. "I have not met the Bane before, but I take it that rhetorical abilities such as these have not always been his forte?"

Before Gregor could respond, a loud groan from Cartesian, who had been stirring in his drug-induced sleep, startled everyone. Had the Bane's words filtered into his dreams?

"No!" he called, clawing at Gregor's blanket, which still enveloped him. "No! No!"

As desperately as they tried to shush him, it was no use. "Wake him, Howard," urged Luxa. "They will hear!"

Yet even as Howard tried to shake him awake, the mouse only screamed louder. "Where are the others?" over and over, his head twitching from side to side. "Where are the others?!"

Gregor allowed just one eye to slip around the cave wall . . . and saw that the army of rats was indeed galloping for them. "They heard!" he screamed. "Mount up! Get out of here!"

They reloaded the bats instantly. Gregor grabbed Boots and mounted Aurora, quickly followed by Luxa. Howard had his hands full, keeping the frantic Cartesian who hadn't ceased yelling, "Where are the others?! Where are the others?!" on Nike's back.

Thanatos scooped up Thalia and Temp, then shot out of the cave into the open first, followed by the Death Rider on Ares.

As soon as they were airborne, they were recognized. The rats began to shout, "The warrior! Queen Luxa!" Some laughed, crazed by their good fortune in trapping such an excellent quarry.

"Where to?" asked Aurora, flying last.

Gregor looked at Thanatos, but he seemed to know as little as the rest of them. "I don't know!" he called. "We need more light! "Shiners! Where are they?"

Gregor turned to watch for the bright beams . . . but received no response.

"Gone!" yelled Howard. "They headed back into Hades Hall the moment we left the cave!"

"Unsurprising!" screamed the Death Rider, then leaned forward over Ares' neck. "Death, just pick a tunnel. We may worry about our trek back later."

Thanatos had little choice but to oblige. He dove into a tunnel at random, and the others followed suit. The rats had been just moments away from reaching them, with no chance of turning back. But then Gregor heard their taunting voices and laughter as they gave up their chase and stayed back at the tunnel entrance. Instantly, a sense of apprehension began to grow. "They don't seem too unhappy about our escape," he said.

"That can only mean one thing," Luxa continued his train of thought. "Whatever awaits in this tunnel wants us as dead as they do."

As soon as the words had left her mouth, Thanatos sounded the alarm: "Prepare yourselves! Stingers!"

Gregor flinched, then swallowed his fear and crooked his neck to see, just as the bats swooped into a vast chamber. There, with their tails poised in the air, waited a pair of giant scorpions.

Gregor estimated their sizes to be around ten and twelve feet. Leaning over Aurora's neck, he saw that their most deadly weapons were not their eight legs or pinchers, but their tails, which began to sway as soon as the bats came into view. He caught a glimpse of a foot-long stinger protruding from the end of a tail as it swung past him.

Gregor's only encounters with scorpions had been in the Overland at the zoo, and his dad had warned him that even those tiny ones had venom powerful enough to kill humans. A cold shiver ran down his spine. If even the Overland variant was deadly, the venom that these scorpions packed had to be sufficient to finish off any of their party with just one sting.

Whether they were aware of this or simply unwilling to take the chance, the bats promptly began expending all their energy evading the tails, even if it meant risking a dive into the range of the pinchers. Gregor had his right arm wrapped around Boots and held the flashlight in his left hand.

It was only when Aurora barely dodged a snapping pincher that he thought it might be a good idea to draw his sword. He struggled to pull it out without letting go of Boots, who was peering curiously over the side of Aurora's neck. "Who's that? Spiders?"

"Sit up, Boots!" He pulled her tighter and attempted to illuminate as much of their surroundings with his flashlight beam as possible.

"We need more light!" called Luxa behind him.

"In my backpack!" replied Gregor, and, with a final tug, he worked his sword free. Except now, he had to hold his wiggly little sister with his flashlight arm. "Can you sit still?!"

"Are they spiders, Gre-go?" Boots ignored him and pointed. "Like "Itsy-Bitsy Spider"?"

"No!" yelled Gregor, flinching back when something flew past Aurora's flank. That hadn't been a tail. That had been a . . . projectile. "Boots, turn around! Hang on to me like a monkey!"

Gregor turned his head to watch the strange projectile and spotted Ares with the Death Rider speeding past them. At that moment, another beam of light brightened the cave—Luxa must have found one of his other flashlights.

"Hold on, Boots! I'm going to let go!" called Gregor, and Boots instantly locked her arms and legs around him so tightly that he could barely breathe. "Good," he pressed out, raising his sword.

"Sever their tails!" screamed Howard, somewhere to his left.

Gregor nodded in a haze, unable to shift into attack mode, with Aurora flipping left and right to dodge the stingers and Boots squeezing the breath out of him, limiting his sword arm's range as he had to fight around her.

He glanced around, hoping that any of his companions were in a better spot to fight, but soon realized that was not going to happen. Howard had not even managed to draw his sword, as he was still holding Cartesian. Luxa was facing backward on Aurora—not an ideal fighting position. And the Death Rider . . . Gregor caught a glimpse of him on Ares, deftly catching the projectile he had thrown earlier. He might be their only hope.

Driven by sheer desperation, Gregor yanked his sword arm up as the projectile whizzed by again, narrowly missing Aurora. She faltered but caught herself just as the larger scorpion to her right emitted a low hiss. In the trembling beam of his flashlight, Gregor made out that whatever the outcast had thrown had landed. However, the tail had not been severed.

"Baby spiders!" called Boots suddenly, as if making a pleasant discovery. "See the babies?"

Before Gregor could tell her that they weren't babies, a deafening scream pierced his ears: "Death!"

Horror-stricken, Gregor saw Thanatos' leg ensnared by the larger scorpion's pincher. The bat let out a high-pitched cry as he fought to break free, while Thalia desperately clung to his back. It wasn't until the Death Rider's projectile landed directly across the scorpion's pincher that it hissed and released its hold.

It's a boomerang, Gregor understood as he finally got a good look at it. An actual, real-life boomerang—something else he had never seen outside of museums before.

As the boomerang collided with the armored pincher, Thanatos managed to break free, but Thalia's grip slipped. The small bat cried out and landed heavily on the hard stone floor.

"Thalia!" screamed Hazard. "Fly!"

Thalia scrambled up, and Thanatos veered, claws extended, to scoop her up, but in vain. With lightning speed, the smaller scorpion leaped and trapped Thalia's wings on the ground. Its tail flipped over its head, poised for the kill. Thalia emitted a piteous cry, knowing she was moments from death.

"No!" screamed Hazard. "No!"

Alarmed, Gregor watched as he wrenched free from Luxa and leaped off Aurora's back. Luckily, Aurora had only been about twelve feet above the ground, and he managed to land on his hands and feet.

Luxa cried out, and Aurora dove, but they would never reach him in time. Unconcerned with his own safety, Hazard scrambled over to Thalia, kneeled above her head, and raised his hands to shield her from the scorpion. "No!"