Free Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane - 2 by Suzanne Collins Page A

the warrior drain your light?

    When Vikus had gone over the prophecy the night before, Gregor had been so consumed with the rats wanting to kill Boots, he hadn't focused much on this line. And Vikus hadn't elaborated. For the Underlanders, the word "light" was interchangeable with the word "life." So, when they talked about draining something's light, they meant killing it. The mission was to kill the Bane. He knew that. But Gregor had assumed the Underlanders would send a lot of soldiers with him. Trained soldiers.

    The line pounded into his brain.

    Will the warrior drain your light?

    Gregor began to get a very bad feeling. "Oh, man," he said. "You mean, there's this giant white rat...and you guys expect me to...by myself...you mean, I'm supposed to..."

PART 2: The Hunt

    ***

CHAPTER 10
    Maybe you didn't actually have to have sleep. Maybe it was something people got used to having, and thought they needed, but could really get by without. Gregor hoped so, because despite his complete state of exhaustion, he'd just spent the night without a wink of it.

    Mostly he'd been trying to imagine the big white rat he was supposed to kill by himself.
    A rat much larger and, presumably, stronger than Ripred. So Gregor figured the Bane was at least twice as tall as he was and probably weighed, oh, nine or ten times as much. Who cared if Gregor could hit a bunch of blood balls? This thing would squash him like a fly.

    Of course, Vikus hadn't gone into any detail about it. The same way he had never really spent much time dwelling on the fact that four of the twelve questers would be dead when "The Prophecy of Gray" was fulfilled. He had a way of sidestepping issues he thought Gregor couldn't handle. How long would Vikus have put off telling him he had to kill the Bane alone? As long as possible. Gregor pictured himself gaping in terror at the salivating white giant while Vikus tapped him on the shoulder and said in an upbeat voice, "Oh, yes, and by the way, according to Sandwich, you have to kill him single-handedly. Off you go, then!"

    Gregor remembered when he was standing in Central Park, barely over a day ago, and how his biggest worry had been how they were going to afford Christmas presents. Nothing like one of Sandwich's prophecies to put your whole world in perspective.

    He shifted his chin to his other hand and tried to focus on the babble of voices around the stone table. Vikus had called a council meeting to discuss his journey to find and kill the Bane.
    The council was a group of older Underlanders who would govern Regalia by committee until Luxa turned sixteen and was of age to rule.

    The only thing the members agreed on was that Gregor needed to get moving as soon as possible. Since the rats knew that Gregor and Boots were in the Underland again, they would surely take extra measures to conceal the Bane and hunt down his sister.

    Apparently Regalian spies also had brand-new information and had just locked in on an area where they thought the white rat was hiding. Although none of them had personally seen the creature, their sources indicated it was in a place called the Labyrinth. The word meant nothing to Gregor, but Ares whispered to him that a labyrinth was a maze. Lizzie and her puzzle book flashed before his eyes. She would be so much better than he would at finding her way around a maze. Thinking of Lizzie made him think of the rest of his family waiting and wondering above, and the thought was unbearable.

    "Yeah, let's get going. The sooner the better!" Gregor said, and everyone looked at him in surprise since it was the first thing he'd said all morning and the council was currently talking about which way to travel to the Labyrinth.

    Although they examined several options, every route that went through the web of Underland tunnels was judged too dangerous. While the humans controlled a much wider range of the Underland than they had before the war, the Labyrinth was situated in a remote corner of the