Suzanne Collins: Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

"Take off their legs, decapitate them, drain them, do whatever you have to do to stop them!" bellowed Ripred. And with that, he sprang straight into the column of ants.

In the period that followed, Gregor lost all sense of where he was, of his companions, of himself. There was heat, sweat, the taste of his own blood in his mouth. His sword knew where to go — to the joints of the legs, napes of the neck, the thin waists. But there were so many...so many! Where each ant fell, another appeared to take its place. Slowly, reluctantly, his feet shifted, as their sheer numbers forced him back. Eventually, he could feel the starshade bundles scraping the backs of his calves as he took one final stand at the stack...and then they swarmed over him, knocking him into the bundles of plants.

"No!" he heard himself scream. "No!" Gregor fought his way back to his feet and plowed after the army as he tried to stop the demolition of the plants, but it was no use. The stack was gone in less than a minute, and the rest of the field was completely vulnerable. As he staggered behind the disappearing army, a pair of teeth caught his shirt from behind and dragged him quickly back from the jungle. He struggled to free himself, to follow the enemy in among the vines, but whoever held him was too powerful to resist.

"Let them go! It's over, boy! It's over. We've lost," said Ripred, as he yanked him onto his rear end.

The force of the impact helped bring Gregor back to reality. He was sobbing in fury at the ants, in revulsion at the battle, and in despair because the field...oh, the field was a wasteland! Ruined bits of plants lay ground into the earth, which was sodden with an evil-smelling lilac goo. He scooped up a handful of the stuff and watched the last shreds of the starshade dissolve into greenish liquid and vanish.

"It's gone," Gregor wept. "The starshade is gone. The cure is gone."

"All gone," said Ripred quietly. "It's all gone now."

Luxa and Nike landed beside them. Through his tears, Gregor could see the blood streaming from the cuts on Luxa's pale legs. He realized he was covered in stinging wounds himself, where the mandibles had found their way through his defenses.

"If it's any consolation, the jungle has finished our work for us," said Ripred.

Gregor looked up at the jungle where the remainder of the ant army had disappeared. It had plowed into the area that Hamnet had raced their party through. Into the pretty white blossoms that made you deliriously happy. The ants must have been susceptible, too, because the jungle was filled with vines ripping obliging insects to bits. It didn't take long. In minutes, the ants were dismembered and dropped to the jungle floor where the roots shifted and covered them. And the silence returned.

Gregor wiped his eyes and struggled onto his feet. Ripred and Lapblood were hunched behind him. Luxa still sat on Nike's back. Surrounded by dead ants, Frill's beautiful blue-green body lay sprawled across the field, the skin scored with hundreds of cuts. Gregor looked for motion in her chest, but it was still as a stone.

Temp was hovering over something at the edge of the jungle. Gregor realized the form on the ground was Hamnet.

"Uncle!" Luxa cried, and then she was sprinting across the field to him.

When they reached him, they could see Hamnet was not long for this world. A gaping hole just under his ribcage was pumping out blood so it formed a pool around him.

Luxa knelt beside him and grasped his hand. "Judith," he whispered. "Judith..."

"Yes, it is Judith. I am right here," said Luxa.

"Hazard...Promise me...he will not be...let him be... anything but a warrior," said Hamnet.

"I promise," said Luxa. "Hamnet? Hamnet?" But his violet eyes were vacant now. He had slipped away.

"Anything but a warrior. Like me," thought Gregor dully. "Oh, let him be anything but me."

Luxa slowly reached up and shut Hamnet's eyes. Then she trailed her fingers along his cheek, removing a spot of blood.

"Now cracks a noble heart," said Ripred. He brushed Hamnet's head with his nose. "Take a lock. For his parents," he told Luxa. She cut a wave of Hamnet's hair and tucked it carefully into her belt.

They all sat near Hamnet's body in the wasted field, mindless of the blood and viscous lilac substance that the ants had spread. Their friends were gone. The star-shade was gone. And with it went all of their hope.

Gregor stared at the ground for a while, before he realized he was looking at something he recognized. Obscured by the muck was the mirror he had given to Boots to play with. She must have dropped it. He pried it up and slowly wiped it clean on his shirt. "At least Boots and Hazard didn't have to watch the battle," he thought. Hazard hadn't seen his dad and Frill die. And Boots hadn't seen Gregor hacking away at the ants.

"Why did they do it?" Gregor said finally. "Why did the ants want to destroy the cure?"

"They view us as an enemy," said Ripred. "All of us warmbloods but the rats in particular. Hasn't helped much that the humans pushed us up against their borders." Gregor vaguely remembered Ripred talking about this, when was it? Before he had gone after the Bane. At dinner in Regalia, a long, long time ago. Ripred had accused Solovet of starving the rats, of driving them up against the ants' borders.

"It was an excellent plan, you have to give them credit for that," said Ripred. "All they had to do was come, obliterate this field, and their problem with the warmbloods would soon be only a memory."

"How did they know where it was?" asked Gregor.

"Oh, that wouldn't be hard to find out. Probably the whole Underland knew we'd gone after the cure. And you can't take a mixed pack, as Hamnet called us, into the Vineyard without causing a lot of gossip. All they needed to know was when and where we'd found the cure. Any number of insects would have been happy to supply that information, right, Temp?"

"Any number," agreed Temp. "Hated here, the warmbloods are, hated here."

"Why?" asked Gregor.

"We have the best lands. The most plentiful feeding grounds. What we do not have and covet, they say we take. We are thought to be lacking in respect for other creatures," said Nike with a sigh.

"Well, you are. I mean, you all treat the cockroaches like trash," said Gregor. "Like when everybody laughed at Temp at that meeting. Do you make fun of the ants, too?"

"The ants are a completely different situation. They have little sense of self. Everything they do is for the collective benefit of the colony. So you see there would have been no trouble sending an army into the jungle. If they lost a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand soldiers, it would be nothing if it meant our destruction," said Ripred. "And every one has such blind loyalty to the queen...No, we don't make fun of the cutters much. They can be too dangerous, as we have all just witnessed."

Gregor's eyes wandered across the field. It was littered with dead ants. But they had done their job. Not a stalk of the starshade was left standing.

"What shall we do now?" said Nike.

"What is there to do but go home, and choose a good place to die?" said Lapblood. "The starshade is gone."

"It does not make sense," said Luxa. "We did all the prophecy asked. Brought the warrior and the princess. Joined with the gnawers to seek the cure. Why have we not succeeded?"

"I do not know. But I do not believe we have ever understood the prophecy. Possibly we fail because we still do not see the when," said Nike.

"What?" said Lapblood.

"'You see the what but not the when,'" Nike quoted from the prophecy.

"I've seen the when. It was when the cutters destroyed this field, and we didn't see it coming," said Lapblood.

"Maybe, but if you are wrong..." Nike trailed off.