Little Thalric and Luther had built their house at the edge of the underground, atop a somewhat hill-like place. It was meant to be a lone and peaceful spot for them, and it was for quite some time. But as time passed, more and more people saw that place as habitable, and soon enough, poor Thalric and Luther had a few new neighbors in their surroundings.

  So Lurthor and Thalric built a fence around their little house, which was now overtaken by a yellowish bunch of growing grasses. Coming to his yard, Thalric did something he rarely did and gazed at his neighbor's house. The red-painted little house had smoke rising to the sky from its chimney. In its front yard, Thalric saw the owner of this house, the deaf gray Larry, laying on the leaning chair, sleeping very comfortably. His darn dog, Barkey, who had almost bitten off Thalric's neck when he was little, also slept nearby on the floor.

  From there, Thalric's eyes moved a bit ahead to another wooden house, where he also saw smoke rising to the sky. All those smokes rising from the nearby houses gathered up in the air, creating a thick layer of gloomy clouds that sometimes lost their ability to float and fell down upon everyone below. The end result of that was the severe breathing issues almost everyone had.

  That house, painted in yellow, had an old man watering some plants nearby. That was all Thalric looked at, for that was all he could remember in his memory as neighbors. And to him, there was nothing out of shape in the surroundings.

  "Doesn't look like a dream at all," scratching his head and feeling a bit perplexed, Thalric turned around to get back into his house but saw a few bird feathers in front of his door, in the exact spot where Baladora stood before.

  "Pretty!" he said, picking one up before going inside the house. Closing the door tightly as if to never open again, he walked back to his room, placed the feather on his table, and looked at his messy room. He decided to do some cleaning that day.

  After hours of hard work, with cleaning that started from his room to his father's room, then to the kitchen and storage, somehow the task ended up with the whole house being cleaned.

  After all that, at the end of the day, Thalric had three large bags of trash in his hand.

  At that point, Thalric was tired from all the work he had done during the day, and after throwing away the trash bags in his yard, he somehow managed to take a nice bath and prepare dinner before curling up into his bed. After a night passed with sweet dreams in his clean house, he woke up at his usual time with a pleasant face. He had already forgotten the trouble he faced the day before morning.

  The floor of his room was very, very clean and had a cherry-colored carpet. He had placed all the messy things in their suitable places, the clothes into the closet, and knives and spoons like utensils into the kitchen, and the pumpkin pie with a bunch of flies into the trash bag.

  Out from his room, Thalric gazed at the rest of his house. His living room had a giant blue round carpet with a soft and comfortable cushion chair on top of it, placed close to the fireplace. After preparing himself a beverage and a new pie, with a book in his hand, he came back to lean onto the chair when he heard a knock on his door.

  It was the same as yesterday, and Thalric somehow felt a chill at the sound of the knock.

  Begging in his thoughts it to be someone else, he put the thing on his hand on the seat and went up to the door. Without even looking through the hole to the other side to check who it was, Thalric directly opened the door to see the one person he didn't want to see—Beladona.

  "You—You're real!" he exclaimed.

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  "Of course I'm real, how could I not be? Now, did you prepare? It's almost time," said Beladona, than she examined Thalric. "A better outfit than yesterday, very good. Let's go then."

  "Pardon me, I don't quite understand what you're talking about—arhhh!" In the middle of his words, without letting him chance to resist, Beladona grabbed Thalric with her large and soft hand and pulled him outside from his house.

  "By the gods, please don't kill me! All those stories are what Father said; I said nothing to anyone else!" Thalric screamed while struggling in her grasp, but his weak strength is nothing compared to her hand, which to him felt like an immovable rock.

  With Thalric in her grasp, Beladona jumped high into the air, and in the middle of Thalric's scream for his life, her tall body changed its shape into a giant and majestic eagle that flapped its large wings and flew up into the layer of dark clouds above.

  In the grasp of the eagle, after he came to agree that he was indeed not dreaming, Thalric closed his eyes out of fright and grabbed hold of the eagle's leg, holding it as if to never let go.

  "Hold your breath, little one," he then heard the slightly changed voice of Beladona and opened his eyes to see the approaching cloud of darkness, like a group of black bees that used to live nearby their house a long time ago. But here, the darkness was far greater than those of the black bees. Looking up at the golden eagle and seeing no sign of slowing its flying speed, Thalric took a deep breath just a moment before they went into the dark clouds.

  The little Thalric and Beladona (now in eagle shape) entered the dark cloud, and just like Thalric, the eagle showed no sign of breathing. In the darkness, all Thalric felt was a burning sensation, like he was standing close to a giant burning fire. And he put all his attention on holding his breath while waiting, hoping to hear the voice of Beladona again, for he deeply believed that once they were out of the dark, she would inform him.

  Moments passed in the darkness, and breathlessly, Thalric got anxious as his lungs immediately needed fresh air. Grabbing hold of one of the claws of the eagle, Thalric tapped it, causing a little sound that was enough to resonate a few feet away from him. He hoped the sound would reach Beladona and she would realize he couldn’t hold on anymore. While in the midst of doing that, Thalric started to hear the beating of his own heart like a death cry. Poor Thalric tried to hold on as much as he could, but when the beating of his heart began to resound in his head and his body started to lose its energy, he gave up and opened his mouth, exhaling before taking a deep breath. He cared poorly about whether he would suffer any breathing problems from this, as long as he got to live.

  What he felt was something dusty and itchy entering his nostrils, but it soon disappeared as the air became fresh, and Thalric saw a shade of light through his closed eyes.

  "Now you can breathe." Thalric opened his ears to Beladona's words and saw that they were flying above the dark clouds and approaching a light shining even above that.

  That light was what kept the underground world in brightness, and Thalric had heard of stories about this light. People from the neighborhood called this light the shadow of the true light, and they also said that beyond that light was the grand land of humans—Albion.

  Beladona reached the bright light with Thalric in her grasp and flew through it, appearing in a new land filled with humans and their crafts. It was beautiful, down to the last bit of sand Thalric could grasp. There was a blue sky above the white clouds with a giant burning ball of fire in the middle. The brightness of the light was way more than what he had ever seen in his life, and it even felt warm to his body. There were people with all in perfect shape going in and out of their houses, some doing their own work and some helping others work.

  Thalric looked down and saw the deep hole he came out from. He did not see anything inside the hole as the darkness had already covered his vision there. But what he saw was the source of the light they had gotten all these years – the white castle that stood in the pile of great rocks.

  It was white in color, just like those clouds in the sky, and had armored knights guarding the surroundings around it. Thalric was completely mesmerized by the beauty of the castle and did not notice that the eagle was reaching towards the castle with him in its grasp.

  When he noticed it, they were already above the giant white castle, and like a predator that saw its prey, the belladonna circle above the air of the castle and slowly descended in and landed on a giant tree growing in one place.

  At that moment, she let go of Thalric, and falling, full of hitting and scraping of tree branches, he landed below the tree. And not soon after, he was surrounded by a couple of guards who pointed their sharp spears at him. Frightened, Thalric did not dare to move and stayed just the way he fell on the ground while cursing for this terrible day he was having.