The courage to face evil; the courage to deny falsehoods; the courage to know who we are. Such is the challenge, and such is the reward.
 

    A young couple, weary from the toils of a long day, lovingly laid their daughter to bed. Autumn's chilling winds tapped at the windowpanes and twisted the trees outside in a strange and mysterious dance. The girl closed her eyes. She knew that sleep would not come easily, and when it did, the dreams would soon follow...

    In the middle of the forest, in a narrow glen ringed by tall aspens gradually tossing their golden display to the gray of winter, was a pit. A ragged clearing circled the pit, slowly funneling into the black depth. Some said that on harsh winter nights a strange light leaked from the depths. Others swore that they heard voices, scratching, and unrecognizable sounds coming from that dark emptiness.

    "Stay back from the pit," mothers would warn their children as they headed off to play. These warnings were occasionally disobeyed, and from time to time a child would go missing and never be found; the deep yawning depth of the hidden world remaining a mysterious and forbidding secret.

    Into this glen came a young girl. She was alone, and she scrambled across the rocky clearing, lowered her legs into the black hole, and stood briefly on a fragile shelf before losing her footing in the slimy dark and sliding feet first down curving passages that progressively narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again. She splashed through blind underwater tunnels where slithering things brushed against her bare legs and skittering creatures eyed her with wary gazes from soggy shelves and muddy pockets. Yet she continued on, down into the depths unknown.