Chapter 11- On to Level 2

"What a minute, I have no idea where we're going." Drake said. He turned and offered Helen his hand. She grabbed it gratefully and he pulled her to her feet. "Isn't this why we brought Yugi along? Because he knows this place well?"

"Yeah, it is." Brooklyn said. "So where to?"

"I've gone out a little farther. There's nothing anywhere near us. Now, do you want to take the short, disturbing way, or the long, quaint path?"

"Uh…what do you mean by disturbing?" Helen asked.

"I mean the torture chambers are that way. You've seen them, haven't you?" Yugi asked.

"No."

"She wasn't with us for all of our other little adventures." Flynn said.

"I see." Yugi frowned. "I'm not going to explain it to you. You don't want to know what's down that path. The others have been down there once or twice, and I think they would be considered what you Americans call, 'scarred for life.'"

"Yeah, I would say that." Drake said, shuddering. He didn't want to think about the images he had seen in those blood-filled hallways. The year before he had almost cracked because of what he had seen in there. If it weren't for Matt… he would probably have died because of the horror he felt. "I don't think we want to go there."

"Yes, I agree." Flynn said, a smile tugging at the left corner of his mouth. "Loverboy and Helen wouldn't want to see all of the horrible nasties in there, now would they?" Helen walked over to him and smacked him upside the head.

"Hey, be nice." Keith said.

"That was mean." Helen pointed out.

"She's got a point." MacArthur said, cleaning some stuff out of the chamber of his gun. He snapped the bolt back into place and the chamber slid shut. "Flynn, you haven't been really nice to her lately. And it's not like its warranted anymore."

"Yeah, sorry about that." Flynn said.

"So we're going to take the long way?" Keith said. "Won't there be more fiends there, as it's longer?"

"Usually that would be true." Yugi said. "But with the fiends stretched across the world, the mastermind will have to focus his monsters into one area. I would guess that he will focus all of his monsters onto the main path, and, with the relative omniscience he has within the shadow realm due to his control of it, he can easily send the fiends to any part of the realm from the main path with relative ease. However, because he cannot give the order as soon as he knows, we have some time to get moving until they find us."

"Alright then. No more complaints here." Keith said.

"I don't like taking too long." Flynn said. "What if the group that has Julie's soul is already here? We need to make up the time they've had to get ahead of us."

"Fiends don't move quickly." Brooklyn said. "They can only sustain travel for a few hours, particularly in daylight, and they had a major setback when the gate in Rome malfunctioned. Chances are they're way behind us."

"Okay. That puts me at ease." Flynn said. "I'd rather the fiends not unleash the power to destroy the world while we're taking the long way."

"Don't worry, that won't happen." Brooklyn said. He slung his laser over his shoulder and turned. "But let's not waste time. Let's go." Everyone dropped in behind him and they started walking down a path. Brooklyn stopped. "I just realized that I have no idea where I'm going."

"Then let me lead." Yugi said, pushing past Flynn to the front of the column. He moved to a wall and pushed open a door in the wall. "Here's what we're looking for." He held the door open and let everyone else through before following them in and shutting the door behind him. For a moment it was dark, but then torches along the wall lit up with purple flames, illuminating the passage. "Welcome to the long way through the Shadow Realm."

"It looks lengthy." Drake said, staring down the hall.

"Hence why it is called 'the long way.'" Flynn said.

"Oh, yes." Drake said. "You have a point." He shifted the rifle on his shoulder and winced at the pain in the region of his wound. Yugi nodded silently and continued on down the hall. Everyone followed.

They found groups of two or three fiends scattered randomly throughout the passageway, but none of them could do anything before Flynn or MacArthur at the front of the column. It still took them over half an hour to reach the gate to the second level.

"So… now we have another decision." Brooklyn said.

"What do you mean?" Helen asked.

"We need to decide if we want to wait here and hope that the army with Julie's soul is not here yet, and then hope they run into us." Keith said. "Or we can try to pry the gate open and go deeper if we fear that they have passed us."

"Which is safer?"

"Neither. We could be attacked at any time staying here, and as long as we don't move the mastermind can attack whenever he wants. However, if we stay here we can dig in and try to make some kind of defensive structure that would block the fiend army's path. If we choose to move deeper in then we can avoid any of his attacks because he won't be able to move the fiends in here fast enough, however, we run the risk of running into an army or into some other unknown trap."

"Okay, so what do we do?" Drake asked.

"YOU are not doing anything!"

Drake turned around and saw a figure wearing a black cloak standing on a ledge about twenty meters away. His eyes were covered by a hood, but his mouth was twisted in a smile. The voice was familiar, but sounded somewhat more twisted and evil than the voice of which it reminded Drake.

"So you're the mastermind, huh?" Flynn said. "You're smaller than I expected."

"Shut up! I have more power than you have ever had, or ever will have, since I'm going to kill you all!" said the mastermind.

"I doubt you have much power." MacArthur said. "As we keep destroying everything you send at us."

"You just get lucky, that's all." The mastermind said. "This time, there is no way out. The gate behind you is locked, so you can't escape through it. In a few seconds, one of my largest fiend armies to date will come in here and kill you." There was a sudden sound, like rumbling thunder. The floor of the Shadow Realm began to shake as a massive army of fiends of all types filtered into the room and filled the vacant space, leaving a three-meter no man's land between them and Drake's group. The mastermind smiled smugly.

"Kill them." He said, and vanished. The fiends on the front of the army smiled and began to slowly march toward them. Drake raised his rifle and began to fire shots into the crowd of dogs, shadows, fiends, and fat fiends. Some of them fell, but the horde kept marching forward. Everyone else was shooting everything they could, but the mob of evil beasts continued forward. They were now just two meters away.

Drake's rifle jammed. He cursed and hit the stock, checked the chamber, and tried to fire it. Still nothing. And now the fiends had drawn to within a meter of them. They were reaching out to tear him apart.

And then they suddenly stopped, as if frozen in time. The whole army did. For nearly ten seconds everything appeared to have frozen. Then, all of a sudden, blood spurted from invisible cuts all over the fiends. Most of them died instantly as body parts fell to the ground. Some of them slowly collapsed, spewing blood all over the room. In seconds the entire army was dead. The mastermind was not among them.

"What just happened?" MacArthur asked.

"I have no idea." Flynn said.

Keith moved closer to a dismembered fiend. "These cuts are outrageously fine… as if someone cut them with a string. They were administered at such a speed that it took almost ten seconds for the cut to register. But that's impossible…"

"Apparently not, as it just did." Drake said.

"This is a bizarre phenomenon…" Yugi said. "What is that fast?"

"Nothing I'm aware of." Brooklyn said.

"At least we're not dead." Helen pointed out.

"That is true."