Chapter 36- Discovery

"So, do you have any thing else to tell us?" Drake asked Brooklyn.

"Not really. At least, nothing that you'll understand." Brooklyn responded.

"Tell us!" Flynn demanded, towering over Brooklyn, though Brooklyn was admittedly holding a laser.

"Okay… I'll talk. One of you is carrying a small gold medallion with the eye of Anubis on the center."

Flynn and Drake looked at each other. "We have no idea what you're talking about." Drake said.

"Hang on then." Brooklyn removed the thick pad from the front of his laser and reached into Julie's pocket, his hand covered in the pad. He pulled it out with his hand closed around something. "Yeah, this should be it." He opened his hand and showed the object he had described.

"Wow, I didn't know she had this." Drake said, and reached out to touch it.

"DON"T TOUCH IT!!!" Brooklyn shouted. Drake yanked his hand back. "This isn't any medallion. It's a key."

Flynn raised an eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, the fiends were located on the surface of the Shadow Realm. We, despite any ideas you may have, are still on the very surface of the Shadow Realm. In order to get farther in, you need one of two things- either a key or a Millennium Item. The farther in you get, the more dangerous it gets- stronger creatures and the like. I discovered that they were looking for the key to level 2 of the Shadow Realm, and I tried to inform Matt, but I couldn't reach him. That's what brought me here."

"And why do we not want to touch the key?" said Drake, who was a little annoyed that Brooklyn had yelled at him.

"Well, it's also very dangerous. Touching it could drive you into the depths of despair."

"And that's dangerous… why?"

"Because it drives you into an intense despair, so intense that you go insane. Imagine, for a moment, that everything that you dread happening happens all at once."

Drake considered this. He thought about his cards being ripped up, having to kill his friends, Julie dying… wait, where did that thought come from? … and he felt the crushing despair. It was enough to make him want to curl up and isolate himself from the world.

"Now picture that instead of hiding from all else, you become enraged by the injustice of it all. What would you do?" Brooklyn leaned back against the wall. "I already know what would happen. I've seen it happen once. And, by the way, the more likely a person is to fall into despair, the more the key affects them."

"What do you mean, you've seen it happen once before? Who touched it?" Drake asked. Brooklyn looked uncomfortable.

"I… don't think I'm the one to tell you."

"TELL US!" Flynn said. This time Brooklyn didn't yield.

"Let's go. The longer we wait here, the greater the chance that they will attack us here again." Brooklyn said.

"Then bring it!" Flynn said. "I want to know who touched it."

"You'll know when it's time!" Brooklyn said. He returned the key to Julie's pocket and wrapped the pad back around the barrel of his laser. "Let's go. We've got a long way to go."

"What? We've come a long way already!" Drake said. Brooklyn gave him a little smile.

"True, but that doesn't mean you still can't have a long way to go." He headed down a hallway to us right. Drake and Flynn followed him. As they continued through the Shadow Realm, Flynn leaned over to Drake and whispered into his ear.

"Who do you think it is? The one who touched the key?" Flynn said.

"It couldn't be Matt, he's too stoic." Drake said. "I think so, at least."

"Yeah, how could Matt have enough despair to activate it? But then, why would he have Julie carry it?"

"Maybe he could see his capture and decided that it would be safer for her to have it, as funny as it seems to us."

"Hmm. How could he see the future, though? And wouldn't he have seen all this trouble we're going through, and given it to someone else?"

"I think we would probably lose it if we touched it."

"I can't think of anyone who Brooklyn knows that would have touched it, then."

"Shut up, you two. I can hear every word you say. Believe me, you'll know when the time comes." Brooklyn said. Flynn looked at Drake in disbelief.

"How could he hear us? I was whispering as quietly as possible." Flynn said. Drake wondered how he could have. Drake himself could barely hear Flynn.

"Don't know." He said. Brooklyn had stopped them.

"Uh-oh." he said. There was a congregation of nearly ten intelligent fiends before them. "We can't take them all at once, and we can't kill them. Any ideas?"

"Sneak through?" Flynn suggested.

"I don't like sneaking." Brooklyn said. "And how can Drake sneak anywhere?" He glanced past the fiends. "But…"

"But what?"

"I can see a door just beyond them. A cell door."

"You don't think…?"

"Yeah, I do. I think that's where Matt is. Why else would they surround it with intelligent fiends?"

"The thing is, how do we get to him?" Flynn said. They all thought for a moment. Flynn came up with an idea first. "What if we managed to isolate each fiend and duel them individually?"

"That would work." Drake said. "But we don't have enough people. We'd need five… because this way, we'll end up with seven fiends left. That puts us all in a two-on-one duel, except for one, which will be three-on-one. And then, one of the other fiends might challenge Julie and decide he won. Remember?"

"Hmm. Good point." Brooklyn said. "We can't just wait here all the time, and engaging ourselves with more than one fiend at a time is plain stupid. We could negate the Julie disadvantage by leaving her back here… but then she is very vulnerable if another fiend appears back here. This is too hard…"

"Hang on… about sneaking through… can the fiends actually see? I've noticed that they don't have eyes." Drake said.

"No, they can't really see. They sense the presence of duelists. The non-intelligent fiends, can, of course, see, but the intelligent ones sense their surroundings." Brooklyn said. "Why?"

"Don't know. Just a potentially useful observation."

"Can we dull their senses in any way?" Flynn said. Brooklyn smiled and withdrew a string of darts from his pocket.

"I never believed Matt when he said adding a dart launcher to the side of the laser would be useful." He loaded the darts into the chamber on the side of the laser and flicked a switch. Ten shots later the fiends were knocked out on the ground. "Shall we wake one?"

"No, let's just sneak past." Drake said.

"Ah, you guys can. I'm going to have some fun." His eyes lit up in a sort of violent way that Drake hadn't thought possible from them. He moved towards the nearest fiend. Drake and Flynn stepped over the corpses of the nine other fiends and attempted to open the door. It was, of course, locked.

"Okay, we need a key. Naturally." Drake said.

"Yeah, but the question is, where is it?" Flynn asked. They scanned the unconscious fiend bodies. Sure enough, one of the fiends had a key around his neck. "Bingo." He reached for the key, only to jump back in surprise when it shocked him. "What the heck?"

"You can't take it unless you beat him in a duel. Standard Shadow Realm procedure." Brooklyn said from his duel. He tossed them a small gun. Drake caught it and stuck it to the fiend's neck, then pulled the trigger. There was no sound, but the gun shuddered and a small needle stuck out and injected something into the fiend's neck. The fiend sat up immediately.

"You. Stupid key fiend. I'm challenging you to a duel." Flynn said.

"Fine! I will make sure it is your last!" the fiend said.

"Let's duel!"