Chapter 16- The Eve of a Deadly Assault

Three Weeks Later…

Drake sat on his bed. It was late at night, and he had already said goodnight to Flynn, Keith and Julie, but he couldn't fall asleep. He felt like something was going to happen. He just knew it. As he sat on his bed and thumbed through his deck in the dark, he thought he heard a noise outside his door.

"Hello? Who's there?" he said, and hopped off his bed to get the door. As he reached for the doorknob, the door flew off the hinges and knocked him up against the opposite wall. He felt an intense pain in his back and saw a large black shape enter the room, then blacked out.

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"Drake! Drake! Are you okay?" came a voice. Drake felt himself being shaken. Something in the room smelled nasty, like sulfur. He could feel some sort of liquid underneath his fingers. The voice spoke again. "Drake! Wake up!"

"What? Huh?" Drake opened his eyes. The room was blurry and there was a throbbing pain in his back where he had crashed against the wall. He guessed that he was still in his own room. "What's going on?" He sat up and shook his head. The kneeling form of Flynn came into focus.

"That thing knocked you out. I've spent a good deal of five minutes trying to bring you back to consciousness. Good thing I had a medical kit in my briefcase, even though almost everything else in it was damaged." He said. Drake looked around the room. Laying facedown on the floor was some type of hideous creature. There was a large pool of the strange liquid surrounding its head- or at least, the part of it that looked like a head. A battered metal suitcase was lying on the floor next to Flynn.

"What happened?" Drake asked.

"Can't talk right now. We've got to go find Keith and make sure he's okay." Flynn responded.

"Right, right." Drake got unsteadily to his feet. Flynn walked to the door and checked outside.

"Okay, no more creatures." He picked up the battered suitcase.

"What's in the briefcase, anyway?"

"Well, my duel disk was, but now it's pretty broken. Let's go." The walked out the door and ran through the woods that separated Drake's dorm from Keith's. One of the lights was on, so they headed up towards it. They opened the door and found Keith sitting on his bed, watching one of th creatures on the floor.

"Are you okay? What happened?" Drake asked.

"Well, that thing walked in and I turned on the lights because I was sleepy and I could discern what it was. As soon as I turned on the lights it sort of… started burning." He kicked the corpse. "It stopped a little before you walked in."

"And we have no clue at all why." Flynn said. "Lock the door." Drake closed the door behind him and locked it, but, he thought, that probably wouldn't make much difference, after what he had seen the creature do to his door. "Alright, so we know they don't like light. But where did they come from? And why?"

"Those questions could be difficult to answer." Keith said. "Maybe Matt has an idea?" Flynn looked nervous.

"Do you think he made it out?" Flynn asked.

"Er… yeah." Keith said. "I kind of guessed that he would." At that moment the door opened and Matt walked in.

"Good. You all made it." He said. He glanced at the suitcase in Flynn's hand. "Creative."

"Do you have any idea what's going on?" Drake asked.

"I have a general idea. I need to meet up with someone to get specifics. But first, we need to see if anyone else made it through the assault. Principally Miss Daran, since I know she is one of the best duelists here, despite her meager lodgings."

"Right." Flynn said.

"In the meantime, stay alert." Matt said. "Most of these creatures seem savage, but I would not be surprised to find some intelligent ones." He pulled a very large knife out of his jacket pocket. "Otherwise, this should serve as sufficient deterrent for the more brutal ones." They slipped out of Keith's room and headed through the trees towards the Green dorm. Thankfully they did not encounter any other monsters during the walk. As they cleared the last grove of trees, the run-down image of the green dorm appeared before them.

"Wow, it looks worse than I thought it would." Drake said.

"Maybe that's because all the doors have been torn off by the monsters." Flynn said. Drake nodded in a sort of agreeing way. A sudden scream pieced through the night. They all looked at each other.

"Julie!" Drake said. They ran up the stairs on the side of the dorm, Matt in front, Keith in back. They checked each room as they ran past, and found Julie backed up against a wall, holding off one of the creatures with a chair. However, the chair was splintering, and the creature would be at her throat in seconds. Acting quickly, Matt leapt at the fiend, and, in a short time, had cut it up beyond recognition. Drake thought he saw a strange look on Matt's face, like he was enjoying the blood that was flying everywhere. After he was done horribly butchering the creature, Matt jumped down off its rather large and mutilated corpse, and with a little flick of his neck, flipped some hair off his face.

"Are you all right?" Matt asked Julie.

"Yeah… I guess…" she looked at the corpse before her and shuddered. "What is that thing?"

"I'm not quite sure. I need to meet up with someone to confirm my observations about them." He said.

"Where is this friend of yours?" Drake asked.

"He's not a friend of mine. He's my brother."

"Okay, where is he?"

"He's on the island, a little behind the main building." Matt walked towards the now empty doorframe. "Come on, we need to get out of here before more of those things show up." With that, he jumped over the railing and onto the grass below. The others followed him.

They trekked through the woods for nearly half an hour, Matt leading them and hacking tree branches out of the way with the still-bloody knife in his right hand.

"It's a bit further in." He said. "I had to make sure that no one could find it unless I led them to it." He pulled a tree aside. They had made it to a small clearing in the forest. There was a large amount of brush scattered across the ground. Matt began to clear the brush away. After a while a metal door appeared from under the brush. Matt pulled it open. "After you." He said, and moved to allow them through. One by one they climbed down the trapdoor and entered the secret base of Matt's younger brother.