Chapter 25- Enter the Shadow Realm

"Well, let's get going." Matt said.

"Where are we going?" Julie asked.

"Where's the nearest arch?" Matt replied.

"Oh, I think it's over that way. Why?"

"That's where we're going."

"Just a thought…what's the Shadow Realm like?" Drake asked.

"Hm… that's a good question. Supposedly it's a little different for everyone that goes there. But that's when they're sent there by the wielder of a millennium item. So, it's debatable about what it actually looks like when you actually just visit it. Hang on…" Matt looked around.

"How did you kill all those fiends?" Keith said.

"Oh, there's a chaingun behind us. It's imbedded in the ground. I told Brooklyn to activate it and he basically mowed down all of them without even having to come up. Okay, we should be clear. I don't think there's anything left around here." Matt unslung his duck gun and walked through the trees. The others followed him.

They walked around through the trees for nearly half an hour without finding the arch. "Shouldn't we be there by now?" Drake asked.

"Yes, we should. I think we got lost somewhere. No matter, I have a way to find it." Matt said.

"How?" Flynn asked.

Matt reached his left hand up to the bandages covering his left eye and pulled them up. For a moment his eye remained closed. Drake noticed that it was scared and seemed to have multiple purple veins branching out from the center. Then the eye opened. Drake noticed that everyone who could see it recoiled in disgust. The iris was an almost white-purple, and it was filled with blood. The pupil wasn't even black; it was actually an off-green color that reminded Drake of puke. The purple veins came through the "white' of the eye (which was actually red) and connected to the iris.

"Ugh!" Julie said. She turned around and threw up on a tree. Matt's eye began roaming about. After a few seconds he nodded and pointed.

"There's an arch that way." He said.

"What the hell happened to you?" Keith said. "Now I know why you keep it covered."

"Oh, this happened a while ago. I call it my shadow eye, because it can sense the presence of Shadow Realm energies, Shadow Games, things like that. Otherwise I'm completely blind in this eye. However, it does have other useful functions. Such as allowing me to strike panic into people just by looking at them. You've seen that one twice now. You've seen its other powers as well." Matt scratched his chin. "I'll just leave it uncovered for now. It'll make it easier to locate the fiends."

"How so?"

"I told you it senses Shadow Realm energies. That extends to fiends, too." And, to prove his point, it seemed, a fiend dropped from a tree. He hadn't even hit the ground before Matt had let him have it with the shotgun. Matt reloaded and shot another fiend who had just begun to fall out of a tree. "See?" He shoved two more shells into the breech of his shotgun. "Now they can't surprise us."

"Let's get going then. I'd rather we get this shadow realm debacle over with sooner rather than later." Flynn said. Matt nodded his agreement and they set off again. They did not encounter any other fiends until they had reached the gate that Matt had detected.

"Wow, that's a lot of fiends in one place." Drake said. "How many do you count? 'Cause I've got about fifty."

"Sixty." Matt said. "Six rows. Ten fiends in each row."

"Yeah. How do we punch through that?" Keith asked.

"We use tactics." Flynn suggested.

"Adam's grenade pistol would come in handy right now." Julie said. "Why don't we give him a call? He could be here in seconds, according to his logic."

Matt smiled wryly. "There are two problems with that. One is that Adam rarely listens to me. The second is that I have no means of contacting him."

"Oh."

"We could find another arch." Drake suggested.

"I don't want to take the chance of finding more fiends at that one or giving the fiends more time to plan a further assault on us. No, we have to break through. Besides, to get to all the other gates we'd have to wade through at least this many fiends just to get there. There's no concealed route to any of the other arches. So, here's what we do- we snipe them from here. Long range shots, one and all. They have no weapons unless they've changed their tactics, and even if they have, I don't think they can find us in here very quickly. Keith, give them hell with that SAW, you have 200 rounds in a clip, I want to see 200 bullet shells on the ground. Drake, Julie, single shots, I want to see heads exploding. Flynn, you have at least one grenade, I want to see nice big explosions out there. As for me, well, I can't really do anything from this range. So, take aim." Four guns were leveled. Flynn flipped the little sight on the front of his gun up and angled it up. "Now, open fire!" Two fiends were instantly killed as a result of head shots by Julie and Drake. Several more were blown to tiny pieces by Flynn's launched grenade. About eight were torn to shreds by Keith's (appropriately named) SAW. The rest looked around stupidly. Drake took aim at another and pulled the trigger. His stomach squirmed a little as the fiend's head exploded. Strange, he couldn't remember it doing that before. He noticed that the others seemed to be having similar problems with the repulsiveness of their actions.

Matt noticed. He jumped out of the grave of trees and like some kind of hero ran out towards the fiend horde. Both barrels of his shotgun flashed as four more fiends went down. He turned back to the others as he reloaded.

"Come on!" he shouted. "Fight!" Drake was overcome by a fit of weakness. Apparently the constant combat was wearing on him. Flynn managed to reload his grenade launcher but seemed afraid to use it. Matt groaned. "Worthless!" He turned back to the horde and fired two more shells into the crowd. Six more fiends went down. Matt was now backing up, slamming two more shells into the breech of his shotgun. He leveled the shotgun again, ready to pull the triggers, when the fiends reached him. One raised its claw, ready to strike, when Matt clocked it up the side of the head with the butt of the shotgun. Another came at him from the left. Matt slipped under its claw strike, shoved the barrels of the shotgun down its throat, and pulled one of the triggers. The fiends' guts were instantly no longer in his body. By now, though, the fiends had surrounded Matt. He unloaded the second shell into another fiend, but the shear numbers allowed them to best him. One of them slashed him across the face with enough force to knock him to the ground, blood pouring from the cuts. Another fiend kicked him in the head while he was on the ground.

Matt didn't get up. There was still blood gushing out of his face, and his nose looked broken from the kick. The fiends laughed, then picked up his body and walked through the arch. Flynn came back to his senses first.

"Oh, God. We are screwed. He was the only one who knew what was going on." Flynn said. "We have to do something though."

"What? As you said, Matt was the only one who knew what was going on." Keith said.

"Simple. We follow them through the gate."

"Okay, sarge. Whatever you say." Drake said. "Only problem is, none of us know what the hell we're supposed to be doing."

"Look, we have to do something! We can't just sit around and wait for the fiends to take over!" Flynn said.

"I know…" Drake said. "So we all agree that we should jump first, ask questions later?"

"Sure. I'm with 'sarge' on this one." Keith said. Flynn gave Keith a nasty look. "Hey, you were in the marines, and you're the most commanding of all of us. You may as well be sarge."

"I'm with you guys." Julie said. "Matt basically saved my life back in my first shadow game. I need to pay him back."

"Right then." Flynn said, and pulled on the bolt on his 203. It snapped back into place with an ominous click. Drake reloaded his M-24, and Julie snapped a new clip into place in her M-16. Keith removed the box from his 249 and replaced it. "Ready?" They all nodded and ran through the arch, the entrance to the shadow realm.