Chapter 39- Secrets Revealed! Matt's Hidden Past
No one spoke for a long time. They had all assumed that Matt was dead, but they had never guessed that they would find him like this, horribly mangled and hanging from a wall.
Julie collapsed to the ground and continued crying. Flynn stared at the body, his eyes wide and full of surprise. Chris looked at the body once, then turned away. Drake stared at it once, then turned away, feeling the tears welling up in his eyes. As strange as Matt had been, he had been a great friend. The loss of him was something Drake could barely deal with. He had always believed that, despite all of the assertions by Keith and Flynn, they would find Matt still alive. But this, this was too real to deny the reality anymore.
Brooklyn was the first to regain his composure. "We need to go." He said. "Undoubtedly they will send more fiends after us, and I don't think we'll get as lucky as we did last time." Everyone fortified themselves against sadness and began to walk away. They had nearly left the room when they heard something.
"Uh… would someone mind…cough getting me down?" came a weak voice. Everyone spun around. Matt's other eye had opened and it was watching them. He was breathing shallowly and laboriously, but he was unmistakably and joyfully alive.
"You're alive!" Flynn said.
Matt coughed again. "Of course… ugh… that key to the cell… is for the chains too." Drake walked over and unlocked the chains. Matt fell to the ground apparently too weak to stand on his own. Julie, possessed by a crazy joy that gave her her strength back, ran over, helped (or, more accurately, picked) him up, and threw her arms around him. "Gently!" said Matt, who was in a considerable amount of pain.
"Oops, sorry." Said Julie, and let go. Matt, still weak, fell down again but managed to sit up with his back against the wall.
"So, you survived?" Brooklyn said.
Matt coughed a few more times. "Yes, but not by much. I need medical attention soon, or I'll bleed to death. Maintaining consciousness is very difficult…" He looked up at Brooklyn. "You'd better have a medkit."
"Of course." Brooklyn pulled off his backpack and pulled out a large medical kit. "And you say I never listen to you!"
"You don't." Matt said. He took the kit and pulled out a large roll of the same white bandages that usually covered his shadow eye. He made an effort to start wrapping them around his body, winced, and dropped the bandages. "Ugh… too painful…"
"Here, let me." Julie picked up the bandages and began wrapping them around Matt's bloody body.
"Thank you…" he said. "You look tired. What has happened since I was captured? I'm afraid I'm a little out of date."
"Yeah, she looks tired, and I'll bet it's your fault!" Drake said. "We know about the key; I bet you gave it to her! It's almost killed her!"
Matt grimaced. "I thought it might. But I had no choice. I cannot carry it."
"What are you talking about?"
"Brooklyn, how much have you told them?"
"Let's see… I've told them about the key and its functions, as well as its side effects. I think that's all. I didn't tell them about these." He showed his gold shell.
"Okay." Matt shifted his position. "It is time… I explained everything that I know. My past, namely."
"Finally!" Flynn said. "I've been waiting for this a long time."
"It starts nearly seven years ago. I took a trip to Egypt that year. I had a small amount of knowledge about the ancient Shadow Games, but I was not looking for anything related to them. One day, I was walking through a historic town. I entered a building that I believed to be a tourist attraction. It was actually a person's home. I noticed the key on the fireplace. There was a small plaque in front of it, written in Egyptian, but I didn't read Egyptian. So, naturally, in my curiosity, I picked it up."
"So? You couldn't have been affected by that." Drake said.
Matt smiled sadly and coughed a few more times. Julie finished wrapping the bandages around him. "Thank you, I can take it from here." Matt took the bandages and began wrapping his arms up. "It did. I was driven berserk by the despair-amplifying effects of the key. The owner of the house came down from upstairs and shouted at me. I turned and killed him on the spot. His children- I believe that they were about 5 and 8 years old- were with him. I slaughtered them mercilessly."
Julie gasped. "That's horrible!"
Matt inclined his head towards her and closed his eyes. "Yes. It was. There was blood everywhere, which, in my berserk state, made me crave more. I proceeded to kill almost the entire village. Some members of the army came later. I took particular pleasure in slowly carving each one up with a scimitar I had found somewhere.
"Then I found an interesting book in the hands of one of my victims. It detailed the practice of Shadow Alchemy, and it was in English, for some reason. Such a practice pleased me. So, I took the book and read."
"What exactly is Shadow Alchemy?" Drake asked.
"I do not know exactly." Matt finished wrapping one arm and moved onto the next one. "I know one thing: it is used to craft a Millennium Item. However, the practice is deplorable. But, of course, didn't care. To craft a Millennium Item requires a massive slaughter of human life, a condition that I had already fulfilled. I carved out a tablet from the wall of a building and proceeded to forge two extra Millennium Items: the Millennium Shell, which Chris bears, and the Millennium Star, which I bear. After I had finished forging the items, Brooklyn found me.
"By some miracle I did not kill him on sight. He knocked the key from my hand and I returned to a normal state. I realized what I had done, and took the items from my makeshift tablet. Before I could leave the town, though, the souls of all those who I had slaughtered found me and attacked me. They may have only been spirits, but they caused permanent damage- my shadow eye. It has been a curse- the curse of being isolated as a freak. I lived in solitude for a long time. Then, I felt the vibrations of the Shadow Realm with my eye. I joined this academy, hoping to stop it before it started, and obviously failed. And here we are."
There was a long silence. Nobody had expected something like this. Finally Flynn spoke up.
"I'm sorry, but I need to satiate my curiosity. Have you been following us in spirit? And how could you have been following us if you're not dead?"
"I was waiting for you to ask that." Matt pulled a small star out of his pocket. It was solid gold and had the eye of Anubis in the center. "This is the Millennium Star. IT grants… unique powers. First off, it allows me to use astrological movements to predict future events with relative accuracy."
"So you can see the future."
"No. I can guess at the future, and I have been pretty accurate recently. I can usually guess at what will happen without the Star. But this helps. The second power is strange…" He held the Star in between his hands. His outline seemed to waver for a moment, and suddenly he split up into three separate forms- the way that he was now, the Matt-spirit that had guided them through the Shadow Realm, and another form that they had never seen before- he looked incredibly sinister, wore a black cloak, and had two shadow eyes. "It split my soul. Now, my body holds one soul at a time, and the Star holds onto the other two. This is Perfect Matt…" He gestured to the first Matt-spirit, who smiled at them warmly. "…and this is Evil Matt." He gestured to the other, who snarled at them. "They are me and I am them, but with slight changes." Both vanished, leaving the normal Matt alone again. "Perfect Matt is holy; he cannot do wrong. Evil Matt is the opposite; he cannot intentionally do good, but can be convinced to do evil that does good. I can send them out from the star, with or without a physical form, but they can only retain this form for a limited amount of time.
"I have used Perfect Matt extensively here. I usually keep Evil Matt nice and safe in the Star. So yes, to answer your question, I have sent Perfect Matt out to help you through here. I would guess that you thought it was an illusion of the Shadows?"
"Yes."
"A reasonable deduction, albeit a false one. Don't let it bother you. So, that I my sad past."
"What about the Millennium Shell? What does it do?" Drake asked.
"Firstly, it gifts the bearer with an incredible endurance and hardened skin. Hit Brooklyn on the arm." Matt said. Drake leaned over and punched Brooklyn in the arm. Sure enough, his skin was not the flabby stuff that covered a normal human, but a hardened carapace. "Second, it gives the bearer the ability to protect others at his own risk. I believe you saw the right of protection only a few minutes ago."
"So that's what that was." Flynn said.
"Yes. But we need to go." With effort, Matt stood up.
"Are you sure you're up to it?" Drake said.
"Of course." He said. "Let's go. Before more fiends show up." With that, he began to walk towards the door, the others following him.