The story gets really angsty and intense, maybe even gory. I've been trying to be realistic and work with realistic people with more than one side, not like 2-d cartoon baddies that (although entertaining) are not believable.

Chapter 25

Phantasus

The third floor of the temple was a labyrinth of solid ice; each corridor was no larger than six feet across. An icy wind swept past them, blasting their hair and clothes around, and making the flame to a single lamp flicker. The walls were a bluish color, semi transparent, and very smooth, reflecting the Tantei in its surface. A voice echoed through the walls and filled the room.

"Welcome, wakamusha, young warriors." The cool voice said. "So you have foiled my brothers? Well, I must say I am impressed. But it will take more than muscle to defeat me, for this challenge, you shall use your heads. Come and find me in this maze; but you had better hurry, because everyten minutes you waste, the temperature will drop ten degrees. In a matter of hours, you will all freeze to death." The voice ceased and another blast of wind rushed past them.

Gabriel rubbed her arms, "What should we do? We could get lost in there for days!"

"If there was a way to keep track of where we've been, we would eventually find the end." Yusuke said.

"Well, we don't have any string or something to mark the walls with." Kuwabara said.

"Well, Gabi, I guess its up to you." Yusuke said.

"Me!" she squeaked.

"Sure, your tetsujin abilities let you read the things around you, right? You can tell where and where not to go."

"Well, yeah,"

"So, lead the way! Its freezing in here!" and so they followed her. She walked slowly at first, feeling with her ki the different paths and where they led; but then she went faster, almost jogging down the identical corridors. The light began to fade the farther they got away from the entrance, so she opened the magazine chamber to her rei-guns, and let her light shine out; this used none of her energy like the stone on her staff.

Eight minutes had passed when a low vibration was felt through the floor. Gabriel slid to a stop; "The maze is changing; that asshole is cheating!" a slab of ice slid down into the floor, creating a doorway, while another slide up beside them, closing another door.

"What should we do?" Kuwabara quailed.

"Cheat back!" Yusuke said, pointing his finger up, "Maybe we can jump the walls. Reigun!" he fired a bright sphere into the air and watched it streak away.

"It just goes on forever," he said, and then a small explosion was seen far away at the ceiling, "Maybe not." Hiei sprung up, ricocheting of the walls like Super Mario. He disappeared into the darkness above for a few seconds before a faint, 'damn it!' drifted down to them. Hiei slammed back to the ground in a kneeling position, nursing a small cut on his cheek. A rumbling sound grew again and the ceiling suddenly became a lot closer than before.

Sharp stalactites loomed over them, daring them to move. "Well, that was a bust!" Yusuke cried; the thousands of dagger-like points rattled with the waves of his voice, glittering in Gabriel's ki-light. A wave of icy spears rained down on them; they dodged, taking various strange poses, looking like Twister champions, with stalactites millimeters away from a leg or a head. "Shh!" she smooshed his lips down with her finger, "Whisper, or we're shish kabob!" she hissed.

"We can't go on like this; we'll freeze to death or get impaled." Kurama whispered.

"Why don't we just do the easy thing and break through the walls," Hiei slammed his Fist of the Mortal Flame into the wall. He drew his hand back, shaking it to dull the pain. The wall stood strong with only a small crack.

"Look, there's a thermometer in my watch," Kurama pointed out. "Its already ten degrees below zero; the colder it gets, the harder the ice gets. Some ice in Antarctica is as strong as steel."

"That lovely geography lesson still doesn't solve our problem." Hiei snorted.

"Then we'll just have to hit harder," Kuwabara said, summoning his reiken. He sliced cleanly through a wall without disturbing the crystal shards above. "Hah!" he cried triumphantly, only to slap a hand over his mouth.

The walls around them began to shift again. The stalactites disappeared; a staircase jutted out from the floor and connected with the edge of a hole in the ceiling. Another staircase came out of the wall sideways and connected with another wall. The floor opened up beneath Kuwabara and he fell with a cry, but stopped; when they looked down the hole, the saw Kuwabara sitting on the edge of a step, staring back at them, but horizontal. "I must be high, or something! My brain is telling me you should be falling backwards or something!" Yusuke said.

"Mine says you should be falling too," he answered back.

"This place looks like a work by M. C. Escher; the Relativity Room!" Kurama mused.

"This is a dream world; the harder we try to get out of here, the more difficult he makes it." Gabriel said, jumping into the hole. Her body stuck to the wall, and as she sat up against the new gravity, she perceived the wall as a floor. "I think I'm going to puke," she mumbled.

"How the hell are we supposed to find the end to the maze now?" Yusuke said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Come with us, its this way." The blonde said, "Kuwabara, help me here; you guys just lay on your stomachs and grab our hands, you should transfer to our plane." And sure enough they did. As they lay down and took the hands of their comrades, they felt gravity pull on them in a way suggesting that they were hanging on the edge of a cliff.

"It just dropped ten more degrees," Kurama said, "its –20 degrees Fahrenheit."

"Lets go, Gabi!" Yusuke cried. They pressed on, climbing at odd angles, and adjusting to the ever-manipulated gravity. A network of icy air currents blew around them, dropping the temperature another ten degrees. The Tantei slowed exhaustedly, losing energy with their body warmth. Snow began to pile up on their feet as they trudged along.

"Almost there," Gabriel mumbled, regretting that she wore tights. Her staff fell from her hands as her fingers became useless and had a burning feeling. She looked over her shoulder at her comrades, only to find them strewn about the staircase they were climbing. "Guys! Get up! If you rest, you'll fall asleep and freeze to death!" she knelt down to Yusuke, who was slumped against the wall with one leg stretched across the step. "Get up, Yusuke!" she slapped him ineptly.

"Gabi… can't move." He muttered, "Coffee." He said, asking her with his eyes. She tried to unscrew the lid to his thermos, but her fingers could not grip the lid.

"Yusuke, I can't. My hands are numb. Can you still muster your reiki? I need you to blow the lid off the thermos. Yusuke!" his eyes began to flutter and slid shut. She felt sleep washing over her; only her fear of what she would become made her hands move. She used her numb hands like a pincer to lift the thermos and press it to his mouth, while working her astral-projection on the lid. The lid went semi transparent, and the coffee passed though it like a ghost through a wall. He swallowed the super coffee weakly, only for his body to shudder and come alive at an alarming rate.

"FCK THAT SHT IS NASTY!" he screamed, dragging his sleeve over his mouth several times. Twitching he grabbed the other four, two in each arm, around the waist and charged up the stairs at lightning speed. Dumping them on the ground, he opened their thermoses and forced a little of the foul liquid into their mouths. All five of them were running around trying to satisfy the energy inside them trying to get out. After smacking into each other and falling on the ground, they saw the center of the maze.

A clear blue light hovered in the air, in the exact center of the room. Hiei, being the closest, reached out and touched the light. The oddly angled staircases around them shrank back into the walls, while the doors closed up, and the walls slid back into the floor, leaving them in the center of a frozen abyss. Phantasus appeared out of the icy light, dressed in a dark violet robe. "Well done, but now that you are weakened by the cold, it should be no trouble finishing you off," he smirked proudly.

Hiei, who was next to fight, drew his katana faster than he had ever done and struck out at him. "Coffee!" he yelled. Phantasus jumped back in alarm and confusion etched his face. "Why aren't you weakened?" he asked in anger, pulling a strand of dream-thread across the distance between them; a thick wall of ice slid up from the floor, deflecting a direct thrust from the Koorime's katana.

"I'm a fire youkai, baka; I have my ways." Hiei smirked and continued to drive Phantasus back. The mage pulled a second thread, and the temperature dropped sharply. The remaining Tantei dropped to the ground, huddled together. "It's s-s-so c-cold-d-d, I f-f-eel l-like m-m-my t-t-teeth are g-going t-t-to sh-shat-t-t-er!" Yusuke commented, wrapping his arms around himself.

"M-my eyes f-feel f-frozen!" Gabriel stuttered. "I hope Hiei k-k-ills him-m qu-quick!"

Said youkai was unaffected by the temperature, now having enough energy to control his body heat. "You're just prolonging the inevitable; hold still!" he said. Phantasus looked panicky, randomly throwing up ice walls to stall Hiei. Hiei plowed through his defense with the ease of swatting a wall of cardboard away.

The cold became unlike anything this planet is capable of. The Tantei fell sideways on the ground; their limbs locked up, and their breathing became dangerously shallow. Since they had entered the labarynth, each of them tried to move their reiki around inside their bodies to keep warm, but even this was fruitless. "Th-the air… is th-thin-n-ning…" Kurama said, "If we don't f-freeze to d-death first, w-we'll suf-f-focate."

"Hang on, g-guys. Hiei c-can d-do it." Yusuke said confidently.

The fire Koorime put in a burst of speed an impaled his foe. Phantasus let out a gurgling gasp and slumped forward. Shoving the body off his sword with his foot, Hiei turned to his comrades. They were immobilized; even the coffee was losing its power in the cold. "Hiei," Yusuke said with a wry smile, "W-would you m-m-mind helping us-s out?" he asked casually.

"Why?"