Chapter 14- Return to the Shadow Realm

They climbed the stairs to the second sublevel of the ship. Three fiends were at the end of the hallway, their backs facing the group. They seemed to be eating one of the dead sailors. Julie turned around and threw up on the stairs (Good thing she was the last one up, Drake thought.), which got the attention of the fiends. One of them, its mouth dripping with blood and human entrails, grinned greedily, as if expecting them to be his next meal. If he thought this, Flynn quickly corrected this misconception. He put three bullets through the fiend's skull. It readily accepted this correction and went down quickly.

"I don't remember them dying that easy to head shots." Flynn said.

"Nor do I, but it seems to be working better this time." Drake said, and shot the other two.

"They must have lost their resistance to head shots over the past year, since they weren't getting shot at all." Keith suggested.

"Just use it sparingly in case they re-develop that trait." Matt said. They stepped over the dead bodies and past the disemboweled human corpse leaning up against the wall (Julie retched but held her lunch this time) and walked up the stairs to the first sublevel.

There were no fiends here, but the bodies that had been there earlier had "magically" transformed into skeletons.

"Wow, looks like some fiends slacked off for a lunch break." Flynn said.

"Why would they want to eat humans?" Julie asked. "It's making me sick…" And indeed she was starting to regain the pale look that she had had the year before after exiting the shadow realm.

"I don't know." Matt said. "Last year they had no desire to consume human flesh or organs. It has to be a recent taste, or maybe a characteristic of their leader… something about him disliking his own race and perhaps trying to make himself of a different race."

"How the hell would he do that?" Keith said. "How would you alter yourself like that?"

"Keith, I've been all around this rock, been in a lot of places, seen a lot of crazy things. And believe me, there's a way. Not a way that I know or would try, but there's a way."

"That's not a good thought…" Drake said.

"No, it's actually rather disturbing." Bentz said. "If they found that out in science, study would probably be banned due to the ethics of it." They climbed out of the ship and onto the decks. The sun had risen high in the sky by now.

"Hey, wait a minute." Keith said. "Aren't they supposed to burn up in sunlight?"

"Yeah, last year Keith survived because he burned one with a desk lamp. You'd think that they would die in sunlight, too." Flynn said.

"This is a troublesome development." Matt said. "Now they no longer need the humans, so they eat us. Just fabulous."

"Oh yeah." They climbed off the ship and onto the docks.

"And now to begin the long walk back!" Drake said. "Back along the path to the Arches!"

"Sounds like a bunch of fun!" Julie said. And so, they began along the path back towards the academy main building, from which they could access the arches and the gates to the shadow realm.

As they walked Drake kept nervously checking his watch. The more time they wasted in transit, the less time they had before Matt died. He didn't know exactly what time Matt's disease had gone active, but he could guess. By his guesses, Matt had a little over 40 hours left to live.

Forty hours, Drake thought. It sounds like so long, and yet for him, it seems like a ridiculously short amount of time. Julie noticed his preoccupation with the time.

"Are you worried about Matt?" She asked.

"Yeah…" He said. "I thought he would be able to guide us forever. I mean, he survived all of that last year, bailed us out this year when we were about to die, and all of a sudden we're going to be deprived of his leadership."

A tear leaked out of the corner of Julie's eye. She wiped it away, but not before Drake noticed. He knew that she harbored a secret affection for Matt, but she had never admitted it to anyone but Drake. "Yeah, it doesn't seem fair… he's such a nice person, and yet the Egyptian government wants him dead, so he has to live alone and out of touch with society. He's a courageous and intelligent person, but he has to die before his time. It's too bad…"

"What are you guys talking about?" Flynn asked. "You look like you've been invited to a funeral for your best friend."

"Well, in a sense, we have." Drake said.

"What do you mean?"

"Does this involve a certain aspect of my condition?" Matt said.

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"The recent one."

"Proceed. That's on need-to-know basis, but he needs to know."

"I'm lost. That's what I get for being arrested." Flynn said. "Tell me, what's going on? What's wrong with Matt?" His troubled look suggested that he was guessing right.

"Well, before we rescued you, Matt was dueling, and he experienced pain in his heart-"

"Isn't that natural for a Shadow Game? I am, of course, assuming that he was in one at the time."

"Yes, but this wasn't caused by the game."

"Go on."

"It turns out that Matt has some kind of terminal heart disease that's so rare that it doesn't even have a name. He's supposed to die 48 hours from the activation of it."

Flynn was silent. He seemed to think about it for a moment, then spoke again. "How… much longer does he have?" He had trouble keeping his voice from quavering.

"I would guess that he's got about 40 hours left." Drake said.

"Actually, I have exactly 39 hours, 47 minutes, and 29 seconds left, but who's counting?" Matt said.

"How do you keep track of that?" Julie said, surprised.

Matt laughed, a laugh that turned quickly into a hacking cough. His hand moved slowly to his heart. "The disease keeps telling me."

"That is one strange disease." Bentz said.

"Yes, quite. I was told it shouldn't affect me until it kills me, but…" He grimaced, and the hand at his heart tightened its grip. "…that does not seem to be the case." They passed the airstrip. The lack of fiends was starting to unnerve Drake.

"Why aren't there any fiends?" Drake asked.

"Maybe they sent them elsewhere." Keith suggested.

"Perhaps they decided that we were no longer worth attacking." Flynn said.

"I don't think so." Matt said. "It's just that… when we passed this way earlier, I set a large amount of traps around here. They're all hanging from the trees in various states of impalement."

A drop of some black liquid hit Drake in the shoulder. He looked up, and, sure enough, a fiend was hanging from the tree with a large amount of kunai in its body. "How many of those things do you carry?" He asked. "From what I've seen, it's an irrational number."

"It is an irrational number. But remember that I trained with ninjas. They have better storage methods than you common people." Matt said.

"I'm not even going to question that." Drake said. They walked for another five minutes and made it to the arches.

"And so here we are again, at the climax of some grand adventure, waiting to plunge into enemy territory." Flynn said, staring at the glowing portal.

"I have a bad feeling about this…" Matt said.

"Should that stop us?"

"No. Proceed." Everyone took a step forward, through the portal, and entered the Shadow Realm.