Chapter 25- Up and Out

Matt frowned a little. "This is getting bad. If they can develop a Shadow Game that is even worse than this, there might not be hope for us."

"What are you talking about?" Flynn said.

"I think I know what he means." Drake said. He knelt down next to Julie, wrapped his arms around her, and gently rocked her. She didn't resist but instead threw her arms around Drake and held tight, tears running down her cheeks.

"I thought I had lost you." She said.

"Not yet." Drake said quietly. Matt groaned and held his hand to the left side of his forehead. Everyone stared at him. What's wrong now? Drake thought. Matt cringed and turned away, still clutching the left side of his head with his left hand.

"Matt, what's wrong?" Keith said. He began to approach Matt, but Matt waved him off with his other hand.

"A little disturbance." He said. "It'll be okay in a little while." And so for a while they sat there, Matt groaning a little from some kind of mysterious pain, Drake holding Julie, Julie crying softly into Drake's jacket, and Keith and Flynn staring at any of them. Matt shook his head forcefully, stood up straight, and walked over to the place where the fiend had stood. He bent over and picked something up.

"Well here's the key." He said. "Guess I didn't forget…hehe."

"What are you talking about?" Drake said.

"I guessed that after last year the key fiend wouldn't go far away from the vault. And sure enough he was here. However, because his leader has probably issued some kind of order to slaughter us, he attacked when he saw us."

"Why didn't you go first then?" Drake said. He was kind of angry at Matt. If he had known that the key fiend was here, why hadn't he taken it upon himself to fight the monster? He had caused Julie immeasurable pain and shirked away from it himself.

"Because there was no way that the fiend would come out if it was just me. No one really wants to duel me if they can avoid it, and he could have. So I brought us all in an attempt to get him greedy and think he could take us all down. And it worked."

"Yeah, it worked, but it nearly destroyed Julie!" Drake was shouting now.

"Drake, remember who you're talking to!" Keith said urgently. Drake ignored him.

"All this time you've known all this stuff and you've never let us in on it! Why don't you? Wouldn't it be beneficial to the group if we all knew exactly what was going on?" Drake let go of Julie, stood up, and faced Matt.

"I… GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Matt's hand shot to the left side of his face again. He fell to his knees, screaming from the strange pain. He bent over, coughed, and spat out a large amount of blood. He rolled over and lay flat on his back. "SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP!" He shouted at no one in particular. The others gaped at him. They knew he had problems with talking to himself (literally) but they had never known it to ever be this bad.

Matt continued to shout at the voices in his head to shut up, then, when that didn't help, rolled over to the door of the vault of souls and began to smash the left side of his forehead against it and continued shouting. After a while he stopped, bent over on the ground and breathing hard, his hand back on his forehead.

"What was that?" Flynn asked. Matt stood up slowly and turned to look at them. He had hit his head so hard that he was bleeding. The blood was running down over his shadow eye and past the left side of his mouth, but he didn't move to wipe it away.

"Nothing." He said. "I had a little conflict, that's all." He twisted his neck and flicked a little bang of hair away from the bloody patch. Julie had regained her composure during all of the shouting. She was staring at the wound on Matt's head.

"That looks bad…" She said. "I should treat it…" She moved closer and reached into the little pouch at her waist that carried the first-aid gear she had begun to carry last year for just-in-case moments-and also in case this happened again.

"Don't worry about it." He said, and as he spoke, the wound closed and the blood stopped flowing. While they were still staring, he turned, inserted the key into the Vault door, and threw it open.

The souls began to pour out as they had last year, blowing past them all in a fierce whirlwind. It didn't last too long, though, and now they stood there with an empty black abyss in front of them. The vault door slammed shut of its own accord. Helen stirred behind them and sat up.

"What's going on? How did I get here?" She asked. Matt turned to speak and she freaked out. "What are YOU doing here?!? You…you… you murder! You beast!"

Matt frowned. "That's nice. I only just saved your skin from being possessed for all eternity, and you say that?"

"Well, I, uh, that is to say, uh… oh blast it! I don't have to explain myself! You slaughtered an entire village of innocent people! What am I supposed to say?!?"

Matt opened his mouth, cringed, and began to hold the left side of his head again. "Someone else fill her in. I cannot." And he walked away from them, though still within visual range, and sat down. Helen looked at him disdainfully.

"Why did he come here?" She asked.

"Because I asked him to." Drake said, though now, he felt a pang of regret that he had. The complaints that he had raised had tinged his respect for Matt with a little dislike. The fact that Matt had never answered made the dislike even stronger. And then there was the notion that Matt was playing them with an act of intense pain… Drake didn't like it.

"And why would you do that?" Helen asked.

"Well, originally it was to help Flynn, but then the fiends arrived… and we needed him for that. Didn't Bentz tell you what happened last year?" Drake asked.

"Well, yes, but-"

"Whatever happened to him?" Julie asked.

"Who?"

"Bentz."

Drake swallowed hard and it looked like Keith and Flynn did as well. "He, uh…"

"He was killed." Flynn said. A tear ran down Julie's cheek.

"Oh…" She turned away. Helen looked simply dumbfounded.

"The Chancellor was killed?" She asked. "How?"

"Well, he was impaled multiple times." Keith said.

"Do you realize what this means?" Helen said. Everyone shook their heads. "The American Academy is pretty much finished. After two chancellors die in two years, and events like this keep happening, no one will want to send their children here. We'll have to close. Lots of people will be put out of jobs."

"That's a problem we'll have to deal with later." Flynn said, assuming the leadership role in Matt's temporary absence. "Right now, we need to get out of here. We need to figure out who the leader is this time, and stop him. But before that, we need to either get you-" He looked pointedly at Helen. "-to a safe place, or you'll have to come with us. You probably aren't safe on your own, but with us it's likely that you'll be even less safe. Though we do have a pretty good causality rate… hahaha…"

"What are you talking about? You have a one in six death rate." Helen pointed out.

"Fair point. But that's only because we never gave Bentz a gun…hmm… why didn't we?"

"Because none of us thought of it." Keith said. Drake nodded.

"Well, I'm thinking about it." Flynn grabbed a rifle off the ground. "Here. And please don't shoot any of us with it." He handed it to Helen. She reached out and took it, looked at Matt, aimed, and pulled the trigger before they could do anything about it. The bullets connected and Matt was sent sprawling forward before being engulfed in a puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared Matt wasn't there. The bullets had torn through a tree stump that had appeared from nowhere.

"That wasn't particularly nice." Came a voice from behind them. They turned around and saw Matt standing behind them, a book held open between the thumb and fingers of his left hand, looking thoroughly unconcerned. He shut the book and slipped it into a pocket of the vest he wore under his cloak. Helen looked dumbfounded again.

"How did you… what did you… what are you?" She asked.

"A ninja." Matt said. "Guess I remember three ninja techniques. That one's just so basic I never think about it."

"That was cool!" Keith said. "Why can't you teach us this stuff?"

"Takes too long. I'll get you into the ninja program after this if your still interested." Matt said. "What are we doing? Are we going to take this…" He looked at Helen with disgust. "…this…jerk with us?"

"Well, I suppose." Flynn said. "If you don't object?"

"As long as she doesn't try to shoot me again, I'm fine with it. You aren't going to shoot me again, are you?" He asked, his shadow eye bearing down on Helen. The fact that it was still covered in blood made it that much more ominous.

"Er, uh… no, I guess not…" She said.

"Good, then let's go." Matt said, and began to walk down the hall and past his tree stump. The others quickly followed.

They didn't encounter anything on the way out, which gave Drake plenty of time to think. He had known Matt for a little more than a year now, and he had always respected him. He hadn't acted any different last year, why was he now starting to question Matt's methods?

Ah, a little voice inside his head said. You did question them last year, didn't you? Drake thought about it. He remembered getting angry at Matt at least once for putting Julie out on a platter for the fiends to grab, but he hadn't questioned Matt's ways. Or had he? He couldn't remember.

"Stop." Came Matt's voice from the front. Drake broke out of his train of thought and listened. "Just ahead of us there's a few more of those big fiends. They're in between us and the gate out of here. We need an effective battle plan so we can take them down with less trouble than last time."

Drake nodded. The last time they had encountered those things it had been an absolute fiasco.

"Where do you think they came from?" Keith said. "I've never seen a fiend that big before."

"I would assume that they came out of the fourth gate. It's likely that they aren't really fiends, but some sort of relation. Anyway, any ideas?"

"Well, you could just run in there and take them all down." Drake said.

"Not a good idea if you want me coming back to you in one piece."

"Shouldn't they have some kind of weak point?" Keith suggested. "After all, the other fiends had a weak spot."

"Not the shadows." Julie pointed out.

"We haven't seen many of those, though."

"It's possible, but how are we to figure out the weak point if we have this limited information?" Flynn said.

"Just look at what they protect." Keith said. "If you haven't noticed, all of the normal fiends always have their hands near their heads. And the hounds have those frills that protect their necks. So let's see…" Keith moved up next to Matt and stared at the fiends. "I'd guess that they are probably weak somewhere around their abdomen. Look, they're holding their hands down in front of it."

"I can see a little orb-type thing in their stomach." Matt said, his right eye closed. "I would guess that's the weak spot you're looking for Keith. Besides, it's glowing in my eye."

"What orb? I can't see it." Flynn said.

"Nor can I." Keith said.

"That must be it then." Drake said. "If they protect it so much that you can't see it… but that also kind of stops the plan from working."

"Shoot their hands?" Julie suggested.

"They look armor plated." Keith said. "I doubt it would do much, if anything."

"Hmm…" Helen set herself to thinking. "What if… someone went out there to draw them in? Wouldn't that cause them to raise their hands and provide a clear target?"

"Likely." Matt said. "Not certain, but likely. But it's all we've got. Let's go." He jumped out in front of them.

"Where are you going?" Julie asked.

"To set the trap." He said. He positioned himself in clear sight of the monster fiends, but out of the way of the other's targeting sights. "Hello there, gents." He shouted.

Idiot, Drake thought. He's going to get himself killed! We're not ready yet! Drake locked his rifle into position and took careful aim. Weapons cocked all around him. The fiends were really dim-witted- they had only just noticed Matt.

"Get him!" one of them said in a very garbled accent. Matt lazily reached into his cloak, withdrew his book, and began to read, apparently oblivious to the fiends running at him. Drake could see it now- a little black sphere in the center of the beast's stomach. He leveled his rifle on it and pulled the trigger… the gun jammed!

"Oh, come on, why now?" Drake muttered, and whacked the gun. Apparently the others were having similar troubles, because similar comments of general frustration were muttered and guns were being smacked around. For a moment Drake felt a little concern for Matt and looked up.

Matt was effortlessly moving out of the way of the monsters' attacks without so much as looking up from the page. Drake could tell the monster fiends were getting aggravated with his apparent disinterest in them, because their attacks were getting wilder. One of the fiends swung so hard that he smacked his companion in the stomach- smashing the orb! The whacked fiend's eyes blew up to the size of dinner plates (Drake couldn't believe how big they got) and fell over, obviously dead. Another fiend pushed the first fiend, and they began to fight. Soon, Matt was standing bemusedly next to a pile of dead bodies, all killed by each other.

"That was amusing." He said, and put his book away.

"What, the fiends killing each other?" Flynn said, emerging from the little alcove he had been in.

"Yes."

Everyone stood up. "Shall we?" Keith said, and gestured toward the portal out.

"I couldn't agree more." Helen said. "I hate this place." She stepped through the portal. Drake followed her.