The only thing she was sure of was that she was not sure of anything.
She thought once (more than once) that she wanted this life, that she had volunteered for this. Her certainty of that remained unwavering, now as ever. Yet, one bit of knowledge caused her doubt.
She had allowed him entrance into her mind and her body, into the most intimate parts of her, allowed his essence to fill every part of her. In turn, he had allowed her the same privilege.
Their union gave them both things almost beyond words in any human language - perfect certainty about the other's thoughts and feelings, ceaseless bliss and warmth coursing through one into the other and back again, changed and perhaps strengthened by its passage.
Even after centuries of introspection, neither felt certain that they could ever define the totality of what they felt about the other.
She felt every bit of the love he held for her, a potent burning leaving its undefinable mark, as he felt the love she held for him.
Love had always been the motivating force behind everything he did to her, whether malevolent or benevolent, a love so potent that it scarred both, in the vaguest of ways.
What did that make them? When their very identities and selves were continually exposed to everything, pleasant and unpleasant, major and minor, simple and complex, of the other?
In a space without direction or definition, dead Hikari laid dreaming, embracing and embraced by Dagomon. Their energies bled out of them, bright nurturing Light and deep isolating Darkness mixing and blurring and distorting, leaving a joyously unpleasant aftertaste in her mouth and mind.
The sensation was one that she found that she could almost lose herself in, for eternity.
Their love was more than eternal, she concluded on that occasion, and a beautiful, ancient, decrepit thing as well.
Being one of the Dark Ocean's rulers was an experience and a privilege unlike any she had/would experience as a Homo Sapien, she mused, one day finding herself in an introspective mood.
The position gave her power beyond human understanding, for their ideas of power were rooted in the physicality the species shared with the planet.
She could look however she wished - it was merely a question of altering her current vessel, or entering one of her other vessels in her castle's wardrobe hall, or making an entirely new body.
She could have whatever she wished - it was merely a question of manipulating local spacetime, or fashioning it from the Crest of Light's energies, or transmuting a few Deep Ones.
She could do anything whenever she wished - the Dark Ocean's territories were boundless, and the infinite cities of Carcosa & R'Lyeh contained every sort of architecture and building and mundane distraction in several places, collected over millions of years from over thousands of other realms.
She could be wherever she wished - contrary to what its name might, the Dark Ocean's dimension contained every which sort of terrain for her and the Deep Ones to explore.
Godhood was their mutual gift, and what could be greater than that, she questioned one evening beneath her bedsheets. The humanoid found continually that her current lingering vestiges of 'humanity' - whatever that quality involved - found it uncomfortable to be here, in the realm of the deepest darkness and the cold-at-the-center-of-the-soul.
It came at a cost, certainly - for every few decades, she would be dragged back to the universe cluster she had been born in, by a force beyond even their pooled might to resist or delay, for a reason that eluded them both.
Her non-human part dismissed those emotions. They would fade in time, as always.
Hikari and Dagomon were puzzled.
Fact was: Her body was not human - it was a construct, a thin veneer of flesh made to resemble a Homo Sapien, a means for her to manifest every form of horror and terror in the physical realms.
Contrary what her human friends and allies thought, his love for her ran purely into the realm of the romantic, not the sexual.
Fact was, the Dagomon-species wasn't equipped with the parts needed for sexual intercourse, even if the desire should arise.
Fact was, neither of them were physically compatible with the sexual reproduction method.
Fact was, she hadn't donned her human body for a bout of sensory stimulation in well over a decade.
It was, then, entirely beyond the realm of possibility for Hikari to be pregnant. Nonetheless, she was.
Hikari felt superficial curiosity emanate from him. In whatever form of space existed between their respective minds, there was... something that was physically gestating in a realm of pure thought. The contradiction in that was but one thing of many that perplexed him about it.
The thing was some manner of parasite, latching on to her Light and his Darkness, and feeding off their respective energies. That phrasing, Dagomon found evocative of Lucemon Chaos Mode & Mastemon. Perhaps their child would become an angel of their variety, he conveyed matter-of-factly.
A human, transformed by cosmic power. A Digimon, transformed by cosmic power. What sort of creature would be born from such a union, Hikari wondered. The thought was accompanied by curiosity, along with something unpleasant and unfamiliar that she soon remembered to be fear.
Dagomon's attentions fixed on the impossible phenomena gestating so close to his beloved. Whatever it was, he was certain that it was still in its Fresh state and that they could exorcise the creature.
It quickly proved a challenge to do. Even with two minds against none, it was surprisingly reluctant to leave its metaphysical nest. As in, neither could elicit any reaction or movement from the thing.
She had no intention of letting it occupy space in their mindscape, but other than psychically compelling it to leave, she could think of no means for dislodging it. Dagomon proved little help at the moment, for he preferred to study whatever it was.
Hours after, it disappeared as though it had never been there. Years passed, spent on tending to their Deep One subjects/worshippers and expanding the undersea city of R'Lyeh and searching the shadow-lands of Carcosa for new demons.
A trembling in their psychic link alerted her to the fact that something was happening, and her consciousness vacated her vessel, to wander their domain.
Unseen and unfelt, her soul wandered the stone houses and darkling basalt monuments that littered deep R'Lyeh in an instant. Deep in a temple, she happened across one of her other bodies, a gift to their aquatic subjects: A mindless lump of something-other-than-flesh and the size of a mountain, they fornicated with it, hundreds at a time, to rear and birth new Deep Ones.
Unseen and unfelt, her soul probed the night-wrapped nooks and crannies of dry Carcosa scarcely a fraction of a nanosecond later than she had searched R'Lyeh. Her astral state poured through a sea of ensouled shadows, finding only the dull red burning of their white eyes and nothing out of the ordinary.
Unseen and unfelt, her soul explored the labyrinthine halls and thousands of rooms in their castle, finding only vast solitude and Dagomon's lingering presence.
It was on a beach (whose exact location was beyond Hikari's interest) that they found it. A creature of immense proportions, dwarfing even Dagomon and the oldest of the Deep Ones. Incarnate in almost exactly the same shape as Dagomon, save that it was hued scarlet.
It claimed excitedly that it was their daughter.
They stared, utterly uncomprehending of it, for the better part of a minute.
Explanations were quickly provided, on both sides. Its name was apparently Cthyllamon, a Champion Level, and was the creature that had infested their shared soul years ago. Her purpose was to inherit the position of deity & ruler of the Dark Ocean from them, and slay them once they could serve no further purpose. It was only natural, she related cheerily, that they perished now that they had brought her about. She was their greater, the next generation, a new age for the Dark Ocean, so now their time could come to an end.
They were less than agreeable to that prospect. Rising to the size of a mountain and making her arms into Digizoid swords, Hikari went on the offensive, carving off chunks of Cthyllamon's flesh with a quick series of swipes.
The wounds not only failed to slay Cthyllamon, but also caused exactly no visible or audible pain, and lingered for less than one minute.
After what seemed like hours, their self-proclaimed spawn departed, whining that she would conquer the whole multiverse before ever returning. That promise was soon broken, mere days later.
Dagomon found that he couldn't resent her very existence, over the hours of her visit. She was young and inexperienced in the ways of the worlds, and he deemed it fit to aid this one in her aspirations, as he had thousands of the good ones and the evil ones before her.
Hikari's mind was less made up about this matter. The child (if indeed she was theirs) was not desired, yet she found that they shared unusual origins, which in one manner confirmed her claim. Both Dagomon and herself had created themselves, and now Cthyllamon had as well.
Cthyllamon soon departed, now with several hundred Devimons and twenty-three MagnaAngemons as her army, to invade some world in the Digimon Savers multiverse.
She was old, she mused idly one day as she wandered a street in some part of Carcosa. Her body floated along the ground, carried on invisible strings.
The street was silent and animate, with Shademons swimming across stone and wood and the soil and other things besides. The dead darknesses eyed their goddess-queen with reverence, scurrying to clear her path.
She was old, thousands of years old, millions of years old. That thought brought with it a surge of nostalgia. Hikari remembered then those half-forgotten days after she'd shed her disguise, on so many more occasions than she could immediately remember. A sense of amusement trickled into their mindscape, but her vessel's face remained unexpressive.
It always proceeded the same way, she recalled fondly. It was tedious routine, as much else was.
She would be born anew as a human child, and grow up believing herself to be a normal human being, until such time as the ruse could end.
He would call her back to his side and their throne someday, but that psychic contact mixed with his all-devouring Darkness would be anathema to the human brain.
The Digidestined would think him evil and her brainwashed, for the restoration of memories that Kari Kamiya the human didn't know she was without.
Quite humorous, she found it.
Together, the ultimate Light and supreme Darkness of the Digital World, equals and opposites in every way, they could create entirely new Digital Worlds from their amassed energies. Time after time, she had incarnated in the Earth Dimensions, to live as one of them and with his aid, recreate them into Hell Dimensions. It was a grand scheme, yet it had become tedious routine over the ages.
Kindly gods, they were now.
Kindly gods, they weren't always.
That bit of reminiscing led her thoughts to Cthyllamon. The Champion was very much a child, even after five centuries of life, driven by an insatiable lust for power but desiring or recognizing little of the responsibility that accompanied wielding it.
There was not the slightest chance of her ever fully destroying every dimension save hers, the Dark Ocean and the Dark Area - the natives would resist her forces too greatly, and more alternate realities would branch off faster than she could invade them - but she would need learn this herself.
In hindsight, her metaphysical conception was not entirely unprecedented, she supposed to themselves, though nothing in their life was by this point.
The Lady of Light trudged onwards through her realm.
