Chapter Thirteen
A feminine figured dressed in black strolled along the decaying castle's main hall, her long white hair flowing behind her alongside her torn, black wings. Beneath her feet was a shabby rug that may have one time been a rich, luxurious red but had long since faded to the color of dried blood. Torches burned along the walls, but provided very little light as if the very evil of the castle was swallowing it whole, and every few feet there hung paintings, each depicting a disturbing scene of violence and horror.
She pushed open the massive double doors and stepped into the throne room. Dropping down on one knee, she bowed before her lord.
"We have received word form Minotarumon, my love," she said; her words as soft and sweet as melted chocolate, but the mouth these words came from held a very wicked smile. "He has reached the Frozen Peaks. It will not be long before he has reached the Digimite deposits."
"Good. Very good," her lord replied, pleased by the news.
For a moment she was tempted to stop right there and drink her praise, but if her sources where correct, and should things go wrong and it was discovered that she had purposely held back information... her punishment was something even her twisted mind didn't want to think about.
"However," she continued knowing that she must pick her next words carefully. "There is one other matter."
"What?" The Dark Lord asked, a slight edge of irritation creeping into his voice.
"It appears that a Trailmon was seen heading up towards the Frozen Peaks as well. With passengers."
"The boy," he hissed.
"That has yet to be confirmed, but at this time it would appear so."
His hands clutched the armrests of his throne so tightly that they began to crack and splinter. With a cry of pure rage that seemed to shake the very foundation of the castle he threw up his right up and to the right. A bolt of red energy flew from this outstretched arm striking a bookshelf; the impact causing it to blow outwards sending a rain of burning papers fluttering to the floor.
"Feel better?" She teased, doing so only because she knew there would be no direct retaliation against her.
"Follow Minotarumon," The Dark Lord spoke though a clenched jaw. "If the brat and bitch are there make sure he finds them and rips them apart, and then bring me their heads so I may hang them from my wall as trophies!"
"Yes, my lord," this woman dressed in black with burned wings said as she rose to her feet. "Anything for you."
O O O
Andrew stood where he was, stunned beyond words, and if he had looked over, he would have saw Renamon was sharing his sentiment. Standing before them wearing a long white lab coat, a pair of black slacks, and a faded green sweater was a human man. He looked to be in his mid to late forties. His hair was blond and thin, sticking up wildly from his head; he was very tall and slender with brown eyes that peeked at them from behind a pair of thick glasses. From head to toe this man looked like a living representation of a science geek, but he was here and he was human. Andrew didn't think he'd ever been so happy in his life.
"Oh my," The man said, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room. "Oh my, can this really be true?"
The man took several tentative steps closer and leaned forward towards Andrew as if examining him. He took his glasses off his face and peered at the boy for a full five seconds before cleaning the specs on his shirt and popping them back on. Andrew was still amazed, but now he was also becoming a little uncomfortable. He felt like a rat being examined in a cage.
"Tell me son; are you here?" the man asked, sounding almost like he were interviewing Andrew. "Are you really, truly here? My mind is not playing tricks on me, is it?"
"N-no," Andrew finally managed to spit out. "No, I'm here. I'm real. Like... like you. You are human, right?"
"Homo sapien, my friend; one hundred percent. Oh my, but this is marvelous!" he laughed "Incredible! Positively phenomenal! I had come to believe that I was the only human here, but then you came along and, oh! My mind is reeling with the information!"
Renamon leaned over to Andrew raising one hand to cover her mouth as he whispered in his ear. "This guy's giving me the creeps. Are all of you humans that weird?"
"I hope not," He responded with a slow shake of his head.
The man in the lab coat, who had been pacing the room back and forth babbling to himself and often speaking words whose meaning went way over Andrew's head, suddenly stopped and turned to face them so fast he almost lost his balance.
"Oh, but I have been most rude! I am Professor Clayton Creedance," he said with more than a touch of pride in his voice, as if they might have heard of him before. "And you might you be, my new friends?"
"My name's Andrew Roth and this is Renamon."
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance," he said as he closed the distance between them, grabbed hold of Andrew's right hand in both of his and give it several hard, rapid shakes. "And a pleasure to meet you too, ma'am," giving the same handshake. "Might I offer either of you a cup of tea? They may not look it, but the Koemon are quite the gourmets!"
"Maybe later," Renamon said. "First, why don't you tell us exactly how you ended up here?"
"Oh with pleasure; but first come with me into my sitting quarters, it's a far better place to have a chat. This way, if you will."
Prof. Cleedance led them back towards the room he had step out of; a relatively small living space that housed little more than a table surrounded by four stools, a desk overflowing with papers and gadgets, and a hammock woven much like Renamon's. Cleedance took a seat farthest from the door giving his guest the luxury of not having to wade though his piles of junk that scattered every surface of his room. If there was any kind of method to the madness of his filing system, Andrew didn't see it.
"Now then, where to begin," The Professor asked himself once everyone was seated. "Let us just say for the sake of simplicity that it all started five years ago; I was a scientist and part-time college professor. It was in my constant studies that I came upon something most incredible. I discovered that by combining a series of advanced mathematics, transpersonal psychology, and the current particle effects on the theory of a muliverse; the theory that outside of one universe that eclipses all of space and time and matter and energy there lie infinite more, I had stumbled upon an idea of tearing apart the fabrics of-"
"Hey Professor," Renamon broke in. "How about repeating all of that one more time for the slow people?"
"Oh! Yes! Sorry," he apologized, cleaning his glasses on his shirt again "I suppose I do tend to ramble when it comes to my work. It's just that it's been so long since I've been able to sit down and have a full coherent conversation with someone able to string together complete sentences. Now, don't get me wrong; the Koemon are perfectly lovely and as kind and gentle and one could ever hope, but their communicative skills do leave one in wanting-"
"Professor!" he and Renamon shouted in tandem.
"Oh! Sorry, yes. There I go again." A slight blush crossed his cheeks as he absently cleaned his glasses for the third time, making Andrew think it was a nervous tick of some sort. "Basically; one of my experiments had a massive meltdown, but in doing so it opened up a temporary portal between the human world and this one. For years now I've heard rumors about such a place. Many shrug it off as so much bunk, whereas I on the other hand was never quite so sure, so when I peered into this temporal rift and saw what was beyond I knew that I had been presented with a once in a lifetime chance."
"Wait," Renamon cut in. "You mean to tell me that you made this gateway thing by pure accident that you had no way of knowing what it was or where it went and you just... jumped into it?"
"My dear, the scientific community can never advance unless one is willing to take a few risks," he said frankly, to which Renamon just threw her hands up in frustrated surrender. "Anyway, after I arrived I found myself standing in the middle of a vast winter wasteland and I'll assume that your stories would be very similar here. I entered one of the caves looking for shelter and heat when I was greeted by an odd series of noises which you now know to have been the Koemon playing tricks to scare outsiders away from their home. Rather than being scared I was deeply intrigued so I followed the noises. Well, that sure did surprise the poor little thing. He took off running and I followed in hot pursuit. I was far too fascinated by what I had just seen to be afraid that I was get lost within the caves. Eventually I came out here and, to cut a long short short-"
"Too late," Renamon said under her breath. If Creedance heard, he gave no indication.
"-the Koemon took me in as one of their own. They began to call me 'Cree' and even built the little lab you see here so I may continue my experiments, which has been quite a chore on its own, as I'm sure you can guess."
"What about going back?" Andrew asked. "To our world, I mean. Is there a way to go back? Have you ever figured that out?"
When he first arrived here, all he wanted to do was go back home, but as time had passed and the days rolled on Andrew began to settle in to this one. After seeing how beautiful it was, and how many wonders there were to be discovered, his mind started to think less about what he had left behind, and more about what there was ahead; until now.
Here he had been given the slim ray of hope that he might have been able to get back to his home. It had been well over a week (maybe even closer to two) now since he had left and his mother had to be worried sick. They had fought a lot, but that didn't mean they didn't love each other. They just didn't get along. He had run out of the house on her and, now that he thought about it, that last thing he had said before slamming the door shut was: 'I hate you!'
Those had been empty, angry words meant only to hurt his mother; to punish her for some reason that he could no longer remember or understand, but now... now those might very well turn out to be his final words to her.
Andrew felt tears trying to work their way into his eyes and forced them back. Now wasn't the time or place to feel sorry for himself; later, if he absolutely had to, he could sneak off alone and have a good cry, but not now.
"I'm sorry, my boy," The Professor mourned, "Truly I am, but I have yet to repeat my mistake. Even if I had access to all of the same technology, I have no idea what I did. It was a freak accident, you see."
"Yeah," Andrew said in a small voice. "Yeah, I get it."
"But that's not to say that you should give up hope!" Clayton went on. "Follow me back outside. Allow me to show you something."
The trio stood from their seats and carefully made their way out of the small room, through Prof. Creedance's improvised 'lab' and out the front door.
"Look up," he pointed. "You see the stones overhead, each glowing like its own sun? That, my friends, is the mineral known as digimite; a rather incredible little piece of rock, if I do say so myself. I've obtained a small amount of it, but have yet to truly understand all of its properties, but here is what I can tell you: the digimite works indirectly with the sun. Whenever the sun is up in this part of the world, whether it's shining through the clouds or not, the digimite glows and gives off heat. Here we are standing in the middle of a mountain and yet it's as bright and warm as a tropical island."
"What about at night?" Andrew asked.
"Glad you brought that up," the professor said, sounding like he was falling back into his own college lecture routine. "As the sun begins to set, so does the digimite. Their hue begins to dim and then goes out all together."
"So these rocks simulate a day to night cycle?" Andrew offered.
"Yes! Exactly! Very good!"
"Okay, so we have some glowing rocks," Renamon said. "What's that have to do with anything?"
The Professor shook his head back and forth, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth three times making a 'tsk, tsk, tsk' sound "So impatient, aren't you? If you'll give me a moment, I'll explain.
"For reasons I've yet to fully understand, the Digimite will only produce this 'simulated sun phenomenon' when in close proximity to one another and only in its naturally formed place of rest. Take a piece away and it will go dark and stay dark forever. Even if placed back exactly where it was before, it somehow knows. Breaking it out of its surrounding rock seems to break whatever properties make it work. It's like blowing a fuse in a light bulb; even if you screw it back into the same socket, it will not shine again.
"However," He said looking directly at Renamon this time, "digimite, when removed, does seem to gain one new function: teleportation."
Andrew's jaw dropped at the word. He almost wanted to laugh, but the perfectly somber way Clayton expressed the side effect seemed to say there was no joke about it.
"You mean it can move stuff from one place to another?" Andrew still asked, just to make absolutely sure this was what he was hearing.
"Indeed. The Koemon were the ones who let me in on this little secret. In fact, it was how they successfully scared off all outsides that came to harvest the minerals. Quite easy to act like a ghost when you're actually able to disappear, eh? Once again I can not exactly say why this bit of rock works the way it does, and believe me; I find that just as frustrating as you, perhaps even more, but I have at least the basis of a theory.
"This," The Professor said, holding out his arms in a grand special to encompass everything around them, "is the Digital World. Underneath everything is a series of complex code that holds it all together."
The man paused to bend down, snatching a small rock off the ground; he held it up before his two temporary students. "This looks like a rock. It feels like a rock. If you were to put it into your mouth it would taste like a rock, but look at its very core you will find its code. Now, that's not to say this world is not real; quite the opposite. This place is as true as our own, Andrew; it simply operates a little different. Or maybe not so different at all if certain scientific theories ever turn out to be correct, but that's beside the point."
As he spoke he allowed the rock to slip from his hand where it fell to the ground with a soft thud, kicking up a mini cloud of dirt. "What I'm trying to say is, since we know what this world is and how it works, fundamentally at least, its law can be altered. I know this might sound like gibberish to you, Renamon and I apologize for that; but Andrew you might want to think of it as being a bit like hacking a computer game. If you know what you're doing, you can change the rules to however you see fit. Now, the natural laws state that in order to get from point A to point D, one must first pass B and C, but digimite can bend those rules. It can temporarily rewrite those hidden codes to allow you to jump from A to anywhere you want."
Clayton looked back and forth between his two temporary students. "Is this making any sense?" he asked.
"Yeah," Andrew said. "A little, but its kinda making my head spin."
"Ditto," Renamon agreed. "But if I'm getting this right, you mean that that stuff could get Andrew back to his world?"
As she spoke, Andrew thought he heard an almost regretful tone to her voice. It was faint (if it was really there at all) that he didn't think anyone else around would have caught it, but after spending so much time with her, Andrew thought he was picking up on some of her more subtle traits.
"Well, in theory I suppose," the older man answered before trailing off a bit. "But... you see... the distance a person can go is relative to the amount of Digimite one has in their possession. A small shard may move you a few mere feet, but if one were to possess a large quantity of such a gem..."
"Then anyone could travel as far as they wanted. Maybe even to other worlds," Andrew said, amazed.
"Okay," Renamon added, "But if that's true then why not test it? We know damn well it's not because you're scared to."
Clayton gave a soft chuckle and said; "The problem is not one of guts, Miss Renamon, but of material. As I've said digimite only has its teleport properties after it has been removed and once it does that it can never be used for anything else."
"I get that, so what's the problem?" she pressured.
"Look around you. What you see now are the only remaining deposits of Digimite in existence."
"So if these were taken down," Andrew began and Renamon finished:
"Then the Koemon would lose their home." She turned her gaze down to him "Andrew, this is why we're here. We need to keep this spot safe from the Dark Lord."
"The Dark Lord?" Creedance asked. "Excuse me, but who is that?"
"Someone bad," Andrew said. "Someone very, very bad, and he and his followers will stop at nothing to take over this world, and if what you said is true, there'd be nothing to stop him from taking over ours, too."
"That's why we need to keep him from taking over these caves and if we were sent here, than that means The Dark Lord knows about it, too," Renamon added.
"Oh, my. This is bad. This is quite upsetting. How long would you dare to say we have? Do you believe there would be enough time to warn the Koemon?"
As if in response to this the boulder at the entrance pass opened and a Koemon, the same one that had shown them down here if Andrew was right, came racing down it screaming at the top of its lungs.
"Outsider!" he cried. "Big! Mean! No scared! Coming here! Attacking!"
Panic began to spread among the Koemon as they ran for their homes, many crying out as they did so.
Making his way though the chaos, Koemon raced up to Andrew and the others. "Cree! Friends! Help! Protect home!"
"Oh dear," The Professor fretted. "This really is bad."
It was at that time that the boulder Koemon and run though and then closed again, below open with a mighty explosion sending the two who were guarding it flying. The first landed safely enough in the water; the second, however, was in for a terrible fall. Renamon was off like a shot using that amazing speed of hers to close the distance, still it was close. She had to leap to catch the Koemon before it hit the ground.
The cause of the explosion stepped though the dust and stood at the top of the path; it was a massively huge creature that looked exactly like a bull standing on its hind legs right down to the wickedly sharp horns on its head and golden ring sticking through its nose.
The only really odd thing about it (and Andrew really had to question his sanity when he was only able to pick one odd thing from a six foot tall bull standing upright) was the strange canon like device surrounding its left hand and upper arm. There were a number of stitches going around its body as well as a large zipper that ran from the crotch to the neck, leading Andrew to believe that this thing was wearing some kind of suit.
"Alright you'es pipsqueaks!" it bellowed. "Let's get things straight: I'm Minotarumon and this land is now under the rule of The Dark Lord! So if you all know what's good for ya's, you'lls surrender all the Digimite to me right now or I'm gonna pound each and every one of ya's inta dust!"
Moving quickly, Andrew turned to face Koemon. "Can you and your tribe help us fight?" he asked.
Koemon shook his head so rapidly back and forth that the string holding his ponytail up broke free, letting his hair fall wildly around his head.
"No fight! We Koemon peaceful! We trick and scare, but no fight!"
"Of course." He turned his attention up to the Professor. "Mr Creedance, I need you to get everyone to safety. If there's a back door out of this place lead them though that, if not than just keep them as far away from the fighting as you can. Got it?"
"Y-yes," he responded, marveling at how different this boy seemed in this moment than he had. There was fire in the boy's eyes; they were the eyes of a warrior. "I understand. Good luck."
With that said the two broke off and ran in different directions: The man calling out for the Koemon to follow him as quickly as they could, and the boy towards Renamon. A battle was about to begin and, looking at the competition, Andrew thought it was going to be a nasty one.
To be continued.