Warning for depression and murder

Arc Two: Nightwish

Prologue: The Type of Parent

The Digital World was not a kind, gentle place.

Even though wishes loved to come true here, even though imagination turned ideas into action, this was not restricted to the pure and innocent. It could not be, for even the foulest of people had wishes they wanted to see come true.

In a creaking, sleeping castle at the core of File Island, a man knew this very well.

Said man clung to each crumbling pillar like they were his life, moving across stone and tile in a slow shuffle. He had to reach them. He had to meet them. She, his wife, was gone. But his legacy remained. They had to. There was no way they could not, even with these many passing millennia. No parent wanted their child to die before them, so perhaps he merely was dealing with wishful thinking.

It wouldn't surprise him.

He stopped, leaning against a handhold. The castle made a low, groaning sound. The man almost smiled.

Almost. Rekushin hadn't had much reason to smile in a long time. His reasons had drifted far, far away. That couldn't be helped, however. He pressed onward, trying to ignore the gravel sound of wings gently flapping in the cramped hallways. Well, cramped for them. It didn't exactly work to fly in a castle hall, especially that of a dozing and sulking castle that missed its master.

Well, its current master.

Rekushin reached one of the many expansive gardens where an ancient, gnarled tree stood vigil. The roots seemed to part for him, branches rustling leaves in greeting. He nodded his head, dark purple hair once again too loose and messy, lost in his lack of desire to comb. His up until recent lack of desire to do anything was in the rumbling of his stomach, the heaviness of his limbs. Even now, settling beneath the soothing leaves, he nearly found it too much effort to sit down.

A branch unfurled, stroking his shoulder in greeting. His mouth twitched.

"Good afternoon, Lillian," he managed, nearly regretting the words as they sprang free. He knew the tree – rather, the woman that made up its weave, would have let him stay with no conversation if he had chosen to ignore her. Many other things occupied her attention as one of the oldest conscious Ghost Trees, keepers of Yggdrasil's will. God he may or may not be, he was only one of many.

"Good afternoon, lord of frost." Her response was slow and measured, and he loathed to hear it. She was supposed to be such a young woman, full of life and radiance. What had taken that from her? What had caused her to distance herself from him? He racked his brain, searched for the holes, and still, nothing came to mind. "Your wounds troubling you?"

"Much less, thanks to you and Solomon." Rekushin exhaled low. "Physically at any rate."

"Humans are not meant to be isolated."

"No," he agreed. "We are a social creature, inhumanity or otherwise." If he could have gone, he would have, rather than stay alone with servants and puppets and trees, all creatures bound to the place they served. They were such good company, but there was only so much they could say or do before the beyond called. "Any news from beyond the walls?"

"I am still sifting through it."

Rekushin wanted to shake her, but feared the loss of the trunk and the spirit within it. So instead he closed his eyes and waited, breathing in the aroma of the flowers.

Eventually a leaf fell onto his nose.

He let out a snort. What a trickster she was. "Yes?" He didn't open his eyes.

"They live."

The first word was too emphatic, too heavy to mean a meaningless everyone. Rekushin knew that for certain. So he knew the they. There was no saving one. Two, he knew, were quite possibly lost to the wilds in the case of the former. He couldn't say where his old friend had gone, but knowing him, he was caught up in something far outside of his control. There was likely nothing that could be done for him.

That left only two more. His oldest son. His youngest daughter.

They live.

An urge, an unquenchable thirst of a feeling, threatened to make him weep. Rekushin bore it.

"Really?" he said, in a whisper though it didn't matter. "Are you sure?"

Another fallen leaf. Of course she was.

"Where?"

Thud thud went his heart. Thud thud. How long had it been? His hands itched, twitched, needed to do, needed to be able to hold-

"I'm so sorry, darling."

Rekushin stopped. His hands fell to the ground.

"Such a dramatic." Only a tree would chide a god. He had to chuckle at that. "They don't need you now anyway. Someone else requires your assistance."

"Oh?" He tried not to sound too acidic, but it was difficult. Feeling emotions heavily again was just too much, especially now.

"Your Hector is dead."

It took a moment to have an impact, because the Royal Knights didn't respond to their names over half the time that Rekushin to his own chagrin actually nearly forgot them. But then he remembered fading red scales, a serenity that was indispensable on those too long days. He remembered great soaring wings that dwarfed the castle.

When it came to him, it was like the whimper of a thunderclap. Those controlled tears fell, and his stomach threatened to roll over in a newfound grave, but he didn't scream. His friend would have told him to scream, to throw things and howl. Well, not exactly, but at least one of them would.

"...I see." His Adam's apple throbbed.

"He found an heir before he passed." Lillian continued, not oblivious to his pain, of course not. "Alphamon is in pursuit."

"Alphamon?" The last time an Alphamon had taken up arms had been far before the avalanche. "Why ever would that be the case? With Norn captured-" Dead or broken. His wife was nothing more than a shell that needed to be killed. That had to be the case. "There is no one to give them a will to carry out, is there?"

Lillian was quiet for a moment more.

Then she made a noise like a human's deepest exhale. "Revenge."

Rekushin moved to his feet before she could utter another word.

…

Rindou Akiho ran.

It was a stumbling, untidy gait, but she knew how to make the best of it, especially on even ground with uneven legs. It would have been easier without the bundle in her arms and Digitorin's clumsy grip on her back, but she would drop neither. Not while she was still breathing. And she was, like it or not.

Tears stung the corners of her face, rage tears and grief filling her like the warmth of a good meal served thirty minutes late. They would do, she decided. They would have to do. That monster had made an enemy, and nothing fueled survival like rage. Once she survived long enough, she would be able to live, and living would bring opportunity. And opportunity would bring pain.

Akiho was not someone to make an enemy out of. Alphamon had, a long, long time ago.