The Reign of Courage

Part Eleven: Help and Rest

***

Standard Disclaimer Thingy: Characters not mine. Plot is. No sue. No steal. Thanks. Enjoy!

***

There was a strange mist that surrounded him when he awoke. It was dark, and the dust was gone. Wormmon was nowhere in sight, and Ken blinked, confused, as he peered around.

"Hello?" he called. His voice disappeared in the mist, the sound swallowed by the clouds.

There was a lake before him, and he found that he was lying on the ground beside it. There was no grass. Only mud. He sat up and peered into the lake, but the reflection he saw was not his own. Before he could ponder this, he was aware of an explosion in the distance.

***

Daisuke sighed, frowning deeply. They had been searching for Ken for the past hour, and they'd seen nothing, not even a footprint.

"This dust is so annoying," Miyako groaned, coughing. "I wish it would go away!"

"I wish there was at least some water," V-mon agreed. "I'm so thirsty."

"And we can't see a darn thing!"

The boy sighed, resting against a sorry-looking tree as he waited for Hikari and Iori to return. They had split up in order to search for Ken, and had agreed to meet in this location. However, the other two had not returned.

"Daisuke! Look out!" V-mon shouted a warning. Daisuke peered around, looking for the attack, but there was none. He fell backwards into a pile of dust.

"The tree just – fell apart," Miyako observed with wide eyes.
"I see that," he noted dryly, wiping some of the dust from his eyes. Before he could stand up, however, there was a crunching noise in the trees at the edge of the clearing, and then a tall figure appeared.

"Leomon!" Miyako was startled. She gripped her digivice cautiously with one hand, even though she knew that Hawkmon was too weak to evolve again.

The large feline appeared friendly this time around, however. He held out his arm and they could see a wooden box filled with fruits. "I thought you might need some food," he offered. "What happened to the others?"

***

Despite the huge and formidable opponent, Nanomon appeared to be unimpressed. "Ha!" he called boldly to Taichi. "Is that all?"

"It'll be more than enough," the wild-haired boy replied with confidence.

"Giga Destroyer!" Metal Greymon shouted at the top of his mighty lungs. The metal plate in his chest opened and a large missile launched itself at its overconfident foe.

Nanomon was destroyed instantly. His screams echoed through the dust-filled world and his body deleted.

***

Miyako blinked. "Others?"

Leomon nodded. "I happened upon a girl and two boys earlier. They helped to free me from the dark spell. I thought I had seen them with you."

"You did," Hawkmon replied. "One of them went missing, so we split up to look for him."

The large feline seemed to understand. He set the box filled with fruit on the table. "Do you have a way to make a fire?" he wondered.

"Uh, yes, I think so," Miyako stated, still confused and bewildered.

Daisuke spoke up from where he still sat in the dust pile. "Excuse me - sir, uh, you said something about a dark spell?"

"Yes," he replied, his voice serious now. "Devimon is a powerful digimon who rules this land. When I attempted to stop him, he controlled me with as much ease as he controls the rest of these digimon."

"Controls digimon?" V-mon repeated blankly. "How?"

"With large black gears," Leomon replied. "The gear is infused with darkness and the darkness controls the digimon. They do whatever Devimon wants of them. The way to free the digimon is by destroying the gear. Or to do as your friends do and use those devices."

"Digivices?" Miyako questioned, holding hers up.

Leomon nodded, but looked confused. "Yours look different, though. I wonder why."

"Probably because we have digimentals," Daisuke replied. He showed the strange white box that held his digimental yuuki. Miyako realized then that she had one as well, in her opposite pocket.

"Strange."

***

The small, pink, round blob bounced cheerfully to his partner. "We did it!" he cheered.

"We sure did!" Taichi replied, but appeared confused. "Koromon?"

The pink digimon nodded. "I used a lot of energy evolving that high," he explained. "But I'll be back to Agumon in no time." He grinned cheerfully.

"In that case, we'd better rest before we try to fight again," Koushiro noted. His partner, too, had de-evolved. "It's nearly dark, and I'd like to study over these latest happenings."

"Yeah, and I'm getting hungry," Mimi agreed. "Let's eat."

***

Daisuke finally picked himself up from the ground and proceeded to clean the remains of the tree from his clothes. "I don't like this at all," he stated as he watched Miyako and Leomon begin to cook the food on the newly-made campfire.

"What? The food's not that bad," V-mon told him, but he knew that wasn't what he meant. Before anyone could respond, however, there was another noise in the trees, and Iori and Hikari emerged.

***

The fire was burning quite brightly now, and Mimi and Yamato had begun cooking the meal. They had a few supplies left over from their lunch that afternoon, and were able to supplement it with some berries and nuts that were found in the area.

"Here's some more of that firewood," Takeru announced, dropping the pile of dusty, half-dead sticks at his brother's feet. "It's not much, but it burns."

"Very quickly, unfortunately," Mimi observed, tossing another on to the fire. "It's a good thing this won't take too long to cook."

Yamato was frowning at the meat that he was cooking over the fire. "Another ten minutes, at least," he stated, and then looked at the pile Takeru had brought. "Better find more."

"We're trying," Patamon piped up from behind the younger boy's head. "But everything's so dusty it's hard to find good wood."

"We'll get some," Takeru assured his brother, and disappeared into the woods again.

Meanwhile, at another fire, the rest of the party sat. Koushiro had lit this one and powered it with his own magical energy, making firewood almost completely unnecessary. He now used the light provided by the fire to read in the otherwise complete darkness.

Sora was resting comfortably near the fire, eating some of the food that didn't require cooking. Jyou had examined her quickly and discovered that, aside from being very exhausted, she appeared fine. Now she rested for the next day's battle.

Taichi was in fine physical health as well, but that didn't stop him from being concerned. He had nothing to do, and instead found a suitably stable tree to lean against and stood at the outskirts of the fire's lit circle, brooding. Koromon, still in his de-evolved state, peered up at his partner and followed his gaze back to the circle.

"You all right, Taichi?" the small pink digimon questioned.

Startled slightly, the wild haired young man jumped before he looked back down at his partner and nodded. "Yeah," he replied. "Just wondering what happened to the others."

"I have a theory that only some of us are supposed to fight this Devimon thing," Jyou remarked from where he sat nearby, perusing one of the books Koushiro had brought and loaned to him. "This dust is probably not ordinary dust. And this area certainly doesn't look like the land around the mountain. I think there's some sort of magic involved."

Koushiro paused momentarily in his own reading and nodded. "You could be right," he noted. "I've noticed that it's unusually thick dust, and that despite this thickness, we were able to find each other. However, we couldn't find the others. In fact, those of us that made it through are six of the nine who were designated to receive crests. I don't think that's a coincidence."

"What about Takeru?" Sora questioned, having been listening to the conversation. "Does he have one too?"

Before any of the others could reply, the boy in question and his brother emerged from the dust surrounding the fire, food in hand. All thoughts then turned to the eating.

***

"So you are supposed to help us," Iori noted solemnly to the large digimon sitting cross-legged across the fire from him.

Leomon nodded, an equally grave expression on his face. "Yes," he replied, having declined food while the others ate. "I was originally supposed to assist the first seven, but it appears I am too late."

"They're in more danger than we are, aren't they?" Hikari asked, but it wasn't really a question. "They're the ones that have to fight Devimon. But why?"

The large feline sighed. "I'm not entirely sure," he admitted. "The prophecies say many things and explain even less, as I'm sure you're aware by now. This dust is magic-controlled. Those who are destined to fight are permitted through, and those who are not stay behind."

"The earthquake -," Miyako remembered. "Was that magic, too? Did it happen because we were there?"

"It did. The dust and the earthquake insured that only those destined to could go through the dust."

"So why do we have these stupid digimentals if we can't help?" Daisuke questioned, anger appearing in his voice. "I thought they were supposed to help us fight."

Leomon shook his head solemnly. "I don't know the answer to your question," he replied. "I only know that if they were given to you, they will someday have a use. I suspect there are many battles to come."

"Do you know what happened to Ken?" Iori questioned, speaking softly.

Again the digimon shook his head. "I'm sorry. Those things are beyond my knowledge."

There was silence then as the group ate in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Silently, they moved through the dim lighting and set up places to sleep for the night.

***

The light from the magical fire was still burning, making it easy for the wizard who had formed it to read. Everyone else was asleep, and he had volunteered for the first watch, mostly so he could attempt to gain more information from the books he'd brought. So far, however, he'd had no luck, and his eyes were tiring after the long and stressful day.

Sighing, Koushiro shut the book and rubbed his eyes. The dust-covered forest around them was silent, without even the usual night-calls of nocturnal digimon. The magic Jyou had commented on was thick around this area. The young wizard could feel it in his bones, but it was a statement of its thickness that even the doctor had sensed it.

There was no digimon in this area that was not evil in someway. The darkness and the gears Devimon had used to infect the Unimon that Yamato and Mimi had encountered and the Kuwagamon he and Jyou had helped Taichi to fight had a stronghold on every type of digimon. There were no peaceful digimon, Koushiro was certain of it. There were only the dark-filled ones and the Chosen partners.

If Koushiro had been more inclined to the practice of his magic, he might have been more astonished by the sheer darkness of the region. Even now, he was able to see that it filled every nook and cranny of the landscape, but he could not see how deep. However, he was more of a scholar than a practicing wizard, and as such, his skill in this area was limited.

He was nearly ready to drift off to sleep, tired, when he heard a rustle behind him and spun to see Taichi attempting to quietly sneak up on him.

"You didn't have to get up. There's another hour on my watch," he stated in a low voice so as not to disturb those still sleeping.

The other shrugged. "I know. But I couldn't sleep and you looked tired. Stay up if you want, but I'm not going back to bed."

Koushiro sighed, knowing he wasn't going to be able to argue. He said nothing, only moving aside to make room on the log he sat on.

Even in the dim light the young wizard was able to see the large grin on the other's face as he sat down beside him. "Find anything new in those books?" Taichi questioned, trying to make conversation.

Koushiro shook his head. "I keep feeling like there's something they're trying to hide from me. Every time I look at them the pages seem to blur and I can't see clearly. Part of it's tiredness, but I'm almost certain there's magic involved."

"In the books?" Taichi asked. "Shouldn't you be able to figure that out?"

The other sighed. "Ordinarily, yes," he admitted. "But it's a very faint magic. I didn't detect it back at the castle, and I wasn't really looking for it. I was just so excited to have found the books. And out here, there's so much magic in the air that it makes it hard to see any other magic." He rubbed the bridge of his nose in a gesture of frustration.

There was a moment of silence before Taichi spoke up again. "What's that prophecy thing you told me about before? The one about the seven?"

"The one about the smallest defeating the evil?" Koushiro repeated. When the other nodded, he recited: "'When the darkness rises, the seven will be called to action. The battle will be long, and will test their teamwork. The first battle shall be won by the smallest.' There's more, but I don't remember how it goes."

"There's Seven of us now, aren't there?" Taichi asked. He held up his fingers as he counted. "You, me, Jyou, Sora, Yamato, Mimi, and Takeru. Who's the smallest of us all?"

"In terms of height? I'd say I am," Koushiro replied. "But somehow I don't think that's what they mean."

"Maybe they mean the youngest…that would be Takeru."

"Or maybe the smallest digimon? That's Koromon right now," Koushiro said, half-joking.

"Very funny," Taichi caught the tease. "Patamon hasn't evolved yet. Maybe that's what they mean?"

"Maybe," Koushiro admitted. He paused and yawned deeply. "We'll find out tomorrow. I'm going to sleep."

***

Daisuke peered silently at the sun as it crept higher into the clouded sky. He was filled with a sense of hopelessness. He knew that today, seven of his friends would be fighting an enemy like they had never seen before and might never see again. There was a serious and very real danger that one or more –  maybe all - of them would not return alive.

He'd never been particularly close to any of them. Takeru was a good friend, but not as close as Ken. Yamato and he had never really spoken, partly due to their age difference. Mimi was older than he – and a girl – which made her hard to know and harder to relate to. Sora was nice, but had the same issues – along with the fact that he hadn't seen her very often. Jyou and Koushiro were both too absorbed in their work to really be known by anyone.

Taichi was someone Daisuke had admired and emulated for nearly as long as he had known him, but he'd always been slightly intimidated by the older boy. And, indeed, who wouldn't be? Taichi had grown up a prince in a castle, waited on by servants, bred for leadership. He was boisterous, usually cheerful and friendly, and easy to speak with, but somehow Daisuke, despite a developing friendship and companionship over the years as the age difference began to matter less, was also almost frightened by him.

"Already awake?" Hikari's voice called to him through the dusty air.

He shrugged, still looking at the sun. "I had the last watch," he replied. "I've been up for a few hours."

"Mind if I join you?" she asked, and he could tell by the sound she had moved closer to him. "I can't sleep anymore."

Squinting through the sun, he peered up at her and smiled slightly. "Worried?" he asked.

"A little," she admitted, but he knew it was a lie. She wasn't worried a little. She was worried a lot.

There were a few moments of peaceful silence. For a little bit, they could almost feel as though life were normal, and that they weren't in a forest covered with magical dust and that Ken wasn't missing and that seven of their friends might not die before that sun sank again.

Hikari shivered slightly. She'd wrapped the blanket she'd slept with around her, but still felt cold. It wasn't the temperature that made her shiver, but she wasn't sure how to explain what it was.

"You're cold?" Daisuke asked, more out of politeness than real concern.

The girl wrapped the blanket around her and shook her head. "Not from the temperature, I think," she replied. "There's something here – some sort of darkness. Do you feel it at all?"

He was about to shake his head no, reply that he felt nothing of the sort, and that perhaps it was really just the morning cold or something, but something took those words from his mouth. Suddenly, he felt a shiver go down his spine, and for a brief half-second or even shorter, he felt the darkness, the impending sense of doom that he was sure Hikari was speaking of.

He stood up then; got to his feet as quickly as possible, but by the time he was standing up, the split-second darkness was over. Everything looked the same, and he was just in a forest again, with the early-morning sun's rays peeking through massive dust clouds.

"Daisuke?" Hikari asked. He looked down to where she sat, next to where he had just been sitting. Her big brown eyes peered up at his, and she looked the same as always. Concerned eyes, brown, short hair framing her face, a thin but useful blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a little dirt smudged on her face, and a pale, pink dress folded under her that surrounded her legs and arms.

He blinked once, clearing his head. "I'm all right," he said, sitting down again. But, though the moment had passed, he remembered it. "I think I felt that – darkness – you were talking about. Just for a second." He frowned.

"I know, it scares me, too," she confessed, and turned toward the sun again, as though the light in its rays were the sort of thing that was going to keep her attached to the world in its concrete form.

"I felt that way before," Daisuke admitted. "When I got my digivice." His hand went automatically to his pocket, where the object in question was safe. "And again when that – Demon – appeared."

Hikari shivered again, this time at the mention of Demon, and the reminder of the entire horrific night in which he'd appeared. She'd been aware, then, of the huge amount of darkness surrounding the hill, surrounding Demon, surrounding them all. "That was scary," she agreed, drawing her knees close to her and hugging them tightly.

***

The sun had just barely risen when Koushiro felt a hand nudging him awake. Groaning, he sat up from the ground where he had made his bed the previous night. "I feel like I just fell asleep," he grumbled. "Is it morning already?"

Looking around, he saw that he wasn't the only one feeling groggy. The rest of the group was also slow to rise. "Yup. Rise and shine," Taichi was unusually perky, though the young wizard noted the beginnings of tired circles near his eyes.

"Did you sleep at all?" he questioned.

"Sure I did," the other replied, grinning in such a way that Koushiro knew he was probably not being truthful. "Come on. We need you for a fire. We've got to get moving if we expect to get anything done today."

"There's not much food left," Mimi reported, searching through the bag they had brought supplies in.

"I could have sworn we had more than that," Yamato frowned.

"We did," Palmon reminded him. "We ate a lot of it, and some was left with the other group. Remember?"

"We'll just have to gather some food in the area," Taichi decided. "Get what you can, divide the rest as evenly as possible." With that, Mimi, Yamato, Takeru, and their partners set out to search for some food.

"Just out of curiosity, do we even have a clue what we're going up against today?" Jyou wondered as he began to roll the blanket he'd slept on.

"Sure we do," Gomamon replied, holding open the bag so his partner could put the blanket in. "A big evil digimon."

"I was kind of hoping for something more specific. Like, what exactly are we going to do? Do we have a strategy at all?"

"Strategy?" Gomamon joked, but he was partly serious.

"What sort of strategy would you use?" Taichi questioned. "The simple, run in and hit him with all we've got? Surround him from all sides and hit him with all we've got? We don't even know what we're up against, and we don't know where he is. There isn't really much strategy we can use."

"What do we know about our enemy?" Sora wondered, having been absent from all the previous discussions they'd conducted.

"He's very powerful, even though he's only at adult level," Koushiro reported. "I haven't been able to get much more than that. I think there's some magic on the books I've managed to get that makes it hard for me to get any information from them."

"There's also a prophecy that says the smallest will defeat him, but we haven't figured out who that is yet," Tentomon added.

"Then we'll have to hit him with all we've got," Piyomon spoke up. "If he's that powerful, it'll take more than one of us to defeat him. Maybe all of us."

Taichi rubbed his forehead in a gesture of tired frustration. Koushiro noted with some interest that he'd been doing that quite often lately. "We'll find out when the time comes, I suppose," he decided, sitting down and finally showing some hint of his exhaustion.

"You didn't sleep, did you?" Sora asked.

"A little," he defended, but relented when he saw the look in her eyes. "I couldn't. I kept trying to, but I just couldn't drift off." He sighed deeply and rested his head in his hands.

"That's probably not a good strategy," Jyou observed, settling into the mode of doctor again.

Taichi shrugged slightly, uncomfortable in the sudden criticism and attention he was being given. Sora noticed, and attempted to change the subject. "Weren't you going to light a fire, Koushiro?"

The wizard looked up from his book. "Oh, right," he remembered. Quickly, he assembled a small group of sticks into a fire, then he stood a few feet back and shut his eyes in concentration.

The hand movements for the spell which created a fire were very easy. It was one of the first spells taught to apprentice wizards and sorcerers. However, to keep a fire going for a long time, and with very little wood, was a bit more complicated. A beginning wizard would have been obliged to recite a complicated spell while performing the movements, but Koushiro was experienced enough that he did not require the recitation of the rhyme.

Instead, he formed the words in his mind, visualizing them instead of speaking them. He formed his hands into a cup at waist level, breathed deeply, and then moved his fingers in a complex pattern while turning the palms upward and outward. When he was finished, his hands formed a cup that faced the pile of twigs intended to light aflame. Then, Koushiro stretched his arms so that the cup his hands formed was stretched towards the pile. He opened his eyes then, and the fire instantaneously began, sparking easily and then quickly erupting into a full fledged flame.

The redhead wizard sighed, wiping his palms on the side of his shirt and smiling contentedly. He sat down again and returned to his book, almost completely unaware of – or at least uninterested in – his audience.

Jyou smiled slightly, shaking his head in disbelief. "I don't care how many times you do that, Koushiro, I'll still be fascinated," he reported.

Koushiro looked up from his book momentarily to favor the young doctor with a grin. "I know," he replied somewhat cheekily.

Sora, too, was somewhat awed. "I wish I had even a sliver of magic in me," she sighed. "I'd love to be able to do something like that, wouldn't you, Taichi?"

Taichi's only response was a soft snore, which caused the other three to laugh softly.

***

Sorry for the delay in this. I had a week off from school, which of course meant that I did nothing for seven days straight. Could have worked on this, but did I? Nope. This part is a little shorter than the others, but it's coming to a close soon, so the next part will be longer.

How much more in this story? Well, I can't make any promises 'cause I'd just end up breaking them, but I guess at least two more parts. There will be at least one more sequel to this. Writing the ending to this story is proving difficult only because I keep getting distracted by ideas I have for the next one. And a few others that are completely unrelated! I'm having trouble keeping them straight, but I'm determined to finish this before I start the next one.

Eventually, I will answer the question of what happened to Ken, I promise, but not for a while. And if you're looking for more Daikari – as many of you are – I promise there will be some really good stuff in the story after this one. I can promise that. ^_^  Thanks again for all the nice reviews. ^_^