Enter The Light
Part Twenty-Four: Home
Standard Disclaimer Thingie: Digimon, all related characters, merchandise, television, etc, is not mine. I make no money from the creation of this fanfiction. I do it because…well…I'm crazy and I strangely enjoy it. Don't steal, don't sue. Thanx.
"No," Koushiro answered, a frown on his face. "Nothing. Not a single mention."
"That doesn't make any sense," Takeru grumbled. He gave up his pacing and sat down heavily in the nearest chair. He'd just returned from his parents' home that morning, and he still had the dust from the mine shafts in his hair and eyebrows. Absently, he rubbed his head behind his ears, the dust itching his scalp. "I've seen him. Sora's seen him. Mimi saw him. At least a hundred witnesses saw him. Is it a mass hallucination? We can't all be crazy!"
"The odds are against it," Gomamon put in from his partner's shoulder. Jyou shot him a look, and he grinned cheekily.
"Could it be some sort of magic?" Yamato wondered, turning away from the window and leaning against the frame. "Some sort of elaborate illusion, maybe?"
All eyes turned toward Koushiro, who frowned even deeper. "It seems possible, though unlikely."
"Why would anyone do that, though?" Sora asked. She was seated on a dark blue couch, Mimi beside her. "Why would anyone go to so much trouble to try to show us something that doesn't exist?"
No one had an answer for that worth sharing.
"I have been diligently searching through an innumerable amount of books and volumes," Koushiro reported. "While I have seen no mention of either the digimon in bandages or the sorceress you reported, Sora, I have discovered many mentions of magical crystals."
"Many?" Sora echoed.
"Crystals are potent items, used in quite a few spells and magical items," the wizard responded. "Any simple beginner's spell book has quite a few things that could be done with crystals. I doubt, however, that what you overheard was anything that would be found in a beginner's spell book."
"So, any idea of what they could have been talking about?" Takeru wanted to know.
"Some," Koushiro answered. "There are many worlds which are near to our own and yet cannot be seen or reached by ordinary humans. To reach another world, it requires a great deal of magic and a great deal of need. In fact, the magic required is such that it cannot usually be summoned by any individual spell-caster. To reach another world, it is necessary to have a group of mages working together, and even then, it is not always certain that the spell will succeed.
"However, crystals being as potent as they are, are capable of storing a great deal of magic, often for centuries. If the crystals stored enough magic and they were located in places that have magical powers of their own, during a time of great magic…the full moon, for example…it is theoretically possible to open a portal to another world."
"Theoretically possible?" Yamato questioned. "As in, you're not sure?"
"As in no one's sure," Koushiro replied. "The history of magic goes back centuries, to before the advent of writing, and even things that are written down cannot always be successfully preserved for centuries. In all of the written records I have consulted, there has been no one who has ever actually used crystals to open a portal to another world, at least not for more than a few seconds."
"That doesn't mean they didn't, though," Takeru put in. "It could be that they did, but it was never reported. Or they passed through the portal but never returned."
"Why would they be searching in villages for crystals?" Sora questioned. "Surely it's possible to easily obtain crystals…?"
"Ridiculously simple," Koushiro assured her. "Any small village would have a shop full of them – they're used for decoration, in lights, in windows, in jewlery. I would guess that they are not searching for just any crystals, but specific crystals, perhaps which have been powered with magic."
"They're searching for crystals…specific crystals?" Yamato wondered.
"That would be my guess," the wizard answered.
"Why?" Mimi wanted to know. "Do they want to go somewhere?"
"No," Taichi said, speaking for the first time. "They want to bring something here."
"What?"
"An army."
The day was quite warm, the sun high in the sky and the weather pleasant as the carriage neared its destination. Peering out through the glass windows, Hikari saw green grass and blue sky everywhere. She turned to her traveling companion, who was also staring out the window with some interest, and asked, "Do you remember this place?"
"This place?" he echoed, still intently studying the scenery. "I – I don't think so…."
"It's only grass and sky now," Tailmon reminded her partner in a sleepy voice, resting on the seat beside Hikari. "I don't think you'd remember it either." She yawned, showing her teeth, and shut her blue eyes once more.
"You're right, of course," Hikari consented. "I'm sorry. I'm terribly fearful that you don't remember anything and won't again." She frowned.
"You're partially afraid of his sister," Tailmon mumbled without opening her eyes.
Daisuke turned away from the window, a look of surprise on his otherwise confused face. "Afraid of my sister?" he echoed. "Should I be afraid?"
"No," Hikari stated authoritatively, glaring at her partner, who paid no attention, having resumed her nap. "She's only joking. I'm not afraid of your sister." She paused. "Jun is a bit…intimidating…when she is concerned about you. That's all."
Tailmon yawned loudly without opening her eyes.
"Intimidating," Daisuke repeated. He frowned in thought, and glanced out the window once more. Something caught his eye that he did not remember, for he pointed and questioned, "What's that?"
Hikari peered in the direction he had pointed. A very large pile of heavy stones and pieces of broken and splintered wood lay upon the ground. The carriage slowly rumbled passed, the road then curving away from the wreckage. "It used to be a prison," she told him, feeling slightly cold at the memory of the Bakemon who had briefly guarded and inhabited the structure.
He was quiet, his eyes glancing back as they left the rubble behind. He turned away from the window, the object of interest no longer visible. He was quiet a moment, and then asked, "What happened to it?"
Tailmon opened one eye, glancing in the direction of her partner. When a few moments had gone by in silence, the feline digimon reported: "We destroyed it."
Hikari cast another glare in her partner's direction. Tailmon only shrugged and shut her eye again, continuing her feigned sleep.
"Destroyed it? Really?" Some part of Daisuke must have thought this to be amusing in some way. He raised his eyebrows and a hint of a grin appeared on his face.
Hikari sighed. "Yes," she admitted. "Not purposefully. It's a long story."
There was no longer a hint of a grin, but an actual grin appearing on his face now, making Daisuke look more like himself than he had in some time. "You'll have to tell me."
"Some other time, perhaps," she told him, turning to peer out the window once more, uncertain whether to be pleased at his enthusiasm or not. Her own memories of the destruction of the prison were not memories she particularly wanted to revisit.
Daisuke didn't appear to be too upset by her reluctance, however, for he shortly resumed his own scenery gazing. The carriage wheels squeaked beneath them as they turned around a bend in the road and the place he had been born in appeared before them.
It was not the largest building in the kingdom, but it was an impressive sight – a massive home built with red-brick stones and dark black tiled roof, with many towers, a thick iron gate, a long drive up to the house itself through the surrounding gardens. Hikari turned away from the building so she might see if the sight of his home stirred any memories in him.
Daisuke was staring with eyes wide, his mouth having fallen slightly open. "Do you remember?" Hikari asked him.
He turned to face her, his eyes still wide open, and blinked once before he asked: "Are you sure…?"
"Sure?" she repeated, confused. "Sure of what?"
"Are you sure this is where," he paused, turned back to face their destination, "this is where l live?"
"I am completely certain," she assured him. Hikari glanced back toward Tailmon, whose blue eyes met her partner's and reflected her own concern.
The vehicle came to a halt at the end of the long drive, directly in front of the main entrance, which was a set of large double doors made of dark wood set into the red brick stones. Daisuke had by this time adopted an expression of stunned silence – although his eyes had retreated back inside his head, they were still wide with surprise, and he had said nothing further.
As Hikari had sent no word ahead to alert Jun that they were coming, she was not surprised to find that the front of the house was quite silent and devoid of people. She climbed down from the cart and waited while their driver went to announce their arrival to the household. Having been a bit fearful that Daisuke would be reluctant to leave the carriage, she was pleased to find that he climbed down without a moment's hesitation.
He stood on the dusty walkway and stared up at the house, but no longer with simple surprise. A different sort of expression was now on his face, for he was frowning, and his eyes were narrowed.
Hikari turned to hear the door open and a few servants came down the tall steps in a hurry. The leader, an elderly woman with gray hair hastily thrown into a bun, apologized for the delay. "Lady Jun will be down in a moment, I assure you, Princess," she told her. "Your visit is…unexpected."
"It's perfectly understandable," Hikari told her, and turned back toward Daisuke so she might urge him inside. He was gone.
The gardens were in full bloom, unfolding in a tapestry of colors that blanketed the house on all sides. The grass was a magnificent green and the trees were a mix of pink and white blossoms that fluttered in the warm breezes. A single stone path twisted and whirled its way through the grounds, through flowerbeds, under branches with overhanging blossoms, past a few pools and near the creek, where a small wooden bridge led the way to the fields beyond.
There were workers aplenty in the fields, planting and watering, weeding and tending, each visible from the stone path as nothing more than small blurry blobs in the distance, some wearing wide straw hats to keep the sun from their faces.
There was a faint sense of familiarity here, though no clear memories. Daisuke followed the stone as it led around the house. Behind it, he saw the kitchen entrance, where many servants hurried in and out, some carrying water from the creek beyond, others off on other errands or chores. He turned and went another direction, not wishing to be seen.
Near the creek's edge was a graveyard, a small iron fence surrounding it, an ancient tree's branches sheltering it from the sun, making the whole of it shady. Drawn to it, Daisuke strayed from the stone path for the first time, making his way across the thick grasses.
It was a small cemetery, a tiny square of fenced-off land set aside for the burial of the dead. Stone markers, made from the same pale-gray material as the path he had followed, were etched with the names of his dead ancestors, some of them long dead, some of them only recently deceased. If he had hoped that seeing them would bring back some sort of familial memory, Daisuke was mistaken, for most of the names unfamiliar and the dates from before his birth. Feeling discouraged, he wandered amongst the stones, reading each marker and becoming more and more certain that Hikari had been wrong.
If there had been an illusion once, he reasoned, there could be an illusion again. Suppose this was not him. Suppose that the person that she thought he must be was only another illusion that had yet to be broken.
In the center of the graveyard was a small wooden bench, and he sank into it, feeling discouraged and depressed. This was not his home. These were not his ancestors or relatives. He could not remember anything. Perhaps he was no one after all and never had been anyone at all.
For quite some time he sat, eyes focused on a spot of ground just past his feet, a warm breeze occasionally tousling his hair or blowing a few blossoms past his face. In the distance, he could hear snippets of lively conversations near the kitchen entrance, but they were of no interest to him, and he could make out no words clearly.
The sun was beginning to go down, though he was not aware of it. A cool breeze jolted him from his dark thoughts and he stood, knowing that he could not spend all day in this place and not eager to spend the dark night in a graveyard.
The branches of the tree above him waved in the breeze and then, suddenly, a small fruit unexpectedly fell from above and landed at his feet with a thud in the grass. Drawn to the sound, he saw the unripe object on the ground, and then his eyes wandered to the name on the gravestone above it.
This name, he recognized.
"No," Hikari said when several of the servants offered to go after Daisuke. "He'll come back on his own, soon enough. Leave him be for now."
They hesitated, nervous eyes glancing between each other, but agreed. The elderly housekeeper nodded, bowing on behalf of the others. "As you wish, your majesty," she said pleasantly. "Please, come inside."
Hikari did not have to wait long for Jun, for she had reached the bottom of the main staircase just as Hikari entered the hall. She had likely hurried, for her hair was a jumbled mess and she half wore, half-carried a shawl over her right shoulder. Jun appeared as though she very much would have liked to ask and demand quite a few things, but she held her tongue for the moment and said only, "It is good to see you, princess. I am sorry I was not here before…your visit is rather unexpected. My father is out in the fields, working."
"I know," Hikari told her gently. "It's quite all right. I wonder if I could speak to you, Jun. We have a few things to discuss."
"I daresay we do," Jun agreed, only barely managing to keep a lid on her impatience. "Let us find a suitable place to talk." She turned, hefting her shawl over both shoulders.
Soon enough, both women emerged into a small but comfortable looking sitting room. Tailmon made herself comfortable on the back of one of the plush couches, looking for all the world as though she wanted nothing more than a long nap. Hikari sat on the same couch, and Jun took a seat on an overstuffed armchair across from her.
Hikari was not quite sure where to begin, but was saved from doing so when Jun spoke. "Takeru came here some time ago – about a month now, I suppose. He told me…he told me a very unusual story. It was not what I expected to hear."
She waited, but Jun did not seem to be inclined to say anything more yet, so she nodded. "He was very insistent that someone should send word to you," she recalled. "I am glad that he came to you himself. I assume he told you the truth."
"He told me that my brother was with you, on a boat, headed to sea and a magical island that could free him from a spell," Jun stated. "That's the truth, I hope?"
Hikari nodded.
"And you have returned now? Does that mean that the spell has been broken?"
She hesitated a moment before she answered, and Jun could see that. Hikari had thought long and hard about how to answer such a question, but had not yet come up with an answer that satisfied her. "In a way, yes," she finally said.
Jun opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind and shut it, waiting instead for the explanation to be completed.
"I don't know exactly what happened to him," Hikari began. "Daisuke doesn't remember much of it, and I wasn't there. I can piece together the bits he does remember from what I have been told, and from there, I can try to make a bit of sense of what has happened."
She paused briefly, gathering her thoughts, and then continued, "I think it's best to begin at the beginning. You traveled to Ichijouji because he could not, being that we were in the Eastern Lands, fighting. While we were in the Eastern Lands, someone gave Daisuke a book and showed him a prophecy of the future, telling him that it would be important.
"Things were a bit…crazy for a while. When we returned to the palace, Daisuke decided that he would go to Ichijouji, too, but then he remembered the book. It seems that some sort of spell was placed on it, so that he was the only one who could touch it. He couldn't remember the prophecy, only that it was in the book. We thought that the prophecy might be of importance, and so we convinced him not to go after you, but to stay behind. In his place, Miyako went.
"Unfortunately, right after Miyako left, there was a vicious blizzard, and we feared Miyako might not survive the snows. Daisuke, Yamato, and I went to try and find her. Both of us were attacked by Bakemon. Miyako flew home, not knowing that we had been searching for her. The rest of us were separated during an attack. When the flames cleared, there was no sign of Daisuke."
Jun nodded. "This I know…," she interrupted.
"Yes," Hikari agreed. "And after this is where we have only speculation. Whoever it was that gave Daisuke that book also placed two spells on him, and whoever he was also brought him to the prison." She turned and pointed behind her, in the direction of the village and the rubble that had been there.
"To the…," Jun began, and broke off, eyes wide.
"One spell was a spell of slavery," Hikari continued. "I don't know why or for what purpose the spell was placed on him, but it was, and so was an illusion spell. It was nearly a month later that I came in contact with the one who had placed the spell on him, and he told me that the counter spell, the spell that would remove the slave spell, was in the book of dark magic and prophecy he had given Daisuke, and that book was lost."
"Lost?" Jun had grown a bit pale.
"There were two spells on him," Hikari reminded her. "One was of illusion. I did not agree to take Daisuke because I knew who he was – I did not recognize him, I did not know there was an illusion on him. I agreed because otherwise his former master would have killed him."
Jun was distinctly white now.
"Some boys from your village found his digivice in the rubble of the prison," she went on. "Miyako brought it to me, and then we were attacked near the coast. It was only then, when we were in danger, that somehow V-mon appeared, evolved, saved Daisuke and the rest of us, and then disappeared. The magic of the evolution must have been enough to break the illusion, but not enough to free him."
"And so you went to the island," Jun finished, her face slowly regaining a bit of color. "Did it work?"
Hikari was quite a moment before she answered. "The spell placed on him is ancient. Even in a place filled with magical knowledge, there was no record of a counter spell. I think the only place it was written was in that book – wherever it is now."
"Then it didn't work," Jun concluded, a frown appearing on her face. She was studying the leaves of a tree growing beyond the window she faced. A few cheerful blossoms scattered in the wind.
"Not in the way I'd hoped, no," Hikari answered. "I couldn't break the spell, nor could anyone else, not without that counter spell. However, I was able to…reduce its effects." When Jun looked up, curious confusion on her face, she explained: "The spell is dormant."
There was a moment of silence while Jun digested these words, and then she shook her head. "What does that mean? Is he still – Does the spell still bind him to you, or has he free will now?"
"Both," Hikari answered. "The spell was defeated, but not broken. So long as no one interferes, it will have no effect on him."
"And if someone interferes…?"
"If someone interferes – if someone chooses to reactivate the spell, then it will return, at full strength, and it will be as though it was never defeated," Hikari explained. "It can then be removed again easily, put to sleep again."
Jun was silent, her mind churning this new information over a few times.
"I will tell you now, as I have already told him," Hikari said, getting to her feet. "I give you my word that I will not abandon a search for an effective counter spell, to completely break it, and I give you my word as well that I will never activate it again and I'll do everything I can to keep anyone else from that as well."
Nodding, Jun leaned back in the chair, looking a bit tired. "I can't imagine that you ever would," she confessed, a faint smile appearing briefly.
The sun was beginning to set in the distance. Hikari made her way to the window and peered out at the colors of the sky. "There's something else you should know," she said. "His memory – it is returning, but slowly. In bits and pieces."
"His memory?" Jun sat up again to face Hikari, who sighed heavily and turned around, leaning against the window frame.
"The spell is very complex, very strong. It seeks to destroy the will of the person it holds," she told her. "To do that, it takes the memories of the previous life, so that the slave is not distracted by them. When the spell was laid to rest, so to speak, the memories began to return, but it is a slow process, and he doesn't yet remember very much."
Jun leaned back into her chair again, feeling a pain begin in her head. She massaged her forehead with her fingertips and sighed deeply.
The door opened and the subject of their conversation peered around the doorframe. Catching sight first of Hikari, his face spread into a wide smile and he flung the door open the rest of the way. "I have remembered!" he announced triumphantly. "I remembered something!"
Hikari turned away from the window, and Jun got to her feet. The movement of his sister catching his eye, Daisuke glanced in her direction and then stared for a long moment.
"And you…," he said, his voice lowering in volume. He narrowed his eyes, squinting toward her, then he turned away, shaking his head. "No, it's gone."
Hikari saw Jun stare at him open-mouthed for a long moment, and then she sank back into the chair she had vacated and shut her eyes, appearing tired again.
"What did you remember?" Hikari asked.
Probably a bit too much exposition here for my taste, but a bit of new stuff. Actually, nothing happens in this chapter. Expect a new one, with stuff hopefully happening, very soon! Thanks for reading!