The Crystal Gate

Part Thirteen: Gathering Storm Clouds

Standard Disclaimer Thingie: Digimon is not mine, including most characters and all digimon. Plot is mine. Don't steal, don't sue, don't forget to moo.

Moo.

Although the day before had been bright and sunny, with the evening came cool breezes and heavy clouds, and by morning a steady downpour was falling. The palace's residents awoke in a sleepy state. For the first time in a few weeks, fires had to be lit in more than the kitchen hearths, and those who had set aside warmer clothing now pulled out sweaters and jackets to ward off the returning cold.

Hikari slept late, partially because of the rain and partially because she was still a bit tired from the previous days' journey from Takaishi. The morning meal had been served and cleared away by the time she awoke, her head feeling heavy and her mind feeling fuzzy. It took some effort to pull herself from bed, fighting against the rain-induced lethargy, and then the chill in her room startled her into wakefulness.

She took a thin blanket from the bed and wrapped it over her shoulders, her bare feet thankful for warm, soft carpeting as she crossed the room to the window. Outside, the gardens were emptied of the usual gardeners, strollers, and flower-admirers. A few servants darted through the rain, their footsteps splashing in the shallow puddles that formed on the stone paths. The grass had become swamp-like, nearly underwater, and the dirt in the flowerbeds was quickly turning to mud. A cold breeze battered the outside of the window and slipped through the cracks. A chill ran down her spine.

Tailmon, still lying on the bed, lifted her head and yawned wide. Her big blue eyes seemed to shine in the dim light. "Rain?" she wondered sleepily, disappointment evident in her voice. "Yuck." She yawned again.

"Not simply rain, I think," Hikari disagreed. She was peering out into the gardens, though her eyes suggested that she was not actually seeing anything beyond her window. "Something feels strange."

"Strange? Strange as in good, or strange as in bad?" Tailmon questioned. She sat up and stretched, arching her back and yawning once again before jumping down from the bed to cross the room.

"Strange as in bad, I think," her partner answered, frowning slightly. "I don't know why, yet. It's too vague."

"You slept a long time," the feline digimon noted. "No dreams?"

She shook her head. "Nothing I remember well enough to be of any help," came the response. "Dreams are not the most reliable way of obtaining information anyway." She sighed and turned away from the window.

Tailmon had climbed on to a chair so she might have a better view of the gardens beyond. Not much of a fan of rainy weather, she had no interest in going outside that day. Below, a few footsteps splashed through the water as some unfortunate soul who was obliged to be out in the nasty weather hurried for shelter. "Maybe it's only rain," she said hopefully.

Miyako awoke after a series of mildly disturbing dreams. The moment she opened her eyes, bright sun assaulted her, and she shut them again; the dreams evaporating from her memory. She rolled over on to her side, but the sun did not fade in the slightest.

The sound of the others conversing nearby prevented her from falling back to sleep. She could hear the crackling of a fire, and wondered who would be insane enough to light a fire when the sun itself felt hot enough to fry her skin in seconds. After a few moments, the scent of roasting fish caused her stomach to moan with hunger, and she tried opening her eyes again.

All there was, as there had ever been in this part of the desert, was the sand. All she saw was sand everywhere, and all she felt was heat. She rolled back onto her back and saw the sky, bright blue, extending without clouds in every direction.

"Should be enough to last a few days," Shijo was saying. "Shouldn't be a problem."

"That's enough for breakfast," his partner disagreed, and as Miyako sat up, she saw they were discussing a small pile of fish similar to the ones now being cooked. "What will you eat?"

"That's enough for a few days," Shijo returned, sounding a bit frustrated. "You'll have to eat a little less than usual so long as we're traveling. Unless you'd like to carry an entire Whamon on your back?"

"I wouldn't eat a Whamon," Agumon answered, sounding appalled at the very idea.

"Well then, this will have to last us, then," the boy replied. He had, as he had the night before, skewered a few small fish on sticks and had propped them over the fire. He turned them now so they might cook on both sides.

Miyako helped herself to a few sips more of water. The night had been cool until the sun had risen, and the water was still cool, though not as icily delicious as it had been the night before. She brushed some hairs from her face – a few of them had stuck to her skin with sweat.

Daisuke was standing a few steps away from the fire, staring off into the distance, a frown on his face, as though he were unhappy about something. Miyako wondered if he was unhappy about the heat of the desert or the previous day's battle or something else entirely, but whichever it was, she didn't feel inclined to approach him about it. She glanced toward Ken, who was seated closer to the fire, drinking from a canteen, but he was looking into the flames as though they might hold the secret to life, and also didn't seem in the mood for conversation.

"Well, it's done," Shijo announced, taking one of the skewers away from the flame. He held it near to his face and sniffed. A grin crossed his face as he determined it was ready to eat, smelling delicious. "One each!" he scolded his partner, since Agumon already had a greedy look in his eyes as though he planned to eat every one of them for himself.

The meal was eaten in relative silence, each person and digimon being quite content for the moment with the food. Halfway through her fish, Miyako ventured to ask, "Are you going back there?"

Daisuke slowly chewed his mouthful of food before he replied. Shijo turned toward him, eyes wide, eager for the answer. After what seemed like an eternity, he shook his head. Shijo looked as though he couldn't decide whether to be thrilled or disappointed.

"No," he said finally. "I'm not going to find anything there."

"If there's anything left undestroyed," V-mon added, mouth half-full of delicious fish.

"Undestroyed?" Miyako echoed.

"The whole room nearly caved in before we got out," Shijo told her.

"Be amazing…if anything is left undamaged…," Agumon added between bites.

"There wasn't anything," Ken said shortly, and the conversation ended.

"You're sure…?" Miyako ventured to question after a moment of uncomfortable silence had passed. "Maybe somewhere you hadn't looked…?" He shook his head and tore off a piece of fish with his teeth.

Another long moment of semi-uncomfortable silence passed, though Miyako was beginning to get the impression that she was possibly the only one uncomfortable.

"So, where are we going now?" Shijo questioned, looking toward Daisuke, who frowned at him as if to remind him that he had not precisely been invited along on the journey.

"Back to the palace," Daisuke answered after a few moments of glaring which Shijo pretended to be oblivious to. "I have this bad feeling…."

"What do you mean you don't travel in the rain?" Takeru questioned. "I've seen Piyomon travel in the rain plenty of times!"

A group of Piyomon that were to become the messengers of Hida had settled itself into what had once been a shed behind the manor house. They'd appropriated a section of the grounds for their own, but for the moment, each of the fifteen was within the ramshackle building. Some were napping, some were chatting amongst themselves, and some had taken it upon themselves to try to repair some of the building, for a few drops of water were falling through the damaged roof.

"Sorry, sir," said the spokes-bird. "This is a big storm, I can feel it in my wings. The wind is strong and the air is cold, and it will only get stronger the further south I go."

"The further south…?" Takeru echoed, then shook his head. "Look, I need to have this message delivered to the palace…."

"Sorry sir," said the Piyomon yet again. "I can't travel in this weather. Maybe you don't know, since you don't fly, but it's not an ordinary storm. It'd be too risky for us to travel in this weather. As soon as the weather clears, I'd be happy to carry your message…."

Takeru sighed in frustration and left the shed, letting the door slam behind him. Outside, he stood under the overhanging rafters for a long moment and watched the rain fall. The sound of the rain pounding heavily on the shed roof overhead threatened to drown out the sound of his thoughts, if only for a few moments.

"Do you feel anything strange in the air?" he questioned of his partner, who, as usual, was perched atop his head.

"No…," Patamon admitted, "but I'm not a bird digimon. Maybe it's an intuition you only have if you have feathers."

"You have feathers when you evolve!"

"Yes, but I'm still not a bird," he answered calmly. "What's in this message you want so desperately to have delivered?"

"It's not anything important," Takeru admitted, stepping away from the rafters and heading back to the large house. Rain soaked him almost immediately, but he'd gotten drenched heading to the shed and so he barely noticed it. "I only wanted to tell them about Shakkoumon, and hope there'd be some information."

For a few moments, there was no sound but the steady pounding of the rain. Takeru followed a path of raised, flat stones back to the house, grateful for their presence allowed him to avoid sinking in the mud. Before long he'd reached the back door. It opened with a creak and he stood in what had once been a kitchen, water dripping from every part of him on to the floor.

"Something about the way those Piyomon were talking makes me feel uneasy," Takeru admitted, pulling his shoes and socks off. His socks were soaked clear through and his shoes, one of the only things that had traveled with him from Takaishi, had small puddles of water in the heels when he took them off. His feet were cold, but at least he didn't squish when he walked.

"About how they said it was no ordinary storm?" Patamon questioned. "That makes me feel like maybe something bad is going to happen."

"Reminds me of how Vamdemon made the sky cloud over and blocked the sun," his partner recalled. He pulled off the thin jacket he'd been wearing. Like most of the clothes he wore, it was borrowed, and he hung it on the doorknob so it might dry.

"Weather magic, maybe?" Patamon wondered, shaking the worst of the water off with a shiver. "Maybe we should tell Koushiro. Maybe he'd know what's going on."

Much as embroidery and sewing were not Sora's favorite activities, there wasn't much else to be done on a rainy afternoon. She had lately been in the habit of wandering through the gardens, sometimes bringing with her a book to read in the bright sunlight, the scent of the flowers hanging about in the spring air. Today, however, the morning's gentle misting had grown into a steady downpour, and so she followed Mimi into her favorite sewing parlor and took up a complex pattern showing Piyomon flying cheerfully through gardens with huge flowers opening below them. The happy scene was depressing on a day like this, when her own Piyomon was not flying through the flowers but lazily perched on the back of a tall chair, falling in and out of sleep.

Mimi was her usual cheerful self, her mood seemingly oblivious to the depressing weather. She kept up a steady stream of chatter, which Sora occasionally was obliged to respond to, rarely with more than a nod or a mumble of agreement. The afternoon slowly dragged on until the door to the room opened and a tall pile of papers entered.

Actually, it was Yamato behind a tall pile, but at first it appeared as though he were truly a walking pile of papers. He shut the door with some difficulty and crossed the room, setting the pile down on the low table between the chairs. He sank on to the floor beside it, sighing heavily in frustration.

"What's all that?" Mimi ventured to ask, looking to be rather alarmed at the size of the pile.

"My worst enemy," Yamato answered darkly, a rather frightening sort of look in his eyes.

"I'm sure," she answered dryly, and laughed. "Now, that'd would be funny, wouldn't it? A mighty warrior felled by a pile of papers?"

He glared even more intensely in her direction until she'd stopped giggling and leaned back in her chair, hiding behind her work, suddenly seeming to be incredibly concerned with where the needle should next be placed. Then, he sighed again and picked up the topmost paper.

Sora, who had remained so quiet he had barely noticed her, ventured to question in a much more reasonable tone, "What is that all about?"

"The scary part of it is that I don't even know," he answered, squinting at the scribbles on the page. "Something having to do with a law regarding Piyomon…?"

"Compensation of messenger services," Mimi said, not glancing up from her work. "It's a law requiring that Piyomon and anyone else who carries a message be compensated appropriately for their services."

There was a long moment of stunned silence in which both Sora and Yamato stared at her with open mouths. "How did you - ?" Yamato began.

"Considering everything, I'm surprised you don't," Mimi answered, still not looking up from her embroidering. "The leader of the largest Piyomon village in Yagami was here only two mornings ago to meet with the king, complaining about how little the Piyomon are paid for their services. They have to eat, you know, that's why they work."

"People don't pay them?" Sora questioned, glancing briefly toward Yamato, who was staring at Mimi as though he had never seen her before.

"They do," she answered, finally glancing up from her work long enough to noticed that she was being stared at. "Not very much, though, and there's no additional compensation if there's danger. There should be, of course, but some people don't and…." She trailed off, beginning to feel uncomfortable. "What?"

Yamato set down the paper and took the next one from the pile. "And this?" he questioned, thrusting it toward Mimi.

She took it from him, a suspicious look in her eyes as though she expected this to be some sort of joke. After a moment, she set it down, shrugging, "Wagon wheels," she said. When this statement returned only a blank stare from him, she sighed. "This is an old one, been argued about for the last two seasons. Wagon wheels should be made to a certain size and of a certain sort of wood or metal."

"There's a law about wagon wheels?" Sora questioned.

"There is now," Mimi answered. "They have to be strong enough to carry a certain amount of cargo, of course, and this is to ensure that at least any wagons that carry things to the palace will have wheels strong enough to carry the load."

"Amazing," Yamato said, and took the paper back. "Transportation…commerce regulations…I see." He took the next from the pile and handed it to her. "This one?"

She sighed heavily and took the paper. "Honestly, Yamato, what's this about?"

"Read, read!" he answered, taking a pen and ink and marking notes of what she had said on the top of the other two pages. "I might actually see an end to this before midnight if you help!"

"Weather magic?" Koushiro echoed, glancing up from the heavy volume he'd been absorbed in, a dark frown on his face. "I haven't sensed anything unusual, but I never spent much time studying weather magic and how it functions…."

"The Piyomon seem to think something's wrong with the weather," Takeru told him, sitting on a makeshift wooden chair. It looked as though it might fall apart if he sat too hard, and so he did not fall into it as he was inclined to do. He was still mostly soaked from the rain, and so it was a good thing that the office Koushiro had claimed as his own was not filled with expensive furniture to ruin. "They won't fly."

"I've never known a Piyomon to be deterred by rain," the wizard noted, frowning in thought. "I also find it to be a bad sign if we can't communicate with the rest of the world. If the storm is caused by magic, maybe it's something to be worried about." He sighed, leaning back in his own quickly-made chair, and scratched his head absently. "I should have brought more books with me."

"Isn't there some way you could send a message magically?" Takeru wondered. "Miyako is still at the palace – maybe she could search through books and find something of use."

"I could try to send a message on the wind," he replied, "but that would be less reliable than a Piyomon if the storm is magically created. I know of a few other ways of communicating, but they won't do any good because Miyako doesn't know them, and so she wouldn't get the message." Koushiro frowned even deeper and sighed.

"Well, there has to be some way of sending a message," Takeru said. "I don't know why, but if this is a storm created by magic, that means that someone is trying to prevent us from communicating…but who?"

"Maybe Mummymon and that sorceress?" Patamon suggested.

"I don't know if she has that sort of power," Koushiro admitted. "Weather magic is a very difficult thing to perform…that's why you don't see too many weather mages around these days. It takes a lot of power, drains one very quickly. Even the wind spell Miyako's nearly mastered is very draining and leaves her exhausted. To create a massive storm, to keep it going for very long…it's very difficult. I don't know if that sorceress has enough power."

"She seems to have powerful magic," Takeru recalled, thinking of the warrior digimon who had appeared from nowhere and attacked him in the rice fields. "I don't know about weather, though."

Koushiro was quiet for a long moment, running through a mental list of possible spells, silently calculating a dozen different things in his mind. Takeru, sensing that he was thinking and not simply staring blankly into space, fell silent rather than interrupt with questions or theories, a thousand of which occurred to him with every passing second. After what felt like an eternity, the wizard looked toward him.

"Did you write something down for the Piyomon to carry?" he questioned. Takeru nodded and held out the slightly damp piece of paper for him to see. "It will have to be rewritten. I think I might add a few words to it." He turned in his chair and found a dry sheet of paper and a bottle of ink. A few moments later, he had rewritten the entirety of the letter and added a few lines of his own. Then, he folded the paper in a complex pattern.

Takeru thought to question if there was some magic involved in the folding, but fell silent, realizing before he had even formed the question in his mind that there most certainly was. He knew it with certainty, he realized, the same way as he had known that the crystal would take him where he needed to be. He reached absently into his pocket and felt the smooth surface of the polished rock and wondered if the time had come for him to be somewhere else. If he had hoped for some sort of answer from the crystal, however, it gave him none.

His musings were interrupted then as Koushiro rose from his seat, taking the folded piece of paper with him. Takeru hurried to follow him from the room, down the hall, and up the stairs. They ascended several flights, passing through rooms filled with ancient furniture and piles of ancient accounting binders before finding a nearly-empty room with a set of tall glass doors that opened on to a balcony. The sound of the rain was loud here, but Koushiro opened the windows wide, ignoring the mist that soaked him with the first gentle wisp of the wind.

"Let us hope I remember how to do this," the wizard mumbled, and Takeru remembered only then that Koushiro had never been much of a practicing wizard but more of a studying, teaching sort of wizard. He squeezed his fingers tight around the folds of papers and again Takeru came to the immediate realization that there was some magic involved in this action as well. Then, Koushiro raised his arms in the air and tossed the paper out the window.

For a moment, it dropped like a stone, and Takeru thought that the spell must certainly have failed. Then, a gentle gust of wind tossed it upward and then, by perhaps its own power, the paper floated even higher, and then took off in a southerly direction at a surprisingly quick rate of speed. For a moment, Takeru stared in open-mouthed astonishment, for any sort of magic is astonishing to one who has never seen it before. "I suppose it worked, then," he said then, trying to sound casual, as though this sort of thing were nothing at all.

Koushiro sighed for what must have been the thousandth time that day. "Let us hope it did," he said and shut the doors behind him. "Let us hope it finds the right destination despite the rain."

"Does the storm seem magical to you?" Patamon wondered from where he had rested on his partner's head.

The wizard only shrugged. "In some ways," he admitted, "and in some ways not. Magic is not so simple as to be there or not there. There is magic in the air, but…," he sighed yet again. "It is hard to say for certain."

After half a day of walking, they were still not in sight of the edge of the desert. Although everyone was fairly certain they were headed in the right direction, they'd seen no landmarks of any kind to judge their progress, and the constantly shifting, never ending sands made it hard to be completely sure.

Shortly after noon, with the sun in the highest part of the sky and the air hotter than ever, Miyako felt her legs give out and she fell down into the sand, feeling exhausted. Even now, her muscles and bones and every part of her body ached with each step she took. She'd ignored the pain for most of the day, but it had only grown worse, and finally she gave in to it and sank down into the sand on her knees, shutting her eyes to block out the bright sun.

"Maybe you're not completely all right," V-mon noted, peering around his partner's legs with a concerned glance.

"It has been a long day of walking," Agumon observed, watching as his partner pulled one of the half-filled canteens from his pack and offered it to Miyako. "My legs feel about to give out, too. Of course, I haven't had legs for very long, so that might be why."

"I'm all right," Miyako said, taking the canteen from Shijo and quickly downing a few gulps before remembering that they needed to conserve water. "Just a little…tired."

"I think more than a little," Ken disagreed. "Maybe we should rest for a while."

There was no disagreement to this, and even Miyako, who didn't want the others to feel as though she was holding them up, found she couldn't muster the energy to fight it. Immediately, Ken sat in the sand and took a few gulps of water, and Shijo, Agumon, and V-mon followed suit. Daisuke had stopped walking, but did not sit as the others did. Instead, he was staring in the direction they were heading, squinting in the sunlight, concentrating as though he was trying to see something.

"Don't you want some water?" V-mon questioned, holding up the canteen. Daisuke absently shook his head, not even glancing back toward the others. V-mon shrugged and took a few more gulps before reluctantly closing the bottle.

"Are you looking for something?" Miyako questioned. "You've been staring out into the sands all day. Are you looking for some landmark that I don't know about?"

He shook his head again, still not seeming to pay attention to the question, and then sighed and sat down in the sand as the others did, taking the canteen from his partner. "Trees, mostly," he said, shrugging, and taking a few gulps.

There was a bit of fruit, a few days old by now and so not as tasty as when it had been fresh, but still better than nothing. Since he hadn't the energy to cook more of the fish, Shijo handed a few of the fruits around. For a few moments there was silence as everyone ate and took a few more sips of water.

There was a calm gust of a warm breeze that did almost nothing to cool the air but thankfully didn't scatter the sand. No one spoke. There was no sound in the sands.

Suddenly, the wind grew stronger and the air grew slightly colder. A strange sensation sent shivers down her spine as the feel of magic drifted through the air. Miyako got to her feet immediately, forgetting for the moment about the soreness in her body and her exhaustion, and cast out with her magical senses.

"What are you doing?" Hawkmon questioned from where he lay, half-asleep in the sand below.

"I sense magic…," she answered.

"Bad magic?" V-mon asked, looking around for something, he didn't know what.

"No…," she answered vaguely, squinting through the bright light, honing the magical sense of her vision, catching sight of a sparkle in the sunlight, a flash of color other than the pale blue of the sky or the pale beige and yellow of the sands. "There!"

"You're not going to - ," Daisuke began, fearful of sandstorms, but she ignored him, dashing across the sand quickly. After a moment, the others could see that a small scrap of paper was floating gently on the breeze.

"What is that?" Shijo questioned, but no one hand any sort of explanation.

The paper didn't seem interested in coming to the ground, and so Miyako was obliged to use magic to force it down, sending her surprisingly strong magic up into the clouds to wrap around the floating object. When she'd grabbed hold of it, she pulled it in and took it in her hands. It was, as it had seemed to be, a scrap of paper.

It was damp and slightly tattered, no doubt the result of having traveled a far distance on the breeze, perhaps through rain and clouds. For a few moments she held it in her hands, feeling the magic that had carried it, each second her frown slowly spreading into a wide smile.

"You seem happy," Hawkmon commented when she'd returned to where the others were seated.

"Odd way to feel over a scrap of paper," V-mon said, tossing the pit of his devoured fruit in the air and catching it.

"It's not any old paper," Miyako scolded him, a frown briefly reappearing, only to be quickly replaced by the same cheerful sort of grin. "This is a message, sent by magic, and, unless I'm mistaken, it's from Koushiro."

"The wizard at the palace sent a message?" Wormmon questioned, obviously still confused over why this had her in such a good mood.

She shook her head. "He's not at the palace, he's in Takaishi." She began to open the paper with some care, as dampness had caused it to stick to itself. "It must be raining there," she said wistfully, jealous of the rain as only one who has been spending a lot of time in the desert can be. "This paper is a bit wet."

"What does it say?" V-mon questioned when she'd opened it fully.

"The ink has run a bit, so it's not easy to decipher," she admitted, her smile fading. "Something about…Shakkoumon?" She shook her head. "I've never heard of that digimon." She glanced up and cast her gaze at the others, but saw only blank stares in response.

"It's raining in Takaishi," she continued. "I could have told him that. Why would he write me with a weather report? Something about Piyomon…."

"Piyomon?" Hawkmon echoed. "What about Piyomon?"

Squinting even harder to make out the blurry ink, Miyako stared blankly at the paper for a few moments longer but was unable to make out the rest of the message. She shook her head and groaned in frustration. "Why would he send a paper message in the rain? Did he not think it would be damaged?"

"How did he know to find you in the desert?" V-mon wondered.

"He probably didn't," she answered, falling back in the sand and letting the paper drop to the ground beside her. "He probably set the spell to find me, and it did, even if I wasn't where he thought I would be."

"The Piyomon won't fly," Ken said, having taken up the paper. "That would explain why he didn't send it with a Piyomon."

"Won't fly?" Hawkmon repeated. "Why?"

He shrugged. "Something about rain…."

"Piyomon fly in the rain," V-mon disagreed, glancing toward his partner. "We've gotten messages carried by Piyomon in the middle of thunderstorms, haven't we?" Daisuke nodded.

"Unless…," Miyako sat up again and looked at the paper over Ken's shoulder.

"Unless it was a magical storm," he finished.