38

Separated

"The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling brought no response; the inscrutable forces of the Wild had summoned their victim beyond recall – and held him fast." – Algernon Blackwood, "The Wendigo"

As Ken made his offer, the corpse-thing before him slowly lifted its battered left arm. The mouth pulled itself into a kind of grimacing grin, and he could see that several teeth were missing. Osamu took the D-3 from Ken's hand, and Ken shivered at the feel of his dead brother's fingers, which were colder even than the frigid air that hung around them.

"Now…" the lich said in its wasted voice, "Now it is where it belongs. You are now back to the nothingness you were meant to be."

Ken had drawn his hand back against his chest. All the blood had gone from his face. He wondered what would happen, now that Osamu had what he wanted. Maybe his brother would kill him and avenge itself, or maybe it would shamble back into the darkness of the woods and leave him to wander there for eternity.

Ken-chan… I need you here.

Was that Shadramon's voice? It must have been imagination. Shadramon was not here, and the sound – if it could even be called sound – was so faint and far. But the voice came again, and became a droning plea that echoed through Ken's mind.

Osamu was raising the Digivice above his misshapen head. A wave of darkness spread outwards from the D-3, the opposite of the light that brought evolution. Ken felt nothing, and there was no visible effect of the black emanation, but at its coming the imagined voice of Shadramon was abruptly cut off.

The battle commenced with Wendimon's pounce. Kangaroomon managed to beat back one massive hand with a flurry of punches, but the larger monster seemed more annoyed than pained by it. Shadramon flew up above the trees to use Flare Buster, but his flames simply bounced off the enemy's primitive helmet. In retaliation Wendimon extended its right arm and lashed the insect Digimon as with a whip, knocking Shadramon backwards and leaving Kangaroomon temporarily alone.

Curling its left hand into a fist, Wendimon threw a punch of its own. Kangaroomon's gloves came up to block it, but he may as well have tried to block an oncoming train. The force of the blow drove him back against one of the trees, and he fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of him. Wendimon reached forward to squeeze the life from him.

"Flare Buster!"

A barrage of fireballs crashed into Wendimon's chest, and it stumbled backwards.

"Are you alright, Kangaroomon?"

Daisuke's partner got back to his feet and managed a nod. The pair of them faced Wendimon as the monster stepped towards them again, but before the fight could resume, Shadramon reverted without warning to Wormmon.

"Wormmon! What happened?"

The larval Digimon was looking down at his unintimidating body in disbelief. He couldn't answer. The power of his evolution had simply been sucked out of him in an instant, and now a caterpillar was left to take on the behemoth that was Wendimon.

Daisuke looked about him in wonderment. The forest was much the same, but the sun had apparently vanished, and the ground was newly concealed by a blanket of snow. He had heard Kangaroomon call his name, but now all was silent again. He was about to call out himself when he was stopped by something lying on the ground some distance away. He moved in that direction, and as he approached he began to see that it wasn't an object, but rather an impression in the snow.

Once he had come up with it, he could see that what he had found was a footprint of some kind. The print was huge, with the impressions of three large claws at one end. Obviously only a Digimon could make a print like that. But where had it gone?

Daisuke swiveled his head around to see if he could spot another track, and caught sight of one in the direction that the first footprint pointed. There was quite a stretch between the two. It would take him several long jumps to cover that distance. He continued onward, following the tracks. It occurred to him that he might not want to catch up with this thing, but he knew how huge the woods were, and that he would never be able to find his way out unless someone showed him.

Is this where Ken went? he thought. Maybe this thing got him. The idea caused him to hurry more, but eventually the tracks seemed to have ended. As far ahead as he went he couldn't find another one, and thinking back he couldn't be sure if the distance between them hadn't gotten bigger with each print.

"Man, I wish V-mon was here…"

The forest was starting to spook him. Having just one more person there would have been enough to shake the feeling, but alone, without his team members, Daisuke felt strangely weak and exposed. The forest was much darker now. In those shadows there might be any number of concealed enemies waiting for the opportunity to close in.

Several times Daisuke turned suddenly around, trying to surprise anything that might be lurking behind him. He tried to laugh at himself, but the sound was small and ineffectual. In the end, he could not prevent himself from breaking into a nervous jog. He no longer followed the direction that the mysterious footprints had led in – to tell the truth he had forgotten which direction that was.

There's no telling how the situation might have played out if he hadn't stumbled over something in his path. He scrambled back to his feet and called on his remaining courage, trying to look like someone who should not be attacked offhand. A few quick glances, however, showed him that there was no one there. When he looked down to see what had tripped him up, he saw that it was a sunken place in the forest floor. The bottom was devoid of snow, but there was a barely noticeable ring of snow around it piled higher than elsewhere. It looked almost like a small crater.

Temporarily forgetting his fear, Daisuke scanned the ground around the depression and noticed a new set of footprints. These were human-shaped, pretty clearly made by shoes of some kind. Could they be Ken's? There was only one way to find out.

Kangaroomon and Wormmon could hear the trees crashing behind them as Wendimon continued its pursuit. Once Wormmon had devolved, Kangaroomon knew that there was no chance of beating the giant without Wormmon getting hurt in the process. He hated to run from a fight just as much as his human partner did, but with both of the Chosen Digimon unable to evolve, and one of them only in his Child-level form, there was no choice.

With Wormmon huddled in his front pouch, Kangaroomon hopped as quickly as his powerful legs could propel him through the forest, dodging between trees. Wendimon was on their heels, ploughing through whatever stood in its way. At first Kangaroomon had appeared to have superior speed, but once Wendimon could no longer keep up by running it had began to make huge flying leaps, and now gradually gained on its targets.

But all of a sudden the sounds of pursuit ceased. Kangaroomon kept on anyway, not sure if the pause might be a trick to get him to slacken his speed. When he had gotten some distance and still heard nothing, however, he did stop his jumping and turned around to look back the way they had come. To his surprise, there was no sign of Wendimon. Had it really given up the chase?

He got his answer when there was a terrifying cacophony behind him. Trees fell over, the ground quaked, and Wendimon's wild, alien scent washed over him. Spinning about in sudden panic, Kangaroomon was met with the nightmarish sight of Wendimon's inhuman face thrust forward, madness in the beady red eyes, the dripping mouth wide open. The monster cried out again, pummeling Kangaroomon with its deadly voice while Wormmon cowered low in his pouch.

This time Daisuke's partner was in too much aural pain to even attempt blocking Wendimon's club-like arm. He was hit and flew back, breaking through several trees before coming to a stop. Wormmon had been thrown from his hiding place and lay motionless on the ground. Kangaroomon attempted to fight the weakness coming over him, but in the end he could not prevent reverting to V-mon.

Another cold wind blew through the woods. Ken wrapped his arms around himself and groaned softly, feeling as though he were drowning in ice water. From far off in the forest there came a low sound that brought him no comfort. It was a chuckle, unmistakably in the same voice that had summoned him to this haunted place, and Osamu gave his shattered grin again in answer to it.

"It's almost time for me to go, Ken. Time to fly and burn. You can stay here until you freeze or starve. Before I go, I want you to know that your partner is dead. And his Digimon friend is dead. And all the rest of your worthless friends will be dead soon, too. That idiot with the goggles is here, but neither of you are getting out. I guess one of you will have to eat the other."

Ken looked up at the living corpse again.

"Motomiya is…"

And it was as he spoke that he saw someone emerge from the darkness behind his dead brother.