93

Positions of Power

"Ye lite fayles, ye shadows gather. There is no god but evil; no lite but darkness; no hope but doom—" – Robert E. Howard, "Dig Me No Grave"

The first thing Taichi became aware of was a gentle movement. From his perspective, it was what woke him up. The bed he'd been lying in and the sheets his restless movement had disarrayed were gone, replaced by a hard surface that curved upward on either side. Hurriedly sitting up, he felt it pitch back and forth, and recognized that he was in a small boat. Regaining his balance and steadying the vessel, he began taking in more details of his surroundings.

The wooden boat, scarcely big enough for two passengers, floated in motionless water that stretched to a horizon hidden behind walls of silvery mist. There were no waves, and no breath of wind. Taichi couldn't hear anything, though there was a smell in the air that he didn't like. He couldn't identify it, and thought that it might even be his imagination, but it wasn't any more likeable for either reason.

Now came the time for wondering where he was and how he had gotten there. He had to be outside, or there wouldn't be any mist. Peering over the edge of the boat didn't tell him anything. The water was a filmy gray, giving no indication of how deep it might be, and with the mists hanging close around he had no way of knowing whether he might be on an ocean or in a swimming pool.

In fact, he wasn't even sure whether or not the boat was moving. Sometimes he thought that it was, like it had seemed when he woke, but with the stillness and blankness of the water he couldn't be sure. All of his sensations were vague, as in one of those dreams that seem real until the dreamer wakes up and wonders how he could ever have thought so.

Yes, a dream of gray waters. Hadn't he been thinking about such dreams not long ago, when he was on his way home? He remembered now how he had arrived at the apartment and paced in his room for long minutes despite his exhaustion. He'd made as little contact with his parents as possible, afraid that they might smell Lilithmon's victims on him. He hadn't been sure if the stench of blood had really clung to his clothes as it had to his mind.

And now he was dreaming. This had to be the start of another nightmare. He waited, wondering apprehensively what he would be forced to see and feel. But he couldn't wait long. All day long his frustration and rage had been building up over his fear and forced inaction, and now a burst of that anger welled up inside him.

"Well, come on and let's do this!" he shouted into the mist, not caring what heard him. "You cowards! Come out of hiding and fight me, or whatever, but stop wasting my time with these stupid dreams!"

He would have continued, no matter how loud the silence that met his shouts got. But suddenly the boat was moving, as if a powerful current had risen out of nowhere, and the surprise of it sent him stumbling. He might have pitched headlong into the water, but as he started to fall a movement of the water's surface sent him reeling backwards. It didn't seem to have been made by the wake of the boat, and a sudden terror had turned his stomach and thrown him away from whatever had caused it.

The boat rocked wildly, and for a horrible moment he was afraid it would capsize, but before long it had regained its equilibrium, and he was left in its bottom, shaken. Unsteadily, cautiously, he raised himself up again. There were still no landmarks to go by, but he sensed that the boat was picking up speed. What had sent it into motion he had no idea, but whatever had turned the ocean into a rushing river, he knew that it couldn't bode well for him. That unnerving scent had gotten stronger, cold and sterile in his nostrils.

Looking ahead, at first he could see nothing but the never-thinning mist. Then something silent and dark emerged from the cloudy vagueness ahead. It passed by on the starboard side of the boat, and was lost again in the fog, though as it passed he could see that it was a building such as one might see in Tokyo, crumbled and rotted into a shapeless hulk. Other buildings followed, on both sides, all of them looking like the age-blackened ruins left by some apocalyptic war.

He didn't know what it meant, but after a while he felt the speed of the boat slacken, as if it was approaching its destination. Taichi sat quiet, staring ahead. He welcomed a confrontation, but a traitorous part of him dreaded it as well. After another minute, a new shape rose out of the fog. He saw that it was a squared-off archway, and when another materialized behind the first he recognized them as the porticos that decorated the apartment complex where he lived.

The boat passed solemnly under the first of the porticos, and the others followed in eerie procession. Taichi still crouched in the little craft, tensed up with expectation. He noticed that a few of the objects were warped or cracked like the buildings that had come before. Was he floating over the streets of a dead and drowned Tokyo?

No, he thought, insistent. It's just a dream.

The last portico passed over his head, and a moment later the boat had run aground. Trying to keep steady, Taichi stood up and started to climb out. The land the boat had struck was an uneven plateau of cracked and blasted concrete. It looked like an abandoned battlefield, but it seemed solid enough, and Taichi was happy to leave the water behind him.

The mist still hung around, so he couldn't see how far the concrete extended. He started walking, not sure where he was headed, but unwilling to remain inactive. The going was slow over the rough terrain. Picking his way along, he had time to wonder what was waiting for him here. The boat hadn't started moving until he had called out his challenge.

What would he face? He thought of the Airdramon that had burnt him alive in a previous dream. Maybe it would be another Digimon this time. Since this was a dream, it could really be anything. He promised himself that whatever it was he would meet it with all his courage and all his anger. Pointless as it might be, he would fight it. If any chance to hurt the unknown forces that had taken Hikari and made life hellish for him and his friends presented itself, he would take it.

The general trend of the ground seemed to be uphill in the direction he was moving, so he had to prevent himself from falling when a step took him suddenly to the edge of a concrete cliff. There was about a meter's drop or more from the crumbled edge he stood at to the field of concrete that continued on into the fog below. He wondered if he was going in the right direction, and was about to call out again when a sound like thunder broke the silence, and a large slab of the concrete he was standing on tumbled from the cliff.

As before, the unexpected movement cost him his balance. Falling backwards off the chunk of rock as it hit the ground, he felt a burst of pain in his back as he landed on the far from even ground. It was lucky that he hadn't broken his skull. Swearing, he raised himself up, the rubble shifting under him with a heavy rattle.

"Taichi?"

There was another twinge of pain as he turned his head, looking for the source of the juvenile growling that could only be Agumon's voice. At the base of the artificial cliff he saw a spot of orange, and climbing carefully over the rocks he got close enough to see that it really was Agumon there – or part of him. Taichi could see an arm and head, but the rest of his partner was hidden due to his being half buried in the side of the cliff. The reptilian Digimon was bruised as though he had just lost a battle, and Taichi wondered if the unstable concrete had somehow collapsed on him.

"Agumon! Are you okay? Can you get out?"

Agumon strained against the rocks that pinned him, but soon winced and had to stop.

"Sorry, Taichi. It hurts."

Taichi was reaching out to put a hand on his partner when a strange feeling came over him. With the shock of his fall and the very convincing sensations it had given him, he had temporarily forgotten his conviction that he was dreaming. These past few nights the nightmares had differed from reality only because of their strange content. More realistic than dreams or hallucinations, they had the power to convince a person of anything.

So how did Agumon fit into this? His partner couldn't really be in the same dream as him, could he? Was he just a part of the dream? Taichi paused and studied the little dinosaur more carefully. He looked like Agumon, and sounded like Agumon… but did that prove he was Agumon? What if this was a trap of some kind?

"What's wrong, Taichi?"

The question seemed like a perfectly innocent one. Taichi remembered hearing that warm, friendly voice telling him to bring out his courage once, when he was reaching towards something else that had the potential to hurt him.

"Nothing," he said. He laid a hand on Agumon's extended foreclaw.

"So you've arrived, Yagami-san," said a voice somewhere behind him.

"Taichi, there's someone there," Agumon said.

Taichi didn't need to be told that. Letting go of Agumon, he straightened and turned around to see the dark figure of a man standing in the mist, half obscured. The quality of the voice alone told him that the confrontation he had been waiting for had arrived. He could sense the hatred behind its icy civility.

"Alright," Taichi said. "Who are you?"

"You've already guessed who I am. I sent the message from your sister's D-Terminal this afternoon," the voice answered. The mist and the shroud of darkness left the speaker's facial features indistinct. Taichi clenched his fists, unsure of what would happen if he gave in to the urge to close the distance between them.

"Then you're the one behind all this?"

"You could say that I am."

"I wish I wasn't dreaming right now," Taichi told him, glaring.

"So do I," the figure said. "Today I finally had the pleasure of meeting some of your friends in person. I look forward to getting to know them better."

"Making us think that Lilithmon had them… Where are they? What did you do to them?" Taichi asked, his voice rising with his questions.

"What happened to Tailmon and the others?" Agumon joined in, looking just as angry as Taichi from his rock prison.

"For now I'll leave that to your imagination," the other answered. "Though I wonder if not knowing would hurt as much as knowing what happened, and what's going to happen. But I'll make sure you learn all the details eventually. Then we'll find out."

"You're sick," Taichi spat.

"I'm pragmatic. Our plan relies on causing as much pain as possible. The Chosen Children are an essential part of that. It's the reason that we were so glad to meet Takaishi-san, and Ichijouji-san, and Moto—"

"Shut up, damn it!" Taichi yelled at him, not wanting to hear the names ticked off one by one. "When I wake up, I'm going to find you. I'm going to save them all!"

"You'll try," the man said, unperturbed. "I know your guilt would never let you rest if you didn't. Not after you've failed them like this."

"I…" But he couldn't respond. He knew that he had failed them.

"You'd think of poor Hikari-san…"

That was exactly what he didn't want to think about. Protecting his little sister had been his most sacred duty. He was supposed to always be there for her, but that morning he had sent her – sent all of them, but especially her – into the waiting clutches of this psychopath. He thought he recognized the smell that had been bothering him now. It was exactly the way he remembered that hospital smelling when Hikari lay there, at the brink of death. Something much crueler than a cold threatened her now.

"No… I won't let anything else happen," he said, as much to himself as to the other. Snap out of it, he told himself. This is part of their plan, too. Putting these bad memories in my head.

"I think you'll find that that isn't your choice to make."

Taichi's rage flared up again.

"That's enough! Agumon!"

His Digivice was suddenly in his hand. If Agumon evolved to Greymon, it would free him from the concrete that he was pinned under. Taichi would take no more from this man who threatened him and all he cared about. He turned towards his partner, whose look of determination matched his own.

A second passed, and then another. Taichi looked to his Digivice in confusion, but there was no reaction of any kind.

"T-Taichi," Agumon called, realizing that something was wrong.

"An evolution born of light has no place here," Sato's voice said from the mist. "The Holy Device is useless. No amount of courage can change that. Darkness is fed by fear as well as by pain, and by anger, hatred, sorrow, and despair. That is the only source of power here."

Taichi looked long at Agumon. He could see his partner was trying, but he knew that his enemy was right. It would be no use. He spun around, and charged toward the man in the fog.

He had almost reached his goal when the ground changed without warning beneath his feet. With a cacophonous rumble, what had been a flat field of unbroken concrete shattered and shifted. A network of cracks appeared in the surface, and chunks of rock sank or were lifted up at random. Taichi stumbled and went down. His clothing and the skin beneath were torn open, and he was bleeding from a half dozen wounds as he shakily raised himself.

Before him the shrouded form of Sato Katsu stood, raised on an unbroken island above the chaos of broken stone. Even as injured as he was, Taichi would have crawled on, and come to grips with his tormenter, but behind him he heard the heard the crash of titanic feet, and the appalling noise of bones grinding against each other.

There was no chance of escaping. Rolling onto his back, Taichi saw death rising over him in the form of SkullGreymon. A miasma of purple darkness rolled off the gray bones of the huge figure, the skeletal monster that would have towered over any living Greymon. The fleshless claws reached for him.

He screamed as the monster seized him, tightening its grip until he thought he would be crushed to a puddle of gore. Raised aloft, he found himself looking past SkullGreymon's uneven fangs –

into the deepest, most utter blackness he had ever seen.