113

Sato

"His was a religious soul that had failed to find good in the scheme of things; and lacking it, was impelled to make of evil itself an object of secret reverence." – Clark Ashton Smith, "The Devotee of Evil"

Hikari couldn't remember much of what had happened since Sato Katsu had left her. The black tides must have receded, not yet swallowing her completely. Perhaps they would return again and again, one of the weapons used to heighten her misery. She told herself she must try to resist… but what hope was there? Her strength would give out – the strength poor Tailmon had always insisted she had – and she could not turn to her friends to renew and bolster it. Instead her fear for them sapped what strength she had. She would try to fight back, she promised herself. She would try. But all the while a pitiful voice in the back of her mind whispered, It's over.

Though no longer handcuffed to the pillar, she didn't move around much. There was no activity or position that eased the ache of her muscles, which had been hurting since she woke up and felt still worse after the roughness of her encounter with Sato.

Sato! She shuddered at every thought of him. What had she done to make him hate her so much? And yet his malignance was somehow less disturbing than his apparent obsession with her, and the deadness of spirit that made him seem inhuman in a way neither she nor her friends had encountered before. A man like that was capable of anything – as she had already seen – and now his monstrous ingenuity had turned towards her and, worse, to the others.

Alone in the cell's darkness there was no escape either physically or mentally. If she turned her thoughts away from the terrifying riddle of Sato Katsu, she could only turn to other worries and horrors. Tailmon and the other partner Digimon killed by the Being that took the form of AncientSphinxmon. That Being himself, whose mystery was as deep and black as Sato's. Her family in the human world. They had to be sick with worry, and who knew what dangers her brother and the other free Chosen Children were facing. The thing or things that had attacked Iori's girlfriend could threaten any one of the group's friends or relatives.

There did eventually come a brief respite. Utterly exhausted with worry, Hikari drifted into a lethargic daze, motionless on the floor, and though still miserable she was spared for a while the sharp pangs caused by thinking. Body, mind, and soul were given up to a dull ache.

At some point she must have fallen asleep in spite of her situation, because she realized that she was dreaming. She dreamt that she was out of the lightless cell, though this did nothing to relieve her – she stood upon the shore of the Dark Ocean, Dagomon's Ocean, on a seemingly limitless beach broken up by hulking lumps of rock that stood out of the haze.

As always she heard the rolling of the waves, but she could see as well that the ocean's surface was troubled. Breakers crashed on the sand to one side of her, and before long she saw that the sky, too, was not quiescent. At irregular intervals a change came over it. Sometimes it darkened for a moment, becoming the color of coal and dimming the ghostly landscape, while other times there would be a flash of… not light, but the sky's gray paled almost to whiteness. These brightenings died out in an instant, but they seemed to come a little more frequently than the darkenings. Suggestions of sounds accompanied both, vast and far off.

As the dream went on both phenomena became less common. The violence of the waves subsided. The World of Darkness returned to its common state of deceptive stillness, its silence broken only by the murmur of the sluggish tide. Hikari hadn't yet moved much except to look around her. Doubtless something terrifying would happen soon, but she waited for it almost with apathy. After all, what new nightmare could be worse than reality?

Apart from its Spartan furnishings, the chamber that served as Sato Katsu's private room differed little from the Chosen Children's cells. Stark and impersonal, the room was undecorated and, except for the dead grayness of its atmosphere, unlit. All it contained were a desk, an untouched cot, and Sato Katsu himself. He had come to it directly after his brief interview with the messenger from the Dark Ocean rather than turn his attention back to his prisoners.

By this point in his life Sato's mental states had little in common with those of a normal human being. He could barely recall the sensation of happiness, but didn't feel the loss keenly, and for the most part sadness also was alien to him now. He was a man consumed by his work. Any fervent flare of emotion could usually be traced back to the progress of his campaign to bring about the ultimate triumph of Darkness. For the most part, he felt nothing.

But there were occasional dim stirrings of emotion in the background of his mind, more inferred than truly felt. Tonight he seemed to himself uneasy. Obviously enough, the cause must be that part of the Deep One's message that had essentially questioned his devotion to the Master who had sent it. Dagomon. The High Priest of Darkness, the Elder God…

Sato asked himself whether his god's rebuke was deserved. It was true that he had not been sleeping lately except to shape and invade the dreams of the Chosen Children, and that he had spent many a night pacing through dark halls when his mind could have been open to direct communication with his deity. But it had not been his intention to keep himself cut off. Not his conscious intention, at least. But an unconscious one…?

Sato frowned. The possibility was disturbing. Dagomon had shown him his purpose in life, the common destiny of all lives, and the god did not forgive laxity. One of Sato's hands curled into a fist and flung itself against the rough stone of the nearby wall. My zeal will not falter now, he commanded himself. Not when the awaited time is finally here.

He withdrew his hand from the wall. The impact had reopened one of the cuts in his wrist, made by his knife during bargains with various evil entities, and with blank disinterest he watched a drop of blood make its way down his arm.

He walked over to the desk, where the children's Digivices and D-Terminals lay. It would not be long at all now before his goal was achieved. It had been many long years in coming, but the powers of darkness had done their work continually and, despite the numerous setbacks, done it well. At this very moment the six captured Chosen Children were in the process of providing the last measure of negative energy needed. Sato knew it would be useless for him to try and sleep tonight. There would be plenty of time to commune with his god once the suspense was over.

Perhaps for now he should be checking on the progress of the Chosen Children and their torturers. As far as personal participation went, he had yet to interview Ichijouji or Inoue. Motomiya he would leave alone for now – the Dark Man had something in progress with that one – but at the moment he didn't feel inclined to bother with the other two children either. This was perhaps surprising, given how long he had awaited a time when the Chosen Children would be in his power, but tonight his mood was an uncommon one – a mood for reflection. It might have been brought on by his recent return to the World of Darkness. Several years had passed since his last sojourn there.

Reminiscence did not come naturally to Sato. Large swaths of his memory lay in dimness, not forgotten, but not differentiated into distinct images. Each segment of his strange life had its own overarching theme, and broad impressions of their dominant emotions came to him more easily than events and incidents. Several did manage to rise above the waste, however, like low dark islands lashed by stormy seas.

He remembered meeting his mother for the last time. They had just happened to pass by each other on the street, and for a moment their eyes met. He saw the confusion that came over her expression, could almost feel her pulse quicken with something like hope and something like fear. A long moment had passed, and then she dropped her eyes. Even allowing for the time that had passed, this young man was too old to be her boy. They walked past each other, and Sato had the sensation that she had turned and stared after him. He did not look back.

That had been his last fleeting contact with his old life. It had been a chance accident, and he couldn't say what it meant to him, or whether it meant anything. What came before it held more significance, because that was a step he had deliberately taken, one of the most important tasks of his early discipleship. Over the course of a few nights' work he had set out down the path he still walked today, and he did not regret it, though there was a memory, clearer than the others, which he wished he didn't have – a low, shocked voice asking, "Katsu?"

But what did it matter? There was no other way that things could have happened. Time spent resisting the Darkness was time wasted. He'd learned that well enough, and even that early on his destiny was irrevocable. Soon, events would prove to both him and his enemies that his course had been the logical one, in spite of every random chance that had saved the Chosen Children in the past.

He wondered if they really did have any hope left. Maybe even now they expected another divine intervention to save them. Sato, of course, knew better. He knew that in the end the inevitable would happen, and the powers of light would run out of miracles. They always did.

When the time came Hikari was startled, not because the thing was frightening but because it was so different from the sort of development she had been expecting. She heard a voice, either distant, or nearby and muffled by the fog. Not at all menacing, it was the voice of a boy, and though she couldn't tell what he said he seemed to be distressed. Curious in spite of her surroundings, and eager to offer what little assistance she could, Hikari tried to decide what direction the sound had come from.

The speaker seemed to be somewhere among the rocks, so she began her search there. For the moment she had forgotten she was dreaming, but it came back to her suddenly when she happened to wonder if the unrecognized voice might have belonged to one of her friends. But of course not. Her friends were imprisoned in Sato's lair, just as she herself was. Even so, she continued looking. The sight of a human being, even as a figment of dream, would be more than welcome.

The fog seemed thicker among the rocks. While not exactly a maze, the area was easy to get turned around in, and for a while Hikari saw no sign of the person, though she could hear his voice, still muffled and indistinct but intermittently understandable.

"Ginjiro-san?" he called. "Maeko-chan?"

"Hello?" Hikari said, matching the volume of the voice but going no louder.

"Where am I…?" she heard him wonder, talking to himself as though he had failed to hear her. "I need to get back. Everyone is…"

"Excuse me," Hikari tried again. "Who are you?"

No answer. A creeping sensation came over her in the renewed silence. Her steps slowed, became more cautious, but she kept walking. Around the next rock… and there he was. Following his voice she had come back towards the sea, and he stood within a large semicircle of rock with empty sand stretching to the sea beyond him. He was surveying his settings with a kind of franticness, and just as Hikari stepped out from among the rocks he glanced in her direction.

He was a boy about her age, with dark hair and expressive eyes, wearing unremarkable clothing and a dismayed expression. She'd never seen him before, and couldn't help but wonder what he was doing in this dark world. She was about to speak to him when he turned his gaze elsewhere. He took a few steps, stopped in indecision. It looked as if he hadn't even seen her.

"At this rate," he murmured to himself, "the battle may…" He glanced quickly in several directions. "Hello!?"

Hikari stood frozen where she was, trying to understand. She noticed now that besides being muffled his voice held a quality hers lacked. It reminded her of when she, Miyako, and Ken had been lost in the distorted forest, able to see and hear the others without being seen or heard. If this was a similar case, how could she reach this boy? Though she did not know him, something about him seemed to call out to her. She felt a desperate desire to help him. Somehow. Anyhow.

Just as the thought crossed her mind, a sudden change came over the atmosphere. Though she wouldn't have been able to describe it, she knew that she felt it, the way the human ear might detect a high-pitched sound without hearing it. The boy seemed to feel it too, for they simultaneously turned their eyes and their attention out to the misty reaches of the gray sea. Something stirred out there – an invisible motion that sent its ripples through Hikari's mind.

The strength threatened to go out of her knees. She didn't know what was going to happen, but she knew that the nightmare had begun in earnest, and she knew she would have given anything not to face it. She could hear the boy breathing heavily. He may not have any idea what his surroundings meant, but his instincts must have realized something terrifying was coming.

Then they could see it. In that universe of gray a blackness appeared, rising slowly out of the waves. From the start she saw its enormity, and could only stand and stare in horror, but when the red eyes appeared, shining like windows into hell, she let out a shrieking gasp and collapsed. Yet the eyes held hers – on her knees, with her hands clutching the sand, her gaze followed them as they rose higher and higher, until a mountain of living darkness towered above the ocean's surface.

In her peripheral vision Hikari could see the boy stagger a little. Like her, he must have felt something at that moment reaching for his soul. She had felt the thing's presence before, during her second Dark World experience, and the idea came to her that this time she was spared the worst of its influence only because its attention focused on the boy.

This Presence felt more alive, somehow, more real than the shades she had met in previous dreams. Was she not dreaming now? Waking or sleeping she was trapped in the World of Darkness, and what was that world but nightmare itself?

With a yell the boy fell suddenly to his knees. His hands flew to his head, clutching and grabbing at it as if he would pull out the thing that invaded it. His gasps and moans told of the losing struggle. As the gut-wrenching scene went on Hikari tried to crawl towards him, to reach and comfort him, and combine their feeble human strengths. But she felt the mind of the evil on the horizon turn fully towards hers, and then she could do nothing but lie in the sand and writhe as the horror of that contact swept over her.

The mists were thickening. The darkness deepened – she felt rather than saw that her companion too was downed, and helpless. She closed her eyes, and they screamed together.