130
Forms of Darkness
"A monstrous creature resembling nothing so much as a squid…with certain abominable approximations to the human form in its contours. I had never before seen so utterly loathsome and nightmarish a form… About [it] there hung an air of sinister evil so profound and pervasive that I could not think it the product of any one world or age. Rather must that monstrous shape be a focus for all the evil in unbounded space, throughout the aeons past and to come…" – H. P. Lovecraft, "The Diary of Alonzo Typer"
Something broke the surface of gray, agitated water. Despite the distance the Chosen Children could clearly discern its shape as it continued to rise – a huge black pyramid. Many of them couldn't help but be surprised. What was an enormous building like that doing in the middle of Tokyo Bay? Was it still Tokyo Bay? They only turned away from the strange sight when they heard the sound of whimpering in their midst.
"Hikari? What's wrong?" Taichi asked. He had never seen his sister like this before – shaking, eyes squeezed shut as if she feared to see something unbearable. Hikari's masking of her insecurities was never more rigid than when she was in his presence. He'd thought at first that she was hurt, but saw now that that couldn't be the case.
Most of the other Chosen Children were equally shocked, but a few had seen this before, and had an idea of what it meant. Miyako, her hands on Hikari's shoulders, cast a nervous look over the water, where the black pyramid continued to rise and the tops of other structures began to thrust out of the waves.
The Chosen and Agents were not the only ones watching that ominous ascent. Atop a nearby building, out of their sight, the Dark Man stood and observed the frothing water with a quiet smile.
"You've played the game well, my friend," he said. "It took a while, but now almost all of the inessential pieces have been removed from the board, and there is only your last triumph remaining. Demon gone, Anubimon, Neptunemon – and poor Sato! I think he really must have regretted at the very end. Not that that matters, of course."
The Dark Man chuckled, then raised his left hand and examined it with a critical eye.
"Fading already," he muttered. "And so soon after eating, too. Well, it can't be helped. I suppose I should go say my farewells."
Down at street level, Iori suddenly exclaimed, "That looks like…!"
Some of the other Chosen Children had noticed it too. The black pyramid had risen high enough that they could see it wasn't actually a pyramid. It was only the cap of a larger structure – the top of an obelisk. It rose at about the center of the cluster of black stone structures, tallest of them, a Dark Tower to dwarf every other in existence.
The other buildings had various shapes, though all appeared to be of the same material. In size they were all enormous, in architecture strange and inhuman.
"It's like a whole sunken city!" Mimi said in an awed whisper. "Like Atlantis…"
Hikari, quiet now but still fighting against her panic, realized then that she had seen that "city" before. For two nights in a row she had walked amidst those windowless buildings. It was the place of alien stench, of explosions in the mind, and of the physically impossible door that opened on blackness and…
"No," she said, shaking her head, with the tears of terror in her staring eyes. "No, it's a dream!" She looked wildly to the others, seeming to shrink into herself. "This is a dream, isn't it? Please! Tell me it's…!"
Her fear was contagious. Her friends didn't know what had so excited her, but from moment to moment they liked the situation less and less. No one had even managed to stammer out a response when a voice that did not belong to any of them, an adult's voice, spoke up.
"Sorry to disappoint you, but it's not a dream this time."
Several of the Digimon exclaimed before the sentence was completed. They sensed a presence that unsettled them, and for half of them the sensation was not unfamiliar. Everyone turned to face the figure standing a short distance from the group. It was the Dark Man, looking more phantasmal than ever, the shadows clinging to him so that only the thin crescent of his white teeth and the stars twinkling deep in his eye sockets could be discerned clearly.
Of the six oldest Chosen Children, only Yamato had encountered the Dark Man before, in dreams, but the rest knew without being told that something evil stood before them.
"Bastard…" Daisuke growled. He felt the impulse to call Lighdramon to attack this monster, and only hesitated because he remembered the outcome of their previous battle. Similar reflections had passed through the minds of several of his friends, and they and their partners could only wait on edge for whatever was about to happen. Lighdramon and his friends knew that if it came to a battle, the end result would probably be the same as last time, but they would defend their partners to the death again if they must.
"Don't worry, I'm not here to fight," the Dark Man said. "I just wanted to have a last little talk. By the way, if Professor Takenouchi were here he could tell you that that's R'lyeh on the horizon, not Atlantis."
Sora and Mimi both started.
Gennai stepped forward. He made no overtly threatening action, but anyone could see that he was ready to strike with his sword at a moment's notice. Benjamin and Ilya stood attentive behind him.
"Who are you?" Gennai asked.
"Don't you have other things to attend to?" the Dark Man asked, gesturing with one hand. As if it had conjured them the Deep Ones stepped forward out of the gathering fog and began creeping closer. Gennai reflected for a moment, then nodded to his compatriots and reluctantly wheeled to face the approaching threat. The other two Agents followed his lead. Several of the younger Chosen Children wondered if they would have done so had they known just how dangerous this "man" was.
"What do you want?" Ken asked, just managing to keep his voice from quavering.
"A talk, like I said," the Dark Man answered. "I'll keep it brief." He raised one of his hands before him as if to let them examine it. The gesture wasn't aggressive, but the Armor Digimon tensed at it. Daisuke and the others only stared. The hand was ill-defined, almost insubstantial, as if it were melting into oily black smoke.
"What's happening?" Ken asked at last.
"Now that Sato's dead, my contract is fulfilled," the Dark Man answered, smiling wistfully.
"What do you mean?" asked Takeru. "What are you?"
"Just darkness," the Dark Man said with a shrug. "Sato Katsu called upon Darkness for a servant to aid him, and he got me. Now that he's gone I'm no longer needed, and so before long I'll be absorbed back into the Source that gave me birth."
Unsure how to respond, the Chosen Children kept quiet for a second, still looking suspicious and bewildered.
"It's a pity I have to pass away before the climax, but I'm leaving you in the capable hands…" He smirked at that. "…of someone you might say I'm related to. That's the wonderful thing about Darkness, you see. It takes a thousand different forms, and once you've beaten them all, well…" And he chuckled softly. "…then come the next thousand."
Other parts of the Dark Man's body had now begun to lose their coherence. His feet were lost in black fumes that hovered just over the ground. His skin and clothing had lost some of their color, as if someone with a remote were lowering the brightness of a television screen.
"Wait, damn it!" Daisuke shouted. "You killed Nat-chan, and the rest! I'm not letting you leave without settling things!"
The Dark Man laughed.
"Oh, you really have yourself to thank. If you hadn't beaten Takaishi-kun to the punch and killed Sato," he said, with a malicious grin at Takeru, "I might still have a reason to exist. Didn't you say you were going to wipe the smile off my face? You're about to wipe me out entirely."
The Dark One's laughter rose towards the sunless sky with the pitch black effluvia of his dissolving form. There was something so terrible in the sound, something so insane and powerful and heartless, so divorced from human emotion that the Chosen Children and their partners could not help but shudder at it. Soon the whole mass of blackness was ascending in a shapeless cloud. Two eyes like supernovae burned in it for a few moments, then it all faded into thin air, and the laughter abruptly ceased.
"Dammit!" Daisuke screamed, collapsing forward and beating his hands on the concrete. After all the pain that thing had caused, it got to just vanish into thin air? With a laugh? It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.
The others said nothing. There seemed nothing to say. Some felt angry too, some of the older Chosen felt confused, but Ken and the others who had interacted with the Dark One felt relieved that its last joke was now behind them.
It was only now that some of the Chosen Children, and more particularly their Digimon, took notice again of their surroundings. While present, the Dark Man had absorbed all their attention, but now some looked again out over the water to see what was developing, or looked aside to make sure that the Agents had the attacking Deep Ones under control. Jou turned his head in time to see Benjamin's sword slice through his current opponent, the last of the creatures within striking distance. As it disintegrated, Benjamin and the other two Agents paused.
Dozens of Deep Ones could be seen to have gathered in spite of the fog, but they had ceased to advance. Gennai wondered if perhaps they were wary after seeing so many of their kind cut down, but it struck him that they looked more as if they were waiting for something.
Taichi had turned his attention back to his sister after the Dark One had vanished. Hikari was quiet now, but still not quite able to conceal her distress.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
Hikari looked at him. "Y-Yes…" she answered. But she could see that he wasn't convinced, and she also noticed Takeru watching her and looking doubtful. She knew without looking that Tailmon was observing her too, and at that moment she felt the urge to apologize to them all. She might have done something of the kind, despite having no idea what words to use, when something happened to drive everything else from her mind.
It was a sensation of some sort, more mental than physical. She'd felt something like it before – the sense of a change and of something behind her that she'd felt before seeing her first Deep One in the hallway of the elementary school. This time the feeling was much more intense. She heard several of the others exclaim, and wondered whether they felt it too, or if they had only seen whatever she must see upon turning back towards the water and the black city.
Those keeping an eye on the motionless Deep Ones saw them crouch, get down on all fours, and bow their heads. Hikari turned.
The fortress city called R'lyeh had ceased to rise. Many buildings were still partially submerged, but near the center of the vista a kind of foundation had emerged. All eyes were drawn to the great black throne that stood at the base of that sky-piercing Dark Tower, and to its occupant. A single subterranean boom shook the world as the awful form of Dagomon rose from its seat and drew itself up to its full height. Taking into account its distance from where they stood, the Thing had to be the largest Digimon they'd ever seen.
As Dagomon stepped forward into the sea and out of the fogbank that shrouded his city, they became able to discern more details of his features. Burning red eyes were set in an octopoid head whose tentacles twitched and swayed above a gaping maw of needle-sharp teeth. Tentacles were everywhere, forming even the frame for the bat-like wings sprouting from Dagomon's back. The left arm – if it could be called an arm – was simply a bundle of them, squirming and pulsing, while the tentacles that might have made up the right arm were fused into a single thick limb. Incongruously, a chain of what looked like prayer beads hung upon the High Priest of Darkness's shoulders.
For a long moment nothing moved but the titanic figure and the waves it raised at every step. The sight of Dagomon had paralyzed the Chosen Children and even the Digimon with horror. The stillness of Odaiba was only broken when Hikari began to scream.