133
That Last Hope
"For they mean to eat me up, I know, these Titanic darknesses: and soon like whiff I shall pass away, and leave the world to them." – M. P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud
At the center of a whirling cyclone of cloud floated Qinglongmon, his enormous body restlessly coiling with an agitation unusual in a being of such divine power. About him floated his many Digicores, the symbols of his godlike status, now fitfully flashing and darkening like so many warning lights. His comrades, the other Holy Beasts, likewise stood each at their corner of the Digital World, placing themselves in the role of the erased seals and the destroyed Holy Stones. If their strength were to waver an instant, it could mean the end of the Digital World in its current state. The darkness that had already assimilated the human world would begin to consume their world as well.
Qinglongmon had to maintain his concentration to prevent that from happening, but he allowed himself to wonder how the Chosen Children were faring against the enemy that must by now have finally shown itself. If they could not defeat this evil, then it was perhaps not an exaggeration to say that all would be lost.
Qinglongmon could not spare the energy required to ascertain what might be happening to the Chosen Children in the human world. The most he could do was judge the state of his Digicores, the spheres of Hope and Light, which bore some slight connection to the Chosen Children holding those Crests. What he read in those spheres did not much reassure him. The fight must be going against the Chosen Children, though they had not yet surrendered utterly.
A thought struck Qinglongmon then. There was a way in which he might aid them, but the risk of doing so would be great. He had no positive proof that it would be of any use to them. Qinglongmon was not one to make decisions quickly. He gave careful thought to every issue before any intervention. From the time this new idea came to him, several minutes passed before he decided whether or not to act upon it. In the end, the agitation of the spheres of Hope and Light decided him.
A misty golden glow appeared in the air before him, and began to coalesce. The process was slow. If he devoted too much of his attention to it, the Digital World might be compromised. Finally a glittering golden spark shot upwards and vanished.
The swirling clouds grew darker.
In another moment the innumerable tendrils of Dagomon's left arm would have been among his enemies. But a blinding light burst into existence in the Chosen Children's midst, and the tentacles hesitated, hovering in the air above their heads.
No one could have been more surprised by that brilliant gold explosion than the Chosen Children themselves. They had seen their end coming as the threat of capture by the dark god or death at his hands became imminent, but this sudden light had bought them another moment. What the light was they at first had no idea, though clearly it could not have been the work of Dagomon. Not far away, the Deep Ones froze in what may have been fright, giving their battered opponents time to strike once more before turning to see what was happening behind them.
Daisuke was the first to squint into the light's point of origin and see the compact shape hanging motionless at its center. What it was doing here, he had no idea, but he did not hesitate in reaching out a hand to grasp it. Here was their salvation.
"Digimental Up!"
The light brightened, and for an instant the Chosen Children's whole world seemed gold. Then the light had coalesced into a solid, man-sized shape, and Magnamon stood where V-mon had been, looking at his partner in evident surprise.
"Alright," Daisuke said. "We can beat him now, can't we?"
"…Right," Magnamon said. He turned to face Dagomon, who looked down upon him with red eyes as inscrutable as ever. The twisting tentacles stopped, then shot into motion, extending and converging on this new opponent. "Here I go!" Magnamon yelled. "Get down, guys! Plasma Shoot!"
Hatches on the golden Chrome Digizoid armor opened to fire their missiles, and almost immediately Magnamon was surrounded by explosions as his shots found their targets, blasting apart the tentacles they hit and unleashing a shockwave that shredded many of the rest. Magnamon shot upwards out of the chaos. With Dagomon so close to the Chosen Children, he had to end the battle as quickly as possible.
He stopped his ascent about level with Dagomon's gaping maw, from which was issuing a booming hiss of what may have been anger. As Magnamon began to shine and to cross his arms, Dagomon's gargantuan right limb rose. In another instant it would come slicing down with explosive force. But before that could happen, Magnamon unleashed his attack.
"Extreme Jihad!"
A sphere of golden energy, shining almost white in its intensity, formed with Magnamon at its center and began to expand outward. It continued to expand until Dagomon's entire head and much of his chest had been engulfed. His right arm struck, and most of it likewise disappeared into the light.
We did it, Daisuke thought. A miracle... It's over, Hikari-chan! Everyone!
Gradually the light of the explosion began to fade. Magnamon's attack had ended. Empty space gaped where Dagomon's head had been, and what remained of the partly obliterated chain of prayer beads had dropped into the sea. Staring upwards, the other Chosen Children looked as joyous as Daisuke felt. Even Hikari managed a tentative, incredulous smile. Meanwhile, Shadramon felt the intolerable mental pressure he'd been fighting fade, and gratefully collapsed and reverted to Wormmon.
Magnamon turned around to face the group. At that distance, they couldn't see that he was panting from the expenditure of energy, but they could see him pump one fist in a sign of victory. At any moment they expected to see the remainder of Dagomon's immense body disintegrate into data.
But when something did begin to happen, they reacted with horror.
Dagomon's bluish flesh began to squirm and ripple. Within the gaping chest cavity it molded itself into tendrils, twisting together, repairing the damage. Red eyes began to glow against the gray sky as the dark head began to reform. The lower jaw lolled horribly by itself for a moment as the tentacles of the face began to grow out of the seething chaos above it. The right arm began to return as a nest of tentacles sprouted from the right shoulder and, lengthening rapidly, wrapped themselves into one long appendage. Before many seconds had passed, Dagomon was whole once more.
As the Chosen Children stood frozen in despairing disbelief, Dagomon's mental influence swept over them like a great wave. The resistance of Shadramon's Psychic Wave had disappeared, and it seemed that the invasive power had redoubled in strength. Perhaps Dagomon was only now bringing his full strength to bear. Hikari dropped to her knees, screaming, and the rest of the Chosen Children's reactions were little less violent.
Magnamon quickly turned to find his enemy's red eyes once more blazing at him. Another of Dagomon's alien, half-mental vocalizations filled the air, and Magnamon saw something begin to form in the space between those eyes – a rapidly growing orb of perfect blackness, bolts of pale blue energy arcing across its surface. Towards him it came, a physical manifestation of psychic power.
Magnamon dodged to one side, but quick as thought the orb had changed its trajectory and, moving faster than the eye could follow, had him at its center. He could only scream out as its energies blasted his body a thousand times in a second. His mind went completely blank, and he regained consciousness only when he hit the pavement. Wincing from the pain, he tried to rise but couldn't, and found himself reverted to V-mon. The Chosen's last miracle had failed to save them.
In the general confusion and chaos, no one had time to react before the gray water ahead of Dagomon erupted in a single, perfectly vertical geyser as tall as Dagomon himself. For a moment the roaring column remained, then the water fell away, crashing down upon the waves, and an object stood revealed where it had been.
It was a weapon – a three-pronged trident of dull silver, its points cruelly barbed and raised to the sky. Dagomon's left arm reached out for it, the tentacles closing around it like the fingers of a hand. Quickly, but with a certain ceremonial air, the dark god lifted the trident and reversed its orientation. Then, enwrapping it several times with his huge right tentacle, he raised it above the group on the pavement, and thrust downward.
Yells arose from those who caught a glimpse of the onrushing weapon, but there was no time for any other reaction. The three barbs hit the pavement with a sound like an explosion, penetrating the concrete as easily as they might pierce flesh. Huge cracks tore through the street from the three points of impact, forming an irregular web, and what had been flat ground became rough, jagged terrain as great fragments tilted and shifted.
No one had been able to remain on their feet. The Chosen Children looked up through clouds of rising dust from where they had fallen, some of them thrown by the impact and slightly injured. The Agents and partner Digimon had also gone down. Several of the Deep Ones had fallen, but many of the surviving creatures had retreated during Magnamon's brief battle and were now waiting at a distance, bowing again at their deity's display of power.
At first stunned by the violence of the assault, some of the people and Digimon on the ground had just begun to stir when the towering trident began to shine with that light-blue radiance which some of them had begun to associate with the powers of the Dark Ocean. Rather than illuminating anything, that glow changed only the colors of the scene before it faded, leaving the world still darker than before.
In addition to the ongoing violation of their minds, the Chosen Children now began to experience difficulty moving. It was as if the intangible darkness somehow bound them. The curse emanating from Dagomon's trident was like a poison curdling the atmosphere. The Digimon and Agents, also, had begun to feel the mental and physical effects of Dagomon's presence and attack. Benjamin had lost his sword when the trident had hit, but neither Gennai nor Ilya could raise the weapons they had retained. Gennai knelt with his sword's hilt in his hand and its point in the fragmented concrete, unable to stand.
From high aloft, Dagomon's gaze scanned the devastated ground. His right arm unwrapped itself from the trident's shaft and raised itself above his head. Then it came down like the blow of a whip, blasting the rubble where the Agents and the Digimon who had been assisting them still lay. Pulverized concrete went flying, some of it raining down around the all but immobilized Chosen Children.
"Agumon…!" Taichi choked.
No voice reached the Chosen Children from the direction of the six elder Chosen's partners. There was no telling whether or not Agumon, Gennai, and the rest had survived that titanic blow. Taichi and the others could only writhe in suspense as Dagomon's invading will continued its assault. Mimi wept openly where she lay.
Of the younger Chosen Children's partners, most were only half conscious, and could do nothing to resist the power of the trident. Dagomon made no move yet to attack them. They lay too close to their partners, and it was evident that Dagomon had no intention of killing the Chosen Children yet. He would continue to feed on their minds and souls, and there was no telling what else they would have to suffer through before the end came.
No one grasped the horror of the situation more clearly than Hikari. What she had experienced during her visits to the Dark World, even during her imprisonment in the monastery, would be as nothing compared to what was coming. Instinctively she still resisted Dagomon's hideous mental violation, but it was hard. The struggle exhausted her. Part of her wanted to stop fighting – but even if she did give up the pain would continue… and never stop…
Was it any wonder that Sato Katsu had been insane? In this moment, she could almost have wished for death.