Series: Division of Destiny||Story: Reign of the Undead King||Chapter: The Vision
Characters: Piemon, Vamdemon, Chosen Children, others||Pairings: Ken x Daisuke/Daisuke x Ken, Mimi x Sora/Sora x Mimi
Chapters: 36-40||Words: 2,678||Total: 95,634
Genre: Romance, Drama||Rated: PG-13
Summary: Vamdemon and Piemon rule supreme. Only now, ten years after their victory, are things about to change. For good or for ill.
Finding his flock wasn't as easy as Vamdemon initially presumed it would be. In hindsight, he knew he shouldn't have been surprised about that. He'd ordered everyone to search for the escaped Wizarmon, and the flock obeyed his every command, sometimes before he even had a chance to voice them.
Such a difference from the days when they fought against him and the other evil Digimon. But he certainly didn't miss those. Their enmity hadn't been long, in his case, but he'd seen enough from when they'd fought Devimon and Etemon.
He still considered turning Taichi into his chief servant a fine reward for getting rid of the simian Digimon. There were occasional rumors that Etemon had been seen somewhere in the Digital World, but he trusted Piemon to get rid of the fool if he did somehow come back. Neither of them considered him worth keeping around.
But in due course he did bring the pack together, though Taichi looked ready to leap out the window at a moment's notice and hunt until he brought Wizarmon, struggling and screaming, back to them.
"DeviDramon and FlaWizarmon are tending to this," Vamdemon assured them. "We have other matters to deal with."
"Such as, Vamdemon-sama?" Jou wanted to know, leaning forward a little. He was always so eager to help, to do something to make things right. Vamdemon knew he'd chosen his pack well.
"Pinnochimon is around somewhere in the city. I told him to come here but he seems to have lost his way." Vamdemon didn't quite roll his eyes, but if he'd been a lesser Digimon, or a human, then he most certainly would have.
Sora considered what he said carefully. "There are rumors going around about rebel humans. You don't think he'd help them, do you?"
Vamdemon had considered that himself more than once as he realized that Pinnochimon hadn't arrived as ordered. "I wouldn't think so, but these days, one cannot be entirely certain." Too much changed from the days when he knew any Digimon in this world was his loyal servant. It made him far more uneasy than he wished to admit, even to his faithful followers.
"Do you want us to find him?" Taichi asked, perking up at the idea of a hunt, even if it wasn't for Wizarmon or dinner. Vamdemon did not hold back a fanged smile at that. Taichi, his dear little hunter, so eager to shed blood and rain down the fury of the undead upon those who crossed him.
"Yes. Whatever else he's doing, he's disobeyed my orders. Be wary, though, my pack. He is an Ultimate Digimon and his powers are not to be discounted. He can control virtually anyone with his puppet strings, and his mallet might not be able to kill us, but it could be damaging nevertheless." Vamdemon had seen the puppet at work in the past, and while he didn't feel Pinnochimon's abilities outshone his own, the pack could be another matter. It would require skill, not just strength, to accomplish this task.
Mimi toyed with the ends of her hair. "If we find him, we can send word back to you instead of confronting him directly. He won't even know that we were there."
"Good." He'd chosen her well also. Whether she knew it or not, Mimi had the soul of a general. If the humans ever thought they could rise up against him again, he trusted her to arrange matters to finish them in the shortest amount of time possible.
Or the longest, if he wanted to make certain they suffered for ever daring to lift a hand against their rightful master once more.
A quiet knock came to the door of their meeting room. Vamdemon frowned; not many were allowed to interrupt when he and the pack plotted together. It had to be something important.
"Yes?"
Phantomon floated through the door and bowed briefly. "My lord, I've had a troubling vision that I felt you should know of right away."
Vamdemon tilted his head back, one eyebrow cocked upward. Phantomon's gifts were invaluable; he'd been the one who had noticed that one of the Chosen was near her death, and thus Vamdemon had been aware enough to capture Sora in the first place. One could say that he was responsible for the victory over the Chosen Children. "Speak."
"There will be an attack upon the portal within the next handful of hours." He hesitated, gaze flickering briefly toward the pack before looking back at Vamdemon. "At least one of the people who make it through is the Child of Light."
Taichi was on his feet a moment later. "I won't let that happen, Vamdemon-sama!" Being the brat's brother had never set well with Taichi. He'd wanted so much to bleed her dry and to find out that she, of all people, could not be a vampire's meal had annoyed him from the day they discovered it to this very moment.
Vamdemon waved him back. "Who else will make this attack?" This could be the break that he was looking for, to put down this proto rebellion before it could be anything more than that. He'd listened to the report the pack had brought him concerning Daisuke and the other humans, and while he had other plans to deal with his runaway blood pet, this promised to be useful as well.
"I did not recognize all of them, my lord, but there were several of them. Including Motomiya Daisuke." He hesitated once more. "I could not be certain if he crossed the portal or not. The vision ended before I was able to see. But some of your guard Digimon perish in the attack. Of that much I am certain."
Which did explain why Phantomon had the vision in the first place. But he could see little here that he couldn't use.
"Tell no one else of this," he ordered. Phantomon nodded; those were standard orders anyway. Vamdemon usually only wanted someone to know their death was coming when he brought it to them personally. "Is there anything else that I should know?"
Phantomon considered the question. "I also saw LadyDevimon and Wizarmon with the humans. Exactly what they were doing I do not know, but they were all there together."
"Traitors," Taichi hissed, fingers clenching into a fist. Vamdemon anticipated seeing what he would do to them once they were all captured once again. Taichi enjoyed unleashing all of his rage on those who disobeyed his master. Such a good boy.
"Is there anything else?" Vamdemon inquired. Phantomon shook his head this time and Vamdemon dismissed him, turning this new information over and over in his mind.
"Are his visions that reliable?" Jou asked, a slight furrow between his eyes. "Have they ever been changed?"
"No one that I know has ever tried," Vamdemon said. He'd never wondered about it himself. Phantomon's visions always told him what he wanted to know, so he trusted them. There wasn't any reason not to.
But he'd said an attack, and that the Child of Light was 'one' of those who made it through. His blood-pet's fate was unknown. That meant he could retrieve him. It wasn't set in stone that he didn't. Vamdemon liked that.
"How will they know where it is?" Sora wondered. "It's not as if we advertise the location. Not even LadyDevimon knows that."
She spoke the truth. Only a certain set of his most powerful warriors knew where the portal between worlds lay hidden. He'd ensured that for ten years, not wanting anyone to have access to the Digital World without his awareness of it.
"They either have spies or someone here has told it to them." There weren't many who could accomplish either. He had few humans who worked in any position where they could find out the location without him knowing about it, and the amount of Digimon who knew where it was and were likely to speak of it to humans could be counted on his fingers. Most of those wouldn't have dared to even consider doing so, knowing his wrath.
Except...
Vamdemon's eyes narrowed. "Don't worry about finding Pinnochimon. This is more important." Far more so, for many more reasons than he could currently begin to list.
He snapped his fingers, summoning one of his Bakemon into the room. "We need to feed. Bring up five of the strongest humans in the pens. Have mine delivered to my quarters."
At once the pack stirred, the light of hunger gleaming in all four sets of eyes. "Master?" Taichi asked, hope glimmering alongside of it. "What are we going to do?"
"They will be on my territory, my pack," Vamdemon purred out the words as the plan shaped itself in his mind. "They will intrude on my land, and I will not have it. The only one you must spare is Motomiya Daisuke. He belongs to me, now and forever." He'd issued this order before but with the rising hunger and the glory of feeding and the rage of battle that rose in all of their hearts, it was best to be certain they knew his wishes. "All the others can be slaughtered or kept as you wish."
Mimi laughed a silvery, wicked laugh. "I hope that girl with the purple hair is there. I really want her." She reached over to squeeze Sora's hand. "We can share her. She'll be fantastic, I'm sure of it."
Vamdemon left his pack to work out what they wanted to do and who they wanted to do it to while he made his own plans. He still had the collar, clean and neat and resized to fit around a larger neck. He would wait until he had Daisuke firmly in his grip once more before doing anything with the room his pet would be living in from now on.
And this time, no one is going to take him from me again. He'd listened to the descriptions the pack had of those who'd been with Daisuke when they'd encountered him earlier. He recognized two of them as the ones who'd managed to spirit his pet away in the first place. The more he considered it, the more he decided that simply being torn to shreds or drained dry wasn't a severe enough punishment for them. He wasn't certain what would be right away. Though certain ideas did occur to him.
Being made part of the pack offered a certain amount of pleasure in his opinion. Instead of taking what was his, they would belong to him, and protect his property as fiercely as he himself did.
It would work as a punishment for Daisuke as well, to see the ones who'd 'set him free' now keeping him as chained up as Vamdemon himself did.
The idea did have merit, and Vamdemon couldn't think of any reasons not to do it. He hadn't considered any new pack members before, and if these two were as strong as they seemed to be, then they would make excellent servants.
Yes. He would make those two, whatever their names were, part of his pack. He would have to make certain that no one (Taichi) killed them before he could do it, but that would be the work of one sentence.
A slow smile touched his lips as another thought occurred to him. Another part of the punishment for Daisuke: to have to watch as his two saviors became part of the pack.
They would need to feed. Fresh vampires hungered for days after their rising. He would need to bring the healthiest ones from the pens, or … or perhaps...
Yes. Those so-called rebels wouldn't be killed after all. They would be brought back alive, and those who didn't join the pack or whom his current pack members didn't want for themselves would be the sustenance for those who did. And Daisuke would watch it all, and know that it was all because of him, because those two took him away, because the others sheltered and aided him.
Vamdemon strode forward with more certainty. Those who could be taken, would be. He already knew how to deal with the survivors, and those Digimon counted as traitors.
It was so encouraging to have allies that one could count on. Even in other worlds.
Taichi could hardly wait for their dinner to be delivered. He wanted to feel his fangs sink into warm flesh and to taste that delicious liquid coursing down his throat. It would be a good warmup for the main event.
I wonder if I should try to keep one of them. It might be interesting to try a blood pet out for a while. He still preferred the idea of hunting his meals whenever he could, but to have a steady supply had an appeal all of its own. And if he turned out not to like the notion, he could easily return to proper hunting.
The door opened and four Bakemon entered, each holding tightly onto a human. Their ages and genders varied, but one thing remained the same: all four of them looked, and smelled, absolutely terrified.
Taichi loved that scent. He prowled closer to them, circling the group. As the chief of the pack, second only to Vamdemon, he was allowed first choice when dinner morsels such as this were brought to them. Now he licked his lips, trying to decide which of these he wanted.
"You're going to kill us, aren't you?" One of them spoke up, voice shaking regardless of attempts to keep it calm.
"Oh, yes." Taichi saw no reason to lie about this. He stared into this one's eyes, drinking in the terror that poured out. "And it's going to hurt." He couldn't even begin to imagine how much it hurt. His own memories of dying had long ago faded away, replaced by the content satisfaction of serving his master.
One of the other meals struggled in the thick chains that restrained them all. "Why are you doing this? Didn't you used to be human?"
"Yes, we were," Mimi said, strolling closer to that one with an expression that Taichi had only seen her use when choosing meals or clothes. "But not anymore."
It was always interesting to see how different meals reacted to the idea of being meals in the first place. But no matter how much Taichi would've liked to discuss it, preferably with his fellow vampires, they didn't have time to linger. He reached out and seized the first one that had spoken, snapping the chains with ease.
"Don't worry. It won't hurt forever." Taichi considered his own words, then shrugged. "At least I don't think it does."
He pulled his chosen dinner close to him, ignoring the struggles and shrieks as he located the pulsing vein in the neck, then bit down as hard as he could. That familiar metallic taste filled his mouth and he groaned, enjoying himself as much as he could.
He could hear the others also having their dinner, and they all sounded as if they enjoyed it as much as he did.
Once they were all done and the Bakemon took the remains away, the pack split up to get cleaned up and prepare for the coming battle. Taichi anticipated seeing the sheer terror in so many sets of eyes all over again. Perhaps he could even find a way to put an end to the Child of Light as well. He'd advocated for Vamdemon-sama to get rid of her for years. No matter how much she tried she couldn't fight them, and she couldn't feed them, so there was really no other use for her to exist. And yet the master kept her anyway.
He'd heard Phantomon's prediction, and the master's statement that no one had ever challenged them.
If there was one thing that Taichi liked to do, aside from cause chaos, pain, and shattered dreams, it was the impossible. And he could think of nothing more impossible than turning aside the will of fate.
To Be Continued