Play of Spirits
Chapter 6 - Shadows in the Light

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Kouji despised the black canvas. In his dreams, he reached for a wall that had to be there, logically, but he could never touch. And he did the same thing this time. He was in a train, on a train carriage – and really, the train carriage wasn't very big and barely wider than a couple of hand spans – or a few. And even if he'd been turned around and lost his bearings, there was the door to either end of the carriage not too far off. And yet he couldn't reach it.

Like those never-ending nightmares, he couldn't reach it. But he was stubborn. He wasn't going to stop until his lungs screamed and his legs gave out and maybe he could only keep on doing that because it paid. He'd wake up, if he didn't reach the end and prove it wasn't a dream.

Except he reached the end this time… Though that in and of itself wasn't proof enough to say it wasn't a dream. His hands found a door handle nonetheless, and he twisted it and cracked it open.

Light spilled through, but illuminated nothing but his own body. It just dulled the black: turned it grey. Behind the door, it seemed, was light too bright to see through or past and he'd be just as blind, but he couldn't stay with the door partway open either.

And there was nothing on this side, except his sweat and pain and panting breaths.

He pushed the door all the way open and went through.

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It was too bright. It burned through his eyes into his skull and he marvelled at how a headache hadn't taken root. He wasn't prone to migraines per say, but his father was forever complaining on particularly bright days, or when they had brand new bulbs (up to the point where they switched to power saving ones that were duller but lasted longer and, most importantly, didn't give his father a migraine). If the gene skipped him, he was happy for it. But he wasn't happy about the fact that he still couldn't see.

Still, the light wasn't as suffocating as the darkness was. It was almost tangible. Concrete. He wasn't running full force through it but walking more sedately – stumbling, rather, because now his legs were screaming at him but there was nothing here. He had to keep on going.

At some point, his vision settled. Maybe that had just been a case of going outside after being in a dark room and his eyes had finally adjusted – or maybe the light had just gotten a little dimmer. There still wasn't anything to see but what he carried: his own body, the clothes on it, and the wallet and phone in his pockets.

He hadn't exactly planned for a long trip. He hadn't planned for any sort of trip, actually. He'd just stormed out, felt guilty, and decided flowers would make a good apology and anniversary gift but then had taken the first opportunity to chicken out of it. Or delay it. He'd go back for those flowers. Or get a new bouquet made if the salesgirl gave up on him. At least he knew what to get this. White poppies and purple hycanthias. And blame it on the original flower girl, regardless of what happened this time around. Even if he'd technically been the one to point at the flowers.

Really, he'd had a fifty-fifty chance of screwing it all up. Or was it seventy-five percent? Two questions with two choices and only one combination of the right answer. Yeah, he'd only had a twenty-five percent chance of getting it right, without factoring in the extra things like his knowledge for flowers or his art sense – and really, both those things would have only dragged the number down further in his case.

And then factor in the possibility of never going back for them. Flowers were expensive. But he hardly spent his pocket money anyway. He was fine on that front and it wasn't because he was stingy. He just didn't have many things he wanted to spend it on. He wasn't the type of guy who wanted to collect the newest action hero or the newest movie or newest book or newest anything, really. His father played for his lessons, both school and extra-curricular and he had his guitar in his room or his own too legs when he wanted fresh air. There just wasn't anything else to it.

But as for not going back for those flowers… He intended to, but extra time could do anything, truth be told. It might taper his mood a little more, or it might sharpen it. Something new might pop up to change his mind (because, see? He'd already used money on a ticket he hadn't originally planned for). He could forget entirely and head home and only remember afterwards when he had no present to give. He could wind up staying up all night and miss the anniversary entirely – and he wondered, would his father tell him off then, or give him that sad and pleading look and ask him to try and act more as a part of the family –

But he was already a part of the family. He'd always been. He wasn't the new addition who needed to cement their role before it was cut away.

See, in the light he could think. In the darkness, he was near mindless and he despised that.

Though there was something now and seeing something after so long of nothing sucked the thoughts right of him again. A shadow of some sort. A speck of something or someone in the distance.

He walked that way. It was the only landmark, the only way to go.

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She watched him go.

Ideally, she would have stopped him but this wasn't the ideal situation. And the ideal situation had failed. They'd tried to save everyone, spare everyone, and they hadn't managed it. In her visions, at least. What the future would be. They were solidifying now, those visions. When her doubts crept it, they showed why she had to soldier on.

But there was no happy ending to set her mind at ease, to tell her unequivocally she – they – were doing the correct thing. Not by those children. Not in the short term, at least. They'd all hurt from their very souls by the time the first test was over but they'd all be standing up again. And they'd break them again. And make them stand. Until they could withstand the force of their spirit shattering that final time and survive it all –

Because they couldn't pay for their own world with the lifeblood of a human from another world. It was a curse. Or taboo that create the curse within their own minds. It didn't matter. They simply couldn't do it.

Even if it could have been argued that they were spilling that lifeblood anyway, just in smaller amounts and not enough to bathe the saved world red.

She saw that future too many times. Empty blue eyes and she wasn't sure why she knew it was a human because Lucemon was said to have blue eyes as well. Lucemon: the archangel who'd once sought to bring peace to the world and had managed it. Who had once become its monarch and ruled with his warm hands of peace until he blackened them, until he struck out instead of defended and shattered the peace he'd worked so hard to create.

And then the sealing ritual, after too many had tried and failed to bring them down.

Heroes, some called them.

Cowards, others said.

A bit of both, she thought. They'd been cautious. They'd left their method of sealing behind and their tools as well and faded into the crust of the digital world. They left knowledge of their sacrifice and knowledge of their eternal life as well: their transcendence.

They were the legendary warrior spirits who needed human souls to awaken again.

And the tale had been passed down. Embellished by the story tellers until there was few facts left in the tale and only the most salient ones – but for those who'd inherited the throne… They'd prescribed the true tale, in it's entirely, and guarded it well.

And they had what they needed from both the past and the future to plot their course, despite how their hearts might rebel against it.

And maybe that was why they could bear it all. Why they could do things that would, otherwise, no doubt have torn them apart and into lonely pieces. Why they could drag humans into their problems so stubbornly and keep on pushing them when ideally it would be themselves and their own subjects they'd push. But digimon couldn't save the digital world. They knew that.

It was humans who'd been trusted with the key to their fates – if only they were moulded into shape.

And so she watched him go. Walk towards his new overseer even though her heart bid her to call him back, to pluck him out of the darkness he's wandering in to by following the shadow in the light…

So easily she could have made a light in the gloom instead, before they'd even come into this stage.

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He knew his role.

He was horrified at first, because he was pure and innocent back then. Because he believed in the peaceful world they could create with their own hands and keep with their own hands and all without another war or bloodshed.

He'd believed in a world where they could talk about the problems and reach a conclusion that satisfied them all without too heavy losses to suffer through. But that had been too fragile a dream. Doomed from the start and maybe it was because of the unequal divide of labour or the world or maybe they were too different to ever be able to live in peace forever.

In many worlds, Ofanimon told him, he went mad with the stress of it all. Or she did. Or Seraphimon. Always one of them. Sometimes more than one. Sometimes all three. It was random. No real pattern. Just whichever of them touched the darkness first. Just wherever the world eroded first. And then there'd be a desperate struggle to save the land and they'd fail by themselves. Sometimes, they'd call the humans in. Sometimes, the humans would win.

But sometimes even the humans failed. And even when the humans won, they lost.

Unlike digimon, they couldn't be reborn. They didn't get second leases of life.

And a digital world built on the blood of a human was cursed to a death more horrific than the ones they orchestrated themselves.

And though he wasn't sinking yet, or so he told himself, he knew he had to play the part. They all had to play the part. Promote suffering in a world they'd sworn to keep the peace of because peace did not create strength. Not the type of strength, at least, that would save the world.

And the humans might scream now, might complain after – but after still they'd realise what they'd been spared, what they'd all been spared.

It was a price all of them were more than willing to pay.

Even the humans in those other futures, those other possibilities, who could look back with regret but do nothing to change it at all.

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The speck of something grey amidst the white began to grow and take form. It grew tall, like a child in the distance at first but then shooting past him and becoming in adult. It seemed to have long hair tied back – or perhaps that was a hat or something entirely distinct from the human there.

But there was someone there and they were getting bigger and that was the landmark he headed towards. And he could do so slowly now. At his own pace. Rest and watch it not change at all because it did change, albeit slowly. But maybe that was his fault. Because his legs were screaming no matter how much he rested them and maybe he needed to lie in bed for a few hours before they stopped, but he didn't have the luxury or the time.

The place was too bright to get any sleep in, but that was fine. It was hardly the place to go to sleep in. And he could hardly just sleep anywhere. He'd had to sometimes: sleep on the train or in the car, but they still had seats. Something against his back. Some sort of structure. Here there was no structure at all.

Just the shadow of something he could only follow.

And then the background began to take shape as well. The white faded away and it was growing dark again. He froze for a bit. For a while, rather, because once he stopped walking, his knees caved and he sat on the ground for a good hour – or few. It was hard to tell the time, now, and his phone wasn't helping. It seemed to be working fine otherwise. The time didn't move from six in the afternoon and no phone calls were getting through.

He'd gotten on the strange train at Shibuya station around six in the afternoon, hadn't he?

But sitting down wasn't getting him anywhere, when even the time didn't move. And if he looked away from the shadow, his eyes slid out of focus and he couldn't make anything else out either: his sleeves, his hands, his phone screen…

The only thing he really could do was follow that shadow, and so he did. And details bled into the surroundings ever so slowly until it wasn't white anymore, but grey, then almost black and he wondered what would happen if he sat down now because his calves were still screaming –

But it was so hard to see the shadow now, and if he sat down and lost it, he might not find it again.

So he trudged, but now he had other landmarks, stationary ones, to tell him he was slowing down and eventually he did lose the shadow. And he collapsed on the spot and stared at dark-trunked trees because there was nothing else and breathed –

And then coughed and coughed and coughed because it smelt like wet earth but there'd been nothing else to smell and it burned: burned his nostrils, and his throat, and he just coughed and coughed until his nose and throat were screaming too.

There wasn't any water nearby, was there? He couldn't see any, anyway. Just trees that weren't any better at giving direction but could at least give the illusion of progress when he was on the move. He tried to stand up again but his legs only shook and screamed – and, really, he'd probably overdone it without even knowing which were the dreams and which was reality or how far he'd travelled after all.

He had no choice now, though. He had to rest here. Maybe sleep here. And make sure he didn't get too stiff if this wasn't a dream and he didn't wake up refreshed and somewhere else by the end of it.

He didn't. there were still those trees when he next woke up, barely able to move and his phone screen flashing.

But he managed. Slowly. Steadily. Like he'd stretch himself out after a particularly intense training session, except it was more his legs than anything else. His arms had been dead weight. And he checked his phone while he did that. Cringed as he stretched his legs. Stared in confusion at the message on his phone.

You've passed the first test.

The second test is now beginning.

He read the words once. Just words. But when he read them again, there was a voice. Though not female like the voice who'd illustrated the test. This one was male. Male and unfamiliar.

As for the test… What had it been? To walk all the way to this forest that gave no landmarks through other equally nondescript places? Were those places meant to make him fall? That place of pure darkness where he could only run at full speed until he reached the end. The blinding white light that could've stabbed into his skull and seared holes in his eyes and brains but hadn't. And now the forest where Alice from the fairytale had wandered into and gotten lost, except there was no Cheshire cat to guide her.

Maybe that was the second test. To find the Cheshire cat.

He snorted to himself as he lay, staring at the dark sky. Couldn't there have been a moon? Or some stars? But it wasn't that bad. Better than that pure darkness without anything at all. Better than the light as well. The sort of place, aside from the lack of anything in the sky, one could go camping in, and stargaze in a sleeping bag when everyone else was asleep and the campfire was out. Except there was no everybody else and no sleeping bag and no stars to gaze up at and his legs were hurting and he'd just woken up and it shouldn't even be night anymore…

Though, really, he could have easily woken up and found himself still in the dream. In all honesty, that was the most sensible answer because places of absolute darkness might exist in the far reaches of place, but there wasn't a such thing called absolute light.

It wasn't fair at all, but that was the balance of the world. Light only made up three percent of the universe.