Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ The Shadow War ❯ Chapter 10
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: moose_of_doom 
Anime/Manga: Digimon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Romance | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 07.31.2005 | Pages: 6 | Words: 2.8K | Visits: 243 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Digimon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Romance | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 07.31.2005 | Pages: 6 | Words: 2.8K | Visits: 243 | Status: Completed
hapter 10:
*********
The caves dripped with water. Davis could hear it, and the small sound gave him hope. Water meant life, and it was so hard to believe that life could exist in this barren, lightless world.
They were moving in silence. Not out of any pretence of stealth, but because the events earlier in the day had taken away any of their desire to talk. Liam stalked at the head of the group, next to Davis. The young Paladin didn’t want his friend anywhere he could get at Michael. He too felt betrayed, but they needed all the people they could get. He had been too tempted to allow Liam to finish the job on Michael, but there was no way he was going to allow his friend to kill the younger man. He didn’t want to be in that situation again, and he couldn’t afford the time.
The paladin blade felt reassuringly heavy in his hands. The golden bladed Katana shone in the darkness, illuminating the bare walls of the tunnels. He looked up. They were in a high domed chamber, natural arcades running around its walls. The paladin-blades light shone out, revealing the high walls. A huge shining pillar hung down to the centre of the room, the biggest stalagmite the Digidestined had ever seen.
“What is this place?” TK gasped, more to himself than to the room in general.
“It looks like it contained something…” Tasha said.
“What’s that smell?” said Sora.
Davis sniffed the air. Sora was right; the place had a definite odour. Kind of… sulphuric. He shook his head.
“We don’t have the time to get distracted. Does anyone see an exit?”
Veemon, by his feet, looked up at the high ceiling.
“I cant see anything from here, and I don’t have the energy to digivolve.”
Kari glanced up as well.
“Maybe we should check that pillar. There might be something useful there.”
Davis looked at the tall stalagmite. For some reason, a small voice whispered in his mind.
“No. Lets look for another way.”
Liam gave him a look.
“May I ask why?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling, that’s all.”
Liam stared at him for a second, then shrugged.
“Whatever you say, boss.”
Davis grinned at him.
“Spread out. Stay in twos. Matt, you go with Michael.”
The older blonde man nodded, and moved over to Michael’s side. Matt’s face was neutral. For Matt that was the closest expression of anger he could summon. No-one had spoken to Michael since the confrontation that morning. He sat on his own, away from the rest, as if he knew the extent of his own betrayal. Davis glanced at TK.
“C’mon.”
The blonde nodded, and followed him, arranging his own Katana over his back. The plain, unadorned steel blade glinted dully in the light from its golden counterpart. Davis nodded, and the pair headed off along the lower arcade. Circling the chambers several times, they finally came out looking down over the chamber. Davis waved down at them.
“You found anything?” he called.
“There’s one big exit! I think it leads to the surface, there’s light coming out.” Tai yelled up at him.
“Erm, Davis?” TK whispered.
“In a minute.” He said, “We’ll head out that way!”
“Davis!” It was a hiss this time, and Davis glared sharply at his friend. TK however was staring behind them.
Davis slowly turned. Patomon was hovering in the air, and Veemon swiftly leapt to stand beside his friend.
It was a dark figure, cloaked, and in its hands was a huge double-bladed sword-staff. The point rested on the ground as the figure reached up and pulled back it’s hood. Davis gasped, the sound echoed by TK’s own exclamation of surprise.
The figures eyes, ears and mouth had been sewn shut. Suddenly the figure lashed forward, the twin blades of its staff lashing out at them. The two Digidestined dived to their sides, and came up rolling. As one, they pulled their Katanas from their scabbards. The cowled creature gripped its staff in both hands, as they lunged forward.
=============================================================
The clang of metal on metal echoed throughout the chamber and Liam Dillon spun, pulling his sword from its scabbard in one quick movement.
“What’s happening?” he called.
His only response was the clash of the swords in the high gallery above him.
“Everyone get back into this middle area!” he yelled.
The Digidestined charged back, and stood back to back in the middle of the natural arena. Swords were drawn, and the Digimon lined up in front of their human partners as more cloaked figures came from the side tunnels.
Tai glanced round at his friends.
“Well… this is fun…”
=============================================================
The cloaked figure whirled as TK’s Katana sliced through the air with lightning speed, and neatly parried the vicious cut with the metal shaft of his sword-staff. He twisted, and the twin blade whirled past as TK moved back just fast enough to avoid begin disembowelled by the swift blade.
“Who the hell is this guy?!?” he yelled.
“DO I look as if I know?” snarled Davis.
The Paladins golden-coloured sword whipped up low from the ground, flashing towards the figure’s chin. The tip of the sword staff knocked the blow away, and Davis rolled as the blade hissed through the air where his neck had previously been. He came up standing beside his friend.
“BUBBLE BLAST!” yelled Patomon, a globe of coloured energy escaping his mouth, and hurtling towards the tall swordsman.
The twin blades whirled, and the blast struck the flat of one of the sword ends of the staff. The ball of energy went spinning off into the cavern to blast dirt and rock out of the ceiling.
“VEE-HEADBUTT!” came Veemon’s battle cry, as he launched himself at the figure. The swordsman merely stepped neatly aside, and Veemon’s own momentum carried him neatly past the cloaked being, into the hard rock wall.
“Ouch…” the small Digimon moaned, before passing out.
Davis glanced at TK.
“We go from either side. You take the right.”
“He’s stronger on the left…”
“That’s why you’re taking the right, hat-boy.”
“Jerk.”
The two split apart as the figure lunged at them again, his momentum carrying him past them, into the middle of their pincer movement. For a moment, the man seemed confused, unsure where they were. Davis slashed low at the back of his knees, aiming to hamstring the swordsman. A quick backswing of the sword-staff deflected his blade however, and the fight restarted in earnest as TK slashed at the junction of hood and robe, a brutally decapitating blow. Again the cut was parried, TK’s blade skittering wildly into the air as he struggled to keep out of the way of the swordsman’s slash.
He wasn’t quite fast enough, however, as a thin line of blood suddenly appeared on his shirt as the blade cut a neat slash across his chest.
“Told’ya you should have worn armour.” Davis smirked.
TK fell back, clutching momentarily at his chest. The wound wasn’t deep, but it hurt like hell, and he needed to get time to concentrate. The swordsman, sensing that TK had been temporarily subdued, turned back to Davis. The young Paladin brought the flat of his katana up to his face, and strangely, the figure did the same with one end of his sword-staff.
Davis lunged, making no pretence at defence, seeking only to stop this strangely deformed creature who had attacked him. The Paladin blade lashed quickly in a series of quick cuts, slicing in controlled movements at the figures chest and head. Davis fought with the edge of his blade, the razor sharp edge of the katana that could cut easily through flesh and bone. The katana is not a weapon built for stabbing – fighting with a samurai sword relies on speed and skill to achieve the result in the quickest possible time. Davis’s two-handed cuts were not meant to be parried, they were meant to kill.
That ended when the top edge of the double-blade neatly parried the golden-katana, and the lower, leading edge hooked around the back of Davis’s leg, pulling him off balance, and sending him crashing to the ground.
The swordsman whirled the blades above his head, and the point of the lower end came slicing down through the air. Davis rolled…
As the point of the sword-staff neatly lodged itself in the rock beside his head. He came up to his feet, and swept his sword in a wide cut, aimed not at the swordsman, but at the welded central part of his blades. His aim was true, and the Katanas edge neatly sliced through the shaft of the sword-staff. He launched his leg forward in a kick sending the figure back at the same moment the wounded TK came to his feet.
The swordsman stood stock-still. At the back of his neck, TK’s blade was pressed neatly against his pale white flesh. At the front, Davis’s blade ran across his throat in the opposite direction. Both blades felt as if the pressure could be increased pretty much indefinitely.
“What kept you?” asked Davis.
“Well, you looked like you were having so much fun…”
Davis grinned, and glanced at Veemon, who was regaining consciousness.
”You okay, buddy?”
“I’m good, I’m good! Lemme at him!”
The small Digimon turned, and saw them. He had the dignity to look momentarily crestfallen.
“Oh. You’ve got him.”
Patomon winged back over the edge of the arcade.
“More of those things have got the rest of the guys!” the small flyer-Digimon said.
Davis looked at the captured warrior.
“I know you can understand me. Call them off, and tell us why you attacked us.”
The figures blind eyes turned towards him, and the words formed in his brain without going through the messy process of involving his ears first.
“They have been called back. We were merely defending ourselves.”
“Yeah, cos attacking us first is defending yourselves.”
“You trespassed here. No one has trespassed on this place in almost five hundred years.”
“What is this place?” TK asked.
“This is the forge. Please accompany us.”
“Why should we?”
“Because the master does not like to be kept waiting.”
=============================================================
The group was led through the tunnels by the strange tall figures, their black cloak swathed around them like opaque clouds. Davis lost track of his bearings in the extreme amount of twists and turns the rock caverns around them took. He started to become convinced that the hooded warriors were doing it deliberately, to throw them off.
“Correct, Paladin.” Came the reply.
“Stay the hell out of my head.” Davis snarled back at them. He might have imagined it, but he swore that he saw one of the warriors flinch.
“There is no need to shout, Paladin.”
The tunnel widened up, and the Digidestined beheld the sight before them. Gentle light shone from the roof, although Davis couldn’t see the source. The dull glow surrounded them, and the low, domed houses that sat in the cavern.
“Do you all live down here?” Kari asked.
“Where else do you think we would live?”
“Who ARE you?” Davis asked for the second time that day.
There was a momentary pause, before the thought once again formed itself in his mind.
“…Come. The master awaits.”
They were escorted through lush underground vegetation towards a slightly larger house at the far end of the cavern. As they walked past, the caves inhabitants turned to look at them. Strangely, they didn’t seem the least perturbed over these heavily armed strangers being escorted through their midst. It was Sora who picked up on it first.
“Why are your eyes and ears sealed, and theirs not?”
“Because we are the guardians, sworn with protecting the forger from any… outside influences.”
Kari poked Davis in the side.
“He means you.”
“And you.”
Liam reached out towards one of the plants, and gently touched it’s flowers.
“What are these plants?”
“We call them Arra’s rose.”
“May I…?”
Liam left the question framed in the air.
“Of course. They are a legacy of the Paladin, and as his companion, you are welcome to that legacy.”
“What do you mean by that?” Tasha asked.
Davis looked at their captors – although it was difficult to think of them that way – and acknowledged his own confusion.
“They are named for the woman whom the first Paladin married. They bloom only in these caves. They have… strange properties.”
Liam gently plucked one of the flowers from its stalk, and sniffed it. Almost instantly, his mind flew back to the countryside of Ireland, the sights and sounds of Galway, his home county. When he had been fighting in Northern Ireland, he had gradually developed a Belfast accent, but Galway was the place that always reminded him of home.
He drew away.
“That’s… amazing.”
“They have earned the nickname of ‘Memory flower.’”
“I can see why.”
He passed the flower to Mimi, almost shyly, and she gave him a slight smile, coming out of her misery momentarily at Michael’s betrayal. She sniffed the flower, and her eyes closed. When she opened them, she fixed the big Irishman with a real smile, not a caricature. Liam blushed slightly, a comical sight on an Irishman who at times seems the size of a house, and turned back towards the village. They followed the Guardians in between the rows of houses, and finally reached the Master’s house. The guardians stopped and gestured for them to enter.
“The Master awaits you.”
Davis nodded, and the group moved quietly through the door. Inside, they found a small man facing out of the windows, away from them.
“Greetings, Daisuke Motomiya.”
“Do I know you, Sir?” Davis answered politely.
The man turned towards them, and a warm smile, a trace of irony in its curl faced them, surmounted by a slightly furrowed brow above deep grey eyes.
“No… you don’t know me. But I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.”
*********
The caves dripped with water. Davis could hear it, and the small sound gave him hope. Water meant life, and it was so hard to believe that life could exist in this barren, lightless world.
They were moving in silence. Not out of any pretence of stealth, but because the events earlier in the day had taken away any of their desire to talk. Liam stalked at the head of the group, next to Davis. The young Paladin didn’t want his friend anywhere he could get at Michael. He too felt betrayed, but they needed all the people they could get. He had been too tempted to allow Liam to finish the job on Michael, but there was no way he was going to allow his friend to kill the younger man. He didn’t want to be in that situation again, and he couldn’t afford the time.
The paladin blade felt reassuringly heavy in his hands. The golden bladed Katana shone in the darkness, illuminating the bare walls of the tunnels. He looked up. They were in a high domed chamber, natural arcades running around its walls. The paladin-blades light shone out, revealing the high walls. A huge shining pillar hung down to the centre of the room, the biggest stalagmite the Digidestined had ever seen.
“What is this place?” TK gasped, more to himself than to the room in general.
“It looks like it contained something…” Tasha said.
“What’s that smell?” said Sora.
Davis sniffed the air. Sora was right; the place had a definite odour. Kind of… sulphuric. He shook his head.
“We don’t have the time to get distracted. Does anyone see an exit?”
Veemon, by his feet, looked up at the high ceiling.
“I cant see anything from here, and I don’t have the energy to digivolve.”
Kari glanced up as well.
“Maybe we should check that pillar. There might be something useful there.”
Davis looked at the tall stalagmite. For some reason, a small voice whispered in his mind.
“No. Lets look for another way.”
Liam gave him a look.
“May I ask why?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling, that’s all.”
Liam stared at him for a second, then shrugged.
“Whatever you say, boss.”
Davis grinned at him.
“Spread out. Stay in twos. Matt, you go with Michael.”
The older blonde man nodded, and moved over to Michael’s side. Matt’s face was neutral. For Matt that was the closest expression of anger he could summon. No-one had spoken to Michael since the confrontation that morning. He sat on his own, away from the rest, as if he knew the extent of his own betrayal. Davis glanced at TK.
“C’mon.”
The blonde nodded, and followed him, arranging his own Katana over his back. The plain, unadorned steel blade glinted dully in the light from its golden counterpart. Davis nodded, and the pair headed off along the lower arcade. Circling the chambers several times, they finally came out looking down over the chamber. Davis waved down at them.
“You found anything?” he called.
“There’s one big exit! I think it leads to the surface, there’s light coming out.” Tai yelled up at him.
“Erm, Davis?” TK whispered.
“In a minute.” He said, “We’ll head out that way!”
“Davis!” It was a hiss this time, and Davis glared sharply at his friend. TK however was staring behind them.
Davis slowly turned. Patomon was hovering in the air, and Veemon swiftly leapt to stand beside his friend.
It was a dark figure, cloaked, and in its hands was a huge double-bladed sword-staff. The point rested on the ground as the figure reached up and pulled back it’s hood. Davis gasped, the sound echoed by TK’s own exclamation of surprise.
The figures eyes, ears and mouth had been sewn shut. Suddenly the figure lashed forward, the twin blades of its staff lashing out at them. The two Digidestined dived to their sides, and came up rolling. As one, they pulled their Katanas from their scabbards. The cowled creature gripped its staff in both hands, as they lunged forward.
=============================================================
The clang of metal on metal echoed throughout the chamber and Liam Dillon spun, pulling his sword from its scabbard in one quick movement.
“What’s happening?” he called.
His only response was the clash of the swords in the high gallery above him.
“Everyone get back into this middle area!” he yelled.
The Digidestined charged back, and stood back to back in the middle of the natural arena. Swords were drawn, and the Digimon lined up in front of their human partners as more cloaked figures came from the side tunnels.
Tai glanced round at his friends.
“Well… this is fun…”
=============================================================
The cloaked figure whirled as TK’s Katana sliced through the air with lightning speed, and neatly parried the vicious cut with the metal shaft of his sword-staff. He twisted, and the twin blade whirled past as TK moved back just fast enough to avoid begin disembowelled by the swift blade.
“Who the hell is this guy?!?” he yelled.
“DO I look as if I know?” snarled Davis.
The Paladins golden-coloured sword whipped up low from the ground, flashing towards the figure’s chin. The tip of the sword staff knocked the blow away, and Davis rolled as the blade hissed through the air where his neck had previously been. He came up standing beside his friend.
“BUBBLE BLAST!” yelled Patomon, a globe of coloured energy escaping his mouth, and hurtling towards the tall swordsman.
The twin blades whirled, and the blast struck the flat of one of the sword ends of the staff. The ball of energy went spinning off into the cavern to blast dirt and rock out of the ceiling.
“VEE-HEADBUTT!” came Veemon’s battle cry, as he launched himself at the figure. The swordsman merely stepped neatly aside, and Veemon’s own momentum carried him neatly past the cloaked being, into the hard rock wall.
“Ouch…” the small Digimon moaned, before passing out.
Davis glanced at TK.
“We go from either side. You take the right.”
“He’s stronger on the left…”
“That’s why you’re taking the right, hat-boy.”
“Jerk.”
The two split apart as the figure lunged at them again, his momentum carrying him past them, into the middle of their pincer movement. For a moment, the man seemed confused, unsure where they were. Davis slashed low at the back of his knees, aiming to hamstring the swordsman. A quick backswing of the sword-staff deflected his blade however, and the fight restarted in earnest as TK slashed at the junction of hood and robe, a brutally decapitating blow. Again the cut was parried, TK’s blade skittering wildly into the air as he struggled to keep out of the way of the swordsman’s slash.
He wasn’t quite fast enough, however, as a thin line of blood suddenly appeared on his shirt as the blade cut a neat slash across his chest.
“Told’ya you should have worn armour.” Davis smirked.
TK fell back, clutching momentarily at his chest. The wound wasn’t deep, but it hurt like hell, and he needed to get time to concentrate. The swordsman, sensing that TK had been temporarily subdued, turned back to Davis. The young Paladin brought the flat of his katana up to his face, and strangely, the figure did the same with one end of his sword-staff.
Davis lunged, making no pretence at defence, seeking only to stop this strangely deformed creature who had attacked him. The Paladin blade lashed quickly in a series of quick cuts, slicing in controlled movements at the figures chest and head. Davis fought with the edge of his blade, the razor sharp edge of the katana that could cut easily through flesh and bone. The katana is not a weapon built for stabbing – fighting with a samurai sword relies on speed and skill to achieve the result in the quickest possible time. Davis’s two-handed cuts were not meant to be parried, they were meant to kill.
That ended when the top edge of the double-blade neatly parried the golden-katana, and the lower, leading edge hooked around the back of Davis’s leg, pulling him off balance, and sending him crashing to the ground.
The swordsman whirled the blades above his head, and the point of the lower end came slicing down through the air. Davis rolled…
As the point of the sword-staff neatly lodged itself in the rock beside his head. He came up to his feet, and swept his sword in a wide cut, aimed not at the swordsman, but at the welded central part of his blades. His aim was true, and the Katanas edge neatly sliced through the shaft of the sword-staff. He launched his leg forward in a kick sending the figure back at the same moment the wounded TK came to his feet.
The swordsman stood stock-still. At the back of his neck, TK’s blade was pressed neatly against his pale white flesh. At the front, Davis’s blade ran across his throat in the opposite direction. Both blades felt as if the pressure could be increased pretty much indefinitely.
“What kept you?” asked Davis.
“Well, you looked like you were having so much fun…”
Davis grinned, and glanced at Veemon, who was regaining consciousness.
”You okay, buddy?”
“I’m good, I’m good! Lemme at him!”
The small Digimon turned, and saw them. He had the dignity to look momentarily crestfallen.
“Oh. You’ve got him.”
Patomon winged back over the edge of the arcade.
“More of those things have got the rest of the guys!” the small flyer-Digimon said.
Davis looked at the captured warrior.
“I know you can understand me. Call them off, and tell us why you attacked us.”
The figures blind eyes turned towards him, and the words formed in his brain without going through the messy process of involving his ears first.
“They have been called back. We were merely defending ourselves.”
“Yeah, cos attacking us first is defending yourselves.”
“You trespassed here. No one has trespassed on this place in almost five hundred years.”
“What is this place?” TK asked.
“This is the forge. Please accompany us.”
“Why should we?”
“Because the master does not like to be kept waiting.”
=============================================================
The group was led through the tunnels by the strange tall figures, their black cloak swathed around them like opaque clouds. Davis lost track of his bearings in the extreme amount of twists and turns the rock caverns around them took. He started to become convinced that the hooded warriors were doing it deliberately, to throw them off.
“Correct, Paladin.” Came the reply.
“Stay the hell out of my head.” Davis snarled back at them. He might have imagined it, but he swore that he saw one of the warriors flinch.
“There is no need to shout, Paladin.”
The tunnel widened up, and the Digidestined beheld the sight before them. Gentle light shone from the roof, although Davis couldn’t see the source. The dull glow surrounded them, and the low, domed houses that sat in the cavern.
“Do you all live down here?” Kari asked.
“Where else do you think we would live?”
“Who ARE you?” Davis asked for the second time that day.
There was a momentary pause, before the thought once again formed itself in his mind.
“…Come. The master awaits.”
They were escorted through lush underground vegetation towards a slightly larger house at the far end of the cavern. As they walked past, the caves inhabitants turned to look at them. Strangely, they didn’t seem the least perturbed over these heavily armed strangers being escorted through their midst. It was Sora who picked up on it first.
“Why are your eyes and ears sealed, and theirs not?”
“Because we are the guardians, sworn with protecting the forger from any… outside influences.”
Kari poked Davis in the side.
“He means you.”
“And you.”
Liam reached out towards one of the plants, and gently touched it’s flowers.
“What are these plants?”
“We call them Arra’s rose.”
“May I…?”
Liam left the question framed in the air.
“Of course. They are a legacy of the Paladin, and as his companion, you are welcome to that legacy.”
“What do you mean by that?” Tasha asked.
Davis looked at their captors – although it was difficult to think of them that way – and acknowledged his own confusion.
“They are named for the woman whom the first Paladin married. They bloom only in these caves. They have… strange properties.”
Liam gently plucked one of the flowers from its stalk, and sniffed it. Almost instantly, his mind flew back to the countryside of Ireland, the sights and sounds of Galway, his home county. When he had been fighting in Northern Ireland, he had gradually developed a Belfast accent, but Galway was the place that always reminded him of home.
He drew away.
“That’s… amazing.”
“They have earned the nickname of ‘Memory flower.’”
“I can see why.”
He passed the flower to Mimi, almost shyly, and she gave him a slight smile, coming out of her misery momentarily at Michael’s betrayal. She sniffed the flower, and her eyes closed. When she opened them, she fixed the big Irishman with a real smile, not a caricature. Liam blushed slightly, a comical sight on an Irishman who at times seems the size of a house, and turned back towards the village. They followed the Guardians in between the rows of houses, and finally reached the Master’s house. The guardians stopped and gestured for them to enter.
“The Master awaits you.”
Davis nodded, and the group moved quietly through the door. Inside, they found a small man facing out of the windows, away from them.
“Greetings, Daisuke Motomiya.”
“Do I know you, Sir?” Davis answered politely.
The man turned towards them, and a warm smile, a trace of irony in its curl faced them, surmounted by a slightly furrowed brow above deep grey eyes.
“No… you don’t know me. But I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.”