Index City was not the largest domain of the Digital World, nor its oldest, but it was among the most orderly and secure. Built with deliberate precision and purpose, it stood as a bastion against the steady spread of the corruption encroaching on other regions. Patrols moved in strict rotations; the walls hummed with layered defenses.
Yet even here, the horns of alarm now sounded.
At the Citadel...Darcmon was flying to the citadel in the center of the city, foregoing all manners. She touched down beside Dominimon, her voice tense.
"My lord! The containment expedition is now three days overdue. I think we have to assume they are lost to us. Depending on what they did manage to do, the corruption will reach the outer walls no later than three weeks! Should I take the citadel guard and march out to face it?""You could take every digimon left in the city, and it will not change the outcome," Dominimon replied, steady as ever.
"Mon the walls. Keep the corruption from touching them. But stay within the defenses."Darcmon opened her mouth to protest.
"Then how are we to stop it?""You are correct. We cannot stop it," Dominimon said. He placed his hand against a set of carved glyphs in the wall.
"Not alone. But that is why we have built this city here, upon what remains from the ancient Digital world." The glyphs lit beneath his fingers. With a grinding rumble, a massive stone panel sank into the floor, revealing a descending corridor bathed in cool, pale light.
"You mean... Well, what can we lose, I suppose?" Darcmon said, her tone resigned.
"Hold the walls. I will do what must be done," Dominimon said. Darcmon bowed and took off toward her post.
Once she was gone, Dominimon paused at the threshold and looked upward, past the ceiling and toward skies he no longer walked.
You must be in stitches, Seraphimon, Dominimon thought, [/]
You always believed the Digital World would summon heroes from beyond when the need became dire. I called you a madmon for it - waiting for prophecy while the world broke apart. I left your sanctum, descended to this plane, fought while you watched from afar.[/i]
He shook his head, a mirthless smile on his face.
How ironic... My own hands are about to summon the saviors you hoped for but did nothing to bring forth, and I advocated against.With that, he stepped into the passage.
Deep in the Citadel's heart lay an ancient structure: The Gateway. A pyramid of untouched stone, its patterns older than recorded data. Legends said it once bridged worlds in ages past.
Dominimon approached the central dais. Concentric rings of the ancient mechanism awaited his touch. He moved each one deliberately, aligning them according to the ancient schema he had spent years deciphering.
The final ring clicked into place. A surge of power rippled outward. The alcove walls lit from within. From outside the Citadel, great lances of energy shot skyward - and several stray arcs vanished toward parts of the Digital World. Dominimon raised an arm against the cascading light as the Gateway activated.
In the human world...The effect was instantaneous.
Wherever you were - in your room, on the street, at a desk - something tugged at you. A pressure behind the eyes. A low hum at the base of your skull. It drew you toward solitude - an empty hallway, a quiet corner, a private room.
And the moment you were alone, the world flashed white.
A thundering sound fills your ears.
A twist in your stomach threatens to spill whatever it was you last ate.
A feeling of falling and simultaneously being launched high takes over you.
And then something new comes to view.
Back at the citadel...When Dominimon’s vision cleared, the alcove chambers were no longer empty. Humans and digimon lay on the stone floor, stunned, and some ill from the sudden transport. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw what he though may be an Arukenimon, shortly before they shrunk as their data degenerated.
Not all of the new arrivals were well.
One digimon was obviously corrupted, leaking data streams. What rotten luck that someone destined to be the world's savior would be corrupted what could not have been longer than a minute before the Gateway whisked them away!
Another digimon was little more than a collapsing cluster of unstable data, flickering on the edge of dissolution. Dominimon knelt beside the dying data-form, halting the collapse with a gesture. Not enough to restore its mind - but enough to salvage power. Under his guidance, the fragments condensed into a small pink totem pole with a red scarf, which floated towards one of the humans as if drawn by unseen power.
Dominimon stood and faced the newly arrived Digidestined.
"Greetings, humans," he said.
"I am Dominimon, guardian of Index City. You have been summoned to the Digital World, which stands in grave danger... and we are in desperate need of your aid. Our world picked you, because it determined you had what it takes to, alongside with your partners, to succeed. You must have many questions, but time is running out. Follow me, and I will do my best to answer."
Yuki
Location: Gateway
Skills/items used: None
The day was not going great. It wasn't a disaster per se, dare she say it was rather good, but it wasn't great. 96% on a big test at school. A little tap in the spar she was just coming from that was smarting a bit. You should see the other guy. Overall, pretty good.
Yuki's father didn't deal well with 'just' pretty good.
She was sitting on the bench in the locker room. The rest of the HEMA group has already cleared out, but Yuki was still wearing half of the protective gear, resting her head against the cold metal of the lockers and letting the feeling calm her down. She didn't know why the feeling of cold calmed her nerves rather than being warm and cozy, but she chalked it up to her Scandinavian part.
Then the day got worse.
It started out as a sudden rushing sound in her ears. Before long, her stomach was trying to violently turn inside out. She tried to stumble over to the sink, but halfway across, the world turned white and gravity seemed to become a distant afterthought. And as suddenly as it began it was over, just short of Yuki managing to think whether she was dying of a stroke.
Stone.
Her cheek was pressed against stone, alongside the rest of her. Before whatever it was that happened, she was tired. Now she felt like never getting up again. Compared to what happened now, the symptoms of when she caught COVID were a mild annoyance. With a monumental effort, she managed to open an eye.
She was in a spherical room, made of yellow stone that wouldn't be out of place in an Egyptian pyramid, albeit it lacked a layer of dust or sand to match that feel. The wall was littered with alcoves that looked like intricate, stone-arched door frames, something resembling Ellias' fire buzzing around in the negative spaces on the wall. In or in front of the alcoves were more people, and...
Things.
More precisely,
creatures. Critters of what looked like every shape imaginable, from something that might be called an animal to stuff that was matched only by the weirdest of plushies. That wasn't even the weirdest thing.
That would be the angel like being that looked like it just arrived from the crusade. It seemed to tend to a... mess... in the alcove right next to the one she apparently arrived from, transforming whatever it was into an object that seemed to float to her. Against her better judgement (and her protesting muscles), she reached out for it. As soon as she touched it, she felt it to be just a shiver colder than the room around her. A pleasant feeling, like a snowflake melting in her hand. It gave her the strength to try and get up.
She managed with only a few dark spots gathering around the edges of her vision, trying to listen as the angel - Dominimon, was it? - spoke. Digital world? Aid? Partners? It all sounded like hogwash.
Okay. Pause. she thought to herself,
Take inventory. You were in the locker room, and you started feeling bad. Occam's razor says that your are laid out cold on the floor. Probably hit your head trying to stumble to the sink. This is most likely some comatose dream... or something. A few more moments were spent trying to rationalize how and why this
could be real, but the practical side of her arrived to the same conclusion all the same: Whether this was a dream and her destiny was in the hands of doctors, or whether this was real, there seemed to be no harm in rolling with this for now.
"Um... what's this?" she asked, pointing to the totem pole that attached itself to a silver chain she didn't know she was wearing. Come to think of it, she noticed she was now wearing her school uniform. Damn. If she really was in a 'world in grave danger', her HEMA gear and a good blade would have been preferrable-
Manners! she mentally slapped herself.
"And my name is Yuki." she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, but clearly aimed at the Angel.
Member
RPM
Zeus23
Morose
Fish of Oblivion
Apollosarcher
Majoraa
Agunimon
Azure Bubbles
Neziul
