Frontiers Unexplored

42) Broken God

The first thing Takuya thought when he next woke up was pain. 

His body protested his every attempt to rise fully, and every action that he attempted to take made Takuya hurt more. He didn't even want to open his eyes. His memory from before he lost consciousness was fuzzy and distant, as if it rested on the other side of a broken bridge that he had no way of crossing. 

It took far more effort than he would have liked to actually force his eyes into an opened position, and when he did, he immediately wished that he had allowed himself to press on in the bliss of his ignorance. There was too much damn light blaring on his face from all directions, and the colors that existed in his peripheral vision were too bright. He knew that the Digital World was full of vibrance, but he still hadn't expected anything quite like this. 

He was stretched out on grass of the palest green that he had ever seen, so radiant that the color bordered on being white. The sky above was dark and littered with stars, but the ground below seemed to shine even without direct contact with the sun. He could hear the swaying of a few trees in the distance, and the melody was almost enough to lull him back into sleep. It seemed to dull his pain and bring him to relaxation, as if he had never known peace until that moment in the grass of the Digital World. 

Takuya still pressed on regardless of how much he wanted to sleep though, and he managed to make his way into a sitting position. He rubbed at his eyes and glanced around the area. He could see a trio of other figures nearby, and Takuya realized that he was definitely going to have to investigate if he wanted to find any answers about what had happened. He let out a breath of dissatisfaction before pushing himself to his feet, ignoring the way that his bones seemed to creak and scream with every step. 

Saki came into view soon afterwards, and they were slowly rising to their feet alongside Takuya. Saki stretched both arms above their head, and Takuya saw a flicker of pain appear across her face. They watched Takuya for a moment before their gaze dropped to the other figures in the area. Takuya followed their line of sight. 

He cringed upon seeing Haroi sprawled out on the grass as well. His eyes were resting confidently at half-mast, and Takuya could tell that Haroi was just as unhappy about being awake as he was. The final outline in sight was Bokomon, and he was holding tightly to Cherubimon's egg. Takuya didn't know how Cherubimon had wound up separating from Nyaromon, but he wasn't sure of much of anything in that moment. His mind was still a hazy blur, and he prayed that one of the other members of his team were able to put the pieces together. 

The rest of the team. 

Takuya suddenly felt as if he had been punched, and everything came flooding back to him in a brutal cascade of memories. He nearly stumbled with enough force to knock himself from his feet. They had been attacked by Alphamon, and the Royal Knight had hit them with enough force to send them flying. The last thing that Takuya remembered was falling weightlessly through the air in a direction that he couldn't identify. 

"Where is everybody?" Takuya yelped. His tongue felt as if it had been wrapped in a thick layer of wool, and the words leaving his lips hardly sounded familiar. He glanced around furiously despite the strange sensation of his body and mind having cut ties with one another, desperate to find any traces of the rest of the group. Haroi, Saki, and Bokomon were there with Cherubimon's egg, but where in the world was everyone else?

"Not here, that's for sure," Saki replied. They glanced around the area once again before going to Bokomon's side and easing the white Digimon to his feet. They gave Cherubimon's egg a brief touch just to make sure that it was still intact. Saki moved to Haroi soon afterwards, and Takuya finally snapped out of his shock for long enough to help Haroi rise as well. The younger boy was far lighter than Takuya had expected him to be, but given how slight Haroi's figure was, he really shouldn't have been surprised.