"Rise, my Demon," the chamber vibrated with Dagomon’s voice. With the assistance of his staff, Demon clambered to his feet and looked up at his master. Months later, he still had to fight against the urge to flee when he saw Dagomon. Sitting on a throne of bleached bone, he was roughly humanoid in shape, but that only served to highlight how incredibly alien the rest of him was. His head was high and domed, like that of a squid, and set with two, blood-crimson eyes. Leathery wings were folded at his back amidst a twisting complex of tentacles. His smooth, silvery skin was mottled with black patches, so that, when he moved, shadows seemed to dapple across him.

His mouth opened to reveal multiple rows of teeth, "She has awoken?"

"Ye -," Demon began to reply, but Dagomon raised an arm to caution him to silence. He lifted himself off his throne and moved to a clear, shallow pool in the centre of the room. Passing a hand across it, he spoke several, soft words in a language that was unfamiliar to the other Digimon. They sounded almost like the sighing of the ocean. Curious, Demon edged closer to see what he was doing. The water in the pond began to cloud, then cleared again to reveal an image. It was of a young girl standing in one of the bedrooms of the palace and herself gazing into a bowl of water. She was dressed in a white nightdress, brown hair falling loosely down to her shoulders, and her feet were bare. As if she were aware she was being observed, she turned to glance over her shoulder with a bewildered expression on her face. Demon hissed in rage when he saw who Dagomon’s sleeper was.

"I know this girl," he said, temporarily forgetting himself, "She was one of the children who banished me to this place."

"The Shining One. I know who she is. I have always known of her."

"Forgive my impertinence, my lord, but that could pose a problem to your plans. If she is the Child of Light, then she is under the protection of Seiryuu," Demon’s voice dropped to a hush at the last word. After Dagomon, Seiryuu was the only creature in the world he feared. The Blue Dragon of the East was the god of warfare for good reason, while Azulongmon was the least of his manifestations. In his full glory, Demon did not doubt that he was more terrible than lightning and more powerful than the storm. And the Children of Hope and Light were his special servants.

Dagomon dismissed his concerns with a flick of a tentacle, "I do not fear Seiryuu, for I am far older than he. I came into being when the first man glanced at the first woman, and his blood quickened in his veins. I came into being when they lay down together in the dust. I came into being when her stomach swelled with child, and when she gave birth amidst blood and screams."

Demon was not much comforted by his master’s claims. He wanted to argue with Dagomon that it did not matter how ancient or how powerful he was. He was still a fertility spirit, and a fertility spirit had little chance against a war-god. If he interfered with those under Seiryuu’s protection, he would be destroyed as surely as the tides turned. Instead, he asked him: "If I may stretch your patience, Great Dagomon, why do you need her?"

Silently, Dagomon stretched out a sinuous tentacle and drew aside the membraneous curtain that screened off a private alcove. Demon could not suppress a shiver as he saw what it had concealed. In a deep pool, a creature lay dying. Its nine, reptilian heads lolled at the ends of long, oddly graceful necks. Its sides rose and fell almost imperceptibly, and its flippers gently stirred the surrounding waters. At the movement of the drapes, it opened one, gem-bright eye to look incuriously around it, but it soon fluttered shut as if even seeing were too much effort.

Puzzled, Demon turned back to his master, "I do not understand."

"Hydramon is dying. And with her dies Y’ha-nthlei."

There was no sorrow in Dagomon’s voice, only a pitiless, merciless acceptance of the inevitability of nature. It was the voice of a speaker who had seen creatures burst from the egg to devour and to be devoured in turn. It was the voice of a speaker who had seen empires rise to greatness, then crumble again into the dust from which they had come. It was the voice of a speaker who knew that all dominions must end, even his own, even though he was not ready to accept it.

"You wish to take the child as your new queen?" Demon could not keep the surprise out of his voice.

"The Shining One is powerful. She will make a worthy queen, who will lead my servants out of the deeps into the light. They will rise to take great cities, and they will bring me the tribute that I crave."

"She will not serve you willingly," Demon cautioned, "She rejected you last time. She might reject you again."

"I know. That is why I have stolen her memories from her. See."

With infinite delicacy, Dagomon curled a tentacle around a clam-shell on one of the rocks and passed it to Demon. It felt cool and solid in his hands, and its surface glimmered white as pearl. Cautiously, he opened it a fraction and peered within it . . . .

Demon snapped it shut, and looked up at his master in awe. He was a powerful magician himself, but he never could have done something like this.

"And there is no way of breaking this spell?"

"It will break when the shell is broken," Dagomon carefully took it from him and replaced it in its niche in the rocks, "And that shall not happen. Now, leave me, Demon. I must prepare to receive my guest."

Wiping her eyes dry with the back of her hand, the girl turned away from the bowl of water and the stranger in it. For a moment, it had felt like someone was watching her. That was impossible, of course. She was alone in the room, and she doubted this ancient, ruined palace was wired with cameras. Nonetheless, it had made her realise how vulnerable she was. She was all by herself in a strange place without any means of defending herself or any knowledge of how she might return home. Wherever home was. She felt helpless tears begin to prickle in her eyes again.

"You’ve had your cry," she told herself firmly, "Now, you have to find a way out of here. Maybe if you know where you are, you’ll be able to work out who you are. But you need to find a weapon before you do anything else. There’s no telling what lies behind that door."

Her bare feet silent on the floor, she padded across the room to the niches in the wall. There had to be something in the odd collection of objects she could use to defend herself, if matters came to the worst. The knives were the obvious choice, but the entire box of cutlery had been fused together by the sea. Even had she been able to extract one, time had dulled their edges until she doubted they would do much damage to a block of butter, let alone an assailant. Speculatively, she picked up a jade statuette of a girl dancing and tested its cool, heavy weight in her hands. It was not perfect, but it was better than nothing.

She gripped it tightly in her hand as she walked across to the door and slowly turned the knob. The door creaked open a fraction, and she froze. What if someone had heard the sound? She peeked through the crack, noting with some relief that the hallways were deserted. If creatures lived in this strange castle, they were elsewhere. With any luck, they still thought she was asleep. This was her best chance to escape.

She stepped through the door and quickly shut it behind her. The hallway seemed to be formed of the same, strange substance as her room. A dim, green glow came from the walls, brighter where they bunched into vertical ridges. For a moment, she fancied she was standing in an enormous ribcage, but that was as impossible as her fears about being watched.

"Left or right?" she asked herself, "Does it even matter? I can always retrace my steps."

She shrugged and set off at random to the right. She had not gotten far, however, before she heard footsteps behind her. Her stomach twisted painfully inside her. They had found her. They were coming to get her. It was no use running - whatever was pursuing her was closing too fast, and she knew she didn’t have a chance of outpacing it. Some, almost memory told her that she had never been good at running. Her only options were to hide and to fight. She pressed herself between two ridges of the wall, hoping her pursuer would run past her, hoping that she would have the nerve to attack it if it did not. Her breathing sounded loud to her own ears, no matter how she tried to quiet it. Her sweaty hands tightened around the little statuette, as she raised it above her head.

Feeling as if her heart was about to burst through her chest from beating so hard, the girl heard the footsteps pause only inches away from where she was hiding. Did it know she was there? Or had it given up on the chase?

"I know you are there," a low, almost musical voice said, "Lower your . . . weapon and come out. I shall not hurt you."

Knowing it was pointless to resist, she did as he asked. She was unable to stifle a gasp of surprise as she saw her pursuer. She had not known exactly what she had expected to see, but it had not been the boy standing in front of her. He had steady, grey eyes and dark, glossy hair which fell in loose waves around his shoulders. He was dressed in a traditional kimono - a black one, embroidered with scarlet and gold fishes. And he was easily the most beautiful boy she had ever seen.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

"I am known as many, different things to many, different people," he replied in the same melodic tones, "But you may call me Takeru. . . ."

*Dum, dum, dah* To be continued!

* According to Lovecraft, Dagon was the Phoenician fish-god. As such, he was very much a god of fertility to them.

* Again, if you’re a fan of Fushigi Yuugi, you’ll recognise its influence on this part. The clam-shell was inspired by Tomo and his use of them to capture memories of the real world. Similarly, my use of Seiryuu as war-god comes from that show. It is there in Digimon 02, though. Azulongmon introduces himself as the Guardian of the East and the keeper of the spheres of Hope and Light. And Miyako makes the connection between him and the four gods of earth and sky in the real world, of whom Seiryuu is the eastern one. (It’s appropriate that it is Miyako, of course. Miyako was the old name for Kyoto, where the four spirits are said to be in balance.)

* Dagomon’s description of himself is heavily inspired by Ted Hughes’ Crow poems.