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"Where in the world IS this place?" Gazing at the dragon-grudge fierce beasts that seemed beyond all killing, Iris Dawnford gave voice to nearly the same words Elise had.
Except that here, beyond herself and her own card spirits, there was not one other person's aura to be found anywhere, and a thread of anxiety flickered across Iris's face despite her best efforts.
She had been in the middle of clearing the beasts around her stronghold when, without the slightest warning, she'd been teleported into this Dark Purgatory saturated with heavy grudge, and before she could so much as work out what was happening, dragon-grudge fierce beasts had come welling up on every side in overwhelming numbers, hurling themselves at her.
It was only fortunate that the beasts surging up ran none too strong individually, and that she held the Polaris Star Whale, a card spirit of the full Seven-Star grade. Otherwise, she'd likely have been torn to shreds by that first converging rush at the very start.
But if things dragged on like this, she wouldn't hold much longer either.
The Seven-Star Polaris Star Whale carried combat strength in abundance, and the advantage of flight on top of it. The problem was never the Star Whale. The problem was Iris herself.
Sustaining a Seven-Star card spirit's presence and its fighting over a long stretch devoured mana at a genuinely terrifying rate, and for Iris, who stood only at the Leader Realm, that was plainly asking more than she had to give.
Beyond that, the grudge-beasts she cut down kept resurfacing, and each new wave rose a measure stronger than the last, pressing in without pause to block her leaving. Against numbers that seemed never to run dry, even the Polaris Star Whale was a single beam holding up a falling house.
As for summoning her other card spirits, setting aside whether it would even raise her kill-rate, the drain on her mana would only accelerate. That much was certain.
The battle ground on, and bit by bit, grudge-beasts began slipping through the Star Whale's defense, their attacks hammering down hard against the great Seven-Star spirit's body.
Iris could feel it plainly. The Polaris Star Whale's aura was sinking, slowly but surely, the toll of wound layered upon wound.
"Star Whale! Whalefall: All Things Perish!" After a swift, silent calculation, Iris ordered the Star Whale to unleash its killing blow. Dragging on like this would grind down her and the Star Whale both. Better, then, to wipe out every grudge-beast on the field in a single stroke and be gone from this place before the next wave could crest.
That, at the very least, would buy her out of the present bind for a time.
Amid the whale's deep, ringing song, a waterspout of staggering scale rose joining heaven to earth, folding every last grudge-beast on the field inside its walls. And down into the heart of that spinning column, a boundless sea of stars came pouring in reverse out of the empty sky, like a galaxy cascading from the heavens, drowning and destroying every beast trapped within in the same instant.
The cascade of stars poured on for the better part of a minute, and when the star-sea at last receded, not one living grudge-beast remained anywhere before Iris. The field had been swept clean.
Though in the wake of that single blow, the Polaris Star Whale's aura sank another visible measure.
"Finally, that's dealt with~." Iris blew out a long breath and pointed toward the northwest. "Star Whale. That way."
She didn't even spare the time to gather materials from the fallen beasts. Keeping her own life came first, after all.
As for why the northwest, it was because before the fighting had swallowed her whole, she had sensed something strange in that direction, and the battles that followed had simply left her no room to think on it.
KEEEEN!
The enormous whale-tail swept through the empty air, but the Polaris Star Whale did not carry out her command. Instead it hung there, watching the near distance with open wariness.
Something was coming!
Reading the Star Whale's bearing, the nerves Iris had only just allowed to slacken snapped taut again, and a quiet dread began climbing her chest.
From everything she'd seen so far, the Dark Purgatory's grudge-beasts ran as good as endless, absurd in their sheer numbers, and the Polaris Star Whale was the only card in her hand that could keep her alive here.
But after the wheel-battles just past, she and the Star Whale alike needed time to recover. Neither of them was fit to fight on.
Even as the thoughts turned, a streak like blue lightning surfaced along the far horizon, racing straight for where the Star Whale hung.
This was the first new development Iris had met since arriving in the Dark Purgatory that wasn't a grudge-beast, but the girl relaxed nothing at all. New did not mean good.
Only when she made out the figures riding atop that streak of blue lightning did Iris finally let the breath ease out of her, and she patted the Star Whale. "Star Whale. Take us down."
KEEEEN!
The great whale-tail swept the air once more, and in a blink it had settled upon the land below.
"Oh, it's you two. I thought it was another enemy." Hopping down from the Star Whale's back, Iris watched Luke and Elise draw up before her, and an unmistakable relief threaded her voice. "How did you even find this place?"
Meeting familiar faces in unfamiliar country steadied the heart, no matter what, all the more when she'd only just crawled out of a vicious fight.
It was only that, upon catching the faintly intimate way the two of them carried themselves, an odd look crept over Iris's face all the same. Something about the pair's whole manner sat thoroughly at odds with the Dark Purgatory around them.
But whether it was the Angewomon following behind the two, or the Lethe Spider Lily, the sight sharpened Iris's eyes to a fine point. These card spirits' strength ran not one inch beneath her own Polaris Star Whale's.
The Angewomon above all. Laying eyes once more upon the angel-family card spirit that had resolved her Polaris Star Whale in a single strike back then, the feelings stirring in Iris's chest were complicated indeed.
Still, at a time like this, one more powerful companion, and one stronger than herself at that, was without question a thing to be glad of.
"We were in the area, and we happened to spot your Star Whale, so we came over." Elise offered the explanation, her gaze sweeping across the Polaris Star Whale as she did. The wounds layered over the great spirit's body said plainly enough that Iris had just come through a brutal fight.
Then again, if Luke and I hadn't been teleported in together, I doubt I'd have fared much better than she did. In the quiet of her heart, Elise noted as much to herself.
"Well, by the sound of it, a large-frame card spirit has its uses at a time like this." Hearing Elise, Iris managed a wry little joke of it.
"It's also exactly the sort of thing that draws enemies down on you." Luke shook his head. They had indeed found Iris only because the Star Whale was visible from so far off, but by the same coin, the volume of grudge-beast assaults she'd weathered had almost certainly outstripped what the two of them had faced combined.
Iris very nearly fainted from pure anger on the spot. She knew it was true, every word of it, but for crying out loud, did he have to be THAT honest about it? "Well, excuse me for owning exactly one Seven-Star card," she shot back without a scrap of good humor.
Never mind Iris. Even Elise, hearing it, was left briefly speechless, throwing Luke a reproachful little glare of her own. True though it was.
Luke gave a shrug at the pair of them. "So. What's the plan from here?"
Finding Iris had been pure accident, and she was no clanswoman of Dragon's Valley either, which meant that for now, none of them held any road out of the Dark Purgatory.
"Before all the fighting started, I sensed something strange in that direction. If you two hadn't shown up, I'd probably already be on my way there." Having heard their deductions from Elise, Iris raised her hand and pointed to the northwest once more.