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An elder of Dragon's Valley?
At Viola's words, understanding crossed all three faces. Then again, this whole mutation of the trial ran back to the Dragon Renegades. That the Valley had sent someone made perfect sense.
Though the Immortal Realm meant Drake's strength stood on level ground with Head Wren's own. Which said something about the sisters' standing inside Dragon's Valley, too. However strong the Valley ran, Immortal-Realm elders were never so cheap that one could be casually dispatched.
Luke filed the thought away in silence.
"What's the discussion?" The four came walking over as the group talked, and though every one of them had deliberately reined their auras in, their strength simply ran too far past the students'. Elise, Iris, and Viola all went taut on instinct as the four drew close. Luke alone did not.
"Nothing much. I just didn't expect you to enter the Purgatory yourselves, Head," Luke offered.
"If something this large happened and we sat on our hands, we'd hardly deserve to keep our posts at Celestial." Tobias rolled his eyes at the explanation, though the look he turned on Luke ran full of open appreciation. "Not that it mattered, by the look of things. Even without us, you'd have walked out of here whole."
"I suspect even the Renegades who authored this operation never imagined an ending like this one." Drake spoke up as well, his tone every bit as approving. If only Luke were Valley-born. How much better everything would be.
Praised by two Immortal Realm powerhouses in a row, Luke only smiled and said nothing. He did, however, edge a few unobtrusive steps sideways. That gaze of Drake's was genuinely difficult to endure.
Selene and Moira, meanwhile, had already gone to look the three girls over, and only once all three were confirmed unhurt did the two women finally let their hearts settle.
"Right. Whatever else there is, it can wait until we're back at Celestial." Tobias's gaze traveled to Silas, sprawled in the near distance like a dead dog, wheezing under the weight of three apex spirits, and the appreciation in his eyes drained away to bottomless frost. "This crisis reached you because of our negligence. Celestial does not spare anyone who dares set designs on our students."
"So rest easy, all of you. Celestial will give you a full accounting." As the words fell, even Luke felt the temperature of the air drop by a distinct measure. The Head's fury this time was anything but light, and once they returned to Celestial, Silas was going to have a genuinely memorable stay.
Not that Luke spared the man any pity. He'd brewed this storm himself, and landing in Tobias's hands, the ending wrote itself.
And had the four never arrived in time, the outcome wouldn't have differed much anyway. Exactly as Tobias suspected, Luke would have had Angewomon X send the man skyward. Once someone had come at his own head, was he supposed to release the tiger back to its mountain?
"No. Traced to the root, this happened because of Dragon's Valley." Drake shook his head, and the look he leveled at Silas carried frost of its own. "To you, and to Celestial alike, Dragon's Valley will deliver an answer that satisfies all sides."
Thank the heavens for Luke, the one variable no one had planned for. The losses had been ground down to almost nothing, the great fortune buried inside the misfortune. Mishandled, this affair could have poisoned the relationship between Dragon's Valley and the Ancient Kingdom outright.
The Renegades' target had been the sisters, direct descendants of one of the Nine Great Dragon Lords, and taking them would have dealt the Valley, and Drake's own faction above all, a staggering blow. But beyond that, the Renegades had certainly meant to use the strike to drive a wedge between Valley and Kingdom. That was exactly why they'd moved during the entrance trial: after formal enrollment, their chances would have collapsed to nearly nothing.
Which meant, by any honest ledger, that Luke had just resolved a diplomatic crisis on Dragon's Valley's behalf. Drake's appreciation for the boy climbed another full step.
"Let's move." Tobias plucked the half-conscious Silas up one-handed, like wringing a chick off the ground, and addressed the field.
"You lot, with us." Selene and Moira beckoned Luke, Elise, and Iris along, while Viola fell in beside Drake.
Last to leave, Tobias swung up onto Pegasus, Silas still dangling from one fist. With a long, ringing cry, Pegasus passed through the portal and then erupted with spatial force, tearing the portal apart behind them.
And with everyone gone, the Dark Purgatory sank back into silence.
---
"These Renegades certainly picked their ground well." The portal opened by the Writ delivered everyone safely back to the main plane of the Magic Card Civilization, but the place they emerged stood a long way from Celestial. Close, in fact, to the border where the Eastern and Southern Regions met.
Plainly, succeed or fail, the Renegades had mapped their road out in advance.
"Which means the Renegades who fled in those days really did, in all likelihood, make for the South." A flicker of puzzlement crossed Drake's face. "But then how, exactly, did they slip every search the clan ever ran?"
"Isn't the ready-made lab rat lying right here?" Tobias gave the dead-dog Silas a pat. Fallen into their hands, the man's days of comfort were over. Between Celestial and Dragon's Valley, the ways of making one Renegade say everything he knew were beyond counting.
"That reminds me, Head." At the exchange, Luke spoke up as though just recalling it. "He mentioned that Celestial holds their people inside it as well."
With both Celestial and the Valley now fully engaged, handing this upward was plainly the best of all moves. After a stunt like this one, Luke trusted that Tobias and Drake would be delighted to sit down for a long, thorough talk with any mole who had dared trade with the Dragon Renegades.
"It's true, Elder Drake. That Renegade said it to my face." Viola added her voice from the side, fury burning through it. "They planned to move against my sister inside Celestial itself!"
Silas, who had just begun showing faint signs of coming to, heard Luke and Viola relay it, felt the world go black, and fainted clean away again.
Why. WHY did I have to run my mouth?
"Celestial holds moles who trade with these Renegades, does it?" Tobias went still for a beat. And then he began to laugh. "Good! GOOD! GOOD! These Renegades have gone and taken Celestial for their own back garden! It seems Celestial is overdue for a thorough, proper cleaning."
He said it laughing, and not one person present missed the fury running underneath it. Even Drake, elder of Dragon's Valley, heard it and fell silent.
Because traced back far enough, the Valley could not wash its hands of this either. Had Violet and Viola never come to study at Celestial, the Renegades would likely never have struck their bargain with Celestial's moles at all.