Unknown.
The flash of lighting and crash of thunder coming from all around them caused Solomon and Tactical Warrior to yell out in pain as their intermixing migraines were amplified severely. The sheer pain caused the Rose Duelist and, mentally, the Duel Spirit to involuntarily curl up as the pain overrode conscious thought. The burning sensation of tears running across his cheeks as the mental pain consuming both their minds crashed into each other and prolonged the suffering. Excruciatingly slowly, the twinned migraines began to fade, the all-consuming pain largely giving way to ange, which in turn ebbed to leave a numb exhaustion.
'Tac?' questioned the exhausted Solomon.
'What?' Tactical Warrior responded similarly.
'The fuck was that?' he asked as he shakenly rose to an unsteady kneeling position.
'It seems Manawyddan's brother decided to…step in…while we were in their realm…' the Duel Spirit replied.
'A lot more powerful than Manawyddan was…' Solomon thought, taking a few deep breaths to steady himself.
'Manawyddan was in a weakened form…' Tactical Warrior began.'Crossing dimensions also would have caused him to suffer a drop in power… I have also witnessed him duel before…and the cards he used against us were some of his weaker ones.'
'We barely won…' the Rose Duelist trailed off, the weight of his words crashing down on him.
'Indeed,' the Duel Spirit replied.
'...What is one of them?' Solomon asked with trepidation.
'Riryoku,' Tactical Warrior responded cautiously. 'A power increase spell that reduces the enemy life in half and augments the equipped monster with that amount…'
'...causing a potentially two thousand point increase to attack and defense, something our deck can only get if all our equip spells are used and are on favorable terrain…and we saw he had more equip spells than that…' the Rose Duelist continued the Duel Spirit's statement in falling spirit. '…if I'm not in my time, then I'm never going to be able to get back to it, will I?'
'Probably not…' Tactical Warrior reluctantly admitted. 'I am sorry you got mixed up in this…'
'No,' Solomon responded with a slight amount of annoyance. 'None of my situation was your fault. It was entirely in the hands of the McMooran and Beaufort. You are a beautiful woman who was caught up in the mess that my life had become, and have become one of only a few I trust completely and unquestionably.' In the slightly awkward silence that came after the Duelist's statement, he thought over the Spirit's statement and he mentally kicked himself while saying, '…wait that was an expression of sympathy, wasn't it?'
'Yes…' Tactical Warrior replied awkwardly, before closing away her thoughts from Solomon, limiting their communication to just tangentially feeling emotion. For a second, the Duelist was confused, before he recalled his full statement and comprehension of what he had said crossed his rational mind.
"And the winner of the 'stupidest decision of the day' award goes to Solomon Roosevelt for accidentally flirting with someone stuck in his head," Solomon could have sworn he heard Bjorn mirthfully and bombastically announce to the loud laughter of Rubeus and the quiet chuckling of Li. Something which served to heighten Solomon's embarrassment, though tempered slightly by sadness of having not seen his friends for months, and search for something to distract his mind with. Upon which, he noticed a slight breeze bring something familiar into line of sight, a White Rose card.
For a moment, Solomon was confused as to its presence as he picked it up. As the card disintegrated into a white energy that passed into his skin, the Duelist then recalled that the card had been brought into his line of sight by a slight breeze. "Shit," Solomon exclaimed as he clamored to his feet, only slightly noticing that feedback of his realization had brought Tactical Warrior out of her musings, and both searched their surroundings to locate the other fifteen Rose Cards and just in general determine their surroundings.
They were in the center of a largely collapsed circular structure within a forest, a large clearing visible out the most open part of the structure. It held a large stone floor, oddly carved to be reminiscent of a rose, with six circular, partially engraved pillars laying equidistant along its length, one of the pillars broken near the base. Upon the standing pillars lay a massive ring of stones that was obviously broken away around the destroyed pillar. A broken wall formed of five layers of stones each equal in height to Solomon ran behind a few of the pillars, with the zenith of the crumbling wall reaching the base of the ring upon the pillars. Just inside the pillars was a set of twenty stomach-high pillars that formed a crescent along the edge of the rose-carved platform, just inside the larger supporting pillars. It is upon fifteen of these smaller pillars that the remaining Rose Cards were laying upon.
Solomon slowly walked from pillar to pillar, collecting each of the remaining fifteen Rose Cards, slightly perplexed that none of them seemed to have moved in the slightest from the center of the pillars, unlike the first that he had noticed. A further oddity made itself known as, of the fifteen remaining Rose Cards, the only ones to dissolve into energy and augment his soul were the eight Red Rose cards, the seven other White Rose cards stubbornly staying in the card form.
'We won the eight Red Roses, but were only gifted with one of the White Roses,' the Duel Spirit offered as a possible explanation.
'But we gave them all to Rosenkreuz for the ritual. We shouldn't be able to access the nine we can if that were the case...' Solomon trailed off.
'Do you have a place to keep them safe?' Tactical Warrior asked.
'Not really…wait, there is something I could use,' the Rose Duelist replied, looking around for his bag. Noticing it was nearby where they had initially landed, he headed over to it and began searching around inside before extracting a palm-sized rectangular box made of rigid leather.
'What is it you use that for?' The Duel Spirit asked when he had retrieved the box.
'I haven't brought it up before?' The Rose Duelist replied quizzically.
'No,' Tactical Warrior replied. 'I've seen you handle it carefully when removing it, but I never asked about it before and you've never mentioned anything about it.'
'Well, it contains my deck of the modern incarnation of the game,' Solomon replied, slightly sheepishly at having neglected to mention it for so long, as he undid the latch and opened the deck box. 'Didn't want to open it back then as there wasn't really a reason and it might damage the cards.' Separating two random cards in the deck to create a gap, the visible card interestingly being one of his possible alternate deck leaders Thunder Nyan Nyan, he slid the remaining White Rose Cards into the deck, and, as he reclosed the deck box, he finished, 'Now, we need somewhere to store some cards, and it is fitting…'
Tactical Warrior gave a small chuckle for a few seconds before cutting off. 'We have company. Outside largest opening.'
Solomon tossed the latched deck box into the bag rapidly before refocusing where Tactical Warrior indicated. There were five strange creatures in the direction she had indicated, with forms largely reminiscent of a highly bestial werewolf. The creatures of the pack had bodies that were blacker than pitch, with one exception. The claws, teeth, and what seemed to be a mask were the purest of white, with exception to red markings that crossed over the mask, at one point seemingly forming eyes. Any curiosity was about them was tossed aside thanks to their rapid approach. A switch seemed to flip in Solomon's mind, his expression growing stern, as he pulled the drawstrings of the bag and tossed it off to one side, mentally asking only a single question as he fortified his mind, 'Ready?'
'Of course,' Tactical Warrior replied knowingly as the creatures approached, similarly fortifying her own mind. Four of the entities began to slow slightly, changing direction likely in an effort to surround the Rose Duelist while one kept going in for the attack, but the Rose Duelist and Duel Spirit were only barely concerned. Especially once both reached for the integrated energy of the Rose Cards and the dam containing the energy broke down. A smirk crossed Solomon's face as the power flooded through the two of them, white tendrils of energy crisscrossing his entire body and clothing. Most of the creatures seemed to slow quickly at what was occurring, but the one charging towards him redoubled its pace and leapt for the Rose Duelist. This attack ended in failure as the entity fell right through Solomon's seemingly physical form, as it was dissolved by the power of the Rose Cards and his body and clothing were transformed to be composed of a partially transparent matrix of white energy.
Adjacent to the now ghostly Rose Duelist, a sigil appeared with energy formed in the appearance of the White Rose and edged by an intricate gold pattern. A bright vortex of light was emitted upwards and when it faded, a golden-eyed woman was revealed to be standing upon the sigil, armored in a full set of red plate armor and armed with a broadsword inscribed with many runes and a red and gold kite shield. Around the center of her torso and forming a cape hanging from the back of her hips down to her shin were a great number of white feathers. The helm which covered her long, golden hair with red bangs had four golden wings sprouting from the temples, two on each side. This was the physical form of Tactical Warrior.
Solomon rolled his shoulders as a phantom exhaustion from one of Tactical Warrior's battlefield memories bled through their Rose Card amplified connection, while the Duel Spirit herself heard the echoes of a crowd bleed over from the Rose Duelist's mind. Thanks to their mental preparations they had rapidly learned to develop after past bleed-throughs, neither of these echoes lasted for more than a second and both were able to bring their focus upon the five cards they had gained access to, Hitotsu-Me Giant, Zanki, Battle Steer, Octoberser, and Yellow Luster Shield. The Rose Duelist quickly gazed at the creature that had performed a leaping strike at him and noted its name was a creature by the name of a Beowolf and had an attack power was at an even one thousand, information that was instantly passed to Tactical Warrior without a word needing to be said thanks to the amplified connection.
'Encirclement break point?' Solomon asked, preparing his part in the summoning of the only monster their starting four star summoning power could call upon, Hitotsu-Me Giant. A fact made evident by the swirling vortex of energy surrounding a sphere of intermixed dark purple and brown energy in his open left palm.
'Right edge,' the Duel Spirit replied, preparing the same energy in her left shield hand. Both began rushing the rightmost Beowolf as both tossed the twin spheres of energy before the creature. The entity dodged back into the land behind that section of the ruined temple as the spheres flew towards it, fusing in midair into a single large vortex before it. However, this state was temporary as vortex transformed into the green-skinned cyclops as it leapt towards the creature with a bestial roar. The attack power of the warrior was amplified from twelve hundred to seventeen hundred as it passed onto the meadow that was on that side of the temple. This meant when the cyclops's fist impacted the Beowolf's head, the creature was thrown back with its neck was broken. Oddly, as it was thrown back, the Beowolf disintegrated into a dissipating black mist.
This fact could not be thought upon much as the Beowolf to the left of their position struck at them. Tactical Warrior noticed this quickly and skidded to a stop, bracing herself with shield raised. However, she wasn't able to get to a perfect stance before the creature impacted her shield, forcing her back a slight amount and against the pillar. Both the Rose Duelist and Duel Spirit felt the sting as one thousand of their four thousand point shield was eliminated by the attack. Compounding this, the Beowolf that had attempted to strike at Solomon had recovered, and was approaching from the left, with the other two following behind.
Three stars worth of summoning power was restored to Tactical Warrior and Solomon, and a new card, Nekogal #1, was drawn to refill the hand after Hitotsu-Me Giant's summoning. The cyclops in question used the augment to its speed gifted to it by being on favorable terrain to charge the Beowolf that had attacked Tactical Warrior. While the Duel Monster's attack was reduced to its base twelve hundred, this was still more than enough to dispatch that Beowolf as easily as the previous. While the cyclops struck, Tactical Warrior and Solomon summoned Nekogal #1 between the soon to be destroyed Beowolf and the Beowolf that had struck at the Rose Duelist earlier. The eleven hundred attack cat girl-fairy hybrid manifested from her vortex in an attack simultaneous with Hitotsu, but focused instead upon the Beowolf that had earlier attempted to strike at Solomon, via leaping upon its back and using her claws to tear out the creature's throat with her clawed hands.
The final two charged at the group as the now deceased members of their pack dissolved into dissipating black mists, with the former leftmost Beowolf attempting to perform a strike upon Nekogal #1 while her back was turned. The creature's claws raked across the hybrid's back and wings, but the magic composing the stronger creature resulted in the Beowolf's strike dealing no damage. Nekogal #1 counter attacked by stabbing her bladed tail through the torso of the creature, killing it. The other instead rushed to attempt to move through the gap between Nekogal #1 and Hitotsu-Me Giant in order to strike at Tactical Warrior.
The summoning power of Solomon and Tactical Warrior once more increased by three and a new card entered their minds, the Book of Secret Arts. The equip spell proved to be unnecessary, as the cyclops managed to recover quicker than the Beowolf was able to respond and was able to kill the Beowolf, finishing off the last member of the pack.
The Rose Duelist and Tactical Warrior moved back towards the center of the structure, with Nekogal acting as a guard for their left while Hitotsu moved to guard their right. As Solomon was about to ask Tactical Warrior a question, a strange sound echoed over the trees. The source was revealed as a helicopter flew overhead and landing within the nearby field.
'It seems our arrival attracted some attention…' Tactical Warrior commented as the craft's rotors began to spin down.
'Hopefully it's not negative attention…' Solomon replied, watching what he thought was the door to see who it was that would come out. 'And we can actually communicate with them,' he finished as he gazed upon the unfamiliar design of the aircraft.
Curious, any interest in seeing a list of revisions that were done?