We have to go back in time a little.
Back to before Iris leapt from Damu's western wall and unleashed Zwaard Blome on the wyvern rider.
To the street in Damu where Benarr's estate stood.
*****
The gate Gravel had cast closed behind them. The rift contracted, the colors within it pushing against each other before scattering, and the last light of the magic circle seeped into the cracks of the stone floor and vanished.
Gravel, Iris, and Nia had arrived in the courtyard of Benarr's estate.
Benarr was the great merchant who commanded the largest trading house in Damu. His estate lived up to his reputation — it was spacious enough that its wall ran the length of three alleyways before it finally ended.
At its center lay a broad courtyard of hard-packed earth, ringed by two-story warehouses and a cluster of smaller buildings, all connected by a long wooden gallery held up along the outer walls by timber posts.
Voices rose without pause from every corner of the yard.
"Hurry up!"
"Move that one over here!"
The shouting went on and on, and the footsteps of porters hauling loads beat quick and hard against the stone. Wooden crates thudded down one after another, and dragged loads scraped along the ground. Doors opened and slammed shut somewhere nearby.
A Dawi stood at the gallery railing, both hands braced on it, shouting down at the yard below. His fur had grown long and gray.
"Open every smokehouse we've got! Get every last salmon out! You there — what are you doing standing around with an empty barrel? Didn't I tell you to get down to the cellar?"
Two servants hurried past below, carrying large baskets between them.
The baskets the Dawi carried were stacked neatly with smoked salmon. The flesh had dried and firmed after long curing, its surface a deep, smoke-darkened color. Oil seeped out along the fine cracks in the grain, giving off a dull sheen wherever the light caught it.
Behind them, an old Dawi, well on in years, was hauling a pig by force toward the storehouse. The pig dug in its heels, and the Dawi yanked harder on the rope tied around its neck.
On one side of the courtyard, a row of large cauldrons hung side by side. Beneath them, firewood had been stacked in neat round piles and set alight, and inside the pots the boiling broth rose in thick surges before spilling back down the sides.
A Muwa servant stirred the pot with a long wooden ladle he'd manifested, while beside him a Dawi roughly chopped carrots and turnips and shoveled them in. Scraps of peel from the cutting lay scattered across the stone. The smell of stew hung over the whole courtyard.
On the far side of the yard, two carts stood parked side by side. Dawi were loading bundled arrows packed in wooden barrels onto the cart bed, harnessed to a Mooloomook. Short arrows and long ones, even arrowheads of different shapes, were all mixed together in the same barrels without any sorting.
On one side of the cart lay bows with their strings loosened, bundled together in cloth, and beside them stood a stack of javelins. Once the load was finished, a Dawi gave the Mooloomook harnessed at the front a sharp slap on the flank with his palm. The Mooloomook lurched forward. The cart rolled out of the courtyard, heading down the street toward the wall.
Beneath the gallery of the main house, residents stood in a long line. The old, the young, Dawi and Muwa who could barely walk without support. A servant stood at the front, ushering them inside one by one. The estate's warehouses and outbuildings had been opened as shelters.
Gravel started walking, leaving Benarr's courtyard behind. Iris and Nia followed after him.
*****
The street leading toward Damu's western wall. A faint drumbeat echoed from somewhere far off. It came at no steady rhythm — urgent, broken, uneven.
From the western wall came the thick, heavy report of a ballista firing.
Looking up, several thick columns of smoke rose long and dark from the west. Unlike any ordinary day, not a single Dawi or Muwa was to be seen on the street. Doors were bolted shut, windows barred from within. Theirs were the only footsteps.
"Dallen——!! Da—llen——!! Where are you going, dar——!!"
Nia's voice tore through the whole street.
A pair rounded the corner of the alley. A Dawi walked quickly, a short coat thrown over his shoulders, with a Muwa perched on top of him. Every time the Dawi's broad shoulders swayed, the Muwa braced with both wings against his helmet to keep balance.
"Huh? That's not Mau, dar... it's Bouma."
The Muwa on the shoulder turned toward the direction Nia's voice had come from. Its round, large eyes looked down at the three approaching.
It was Dallen. He leapt down from the shoulder and flew straight to Nia.
"Nia! Weren't you supposed to be at the Temple of Na-Woul?"
"That's right, dar. Just got back."
Nia strode quickly forward, closing the gap between them. Dallen didn't even have time to express his gladness before rushing into what he had to say.
He said a great army of orcs and minotaurs had arrived outside the western wall. Tens of thousands strong. At the edge of Tharn Forest before the wall, orcs and minotaurs stretched out farther than the eye could see, Dallen said — and there were riders too, mounted on small flying dragons.
Siege towers had already reached the western wall, he said, and fierce fighting had broken out there.
Mau, he said, had already gone to the northern wall with his older brother Barkh. Dallen and Bouma were on their way to the southern wall, where volunteers were gathering to help defend Damu.
Before Dallen had even finished speaking, Gravel had already closed his eyes.
From the moment his feet touched Damu's ground, he had been spreading mana thin and wide from his entire body, blanketing all of Damu. The net of his senses reached the walls and stretched on past them, into the forest beyond.
In the west, countless Dawi and Muwa, orcs, minotaurs, and things whose nature he couldn't even place, were split between the top of the wall and the ground below it. Battle was underway. Dawi holding the line atop the wall. Orcs climbing ladders propped against it. Minotaurs lunging at Dawi as they fell. Within Gravel's senses, the entire stretch of Damu's western wall was one single battlefield.
And then — deep within Tharn Forest.
Beings that were neither orc nor minotaur registered within Gravel's mana expansion. A handful of them, scattered like points among the orcs and minotaurs, both near the wall and out beyond it. And the ones gathered together in one place deep in Tharn Forest carried that same distinct mana.
Since coming to this world, he had encountered countless races, each with mana of its own distinct character — but nothing as alien as the mana radiating from whatever was gathered deep in Tharn Forest.
Gravel's eyes opened again.
"Nia."
"Hm? Karka?"
"Would you go with Dallen to the southern wall?"
Nia looked into Gravel's eyes for a moment. Nia didn't ask why. Just gave a short nod.
"Got it, I'll go."
Up on the shoulder, Dallen whispered something quick to Bouma. Bouma nodded. Nia fell in beside Bouma, and the three of them vanished quickly toward the southern wall.
Iris came to stand at Gravel's side.
"I'll leave the western wall to you, Iris."
"Understood, my lord."
She answered, then, after a moment, asked carefully.
"But, Lord Gravel... what will you—"
Gravel kept his gaze to the west, toward Tharn Forest beyond the wall.
"There's something deep in the forest I need to check on. Something with mana unlike anything else — mixed in among the orcs at the wall. A race, I suppose you'd call it? They're gathered over there."
His gaze lifted to the sky above the western wall.
"One thing's certain, though — each one of them is on a level orcs and minotaurs can't even compare to."
"You mean to say... you're going there alone?"
"Yeah."
"...Right now, tens of thousands of enemy troops surround Damu's walls. Walking alone into Tharn Forest, where something that may be behind that entire army is gathered—"
"I know. You don't need to worry."
"Lord Gravel."
Iris's voice dropped a note lower. It wasn't an order. It was a voice that came out even knowing she had no right to compel him. A knight's duty, spoken plain.
"Whatever's in that forest isn't unconnected to this war. Whatever it may be, I cannot agree to you entering that forest alone. As for the western wall, there must be some other way—"
"Iris."
Gravel turned to face her.
He was smiling. Not forced. Just a light, brief smile.
"Let me show you something. Just a moment."
He beckoned her along, leading her off the street and into a quiet alley. It was a back alley of a city at war. The sounds from the wall still carried, but no one passed through. Two warehouse buildings faced each other, with a wide, empty space between them.
Gravel stood in the middle of it.
Iris fell silent.
At first, nothing changed. All that happened was a single speck of dust rolling sideways across the stone beneath Gravel's feet.
Then, in the next instant, Iris felt it — the sensation of the world around her warping, the kind of thing people describe as "the air itself changing."
Inside her armor, Iris felt it first — an overwhelming release of mana pouring out from Gravel. Every sense in her body was screaming.
Mana began radiating out from within Gravel's body. Inside him, mana veins spun fiercely, joining together and coiling into a vortex. At first she only saw it with her eyes, but before long all her senses were perceiving it.
Iris understood. There was no killing intent in this mana. No particular target. It was simply mana, being released, nothing more.
"... Ah."
Iris understood what Gravel meant to show her. But her body reacted anyway to the vast, thunder-laden storm of mana before her. Her hand, resting on her sword, tightened without her willing it.
Instinct tore through her mind, screaming a fierce warning.
This is not something I can stand against.
The mana pouring from Gravel's body didn't stop.
Dust on the stone floor began to push outward, radiating away from him. Then the stone itself, unable to bear the pressure of the mana, crumbled into dust and evaporated, and the ropes and leather sacks hanging on the warehouse walls came apart into nothing, scattering into the air.
Iris, focusing hard to trace the flow of mana clearly, saw before her a vast storm of it. An outpouring of mana so immense that even tilting her head all the way back, chin toward the sky, she couldn't find its end.
Her hand on the sword hilt trembled. Her foot slid back half a step. It wasn't a decision her mind had made — her feet were moving back on their own.
A rattling clatter rang out chaotically from every corner of the alley.
And along with that sound, a tidal wave of mana born from the storm Gravel had raised poured outward.
Mana surged out fierce enough to strike an impact against the front of Iris's helm. The hem of her surcoat whipped violently backward. Had she not planted one foot back to brace herself, her whole body would have been swept away.
A weight from some abyss that touched no floor overflowed through Gravel's body. A tidal wave of mana honed to its very peak, without a single grain of impurity. Iris understood, in the sensation of being swallowed whole by it — this wasn't a simple flow of magical power. This was mana refined tens of thousands of times over, brought to completion.
What Gravel was showing her now, she realized, was nothing more than a few drops flicked off his fingertips after briefly dipping his hand into the ocean he carried within himself — and she knew instinctively that her own eyes could never reach the bottom of that abyss.
It was mana. Without question, it was mana. But it belonged to an entirely different order than anything Iris had ever known as mana.
One fact crystallized in her mind.
Iris knew that what Gravel was showing her now was not the whole of him. She couldn't even begin to guess how high, or how deep, the true limit of that mana's order might lie.
Everything Iris had ever known as strong throughout her life, everything she had feared, everything she had faced in the world she'd lived in before coming to this one — even if all of it stood here together in this place, none of it would ever reach the one person standing in this alley now.
For the first time that day, Iris glimpsed a fragment of the full truth of just what kind of man she had sworn herself to as her lord.
Gravel looked at her, still smiling.
"You understand now, don't you? So there's no need to worry, Iris."
It was a short, plain remark, spoken as calmly as a greeting exchanged with someone passed on an early-morning street.
Gravel's mana slowly withdrew.
It had lasted only as long as a few held and released breaths, yet to Iris, who had stood within that overwhelming flood of mana, it felt as though hours had passed — a strange, dislocating sense of time.
Gravel turned away.
"I'll see you later."
Iris stood rooted where she was, watching Gravel disappear at the far end of the alley.