Iris ran.
The fog, hanging low, curled and bent, trailing after her steps.
Inside the mist hung the smell of blood mixed with earth. Each time she lifted her foot, a thick, squelching sound rose from beneath it. Every time her foot touched down, the pooled blood spread out around her toes, and when she lifted it again, the blood slowly gathered back into its puddle.
Beyond the fog, the throwing arm of a massive trebuchet was being slowly winched back, bound in rope.
"Uwuaaaaaaa!!"
A Minotaur planted itself in Iris's path. Its two feet stamped down and sank into the mud, wet earth bursting up around its hooves. It gripped the axe haft with both hands. Then the axe blade, raised high over the Minotaur's head, came crashing down toward Iris.
Iris's right hand moved.
Inardil's blade rose vertically to meet it, striking head-on against the Minotaur's massive axe.
The instant Inardil touched the blade, it drove straight through, cutting as smoothly as if the axe were not hardened steel at all, but soft wax.
Where the sword's tip had passed, only a thin line remained. The axe blade gave way and split silently apart, and before the two halves had even hit the ground, Inardil's edge was already moving on, unbroken, toward the Minotaur's throat.
The blade met no resistance at all. Not the thick neck bone, not the tough muscle, not even the heavy armor — before Inardil, all of it meant nothing, as though none of it existed. The cut was so perfectly clean that, for a moment, the Minotaur's head simply remained sitting atop its neck.
Its two hands, too, hung frozen in the air, still gripping the now bladeless axe handle, and for that brief instant a strange stillness settled over the scene, as if even time itself had stopped. Then the head slid slowly to one side, and a moment later the massive body buckled at the knees and collapsed to the ground.
Iris was already past it, moving on before the headless Minotaur had even finished falling.
Orcs surged in from both sides as she ran.
Iron axes, clubs, and spears lashed out toward her all at once. Dozens of weapons, swung at different heights, different angles, different speeds, converged on her body in that single instant.
Iris threaded through it all. By the time an axe blade reached where she'd been, she was already gone; where a spear tip should have grazed her, not even the hem of her silver-white armor remained. She slipped through the gaps between the swinging weapons like threading a needle.
In the space of a single heartbeat, in her wake, the upper body of the orc who'd swung the axe parted from its waist and toppled sideways. The orc who'd thrust with a spear no longer had a neck; blood welled up low from the stump and ran down. The orc bringing down a club lost its arm, which fell to the ground.
One headless orc kept walking forward, axe still in hand. Blood sprayed from its neck as its arm swung the axe blindly through empty air. Only after a few more steps did its knees finally buckle — and even as it fell, it never let go of the axe.
Iris kicked off the ground mid-stride, twisting her body to look back as she swung Inardil in a wide horizontal arc.
A blade of mana, honed to a keen edge, split the fog and streaked toward the orcs.
The mana wrapped around the blade released itself along the arc of the swing. A crescent of silvery-blue Sword Sing rode the force of the spin, surging toward the orcs closing in from behind.
The charging orcs saw the silver-blue afterimage rushing at them. Instinctive fear locked their running feet, twisting them into the muddy ground mid-stride. That brief hesitation was fatal — by then, the blue edge of the Sword Sing had already swept past them.
The orcs at the very front were cut through. The edge was so overwhelmingly sharp that not even the sensation of bone and flesh parting reached them. The arms still holding their axes were still mid-swing. Mouths still open, mid-shout.
In the time it takes to draw a single breath, upper bodies slid apart from lower halves. The shields the orcs carried split clean in two. The armor of the orcs standing behind those shields cracked open.
The Sword Sing pressed on, cutting through armor and flesh alike. The thick iron plates wrapped around their bodies meant nothing, nor did the meat behind it. Wherever the silver-blue blade passed, armor split silently open, bodies came apart, and orcs collapsed in heaps, blood spilling from their mouths.
In an instant, the fog itself was pushed back by the shockwave of mana, rolling outward with Iris at its center.
Iris turned forward again.
Had Gravel been there to see it, he might have recalled a line from one of the classics he liked to read.
"One whose strength was enough to defy ten thousand men." That was the warrior spoken of in the old tales. A lone figure who could stand against an army — and now, before the walls of Damu, Iris had become the very embodiment of that ancient legend as she carved her way through the orc hordes.
Yet the orcs' assault showed no sign of breaking. Over the piles of corpses she'd already cut down, countless more orcs kept pouring in, and from within the fog came the heavy footfalls of minotaurs, closing in from every direction. Iris stood at the center of that surging tide of orcs and minotaurs.
A densely compressed barrier of mana unfurled across Iris's whole body — the Mana Bulwark. Mana wrapped outward from beneath her breastplate, covering her without a single gap, from vambrace to fingertip, from toe to crown. Forged along the surface of her armor like a transparent, unyielding sheath of steel, the dense mana sealed her body off completely from every physical law the world obeyed.
Arrows flew at her from behind, from the side, from somewhere within the fog. The twang of bowstrings kept sounding, over and over.
Iron-tipped arrows split the air, streaking toward her.
An instant before each arrowhead reached her, the gray iron tips met the mana radiating from the surface of her armor. The heads crumpled flat, the shafts snapped. Dozens of arrows came at her, and not one so much as touched the hem of her surcoat.
An axe came whistling through the air, cutting it with a sharp, savage sound.
Weighted and spinning, the blade flew straight at her. The instant it struck her Mana Bulwark, the axehead shattered first, and the handle followed, splitting in two, scattering fragments of iron and wood in every direction.
Iris didn't stop; she pressed forward. Amid the screams of orcs filling the air on every side, Inardil's blade tore through flesh, leaving a trail of silvery-blue afterimages.
In the heart of a battlefield where limbs flew and black blood scattered into the mist, the moment her downward strike split an orc's shoulder, she spun and swung wide. The necks of the orcs pressing in were cut through, and in that single unbroken breath, through dozens of strikes flowing without pause, through feet that never stopped moving, the blurred fragment of a memory lingering at the edge of Iris's mind began, slowly, to sharpen into focus.
The overwhelming mana Gravel had shown her, the crushing weight that had pressed into her very flesh, rose vivid in her mind again. She knew even that had not been the whole of his strength. The bottomless depth of that abyss, impossible to measure, had sent a chill down her spine.
There had been powerful enemies she'd faced before. Enemies she'd feared. But even if every one of them — everything she had ever encountered before coming to this world — were gathered together in one place, none of it would come close to Gravel.
And yet, that thought filled her with joy.
A being of an entirely different order. Pride welled up in her at the knowledge that the lord she served belonged to such a realm.
It wasn't simply that he was strong. He existed in a place where every measure of strength Iris knew of simply failed to apply. That she had chosen a man like that as her lord filled her with a joy she could hardly contain.
And that same Gravel had entrusted her with Damu's western wall.
Watching Gravel's back disappear into Tharn Forest, Iris had felt an unpleasant question raise its head inside her chest, once.
Standing before the stature of my lord — am I worthy of that place beside him?
It was a question. A question turned on herself.
Iris looked down at the question that had raised its head. Then, without hesitation, she cut its throat.
There was no time to question whether she deserved it. Her lord had given her an order. While Gravel made for the forest, holding the western wall was hers to do. That was all there was to it. Whatever displeasure she felt at her own shortcomings, whatever helplessness came from the gulf between them — for now, she meant to send it all flying, carried on Inardil's edge.
There was only one way to cut a question like that down.
Carry out her lord's command.
I am my lord's sword!
And Iris knew it. Here, on this battlefield, tens of thousands of orcs and minotaurs were falling before her blade. That was simply how it should be. As her lord's sword, this much was only natural.
Iris tightened her grip on Inardil.
She ran. She cut. She ran further.
Hundreds of orcs closed in around her.
Orc shapes rose out of the fog everywhere at once — to her left, her right, ahead, behind. Footsteps piled on footsteps, shouts on shouts, and the sounds of swung weapons tangled together. From beyond the fog, more orcs kept pouring in, closing steadily on Iris.
Iris stopped moving, just for a moment.
She slid Inardil back into the scabbard fixed at an angle against her side. Then, lifting her head, her cold eyes swept over the minotaurs before her and the mass of orcs beyond them.
Standing in place, Iris lowered Inardil, holding it low against her body.
Her right foot dug deep into the mud and planted firm.
The hand gripping her sword held still at her waist for the space of a breath.
Then, a massive turn began.
"Vloedsnede!"
With her body as the pivot, Iris drew Inardil from its scabbard and swept it in a wide horizontal arc. The mana coiled around the blade released itself in an explosive roar.
The arc the mana blade carved became a razor-edged storm, tearing mercilessly through the muddy ground as it surged forward.
A silver-blue Sword Sing, concentrating the force of her spin, layered outward in ring after ring, spreading in every direction. Following the blade's arc, a wave of cutting force swept out radially, gouging entire sections of muddy ground away.
The mana blade, now given full form, skimmed low and horizontal across the sodden ground. In the wake of the spreading, razor-sharp edge of Vloedsnede, pools of blood split open, and clods of earth mixed with black blood burst violently outward as the ground was carved away.
Orcs and minotaurs caught in the path of the streaking blue blade went down. Orcs who'd raised their heavy shields lost shield and arm together, sheared clean off; orcs who'd charged forward were cut through at the waist before they could even bring their weapons down. Heavy iron armor in the blade's path split open, and bone and flesh were crushed without mercy.
The destructive current stirred up by Iris's Sword Sing, Vloedsnede, blew away the heavy fog that had blanketed the area, all in an instant.
The fog cleared.
Around Iris, a circle of empty space dozens of cubits wide had opened up.
She was the only one still standing. Along the edge of that circle lay the fallen — orcs and minotaurs with their necks severed, their bodies split open.
At the center of the clearing the fog had left behind, Iris slowly lowered her sword. Her gaze had already moved past the pile of corpses at her feet, fixed instead on the massive trebuchet far off, its grotesque skeletal frame bared to the sky.
The distance still wasn't enough. Even that last strike wouldn't have reached it.
A cold breath slipped out between Iris's lips.
...I need to get closer.
She ran again, cutting down orcs and minotaurs as she pressed forward.
And across the blood-soaked clearing, she saw an orc in a thick plate cuirass covered in blunt battle scars, raising a broad, crude cast-iron axe and roaring. A grating, guttural sound of orcish speech, like something being scraped from a throat, spread out through the air.
As the sound reached the other orcs, their scattered movements stopped.
There was only one enemy. A single foe in armor, carrying nothing but a single sword.
Cut down, and cut down, and cut down again. Even watching the corpses pile up with their own eyes, their bodies refused to move forward. Only when the commander's roar reached them did their frozen feet reluctantly begin to move.
The scattered orcs turned as one. Shield-bearing orcs moved to block Iris's path, their heavy footsteps advancing amid the harsh clang of metal on metal.
Heavily armored orcs locked their shields together.
Their ranks locked into place. Iron shield pressed against iron shield without a single gap, forming a solid wall. Spears jutted out through the seams between them. Behind the wall, the orcs advanced one measured step at a time.
A wall of dozens of interlocked shields rose up to block Iris's path.
Iris didn't slow down.
She drove her right shoulder straight into the shield wall.
The collision came.
—CRASH—
The clash of metal rang out in a chaotic tangle of sound.
The feet of the orcs standing at the very front, shields raised, left the ground.
Still gripping their shields, their bodies were thrown back, slamming into the chests and shoulders of the orcs standing behind them.
The orcs struck lost their footing and fell.
More orcs toppled onto the ones already down, shields and bodies tangling together as the wall collapsed.
Iris's left hand rose.
Her fingers curled slowly inward. The mana above her palm drew in, condensing to a single point. The more it condensed, the smaller it grew, and the smaller it grew, the brighter it burned. Bright silver-blue light leaked out between her fingers. Inside her palm, the light of the mana trembled as though it might tear straight through her hand at any moment.
Then, the instant her palm snapped open, a deafening blast tore through the air.
Space itself seemed to buckle and warp outward, and that distortion became a force-laden ripple that spread out in every direction.
Mud and stones flew up as though an invisible wall were sweeping outward; the fallen orcs lifted off the ground along with clods of earth, and even the orcs still standing were flung into the air, as if the ground beneath their feet had simply vanished.
Iris raised Inardil.
She kicked off the ground. It caved in beneath her feet as though it had exploded, and her body shot straight up into the air.
Inardil struck out among the orcs suspended in midair. Once — she twisted her body. Twice — she changed direction. Three times.
Each time the blade grazed them, orc bodies split open, and before the falling orcs even reached the ground, their limbs had already come apart, raining down shards of armor tangled with flesh.
Minotaurs pressed toward Iris through the shower of red orc flesh raining down around them.
Iris's feet touched ground. She charged straight at the minotaurs, sweeping Inardil in a horizontal cut.
The first minotaur's neck was cut through. Its massive head flew up into the air. Even though the distance had seemed far too great for a blade to reach, the other minotaurs faltered mid-step, lowering their eyes to the severed head that had fallen to the ground.
Iris didn't stop. Second, third, fourth — each time Inardil cut across the space between them, another neck fell. Severed minotaur heads dropped to the ground, rolling and colliding with each other.
Iris moved through it all. Everything around her was drowned in dull iron-gray and the red of blood — the gray skin of the orcs, rusted iron, air clouded thick with fog, and a ground flooded with blood up to the ankle. In the midst of it all, only Iris's silver-white armor stood out, sharp and clear.
Somewhere on the battlefield, an orc who'd survived looked down at the axe in his hand. Hundreds of his own kind were being cut down by a single knight. He started to raise the axe, then stopped. That it was his own people being cut apart, trampled, split open, falling — even seeing it with his own two eyes, he couldn't make himself believe it was real.
The axe slipped from his hand.
Thoom...
From somewhere far away, a low, heavy tremor rose up through the soles of her feet.
Iris's eyes turned toward the trebuchet.
The throwing arm was rising. As the chains pulled taut, the massive boulders piled in the basket at its end launched skyward.
A massive load of stone was launched toward the walls of Damu.
Am I too late?!
Iris's feet dug harder into the ground, pushing off with everything she had.
She was too late. The boulders were already airborne. Somewhere, a thunderous crash rang out.
Iris tightened her grip on Inardil, resetting her hold. There was no time to waste. The second launch had to be stopped.
Iris ran for the trebuchet.