Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 18 - Chapter 12

12. Like No Other

It took another two days to reach the Walter Gate. Along the way, the delegation spotted well-ordered enemy units marching through the forest. Half were orcs, half undead, and there were maybe a thousand of them altogether. Most of the orcs had bleached their body hair white, and wielded one-handed swords with jagged, saw-like blades. Judging from their distinctive appearance, these were probably the orcs that had been encamped at Mount Grief. They were trying to join up with the main Southern Expedition force besieging the Ironblood Kingdom.

The Walter Gate was halfway up the western slopes of the Kurogane Mountain Range. The way to the gate went through a canyon, up a valley, and between the gaps in broken hunks of rock. Itsukushima and Yume found footprints made by something that wasn’t four-legged and took note of them, but a thief like Haruhiro wouldn’t have noticed. Without someone to lead him here, he wouldn’t even have been able to wander into this place by accident.

The entrance to the Walter Gate was indistinguishable from a natural cave. However, Haruhiro and Neal were able to spot the multiple watch stations in the area around the entrance. There were little rock huts in all directions with the bearded faces of dwarves peering out of them—some of them with guns held at the ready.

A dwarf came out of one of the huts carrying a gun. The greatsword that was hanging diagonally over his back was more impressive for its girth than its length. He had a face that kinda looked like it had been twisted by anger and hatred—an evil countenance, the mask of a villain. He was a pretty scary-looking dwarf.

Ranta’s hand twitched toward the hilt of his katana. Haruhiro gulped too. He could understand how the dread knight felt.

“Whoa! Scary...” Kuzaku murmured, which was a questionable choice. Haruhiro nudged him in the side with his elbow. “Oops, sorry.”

“Really now...” Setora looked at Kuzaku coldly.

“Willich.”

When Itsukushima called out to him, the sinister-looking dwarf raised his right fist.

“Itsukushima. Glad you’re back,” he replied with a voice that was as grim as his face.

“Looks like you’re in trouble.”

“We sure are.”

After that short reply, the dwarf, who was apparently called Willich, started walking toward the cave-like entrance to the Walter Gate. Did he want them to follow him?

Itsukushima patted Poochie on the head.

“You wait here, boy.”

Poochie looked up at Itsukushima, blinking as if to say, Got it. He rubbed up against Yume a bit, then quickly darted off down the slope.

“See ya later, Poochie,” Yume called after him, causing Poochie to stop and give a short bark in response. He didn’t turn back after that.

The group followed Willich. Around fifty meters inside the limestone cave there was an iron gate with a number of dwarves stationed at it. Willich gestured at the guards to let the group through, and it took all those burly dwarves working together to pull the gate open. It was more than half a meter thick.

Beyond the iron gate, things changed completely. There was a flat stone-tiled floor. The walls and ceiling had been neatly carved too, and reinforced with iron. There was even lighting—lanterns embedded in the wall that seemed to rely on something other than fire to provide illumination. How did they work? Haruhiro wondered about it, but didn’t feel at liberty to ask. Their guide, Willich, didn’t say a word, so the group followed him in silence.

“Heh... Hic... Heck... Achoo...!” Unable to bear the silence any longer, Ranta let out a strange sneeze. It got no response from Willich.

“Hey, hey,” Yume said, hopping up and down as she stepped forward to walk beside Willich.

Ranta tried to stop her with a “Hey,” but it was too late.

“Are you and Master friends, Willup?”

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, your name wasn’t Willup, huh?”

“It’s Willich, Yume...”

Even with Itsukushima kindly providing her with the right name, though, things didn’t work out.

“Mew. Oh, that’s right. It’s Willie. Sorry ’bout that. Yume’s always gettin’ stuff wrong.”

“I’m not really Itsukushima’s friend... More of a friend of a friend.”

“Ohhh. That right? Well, a friend of a friend’s a friend, y’know. Yume thinks you oughta be friends too.”

“I don’t follow, but fine, we’re friends, then.”

“Oh, you are? Well then, since Yume’s Master’s apprentice, and Master’s like Yume’s dad, that makes you like Yume’s uncle, huh, Willie?”

“However you like it...”

“Okay, you’re Yume’s uncle now. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you...”

“Fistbump!” Yume declared, thrusting out her fist. Willich lightly knocked his fist against hers.

“Wow...” Merry murmured. Haruhiro knew how she felt. He’d just been thinking the same thing.

“I know, right? Yume’s got some freaky mad skills at communicating...” Kuzaku said, but his choice of words was pretty weird itself.

The tunnel bent in places, going through iron doors and up and down stairs as it continued for a long way.

Suddenly, Itsukushima asked Willich, “Have you ever been to the hethrang dens?”

“No,” Willich responded immediately, spitting the word out with distaste. “Don’t even say that name. They’re filthy.”

“So there are hethrang dens. They do exist, huh?”

When Itsukushima pushed him on the issue, Willich let out a powerful snort. It probably meant something like, You’re being annoying, drop it.

Yume leaned close to Itsukushima and whispered, “What’re hefferuns, Master?”

“I only know a little, myself. The dwarves don’t like to talk about them,” Itsukushima said, avoiding explaining further. “And it’s hethrang, not hefferung.”

“Nuh? Well, what’re hethrangs, then?”

“Later,” Itsukushima said with a sheepish smile before ending the conversation.

The fourth iron door brought them into what appeared to be a warehouse. It was packed full of red armor and helmets with silver trim, shields, and weapons like halberds, axes, spears, and swords. Some of them were on display in glass cases. There were even machines with lots of complex parts. The lamps hanging from the ceiling, casting a faint light across the room, seemed pretty intricate in design.

“The Walter Gate connects to the private residence of the eminent House of Bratsod,” Itsukushima explained in place of the taciturn Willich. “The current minister of the left, Axbeld, is of the House of Bratsod. I hear their house has been around for five or six centuries, since before the Ironblood Kingdom was founded.”

Willich snorted again, earning a shrug and a smile from Itsukushima. It seemed the dwarf was not fond of the House of Bratsod.

Willich knocked on the door leading out of the warehouse and a dwarf wearing red armor and a helmet opened it. The residence of the House of Bratsod was spacious, and there were more dwarves in red armor standing around the place. They all even had red beards, though it took a moment for Haruhiro to notice that. It looked like they had dyed them.

Exiting the private residence, they came out onto a street lined with blacksmiths’ workshops. It was really loud and super hot. Dwarves with hammers in hand, clanging away. Shouting back and forth. The smell of sweat steaming on hot iron was mixed with the scent of the alcohol the smiths sometimes knocked back. It filled the place with a stench that was like nothing else.

Willich stopped in front of one workshop. A dwarf with flowing orange hair, his long beard cast over his shoulder as he hammered, caught Haruhiro’s eye. Dwarves were, as a general rule, shorter than humans, but this dwarf was a marvelous mass of muscle that was incredible to behold.

“Gottheld!” Itsukushima called out to him, and the muscular dwarf stopped hammering. He turned his eyes—which were green, surprisingly—toward the hunter.

“Itsukushima?”

The dwarf, whose name was presumably Gottheld, set his hammer gently down on the floor before walking over. As might be expected, he wasn’t even as tall as Yume. Even so, he gave Haruhiro the impression that he was a big guy.

He’s probably stubborn, thought Haruhiro. Strong-willed, but forbearing. He’s got that in common with Itsukushima.

Gottheld grabbed Itsukushima’s arm with a hand that looked as hard as metal and smiled. “Glad you made it back,” he said before glancing at Yume. His eyes had a fatherly affection in them. “And this must be your darling apprentice. You were able to meet up with her, huh? I’m happy for you.”

“Yeah...” Itsukushima said with an embarrassed smile. “The force that retook Alterna was the Frontier Army, made up primarily of reinforcements from the mainland. I’ve returned bearing a letter from their commander.”

“Did you come in through the Walter Gate?”

“Yeah. Going through the Great Ironfist Gate seemed impossible.”

“You’ll be seeing the king, then.”

“That’s the plan.”

“I’ll go with you. Hold on a moment.”

Gottheld headed back into his workshop. He was wearing work clothes, so maybe he meant to get changed.

“This workshop...” Ranta said, looking around. “Does he make guns here, maybe?”

“That’s right,” Itsukushima said with a nod. “My friend Gottheld is the best gunsmith in the Ironblood Kingdom. The concept of a gun had been around for a while, but there’s no question that he was the one to make them practical. Thanks to that, they call him the father of firearms.”

When Gottheld returned neatly dressed, Willich took off somewhere, probably figuring his job was done. The delegation then headed to the Iron Palace with Gottheld.

Along the way, Itsukushima asked Gottheld about the hethrangs that he’d mentioned before. “Willich wouldn’t hear me out, but could you tell me about the hethrangs?”

After a moment, Gottheld scowled and asked, “Why do you want to know?” Was it that sore a subject?

“There’s something that concerns me,” Itsukushima said, his expression grim. “There was a group I didn’t recognize among the enemy.”

“You’re not suggesting they were hethrangs, are you?”

“Dunno. All I know is that the Ironblood Kingdom has people who the rumors say are descended from orcs, and you use them for heavy labor like digging mines and mining ore.”

“The hell?” Ranta turned bright red with anger. “I know humans, elves, dwarves, and orcs can have kids together. Most orcs call those kids gumows, and won’t even treat them as their own kind. Are you telling me dwarves do the same shit?”

“Hey...” Itsukushima was about to warn Ranta to tone it down.

However, Gottheld said, “It’s fine,” turning toward Ranta to give him a firm nod. “You’ve got it right. For a long time now, we’ve kept the hethrangs shut up in their dens in the mining and refining district where we treat them like slaves. Hethrangs aren’t seen as dwarves. We give them the bare necessities, not letting them really live, but not killing them either—no, we do work them to death. We don’t just treat them like slaves. They are slaves. If you go to the most dangerous reaches of the mine tunnels, all you’ll find are hethrangs, or their corpses. This is something every dwarf who isn’t a child knows. But we don’t talk about the hethrangs. Because we all know. They are the shame of dwarvenkind.”

“They bring shame on you?!” Ranta ground his teeth loudly, glaring at Gottheld. “You oughta be ashamed of yourselves. If you know what you’re doing is shitty, then set them free and let them live normal lives. Have some goddamn decency!”

“Ranta-kun, you’re getting too worked up about this...” Kuzaku said hesitantly. Ranta wasted no time rounding on him.

“You shut up, moron! I’m getting worked up because this shit pisses me off. What’s wrong with that?!”

“Hethrangs...” Haruhiro murmured, thinking of the man he’d seen, Wabo. “Do they have yellowish-brown skin and disproportionately big upper bodies?”

Gottheld’s eyes widened. After a moment’s pause he said, “I’m told some hethrangs try to escape. We execute all the ones we catch. Are there some who got away? I couldn’t tell you. Honestly...I’ve never wanted to find out. But...”

“It wouldn’t be surprising if there were,” Setora said in her usual disinterested tone. “I think we can more or less see what’s going on now. The hethrangs have been oppressed by the dwarves, forced to do heavy labor. Some escaped, and are now collaborating with the Southern Expedition...”

Maybe the hethrangs had used the gnoll tunnels in their escape. If so, they might use them to get into the Ironblood Kingdom too.

“Heh. What goes around comes around,” Ranta said with obvious contempt. Then, sighing, he shook his head. “If we weren’t here ourselves, I’d just say the dwarves are getting what’s coming to them, and that’d be the end of it.”

“Let’s hurry,” Itsukushima said, pushing Gottheld’s back to urge him onward.

Soon the group came to a major road ten meters across with a downward slope, with a ceiling ten meters high. There were stalls on either side of it, and dwarves going about their business. There were some rather petite human women around too—or so Haruhiro thought, but it turned out they weren’t human at all. When Gottheld explained they were all dwarf women, Kuzaku was shocked.

“Huh?! Are all dwarf women little girls?!”

It surprised Haruhiro too, but he liked to think he had better manners than Kuzaku. “They can’t all be little girls, that’d be crazy. And you’re being kinda rude...”

“Oh! Yeah, I guess I was, huh? Urgh. Still, it’s pretty shocking. I mean, look how different they are from the men.”

“Did you think dwarf women had beards too?” Ranta asked, his tone mocking.

“Well...I considered the possibility. My image of dwarves was that they’re hairy, beardy, and drink a lot.”

Gottheld gave that a strained smile.

“If you limit it to just dwarf men, you’re not far off the mark.”

The massive black door that towered over them at the end of the road was the entrance to the Iron Palace. It was called the Great Iron King Gate. There was a group of black-bearded dwarves standing on a sort of battlement above the gate. It wasn’t just their beards that were black. Their armor and shields had been stained black too. The black-bearded dwarves all carried halberds.

“The royal guard,” Itsukushima explained. “They’re dwarf traditionalists. As you can see, the elites who guard the Iron Palace don’t carry guns. They’re not fans of Gottheld, and they hate outsiders to boot. I don’t expect them to openly do anything to us, but stay alert.”

Gottheld asked to enter, and the black-bearded dwarves silently opened the Great Iron King Gate. There was no word of acknowledgment from them, not even so much as a nod, but Gottheld didn’t seem to mind. He probably got treated like this all the time.

They didn’t call it the Iron Palace for nothing. There were steel plates covering the floors, walls, and ceilings—all of them polished to a mirror-like finish.

“It’s shiny-shiny, huh?” Yume said as she looked at the floor. “If this were a skirt, people might see Yume’s panties.”

“Good point...” Merry quickly brought a hand down to her hemline in front.

“Oh...?” Kuzaku tried to look directly under Merry, but Haruhiro whacked him on the back of the head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Ow! Sorry, couldn’t help myself...”

“It’s not as though you lose anything from him seeing them,” Setora said, impassive.

“Huh? So you don’t mind if I look, then?” Kuzaku asked, earning him a faint smile from Setora.

“If you want to look, look. It costs me nothing. I simply find it unpleasant.”

Deputy Neal, who had been looking at Setora’s feet, subtly turned his head to face forward. Who knew what she’d do to him later if he upset her? She was probably saying anyone who was prepared to find out was welcome to.

After walking down the steel hallways a while, a group of black-bearded dwarves approached them from the other direction. The lead dwarf was so tall he didn’t look like a dwarf at all. He might not have been as tall as Kuzaku, but he was probably taller than Haruhiro.

Gottheld, who was leading the way, came to a stop.

“Why, if it isn’t Sir Rowen, captain of the royal guard.”

The tall dwarf he’d referred to as Rowen didn’t open his mouth until he was standing right in front of Gottheld. “Master Gunsmith. What business have you here in the Iron Palace?”

“Itsukushima made it back from Alterna.”

Gottheld had no choice but to look up at Rowen. The height difference made it unavoidable, but if there were a little more distance between them he wouldn’t have had to turn his face up quite so much. Basically, Rowen was forcing him to look up. What an ass.

“I’ve come to request an audience. Could you see us in?”

“You would ask me to guide you?”

“I believe I just did, yes.”

“You bring in this gaggle of humans I’ve never seen before, and expect to be brought before the royal personage.”

“Gaggle of humans, he says,” Ranta muttered, clicking his tongue with distaste. Haruhiro lightly elbowed Deputy Neal in the side.

“You should introduce yourself.”

Neal scowled, but reluctantly stepped forward.

“Uh, I’m, er, I mean, I am Neal, an envoy...is that the word? Yeah, an envoy sent by His Excellency Jin Mogis, Commander of the Frontier Army.”

“The Frontier Army, you say?”

The captain of the royal guard glared at Neal, making him back away half a step.

“Th-That’s what I said, yeah?”

“Do you mean you are an envoy from Margrave Garlan Vedoy? Who is Jin Mogis?”

“Uh, no, the Margrave died, er, I mean, passed away, and our reinforcements from the mainland of the Kingdom of Arabakia retook Alterna. General Jin Mogis was the leader of those reinforcements, and has now become the new commander of the Frontier Army.” Neal puffed his chest up as if to say, Aw, yeah. Did you see that? I said it good and proper. Though maybe he was just trying to puff himself up so he didn’t give in to the pressure he was feeling from Rowen.

“And you brought this envoy of theirs all this way, Sir Itsukushima.” Rowen glanced at Itsukushima, then laughed. “I am sure it was not easy. But who can say if this representative of the reinforcements, or the Frontier Army, or whatever they call themselves, is of any value to us...”

Itsukushima gazed up at the ceiling, a look of exhaustion on his face. He’d probably been harassed by this captain of the royal guard many times before, and was thinking, Not this again.

Ranta was looking at Haruhiro, mouthing something.

“Do we kill him?”

That’s what it looked like.

“You’re an idiot...” Haruhiro mouthed back at him.

“I get it,” Gottheld said with a shrug. “I’d hate to trouble our commander of the royal guard. I’ll ask the minister of the left to see us in instead.”

Anger flashed in Rowen’s eyes. It seemed he was pretty emotional. “We of the royal guard are the ones charged with protecting the Iron Palace and the iron king. Would you dare slight me, their captain?!”

The dwarf could be decently scary when he got angry. He hadn’t just reached for the greatsword on his back, he was full-on gripping the handle, and gave off the impression that if he drew it this wouldn’t end with just threats. Maybe it was an act. But he could have also been serious. Which was it? Honestly, Haruhiro couldn’t decide one way or the other.

At some point, Neal had hid himself behind Haruhiro and the others. Screw you, man. Haruhiro wanted to shout at him, but had no time to curse out the useless deputy. I’d really like to end this peacefully. But how do I do it?

“Would you give it a rest?” Merry’s tone was so cold it could freeze eardrums. “Your enemies are at the gates. Is this the time for infighting? Enough already.”

He’d forgotten. Merry wasn’t just kind, pretty, serious, and the most considerate of her comrades out of any of them. She was also awfully scary when she got mad. And she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind when she wanted to.

Rowen’s black beard was shaking. Was he thinking about what he’d like to do to this uppity human wench? He seemed so surprised he didn’t know how to react.

“Meow!” Yume suddenly jumped up.

“You’re a cat now?!” Ranta quipped.

“Mweh? Nfuh!” Yume cocked her head to the side, making more weird noises, then finally approached Rowen and started pounding on his armor.

“We’re in a hurry, okay? The enemy’s got hetsuns with ’em. They’re gonna go round-n-round the tunnels, and then maybe they’ll be comin’ out in the Hotblood Kingdom.”

“She’s gotten a lot of things wrong there...” Setora said with a sigh. “There are people in the Ironblood Kingdom called hethrangs, yes? It seems they’ve turned against you. A unit of enemies carrying guns they stole from you may be planning to attack through the gnoll tunnels. That is the information we want to pass along to the iron king. I would think it should be a pressing issue for you.”

“Hethrangs, you say? Through the gnoll tunnels...”

Rowen growled like a beast. While the dwarf was arrogant and prone to fits, he also seemed to have considerable confidence in his strength. He was quick on the uptake too. Despite having been so blatantly hostile before, he buried the hatchet in a second, and even smiled slightly as he nodded.

“That would indeed seem to be a pressing issue. Sir Envoy, I will see you and your entourage in to meet the iron king. Follow me.”

Once he had taken on the task, the black-bearded captain of the royal guard moved things along quickly. He sent his subordinates to go contact the appropriate people and had the delegation wait in another room for about five minutes. Rowen then led them through the steel halls himself, where they boarded an impressive elevator that was majestic to the point it seemed pretentious.

“This elevator, which will take us to the audience chamber, was designed by the great inventor Duregge for the iron king of the time, and is powered using a mechanism known as a steam engine,” Rowen explained eloquently despite no one asking. He was like an entirely different person from before. It was kinda creepy.

“Our Ironblood Kingdom has had many successive generations of wise and brave kings, but the current iron king is a great ruler of a kind rarely seen. Sir Envoy, you can expect your words to be received kindly. However, as a retainer, I ask you not indulge in my liege’s benevolence overmuch. Under normal circumstances, none but those who have sworn loyalty to the royal personage would be allowed in the audience chamber.”

That said, the way he spoke suggested any politeness was only superficial, and he held nothing but contempt for them.

The elevator finally came to a stop. Stepping out of it, they emerged into a spacious hall. This was only the antechamber. The black-bearded dwarves of the royal guard were protecting a set of steel doors. They weren’t large compared to the size of the hall, and were lacking in ostentation, even feeling a little rough and boorish.

Rowen nodded at the black-bearded dwarves and they opened the way. The double sliding doors parted smoothly.

The steel audience chamber was rather long. The far side was raised a number of steps, and there was a blind concealing part of the platform at the top.

The audience chamber wasn’t lined only by black-bearded dwarves. There was also a red-bearded dwarf in red armor, as well as two elves. One looked to be a middle-aged man, but it was hard to tell an elf’s real age. As for the other elf, Haruhiro wasn’t even sure what gender they were. The elf’s features were so perfectly symmetrical that, while he could tell they were beautiful, the elf didn’t even feel like a living creature anymore.

“That’s the elven elder, the honorable Harumerial Fearnotu, and the head of the Seven Sword House of Mercurian, the honorable Eltalihi Mercurian,” Itsukushima explained quietly. The middle-aged elf was probably Mercurian, while the elf of unclear gender was the elder.

“Sir Red Beard,” Gottheld said, nodding to a red-bearded dwarf.

“He’s Axbeld, the minister of the left,” Itsukushima said, glancing at Rowen before adding, “The captain of the royal guard’s competitor.”

Rowen approached the platform and knelt. Gottheld did likewise. The minister of the left, Axbeld, and the middle-aged elf struck the same pose. The elven elder turned toward the platform, face angled downward slightly. The black-bearded guards didn’t budge an inch.

Neal cleared his throat, then took a knee. Haruhiro, Ranta, and the rest nodded and knelt too.

Complete silence without the slightest noise fell over the room.

“Itsukushima, it’s good to have you back,” said a woman’s voice from beyond the blind.

“Ohhh...” someone moaned. Gottheld, maybe? Rowen and Axbeld both lowered their heads even further.

“Huh...?” Kuzaku mumbled. “Hold on, it’s a queen?”

“What insolence...” Rowen said, his voice filled with annoyance.

“Are you stupid?” Ranta asked, clicking his tongue in distaste. “She might just be the royal speaker or something.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kuzaku replied with a laugh.

Itsukushima sighed. “No, it’s her.”

“This is the problem with you humans...” Rowen said, noticeably irritated. Haruhiro was wishing his comrades would keep quiet, but it wasn’t out of any sense of reverence. No matter how great the iron king was, she wasn’t their monarch.

“I’ve heard the gist of it.”

However, when he sensed the owner of that voice stand up on the other side of the blind, Haruhiro felt a little tense for some reason. He looked with upturned eyes, his face still pointed toward the ground, and saw the blind rising.

“Y-Your Majesty...”

Rowen was clearly shaken. That probably meant the iron king didn’t show herself often. It could be that she didn’t speak with her own voice often either. Ranta had brought up the idea of a royal speaker before. There was a throne that looked like a mass of iron up on the platform, and a single woman standing in front of it. Behind the throne and off to one side there was another black-haired girl. Could that girl be a court lady who normally spoke on behalf of the king?

That’s a king?

The dwarven king.

The iron king.

They say the name of a thing represents its form...

Uh, how?

The elven elder had an unearthly appearance, but the dwarves’ queen was in a whole other dimension. The words “fair skin” could have been invented just to describe hers. Her sparkling silver hair was a work of the most sublime art, and her blue eyes were unique jewels that no one else could ever have had. Haruhiro had seen dwarven women outside the Iron Palace. He’d seen the court lady behind her too. The court lady, well, she was slender, and her appearance put her a league ahead of the ordinary dwarf women, but the queen went even beyond that.

She’s like no other, thought Haruhiro. Surely there isn’t a woman like her in all of Grimgar. Her build, the structure of her face, it’s all so special. Is she really a queen? It’d be more believable if they told me that she’s actually a goddess. Isn’t she a goddess?

Haruhiro was overcome by emotion. To put it in simple terms, he was thinking, Wow, I’m glad I got to see that. This was the kind of thing you’d lay eyes on once in a lifetime, if that. Many wouldn’t even have a single such opportunity. That was how incredible the queen of the dwarves was. If, just theoretically, that queen were to say, You there, swear loyalty to me and give me your heart, would he be able to refuse? Haruhiro wasn’t sure. As for Ranta and Kuzaku, they’d instantly reply “with pleasure,” wouldn’t they?

“I wish not just to hear from you directly, but to listen to your opinions. I think we must hold a council. At once.”

The iron king’s eyes narrowed slightly. That was all she did, but it was enough to convey that she was thinking deeply about the future, and was also concerned for the well-being of the members of the delegation, exhausted as they were from their long journey.

“Gottheld, Itsukushima, and the members of the Frontier Army’s delegation. Could I ask you to attend?”

Haruhiro almost said “with pleasure” despite himself, but swallowed the words and bowed his head.

“’Kay.”

He ended up sounding like Kuzaku instead. Maybe he should have gone for “with pleasure” after all.