Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 18 - Chapter 2

2. Bonds Don’t Break, Even When You Cut Ties

“Haru-kun! Hey, Haru-kun! This is huge, Haru-kun!”

Shaken awake by Yume, Haruhiro hurried to the basement of Tenboro Tower with Ranta, Kuzaku, Merry, and Setora. Neal the scout, in his deep-green cloak, called after them to stop, but the group ignored him and headed downstairs. Neal didn’t force the issue, instead following them to the basement.

The man had been relieved of his possessions, stripped of even his cloak and boots, and shut behind a set of iron bars in the dank, cold stone dungeon. He was unshaven and lacking in cleanliness, looking more like a beast than the unkempt man he was.

“Master!” Yume cried, clutching at the bars with a level of intensity that made it look like she might sink her teeth into them. “It’s you! Yume’s been so worried! Thank goodness you’re okay!”

“Y-Yeah...” The scruffy man looked more weirded out by this display than relieved. “Sorry about that. I hate to worry you... Oh, right. I was too. Worried about you, that is. You know, just thought I’d say that...”

“Erm...”

As Haruhiro was looking at the man sideways, trying to figure out the situation, Ranta gestured at the man with his chin.

“He’s Itsukushima, of the hunters’ guild. He’d be the equivalent of a mentor in the thieves’ guild, or a lord in the dread knights’ guild. The hunters’ guild called theirs fathers or mothers, depending on gender. So, that makes this guy Yume’s father.”

“He looks like a savage.” Setora never minced words.

“Well, thanks.” Itsukushima didn’t seem to mind. “It’s true, I prefer living in the remote mountains to being among people.”

“So, the thing about Master is he’s kinda like Yume’s dad. Right, Master?”

“Yeah, um... Your dad?” Itsukushima clearly didn’t know what to say. “Y-Your dad, huh? I’m Yume’s dad...”

“And if you’re Yume’s dad, then that makes Yume your daughter, right?”

“Y-Yeah, I guess by that logic you would be...”

“You’re a fitting pair,” Setora commented, and it was hard to be sure if she was being sarcastic or just blunt about how she felt.

Haruhiro leaned over to whisper in Ranta’s ear. “Don’t you need to introduce yourself?”

“Huh...?!” Ranta jumped into the air, overreacting. “Introduce myself?! Huh?! Wh-Wh-Wh-Why?!”

“Well, I mean, this is Yume’s dad and all.”

“Not her real dad! A-A-A-A-A-A-And even if I did meet her real dad, I still wouldn’t need to! Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Why would I have to do that, you moron?!”

Merry scowled and shook her head. “The echo in here just makes him louder and more annoying...”

“Wah! Wahhh! Wahhhhh! Take that and suffer some more, dumbass!” Ranta shouted.

Haruhiro sighed. “You’re as bad as ever...”

“Hold up...” Kuzaku’s brow furrowed. “What’s Yume’s master, or father, or whatever he is, doing in jail?”

That was the problem, yes.

It turned out that around when Alterna fell, Yume, Itsukushima, and Ranta had been working together for a time. Yume and Ranta went on to rejoin the Volunteer Soldier Corps, but Itsukushima headed north.

“Master was sayin’ he’d go up to the Killing Game Mountains with Poochie.”

Yume’s explanation honestly didn’t make a lot of sense. Her master stepped in to help.

“Poochie’s one of the guild’s wolf dogs. And it’s the Kurogane Mountains, not the Killing Game Mountains, okay?”

“Ohhh, that’s the place with the, uh...” Kuzaku said, scratching his head, “the something-or-other kingdom. Where those dwarven people live.”

“The Ironblood Kingdom. And just calling them ‘dwarves’ is enough,” Setora said, looking at him coldly.

Kuzaku seemed suddenly deflated. “’Kay... I’ll try to say that from now on.”

“Gah ha ha ha ha ha!” Ranta let out a vulgar laugh. “That’s right! You’d better watch yourself! In all sorts of ways!”

“You’re the last one I want to hear that from, Ranta-kun...”

According to Yume’s master, he had friends living in the Ironblood Kingdom. If the enemy had a next target in mind after Arnotu in the Shadow Forest and Alterna, it was probably the Ironblood Kingdom. That’s why he’d gone up to the Kurogane Mountain Range to warn his friends there.

It went about as he’d expected. More than a month ago now, a massive army of orcs and undead had invaded the Kurogane Mountains. With centuries of history on their side, the Ironblood Kingdom was a massive underground fortress. The dwarves who lived there had dug it out of the bedrock. It was basically an interconnected series of mines, both large and small.

The enemy had tried to storm the entrance on the surface, the Great Ironfist Gate. That was the main way into the Ironblood Kingdom, located near a massive river called the River of Tears.

Of course, according to Itsukushima, the dwarves weren’t totally without any plan for how to handle the situation.

“The dwarves never got on with the elves of the Shadow Forest, but the iron king made the bold decision to take in refugees from Arnotu. And I gave them what little intel I had too.”

“The dwarves knew what the enemy was up to, then, huh?” Ranta said, nodding like an insufferable know-it-all. “Which means they had time to prepare for the attack.”

“How did they fare?” Setora asked.

Itsukushima responded without any real emotion. “I left the Kurogane Mountains twelve, thirteen days ago. They hadn’t fallen then, at least. The enemy seemed to be struggling to seal their victory.”

“Hweh.” Yume’s eyes widened. “That’s amazin’! The dwarfies’re real tough, huh! Mwungh-hungh...”

“Arnotu went down in no time, though,” Ranta said, keeping up the know-it-all act. He probably felt the need to look cool in front of Yume’s master, seeing as he was like her dad and all. “And, Yume, how long are you gonna go on making weird noises? You sound like an idiot—”

Suddenly, the iron bars rattled, causing Ranta to let out a squeal of surprise and start trembling.

It was Itsukushima. He hadn’t so much pressed on the bars as smacked them with the palms of his hands. “An idiot? Did you just call Yume an idiot?”

“Ah...! No, I didn’t say she’s an idiot, I just said she sounds like one...”

“Take it back. Or I’ll chop you up and feed you to the bears.”

“S-S-Sorry. I-I-I take it back! I-I-I-I-It was just a turn of phrase, or something...”

“Bears? Scary!” Kuzaku looked less than amused. As for Yume herself, she was blinking in confusion. She didn’t seem to get what had happened.

“So, here’s the thing...” Itsukushima said, clearing his throat loudly as he tried to get back on track. “I didn’t know about it until this most recent time I went to the Ironblood Kingdom, but the dwarves have a secret weapon. Thanks to that, not only has the enemy been unable to get through the Great Ironfist Gate, they can’t even encircle it.”

Haruhiro touched his cheek. A secret weapon. Just hearing the words was a bit embarrassing, but at the same time they set his heart all aflutter. Ranta was beside himself with glee, his eyes needlessly sparkling.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaa! Are you seriously serious?! Secret weapons are for real?! Hot damn, I want one! A secret weapon! Gimme one too!”

“Uh, no, they’re not gonna give them away...” Kuzaku told him, sounding exasperated, but he couldn’t completely mask his own interest. “I would like to see for myself, though. What’re they like? Secret weapons, I mean...”

Setora let out a thoroughly exasperated sigh. “You people...”

It seemed Itsukushima had long been treated like some kind of representative of the human Kingdom of Arabakia in the Ironblood Kingdom. It had just ended up that way because he’d tell the iron king about Alterna when asked, and no other humans from Alterna were around.

Itsukushima and his dwarf friends had participated in the battle to defend the Kurogane Mountain Range, but only until the second day of the fighting, when things intensified, and both sides started taking a substantial number of casualties. In that two-day period, the Ironblood Kingdom lost twenty-seven people, while the enemy piled up hundreds of corpses.

From then on, there were only sporadic clashes, and the Ironblood Kingdom was ready to strike back if the enemy showed any openings.

From the enemy’s perspective, an attack from the rear would be devastating, so they couldn’t afford to carelessly retreat. Itsukushima took an opportunity during an audience with the iron king to suggest that they simply let the enemy withdraw without pursuing. He was told that wasn’t an option.

“The iron king’s impressive. I don’t know how to describe it. Like an amalgamation of everything good about the dwarves...”

According to Itsukushima, the iron king wasn’t bellicose by any means and was in fact very thoughtful, but dwarves as a race tended to be hot-blooded. It was easy to rile them up, and they were incredibly tenacious too. As was sometimes said, “A dwarf’s fire burns for a hundred years.”

When they fought, they went all out. Such was the way of the dwarves. And in this case, the other side had started it. There was no reason to let someone who’d picked a fight with them slink away unharmed. The dwarves had a saying: “Always hang a robber.” If someone tried to force their way into your home, just capturing them and roughing them up wasn’t enough punishment. If you didn’t string them up, it reflected poorly on you. That’s what it meant.

Ranta snorted smugly.

“Once things get started, it’s kill or be killed, nothing else, huh? Can’t say I’m against that. Actually, I like it. I bet I could share some good drinks with the dwarves.”

“Do you know how much booze a dwarf can consume?” Itsukushima said with a nasally laugh. “They could drink even our hardiest barflies under the table. That’s their Achilles heel, though.”

Yume nodded enthusiastically. “They’re a bunch of whiners. Always have been, right?”

“Uh, yeah...” Itsukushima looked like he was going to both smile and cry. “I don’t think that’s the word you were looking for. Winos, maybe? Sorry to be picky...”

Yume was troubling him, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He even looked happy about it. That said, Haruhiro couldn’t let this drag on forever, so he tried to help.

“The dwarves can’t hold their liquor? Is that it?”

Itsukushima shook his head.

“No, not at all. They drink booze like water and are totally fine. It’s normal for them to drink for good cheer in the middle of a battle.”

As a massive underground nation, the Ironblood Kingdom maintained food stores large enough to feed their people for several years. But alcohol was another matter. For the dwarves, booze was a necessity. Obviously, they brewed and distilled it themselves, and had significant amounts in storage. However, they drank a lot more in wartime than when they were at peace, so their stocks had been gradually falling. Normally, they’d be able to import more from the Free City of Vele, but with an enemy force out in the Kurogane Mountain Range, they couldn’t count on that.

If they ran out of booze, they ran out of booze. Was it really something to make such a big fuss over?

Yes. Yes, it was. For dwarves, running out of alcohol was a huge problem.

According to Itsukushima, when rumors had spread that they might not be able to partake freely anymore, the whole Ironblood Kingdom had immediately started to get brutal. All dwarves drank a lot, but even among them there were some who were especially heavy drinkers, and they became the targets of a sort of condemnation. If you’re going to drink so much, then I am too! The situation turned into a sort of pathetic competition to see who could drink the most. Their consumption grew explosively. They’d get hopelessly inebriated, fists would fly, and kicks would follow. There were bloody fights all over.

The way things were going, people were going to get killed. Worse yet, the booze might run out. It was their own fault for drinking so much of it, but ultimately the primary cause was the enemy army. They had to pay for this.

The infighting over alcohol among the dwarves of the Ironblood Kingdom had intensified, setting their hostility and battle fervor ablaze.

“The truth is, the iron king is struggling hard to keep all those drunken dwarves from exploding.”

And as that was going on, they’d received information that a human faction had managed to retake Alterna.

The news had made it to the enemy forces first somehow. The Ironblood Kingdom had only come to learn of it through their intelligence gathering activities.

“So the iron king gave me a letter to bring back to Alterna. I never would’ve imagined it was retaken by reinforcements from the mainland, though.”

Haruhiro glanced over at Neal the scout, who was watching from a short distance away with a smirk on his face.

“Yeah, reinforcements...”

“Hey!” Yume yelled at Neal. “Yume wants you to let Master out of this jail! Master’s real nice, you know! And Yume loves him!”

“I’m not the one you need to talk to,” Neal said with a shrug and a smile. “Why not ask Commander Mogis directly?”

“He’d probably force us into doing something again...” Merry muttered. Setora was quick to agree.

“It’s possible. No, it’s more or less guaranteed.” Haruhiro rubbed his stomach. It suddenly felt heavy, like a solid lump had formed in it.

“Yeah... You’ve got a point.”

“Nnnnnurrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhh...!” Yume filled her mouth with all the air she could, letting a snarling sound escape through her nose. She was absolutely livid.

“Anyway, I gave Jin Mogis the letter,” Itsukushima said, trying to calm Yume down. “I don’t get along well with people who are that full of themselves. Maybe I should’ve flattered him, even if it was a lie, but I couldn’t. Look, he probably only jailed me to try to be intimidating. He’s not gonna kill me. I’m technically an envoy from the iron king, you know?”

“Masteeer...” Yume stuck her fingers between the bars.

Itsukushima seemed unsure what to do for a moment, but he ended up gently stroking her fingers.

“I’m all right, Yume. You just worry about your own comrades.”

“Heh...” Neal smirked. “You’ve got me tearing up here.”

How about I make you cry for real? Haruhiro thought, but he didn’t say it out loud. If he was going to do it, he was better off not announcing his plans first. No need to give his opponent any time to prepare himself.