The hard grip of the handle, the metallic reek saturating the air, the sticky, squelching floor.
At this very moment, when all of it blended together into a feeling like wading through muck.
———BOOM!
The beast charged at me.
By the time I registered it, it was already too late.
I'd already given up on dodging, planning instead to drive my sword in while it had me in its jaws.
- SHRAAAAAK!
But no matter how long I waited, no pain came.
And no wonder, since the beast hadn't attacked me in the first place.
"......What?"
The beast's crimson eyes flashed as it stopped just short of my face.
Close enough that I could feel its rough breath on my skin.
- KRRK
After studying me for a moment, it bent its legs right where it stood.
The way it lowered its body and wagged its tail looked for all the world like.......
"......Like a puppy."
An unmistakable gesture of submission, plain for anyone to see.
A beast that had inherited the blood of dragons, however distant the relation, submitting to a human, how was that even possible?
It was a joke too pathetic to earn so much as a sneer from a street crowd.
Only, it had actually happened, which made it a joke that was no joke at all.
'Could it be...... because of that?'
Only then did I recall the pendant I'd tucked away.
The divine power emanating from the blood inside it sent a cold prickle through a corner of my mind.
"Wh-wh-what is that thing?"
The soldier's gaze had shifted yet again.
If a moment ago he'd been looking at a monster drunk on slaughter, now his eyes held the look of someone witnessing the messiah of some inexplicable miracle.
From his perspective, a beast of unknown origin had appeared out of nowhere and knelt before me.
The reality wasn't far off, either.
"I don't think it's a pig or a horse."
In response to my isn't-it-obvious retort, the soldier scratched his head sheepishly.
"Of course it's not livestock. It's just that it doesn't look like a monstrous beast, either."
In fairness, it wasn't that obvious.
Since he wasn't wrong, I had no choice but to come clean.
"This beast won't attack me. And it probably won't threaten you, either."
Don't attack the soldier.
I'd been projecting that command in my mind continuously.
I wasn't sure if this was how it was supposed to work, but at any rate, wasn't the soldier still in one piece?
'......So this is what it felt like.'
Eladin.
Do you help me still, across time and space?
Just as I haven't forgotten you, have you not forgotten me either?
"......Is that even possible?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
A very long time ago, in an era no one alive remembered anymore.
A scene from memories I'd buried deep.
I had surely lived all this time having forgotten such a sight.
"This, too, is a god's authority."
Encountering her miracle again after so long, it remained awe-inspiring even after crossing centuries.
In the sight of the beast bowing its head, I could almost hear her voice.
Telling me not to forget her.
Telling me she still remained by my side.
'Is this your will, Eladin?'
Putting the tangled emotions behind me, I walked toward the beast.
I dropped the longsword I'd no longer need onto the floor.
"......I misspoke. Stand up. I can ride this instead of a horse."
If I'd had the strength.
If I hadn't lost her back then, would things be different now?
A thought so worn and eroded by now that it no longer carried any meaning.
And yet, one that had tormented me just as often.
Regret could change nothing.
I'd already come too far to look back now.
I had drifted too far for regret or penance, so the only option left to me was to keep moving forward, endlessly.
- GRRRRR
I scratched the beast's throat as it rumbled low.
"Your name, from now on, is Formel."
Formel - forget-me-not.
Its meaning in the language of flowers: do not forget me.
***
When I turned around, the outline of Brüs had already blurred into the distance.
A sharp wind and the cold air of early dawn wrapped around my entire body.
"What's your name?"
The soldier, clinging to my waist with everything he had, eyes squeezed shut, managed a strained answer.
"Huh?"
By now I should have been used to his exasperating tendencies, but every time I heard one of his dim-witted responses, I couldn't help shaking my head.
"I asked what your name is."
"Oh, Kallen Leont."
"Akallen Leont?"
"No, Kallen. Kallen Leont."
All things considered, Kallen, who was essentially being kidnapped by me, had been surprisingly compliant.
After packing at the estate, he'd even stopped by his own home to grab a blanket, a rucksack, and other supplies for a long journey.
He'd even brought rope, using it to lash our gear securely to Formel.
All of it done voluntarily, which meant he wasn't entirely in his right mind, either.
"Aren't you scared?"
"Ha, of course I'm scared. Terrified, naturally."
Sitting atop Formel and grinning, he looked anything but scared.
"But being scared isn't going to change anything, is it? So I've decided to just accept it. This is my fate, I was born to go on adventures with you, sir knight; I'm just going to think of it that way."
And indeed, he'd completely shed the initial fear he'd shown toward Formel.
When he was calmly tying down the luggage with rope, I'd briefly wondered whether he'd finally lost his mind.
"Besides, it's the kind of experience you don't get every day, right? When else am I going to ride a beast like this? The ride quality's terrible, though."
He had a point; compared to Formel's back, a horse's back was practically a nobleman's fine wool armchair.
If not for the spines protruding from his back, we might well have slid off Formel long ago.
"Glad to hear it."
Formel's frame was easily three times that of a horse, which naturally meant his speed was more than triple as well.
We'd barely left Brüs and yet the city walls were already out of sight.
"You said you have no family?"
"That's right. I had a younger brother, but he got dragged off to the Darvar territorial war, lost a leg, came back, and the wound festered and killed him."
"Bad luck."
"Good luck, if anything. He may have died, but at least he survived the Darvar territorial war and made it home."
I didn't know about everything that happened in the world.
All I'd heard was that the Slonhar March, where Brüs was located, had recently clashed hard with the Darvar March.
"Apparently, Darvar's lord hired mages. The Graden Plains where the battle took place were drenched in blood, and hardly any soldiers survived."
"Tell me more."
"My brother said hulking knights appeared and slaughtered the soldiers......."
"What does that have to do with mages?"
"They were tearing people apart with their bare hands, so if that's not magic, what is? So everyone calls those knights the Mages of Darvar."
It suddenly occurred to me that Kallen didn't know I was the Undying.
If he had, he wouldn't have failed to bring up a topic far closer to magic than mere brute strength.
I wasn't confident I could explain it to him, so I steered the conversation forward instead.
"So Slonhar ended up giving up a city?"
"That's right. It's part of the Darvar March now."
After Slonhar and Darvar clashed, Slonhar's lord had barely managed to survive by surrendering a city and fleeing to another.
As for what came after, well.
As we both knew, he was lying somewhere in that estate as a corpse.
With both the city and its lord lost, Slonhar would be swallowed by Darvar.
Brüs still remained, but it wouldn't hold out for long.
"So where are we headed?"
"Pirberg."
The very city that had once belonged to Slonhar and was now part of the Darvar March.
"Things must be tense there...... Is there a reason?"
"There is."
First, there was a high probability that Pirberg held no trace of Luxeon.
One might think that meant there was no reason to go, but it was the opposite.
Findel Morein would have reached the same conclusion.
As a fugitive, he'd have tried to catch us off guard, so there was a good chance he'd headed for Pirberg, the very place we would not go.
And the second reason, which was also the biggest one.
Pirberg was the closest city to Brüs.
Whether he was there or not, starting with the nearest location was simple common sense.
After hearing my explanation, Kallen nodded.
"I see. There's one thing I'm curious about."
"What?"
"What is the Luxeon Cult?"
I hadn't told Kallen about the cult's connection to me.
This would be a short partnership, and in many ways it was better for him not to know the full story.
"It's the cult Findel Morein belongs to. They're probably not in Pirberg."
"Why not?"
"Because a different order is there."
Superhuman strength capable of tearing people apart with bare hands.
That was the defining trait of followers who had received the divine power of Talios.
The knights Kallen's brother had mistaken for mages were probably paladins of the Talios Order.
It wasn't impossible that Luxeon's people had slipped into Pirberg, but considering the Talios Order's temperament, it was unlikely.
It was an order that seized a city so thoroughly it practically ruled it, so there would have been no opening for Luxeon to worm into.
"Sir knight, ahead!"
At that moment, Kallen shouted.
I immediately commanded Formel to halt, and Formel drove all four legs into the earth.
Dirt sprayed as the ground was shoved forward in a great wave.
"......This."
The instant we crested the hill, a vista crammed itself into our field of vision.
Below the horizon, where cumulonimbus clouds larger than any mountain range drifted low.
A river glinting silver and a dizzying gorge sprawled out wide before us.
The Silvern River, lifeblood of the Slonhar March, and the Eilwin Gorge that surrounded it.
"Almost went right over the edge."
"The Eilwin Gorge is famous for its sheer size."
A fierce updraft blew from the fathomless gorge.
The gorge took in the sun's heat in proportion to its staggering size, so the wind was muggy enough to blow away the dawn's moisture in an instant.
Kallen stood dazed, overwhelmed by the majesty carved from raw nature.
"Do you really think Findel Morein is in Pirberg, down along the Silvern River?"
Closeness was a relative term.
Following the river, it was a fortnight to Pirberg on foot, perhaps ten days with Formel.
That far a distance, and Findel had departed only a day ahead of us at best. Expecting him to arrive before us was absurd.
"He might not be there. Or we might cross paths on the way."
"You don't seem particularly concerned."
"No, I'm not."
If Findel wasn't in the Eilwin Gorge, it would be a considerable waste of effort, but that was acceptable in its own way.
I had a debt to call in with the Talios Order.
If it came down to it, I could enlist their help in tracking Findel.
"You'll want to hold on tight."
"Huh? I already am."
"I mean hold on twice as hard as you are now."
Kallen adjusted his position with a groan.
I could feel the arms around my waist squeezing with every ounce of strength he had.
Even so, he asked:
"Why?"
Instead of answering, I quietly projected the thought.
'Jump.'
Formel hurling himself into the fathomless Eilwin Gorge below and Kallen screaming happened at almost the same instant.