Chapter 380: Cliff Fight

The cliff path held for longer than any of them expected.

Loose stone, narrow ledges and hard climbing slowed the pace, but it also kept the open-road hunters from using their numbers the way they wanted. Lucian led the worst stretches, and Sera followed close enough that she could reach him if the ground broke. Istra watched the higher angles. Rhel and Toren held the rear and stopped often enough to listen for movement below.

By the third ledge band, all of them were covered in dust and old blood, and the main road was just a pale line a ways to the east now, lacking their footprints.

Sera wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist. "If they are smart, they already knew we left the road."

"They are smart." Istra said. "Hence why I keep watching above us."

Lucian tested the next hold, and pulled himself onto a wider shelf. From here it was a matter of a sideways path across a steep face with another climb. Ground that punished mistakes. It was also a ground a prepared enemy could turn an advantage over height.

He felt the shift a breath before the first stone fell.

"Down!"

The rockslide was not of the natural order, cut blocks and loose shale pouring from a higher ledge in a controlled drop to break their line and drive them into a kill pocket against the wall, Lucian shoved Sera under an overhang and took the worst of the impact on a burst of force that shattered the heavier stones before they crushed the shelf, dust filling the air. Someone shouted from above.

Then the hunters came down the face.

Moving on lines and grips prepared in advance, dropping the vertical ground as if the cliff belonged to them. The first wave carried the same seat-marks as the unit on the high road, but behind them came something worse.

Bound constructs.

They looked almost human until they hit the stone and keep moving with no care for pain or balance. Dark plating, locked joints, lord-seat marks burned into their chests. No voices, no orders said aloud. They simply advanced, climbing and striking with the steady purpose of things built to finish a task.

Sera stared for half a second. "What are those?"

"Bound shells." Rhel said, already moving. "Don’t treat them like men. They won’t stop because it hurts."

The shelf became a battlefield with no clean footing.

Lucian met the first construct head on and felt the difference immediately, it took a hit that would have dropped a normal fighter and kept coming, hands locking towards his throat with machine patience. He ripped it off the wall and drove it into the cliff face hard enough to break the plating, even then it twitched before going still.

Istra held the left edge, and stopped a hunter from reaching Sera’s blind side. Toren took a cut across the shoulder and kept upright long enough to push his attacker off the ledge. Rhel fought with cold precision, targeting joints and mark-points on the constructs instead of center mass.

One construct ignored the others completely, climbing straight toward Sera.

Lucian caught sight of it too late because two hunters forced him to clear space first. "Sera!"

She did not freeze, waited until the thing committed to the hold then drove her blade into the mark on its chest and ripped sideways. The construct shuddered, lost its grip and fell into the open air below. Sera’s hands were shaking when she pulled back, but she was still on the shelf.

"I am done being the easy one." She said through her teeth.

More hunters dropped from the higher line. The shelf was to narrow for a long fight. Lucian stopped trying to hold ground and started breaking it. He tore handholds out of the cliff under the next wave, sending two climbers into a hard fall. A construct leapt the gap and landed close enough to slam him into the wall. Pain blooming across his wounded arm, he answered by forcing raw power through the plating until the shell cracked open and went dead against his shoulder.

"We cannot stay here!" Istra shouted.

"Up." Lucian said. "Take the next ledge and force them to climb after us."

They moved in a rough climbing fight, gaining height under pressure. Rhel dragged Toren when his injured shoulder failed on a tight pull. Sera slipped once, caught Lucian’s offered hand and kept going without wasting breath on pride. Below them the remaining constructs began climbing again with the same unbroken pace, while the human hunters tried to cut ahead along a side route.

At the next shelf Lucian turned and made the choice the ground gave him.

He waited until the closest constructs clustered on the face then struck the weak band of stone along their line and the cliff sheared, three shells and a hunter going down with the collapsing section. The rest was forced into a slower, more exposed climb.

Rhel used the opening to finish a hunter who had reached the shelf edge, and Istra put down another. For a moment the vertical trap lost its shape.

Then the last construct reached them.

It came over the rim without sound, going straight for Lucian as if the others had only been there to occupy space, he met it cleanly this time with no wasted motion and drove both hands through the chest mark with enough force to end it where it stood, the shell locked, trembled then dropped.

Silence returned in pieces.

Dust drifting down the broken face. Somewhere far below stone continued settling. The remaining hunters, fewer and stripped of their construct support, pulled back along the side route instead of pressing the shelf, and they did not run wild, withdrew like people saving a report for a higher command.

Sera sat hard against the wall and let her head tip back. "I hate cliffs."

"They saved us from the road." Istra said, panting. "Doesn’t mean I like them either."

Toren was pale under the dirt, one hand clamped to his shoulder. Rhel tore cloth and bound it with quick practiced movements. "He can still walk. If the bleeding holds."

Lucian looked down the ruined face, then up to the next climb. The second ambush had failed, but it confirmed the shape of what hunted them. Seat marked men where one problem, bound constructs that didn’t fear pain or orders was another.

"They will adapt again." he said.

Rhel nodded. "And the next adaptation isn’t going to be from the field hunters alone."

Sera pushed herself up. "Then we keep moving before this shelf becomes the place they choose for the third try."

Lucian checked the path above, helped Toren steady on the first hold and began the next climb.

The cliffs had not killed them,

they had only shown how much harder the road intended to become.