Chapter 385: Storm crossing

The storm did not lift after the first quarter. It only shifted in shape

Wind came in sudden shrouds of pressure, and the dust and cold rain combined to swallow distance. Markers that had been clear as day on the open highlands dulled to meaningless scraps. Even the key at Lucian’s belt remained dull, as though the storm pressed against all manner of seat-weight the same.

Rhel kept the group on a tight string through the fog, one hand out to find the nearest crest before the land rushed down and away. "Stay together. If anyone loses themselves here before they see the farther crest, we might not know to look again."

Sera’s lower face was swaddled in a strip of her cloak against the dust. "How long before it passes?"

"Long enough to give the wrong impressions," Istra muttered, favoring her ribs even as her gaze tracked every twist of the horizon. "Long enough to make someone else pay attention."

Toren stumbled over a patch of loose ground and fell, and Lucian steadied him as if they were in a dance without the music. That same glance of relief flicked across the wounded man’s face before he took his weight, and the step he carried forward kept him upright.

For a stretch there was only the thunder of the storm and the sheer effort of taking the next measure, one foot in front of the last, until it was past understanding that there were no glider-framings overhead, no signs of the hunting companies waiting to see if any seat-group survived the crossing. This wall had done its part, sealing the teams as Rhel said it would.

It failed them anyway.

The change in pressure was not the smooth shift of boundary-aligned hunters, though, but something older and unshaped, as though doors were settling into the lock of a forgotten house.

Lucian halted mid-step, and Sera nearly walked into him. "What?’

"We are not alone in here.

Rhel’s blade was already out. "Say your piece."

"Residual," Lucian announced. "Not hunting companies. Something older on the edge. Left to watch."

The thing struck in from the side.

Towering and half-formed, a silhouette of shattered stone and pale fire in the storm, larger in shape than a man, wrong in its angle and construction like old armor, bone, and old mark-etched bindings sewn whole. It lacked the Veynar sigil, but the impression it left was more familiar to Lucian than any symbol, something closer to garrison and more distant from Cael than the last road-marks.

It battered into their group hard enough to throw Istra sideways into the earth, force Rhel back three paces, all muscle and will turning to meet the pressure as though the key and contingency mark Lucian wore made him an easier target. Sera pulled Toren back away from the first swing,

"It is not with the hunters," she cried.

"No?" Rhel snapped. "Worser. This thing belongs to the old boundary."

Lucian met it head-on, and he had the presence of mind to take notice how it fought him. Not hunter-company, but not garrison either. It moved with the weight of long-standing law, each strike as though it carried the authority to pin, to censure, to end by binding alone. When Lucian pushed back, the thing did not break, but took the hit and added to its strength to drive at him again. Cael’s voice sliced through the storm in a steel line of syllables.

"Do not flare to full. If you make yourself whole enough to break this cleanly, Veynar’s people on the outer edge will read the release, and they will secure the farther wall before you clear your span. "

Lucian was already considering the possibility. The thing had invested enough of his strength and power to continue drawing from him, and full release would have ended the thing quickly, though that would mark all of them to Veynar’s gaze.

He met the strike and forced it backward, the shift in the terrain taking advantage of the rain-slick stone and the way their hold in this place weakened to force the creature to meet more disadvantage. Istra took advantage of it, driving at one shoulder and putting a wedge into the thing’s balance rather than seeking outright destruction. Rhel came from the opposite angle, and Sera kept pulling Toren out of the way before the next move would take off the wounded man’s legs.

In turn the hunter-thing adjusted its tactics, forcing a pulse through the stone, the effect knocking Lucian off his feet even as he took the brunt on a rising barrier of his design, the push of his strength left wasted in his limbs. Sera stumbled and sprawled, pushing mud-streaked from her cheek at the rain and the dust of the ruined battlefield. "I’m beginning to despise everything that speaks."

"I’ll finish the job," Lucian growled, driving at the center sigil of the construct’s plating, the old marking similar to the Veynar seals the constructs bore, only rougher with age. The first strike split the center, and the force of the next bled the trapped light out in jagged shreds of the creature’s power, but it retaliated, seizing and squeezing at Lucian’s torso to finish him in a different way. The thought of it was easy.

Easiest thing in existence to let it take him.

A full infinity, ruptured in a single motion to clear the line of passage.

Instead, he forced the width and strength he had in the lock and key alone, and something else he had held in reserve, into the break, hard-edged and definitive. The creature convulsed with the touch, tearing itself apart from within in a spray of dying light, and the blow sent all of them flying backward into the mud and storm.

It was gone.

The storm raged on, but the pressure of the residual hunting-thing was gone with it.

Lucian remained on one knee, waiting for confirmation the key had not flared beyond the wall. It was very hot, but only in a contained way, as he took stock of the others. They were all alive. That was something.

Rhel brushed rain from her cheek. "That would have attacked the hunting teams the same had they come up this road."

"Good," Sera rasped, already pulling herself upright. "I like to think it got a handful of them before we cleared the edge."

Istra took Toren by the arm and pulled him to his feet. "We can not linger. If the seat teams are stacked on the far edge, every moment spent here recovers formation."

Lucian rose and surveyed the others. They were battered and wet and in one place, but still here. The creature was gone, and all in all he had refused to give Veynar enough to light the path forward.

"Then we finish the crossing,"

He said.

They pushed through the remnant billows of the storm, and closer, until the first sight of the outside appeared through gaps in the wall, fractured measures of pale ground and space beyond the clouds. The hunting parties waited there. The storm had not cleared them, but neither had this thing, and now the crossing was truly complete.