Henry swept the turret in a full arc while the cliff closed in on the windshield.
With all other avenues blocked off, they had no other option than to hit the left flank. Yeah, it was chock full of Bralnors, but as long as they played their cards right, they had a chance.
Unfortunately, they’d still need to deal with the mountain stomping behind them.
Any course change meant bleeding speed, and even a few seconds of deceleration would let the thing close to a range where the footfalls alone could flip an MRAP. The Monolith field would force a zigzag on top of that, and if the Gigolith reached the field while they were still in it, they’d be fucked.
But say they made it through clean. Say the Gigolith didn’t catch them. They’d still be leading a Tier Nine straight back to Kharvûk with no way to break contact before they hit the city. Lucan could deal with it – the guy was Tier Nine himself, and he’d probably handle it without a single casualty – but Henry would never hear the end of it. Lucan was already a grade-A asshole on a good day, and giving him something like this to hold over them would upgrade that to grade-S.
And that was just the personal headache. The Guild had sanctioned this as a materials run, not a Gigolith hunt. Rolling back into town with one on their heels would crush their credibility.
Henry had spent maybe five seconds cycling through the possible permutations when the loop came back empty. Not one option returned a result he could act on with any confidence. Every path either dead-ended at the Gigolith or required him to gamble on things he had no way of confirming.
It sucked because there had always been a next step. They’d never been this far behind the curve. Every engagement up to this point had been on their terms – controlled conditions, overwhelming firepower, clean exits. This was the first time he was genuinely shit out of luck.
He keyed the radio. “I’m open to ideas.”
Sera answered immediately. “Drive off the cliff!”
If it had come from anyone else, he’d have written it off as panic talking. Still, it didn’t change the fact that the idea itself was batshit crazy. “What?”
“Drive off the cliff,” she repeated, as if that were a perfectly reasonable thing to say. “Have faith.”
“Dude, ten seconds!” Ron said. “What’s the play?”
Henry had no doubt Sera had already considered pushing through the left. The fact that she chose this either meant she’d gone nuts, or that flying off a sheer drop would somehow net them a higher chance of survival.
Fuck it.
“Do it.” He keyed the radio, not even waiting for Ron’s acknowledgement. “Yen, we’re driving off the cliff.”
“Copy,” Yen said.
“Wait – what?” Hayes exclaimed over the comms.
“Sera’s got a plan.”
“... Copy,” Hayes said.
Henry let go of the PTT button and looked at Sera. “Right?”
Sera had already climbed out of her seat, in the midst of pushing the hatch open. “Hold me steady,” she said, pulling a wand from her coat as she stood. “I shall build a ramp.”
She hauled herself through before he could get another word out. With the cliff less than three seconds away, it hardly mattered anyway. All Henry could do was grab her legs and brace.
And seriously, he really did try to brace. It was pretty funny, actually – he’d been on a rocket launch, done a spacewalk at seventeen thousand miles per hour, yet somehow none of that came close to preparing him for how fast the ground gave out. One second there was ground, the next the windshield had pitched forward into nothing but open air and a forest floor God knows how far below. His stomach dropped so fast he nearly choked on it.
For a second there, he’d completely forgotten Sera even had a plan – he legitimately thought he was about to die.
Thankfully, Sera hadn’t forgotten. Rock erupted from the cliff face ahead of them, stone ripping outward and fusing into what looked like the start of a track.
The front tires slammed into it so hard his teeth cracked together. The angle was steep as hell, and the MRAP damn near went nose-first into the stone, but the surface held.
Not so thankfully, their speed currently outpaced Sera’s construction, and for a few horrible seconds the leading edge of the ramp grew closer instead of farther away. But Sera adapted fast. The gap stabilized, then widened, and by the time Henry remembered to breathe Sera had built a solid twenty meters of track ahead of them at all times. V-shaped walls rose on either side, keeping the MRAP locked on line like a bobsled run.
Ron kept his hands on the wheel the whole time – not that it really mattered. With the channel doing the steering for him, it was less driving and more hanging on for dear life, same as gripping the safety bar on a roller coaster.
Unlike a roller coaster, though, this ride didn’t have brakes for shit. The MRAP screamed down the track and the speedometer climbed past anything the vehicle was rated for.
And of course, what was a roller coaster without the bumps and jolts? Every few seconds, the vehicle shuddered as new columns slammed up from the basin floor into the underside of the ramp and fused into place.
Any normal person would’ve been terrified. Henry was too, to some extent. But crazily enough, some completely fucked-up part of his brain was also having the time of its life. He knew that was insane. He knew that objectively, on paper, this was one of the most dangerous things he’d ever done.
But, come on – driving off a cliff, just to ride down a ramp being built in real time by an elf, to escape a whole bunch of rock monsters? How awesome was that? Apparently it was awesome enough that his body couldn’t tell the difference between this and Six Flags – and neither could whatever part of his brain handled adrenaline. Hell, if there’d been a camera at the bottom, the photo would’ve been legendary.
They blitzed down the lane, Sera still keeping up with track construction despite their vehicle picking up speed the whole time. Before long, they’d cleared the treeline and had started descending through leaves and branches.
The ride lasted close to a minute, though it felt a hell of a lot longer. The ground rose to meet them fast, and with every second the columns under the ramp grew shorter as the gap closed.
Sera must’ve gauged the distance, because the ramp started leveling out well before they hit the bottom – the angle easing from what had felt like a ski jump into something closer to a highway off-ramp. For the first time since the cliff, it felt like Ron was actually driving again instead of just riding it out.
It was almost a relief, until Henry remembered that all that downward momentum had to go somewhere. And where it went was forward – the MRAP had hit NASCAR speeds through unpaved wilderness with no obvious way of stopping.
Sure enough, Sera already had it figured out. She loosened the ground ahead of them into sand, and the second the tires hit it, the whole vehicle lurched forward against itself. The deceleration was brutal enough to shove him into his harness and knock the air out of his chest.
She wasn’t done, either. The sand thickened into something heavier and wetter that dragged at the tires like wet concrete, bleeding off the remainder of their speed. The ground rose into a slight incline after that, gently putting an end to their ride.
Henry’s heart still continued to hammer even after the MRAP had come to a full stop; it beat harder than it had on any other mission. He’d done a lot of crazy shit, but willingly driving off a cliff had to have topped the list.
“Fuck, dude,” Ron said.
“Yeah,” Henry breathed. He let go of Sera’s legs, leaned forward, and pulled up the RWS. Hayes’ MRAP sat about fifty meters back along the sand track. He hit them up. “Hayes, you good?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.”
Henry then swung the turret toward the cliff. The Monoliths had bunched up along the rim, but none of them had followed, and the Gigolith – thank God – had turned back into the basin. Over a mile out from the base of the cliff, they probably weren’t worth the trouble anymore.
He pulled off the RWS and looked up through the hatch. “Sera. You alright?”
She didn’t answer right away, and that alone told him plenty. She looked rough coming down – bad enough that she had to take it one handhold at a time. In fact, this was the first time Henry had ever seen her running this empty.
She sank into her seat and set the wand in her lap. “Yes. Might I trouble you for a mana potion?”
Henry already had the medical pouch open. He pulled one out and handed it to her.
Sera uncapped it and drank the whole thing in one go. She sat there for a moment, then closed her eyes.
“Let us return home.”
She then slumped back against her seat and was out cold before Henry could say another word.
Henry caught the bottle before it hit the floor, set it aside, and pulled her harness across. He got it clicked in and adjusted the strap to make it as comfortable as he could, then sat back.
He keyed the radio. “Alright, everyone – let’s head back.”
Ron pulled them off the sand and threaded through the tree line until they hit something resembling a path. It wasn’t a road by any stretch, but the ground was firm and spacious enough to not complain.
Henry returned to the RWS and swung the turret back toward the cliff.
The full scope of what Sera had built only registered now that he was seeing it from a distance.
The upper section – the part they’d actually driven on – was anchored to the cliff face by a lattice of stone trusses that fanned outward from the rock at staggered intervals, each one thick enough to pass for structural concrete. Where the cliff receded too far to anchor directly, freestanding columns rose from the forest floor to meet the track, some of them tall enough that the tops disappeared into the canopy. Lateral bracing connected the columns in pairs, and the whole assembly narrowed as it descended, funneling into the sand track where they’d come to a stop.
The whole thing stretched close to a mile, and she’d put it together in under a minute. Without it – without Sera – both vehicles would’ve gone straight off the edge.
Henry had gotten used to Sera doing extraordinary things. But this was just on another level. The fact that she’d built it at all was one thing, but the structural work behind it suggested she’d been applying what she’d learned – and under conditions where most people wouldn’t have been able to think at all.
He looked at her. She hadn’t moved since she’d passed out – still settled back against the seat, breathing slow and even. The wand had slipped halfway off her lap.
He caught the wand before it fell and set it in her coat’s pocket.
Then he settled down. The rest of the drive back was quiet, everyone probably still processing the whole chase.
Ron continued along the river until it finally bent south toward the main road. There, he merged onto the junction and brought them on course for home.
Henry kept the feed up out of habit, but nothing eventful came of it.
After about an hour, they finally rolled through Kharvûk’s outer gate. Ron brought them up the main road and parked outside the inn, Yen following close behind.
Everyone filed out and gathered between the two vehicles. Henry stepped out last, leaving Sera asleep inside.
“Alright. We’re done for the day – take some time, get cleaned up, and we’ll head to the Guild to close out the quest once everyone’s squared away. No rush.”
Ron stretched. “I’ma check the trucks. Suspension lowkey might be fucked after that ramp.”
“Yeah, I heard it too,” Hayes said. “We’ll give ’em both a once-over.”
“I’ll help out,” Yen said. “Might as well run inventory on our loadout while we’re at it.”
Doc adjusted his glasses and pulled out his tablet. “Well then. I suppose I’d best get on with the report, while it’s all still fresh in the mind.”
“Appreciate it, guys,” Henry said.
With everyone off doing their own thing, that left him and Sera.
He climbed back into the MRAP and unclipped her harness. She shifted slightly at the click but didn’t wake up – just turned her head and settled deeper, like the removal of the strap had been the only thing keeping her from fully committing to being unconscious.
Getting her out of the MRAP without waking her up turned out to be more of a geometry problem than a strength one. The hatch wasn’t designed for carrying someone out sideways, and Sera was tall enough that he had to angle her carefully to clear the frame. He got an arm under her knees and the other behind her shoulders and lifted her out of the seat, ducking through the hatch and stepping down onto the street.
She snuggled right up against him the moment he had her in his arms, burying her face into his chest with enough intent that he genuinely couldn’t tell if she was still asleep or not.
Henry couldn’t help but smile at that.
He brought her inside and up the stairs. Getting her key out of her coat pocket without putting her down took some maneuvering, but he managed it and nudged the door open with his boot.
After carrying her in, he glanced around. The bed was a much more comfortable option, but Sera wouldn’t want her sheets to get dirtied up. So he crossed to the couch instead and set her down as carefully as the cushions allowed, then grabbed a blanket from the hallway closet and draped it over her.
He was about to step back when her hand found his jacket again and held on. It was gentle, barely there – but it was enough to stop him in his tracks.
Henry honestly didn’t mind waiting, but the way Sera held on didn’t feel like someone just grabbing the nearest solid thing in their sleep. It felt like she wanted something, and he had a feeling he knew exactly what.
He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Sleep tight.”
Her grip loosened almost immediately. Her breathing evened out the rest of the way, and her hand slipped off his jacket and settled against the blanket.
He adjusted the blanket where it had bunched near her shoulder, then straightened up and headed for the door. He closed it behind him without a sound.