Jamous spat out a curse as his foot hold slipped on the edge of the cliff. It was a very narrow pathway that was more fit for a mountain goat than for a human.

“Careful there. Don’t want to fall”

He glowered at the speaker behind him, Nani was a rookie and one of twelve rangers that have been sent on this mission with Jamous in charge of the expedition since he was most familiar with the terrain. Sadly, even if he was the most familiar with the land in this group, it was still a twisted natural labyrinth filled with treachery.

“Don’t need to tell me what I already know Nani, just mind yourself.” It wouldn’t be good as her senior to snap at such a little thing. He knew she meant well and acting out on his own personal frustrations would just cause trouble.

He eventually spotted an area that looked like it would be enough to fit all twelve of them if they kept close together and announced to the group that they would be stopping there for the night.

Because of how twisting this entire area was, they had to use the sun to keep track of which direction they were going, and then use the stars to better understand how far they were.

Climbing to the edge he sat down and closed his eyes briefly as the rest of the rangers climbed onto the rock that overlooked the mountain they were on. Down below was nothing but canyons and trenches that seemed to wrap in around themselves.

Pretty much every part of this whole mountain range was like this and that wasn’t counting the potentially dangerous wildlife that made this area their home.

Territorial mountain goats that will try to knock you off cliffs, mountain cats that will happily look for easy prey. Even venomous spiders that liked to crawl out of small cracks if you got too close to try and bite your hands.

And as if all of that still wasn’t enough. He had to keep in mind the ever changing weather that could be more dangerous then everything else combined.

He looked over at Illess who had just climbed onto the cliff edge “When you have a chance to breathe, if you could try to do some divination to see what the weather will be over the night. I don’t want another surprise pop up hail storm to hit us while we are sleeping.”

Illness grumbled “For the last time I am sorry, divination can be finicky even with someone who is gifted in it. And before you start, the weather is chaotic in these mountains and that just makes any future predictions all the less reliable.”

“Just do it. It’s better than nothing.” Jamous responded as he pulled out one of the special pens that he knew were to be linked with another pen in the capital and poured magic into it. Slowly and carefully moving the pen on the ground below as he wrote an update to their march.

He was required to check in one in the morning and once in the evening, with any other reports to be given if they found something important. He was thankful he only needed to carry the pen with him and not any paper as that would have been unnecessary weight for the trip.

Once he finished giving the standard report, the rest of the rangers that were with him had climbed up to the cliff and settled down just as the sun disappeared across the horizon.

Because of their exposed nature up on the cliff they weren’t going to be lighting any fires so it was just going to be simple rations for dinner with their cloaks and each other's body heat to keep warm.

“Huh. That is.. Hey Jamous, rabbits don’t live in this area that you know of right?” Illness asked and the others gave him an odd look as Jamous let out a sigh

“No Illness, rabbits do not live around these parts. At least not that I am aware of. Why do you ask?”

“Well I was trying to use some divination to see if there would be any problems for us tonight and I just got a couple brief flashes of some rabbits…”

Nani let out a snort “Oh no. A poor rabbit is eating my foot. Seriously Illness, rabbits? Are you that much of a wuss that a rabbit is enough for your divination to tell you it’s going to be more of a threat then say.. Hail coming down on our heads while we sleep”

The rest of the rangers let out some light chuckles as Illness grumbled “I already apologized for that! Maybe you guys should have brought somebody with some real divination skills! Oh wait, you couldn’t because they are all fat cats living it up in high society and wouldn’t last more than an hour out here!”

“Enough everyone!” Jamous spoke with authority and looked at Illness “Can you cast another divination spell to try and get a better idea of what those brief flashes of these rabbits meant?”

Illness shook his head “Afraid not. Just that brief flash was enough to drain most of my mana, if I try again it will be enough to put me in mana shock.”

Jamous was silent for a minute as he pondered and then felt like it was better safe than sorry “Alright. We are having 1 hour shifts tonight. Draw straws to see who gets to sleep and who will have a shift. We rest here until dawn and then move out again.”

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That got multiple people grumbling with several shooting dirty looks towards Illness who was clearly uncomfortable knowing he was going to get blamed for this but Jamous didn’t really care. If they can complain at the end of the day then that means they were alive and they did their job well.

The straws were drawn and Jamous got one of the short ones and so he volunteered to take the first watch and after a quick bite of their rations the rest settled in for the night leaving him to overlook the canyon they were above.

With the sun down he could feel the temperature quickly drop with the wind picking up. He threw a worried glance up to the night sky where the stars shone brightly. He couldn’t see either of the moons from their position which would have been nice for the little extra light.

Because of this he poured magic into his eyes and that helped him see better in the dark. All rangers were trained to have these kinds of basic spells. If he wanted he could have also used a spell that allowed him to see heat but that required more mana. It was actually a recent spell that was given to them by the generous profit in the capital.

A slight smile tugged a bit at his lips when he thought about her. He had only seen her a bit from a distance but every time he saw her he believed what the masses claimed. Powerful, beautiful, kind, the very embodiment of what a noble should be.

It just made it all the more clear to him when he heard the nobles seemed to call her a fool that they were jealous of someone such as her. They could not handle a reminder of their own failures.

The sound of a rock falling brought him out of his thinking and he looked over to the side where he heard the sound drawing his short sword in the process. If it was a mountain goat it would probably leave them alone but there was always the chance of something else.

He didn’t know why they were being sent where they were being sent. Just that they were being sent out here for a potential threat, but if he had to hazard a guess, he would say they were still a few days away from their destination so it was unlikely that they would run into any serious problems.

He continued to closely look around the side of the cliff before tracing his eyes up and froze. Several furred monstrosities were moving on the sheer cliff and they looked an awful lot like humanoid…. Rabbits.

“Wake up! Arms! We are under attack!” He shouted just as the monsters realized they had been spotted and leapt at them with chittering yowls.

Jamous didn’t have any room on the cliff side to dodge so he thrust his blade into the monster that leapt right at him. His blade skewering the monster's mouth and down its throat. But the creature's momentum still carried forward and crashed into him and back into his squad.

He was thankful that their training kicked in and most were already up with their weapons drawn by the time the monsters descended on them despite the fact that he ended up crashing into at least one of his compatriots as the weight of the now dead monster landed on top of him.

Spitting out a curse he shoved the monster off of him and off the cliff as he took his bloody sword and swung it to his side slashing at another one of the monsters side. He heard a lot of surprised shouts and various unearthly howls of pain and anger as he rolled over and leapt onto the monster he slashed at its side back and brought his blade down several times before it stopped twitching.

The whole encounter couldn’t have lasted more than ten seconds and just as quickly it had started it had now ended.

“Status Report! Who is alive!” Jamous quickly demanded

“Fuck! Kim and Iona fell off the cliff from the attack!” He heard Nani exclaim. It took another minute for them to quickly go over and check the others. Two more had died in the attack and they had three more that were injured making that five of the total people full bodied.

“Shit! Shit shit shit!” He heard Nani exclaim, clearly freaking out over what had just happened.

He was inclined to agree with her limited vocabulary but he had a job to do first “Alright that is enough!” His voiced echoed with authority and everyone went quiet.

“Illness, help patch up the wounded. I will quickly make a report to the capital over what just happened and after that we pull back and wait for instructions. That noise was bound to have attracted attention and we do not want to be here in case there are more of these things.”

They all quickly began moving as Jamous pulled out the pen that he had used to send a message. They needed to report this as soon as possible and then would wait for a response for

He didn’t have time to even pour the mana into the pen as a loud crash echoed to his side followed by screams of pain and he turned his head to see a winged monstrous rabbit that stood perhaps seven feet tall with four arms had landed right next to him and flung it’s fist forward and smashed Illness skull into the rocks with an audible crunch.

Jamous tossed the pen to the side and picked up his sword just as the new monster before him gripped the now headless Illness and swung it around the side smashing into two more rangers and flinging them off the side of the cliff.

His blade thrust forward and stabbed into the monster's side making it let out a screech of pain and Jamous just barely managed to duck from the blow but he had to leave his sword embedded into the creature's side.

“You fuckers!” Nani screamed as she vaulted off the side of the cliff and onto the creatures back. Her own short sword stabbing into the creature as she did so which made the monster scream with pain and twisting his arms back gripped Nani and threw her off the cliff as she screamed out.

Jamous tried to roll under the creature as it did so hoping to grab another sword that was on its opposite end but the monster seemed to have had more awareness then he gave it credit for and it kicked him hard and he slammed his back into the cliff Hearing an audible crack and collapsed. He felt searing pain from about the chest up but nothing else downwards.

It left him helpless as he watched the monster easily slaughter the rest of the rangers before turning its attention to him with a malicious smirk across its disgusting face.

It offered no words of gloating but he could tell it relished in his pain as it lifted its leg and stomped down on his head.