"In?" Ravi squeaked, his voice cracking. He looked from the well's dark, gaping maw to the approaching guards. They were less than fifty feet away now, their methodical footsteps like a countdown timer to a violent death. "You want us to jump?"
Lyssara's eyes were blazing. "The Ward might break our fall!"
"Might? You just said it would pulp our insides!"
"I said that's what it does when you fight it!" she hissed back, her words a rapid-fire burst of desperate strategy. "We won't be fighting it. We'll be falling into it. It's different! Maybe!"
It was the most terrifying, least reassuring plan Ravi had ever heard. A thirty-foot drop onto a magical meat-grinder, based on the maybe of a woman he'd met two hours ago.
The lead guard's head turned, his eyes scanning the courtyard. His gaze swept over their hiding spot. He paused. For a gut-wrenching second, Ravi was sure they'd been seen. The guard's eyes narrowed.
"Get ready to run," Ravi whispered, bunching his muscles, preparing to sacrifice Lyssara and make a break for it. It was the sensible, cowardly thing to do.
But before he could act, Lyssara moved.
"If you're a jinx on evil," she muttered, grabbing the front of his tunic in a white-knuckled grip, "then you're about to have a very busy day."
She didn't wait for his consent. She pulled him forward, out from behind the wall and directly into the path of the patrol. She took two powerful strides toward the well, dragging him with her.
"Hey!" the lead guard yelled, finally spotting them. He raised his spear, his face twisting with alarm and recognition. "It's them! Seize them!"
Lyssara didn't hesitate. "Now!" she screamed, and with a strength that belied her slender frame, she threw herself—and Ravi—sideways.
The world tilted. For a moment, he was suspended over the abyss of the well, the rough stone of the ledge scraping against his back. He saw Lyssara's face, pale and grim with determination. He saw the shocked expressions of the four guards as they began to charge.
Then they were falling.
Air rushed past his ears, a high-pitched shriek. He instinctively screwed his eyes shut, bracing for the bone-shattering impact he knew was coming. Thirty feet. A three-story fall onto stone or, even worse, into some kind of mystical rejection field. This was it. This was a death even he couldn't nullify. Gravity didn't care about his weird mismatch with the world's atmosphere.
They hit the bottom with a gentle whoosh.
It was like landing on a giant, invisible cushion. There was a brief moment of pressure, a sensation like being submerged in warm, thick honey, and then they were standing, perfectly upright, on a solid stone floor. Unharmed. Not even a single joint had been jarred.
Ravi blinked, his heart trying to beat its way out of his ribcage. He looked down at his feet, planted firmly on smooth, gray flagstones. He was in a perfectly circular, dark room. A faint, blue light emanated from strange, glowing crystals embedded in the stone walls, casting long, dancing shadows. In the center of the room, directly above them, was the round opening of the well shaft.
He could hear the guards shouting from up above, their voices echoing down to them. "They jumped! Get ropes! Is there another way down?"
He looked at Lyssara. She was pushing herself to her feet beside him, her face a mask of breathless, triumphant disbelief. She ran a hand over her own arm, then looked at him as if seeing him for the first time all over again.
"The Ward," she breathed, a giddy, half-mad laugh escaping her lips. "It didn't repel you. You just… fell through. It caught us, it held us… and then it just let go. As if you told it to stand down."
Before Ravi could process this, a new sound echoed in the chamber. It was a low, mechanical grinding. He whirled around. A section of the circular stone wall was sliding away, revealing a dark, narrow corridor. The air that drifted out felt ancient and still. The Nethervault was opening. Welcoming them.
His bizarre invulnerability hadn't just bypassed the seal. It seemed to have actively disarmed it. It hadn't been a negotiation; it had been an override.
The realization sent another spike of fear through him. His "power," if it could be called that, was far more absolute than he'd thought. It didn't just break weapons. It unmade rules. It rewrote physics. That made him far more of an anomaly—and a threat—than he'd ever imagined.
As the heavy stone door slid fully open with a final, booming thud, Lyssara's wild grin faded. She was staring past him, into the darkness of the newly opened passageway. The faint blue light from the chamber's crystals stretched into the corridor, revealing a shape standing just inside.
It was a figure clad from head to toe in rust-colored, segmented metal armor. The helmet was a faceless plate of pitted iron, featureless except for two pinprick holes where the eyes should be. It didn't move. It just stood there, a silent, ancient sentinel. In its gauntleted hands, it held a massive, double-headed axe that looked heavy enough to crush a warhorse.
"Lyssara," Ravi whispered, his voice trembling as he backed away. "I thought you said this place was a safehouse. Not a tomb."
Lyssara's face was ashen. Her intellect, her one unshakeable weapon, had finally failed her. "It… it's supposed to be empty," she stammered, her voice stripped of its usual confidence. "The records said all the constructs were deactivated. It's an Automaton Warden. An ancient relic of the Guild."
The Automaton's head tilted slightly, an unnervingly fluid motion for a thing made of metal plates. A low hum began to emanate from its chest, and the two pinpricks in its helmet flared to life with a hostile, crimson glow. It raised its enormous axe, the movement as smooth and silent as flowing oil.
It had registered their unauthorized entry. It had identified them as intruders.
It took one heavy, deliberate step out of the corridor and into their chamber. And the massive stone door began to grind shut behind it.