Ravi stared at the scroll in her hands as if it were a venomous snake. "Nethervault?" The word tasted like trouble. It sounded like something adventurers and heroes sought, not something cowards and fugitives hid in.
"I don't want a vault," he said, the words coming out as a strained whisper. "I don't want a key. I just want to find a hole to crawl into until this is all over."
Lyssara met his gaze without a flicker of pity. "That's what the Nethervault is, you fool. It's the deepest, safest hole in this entire city." She spoke with a sharp, impatient precision, as if explaining basic arithmetic to a difficult child.
"It was a Free Guild safehouse, built two centuries before the Empire and its Wardens purged them from the capital. It's not a treasure hoard. It's a fortress, hidden in plain sight. Stocked with supplies. Sealed by arts the Warden's Glyph-breakers can't unravel." She paused, letting the weight of her next words sink in. "It's a place to disappear."
The word resonated with every cowardly fiber of his being. Disappear. That was exactly what he wanted. To become a ghost, to wait out this nightmare until he could figure out what the hell had happened to him and how to get back. If that was even possible.
But her explanation had the distinct feeling of a sales pitch. And every pitch had a price.
"If it's so safe and so well-sealed," Ravi asked, his voice low with suspicion, "how do you plan on getting in? I'm guessing that little scroll isn't a simple key."
A slow, calculating smile touched Lyssara's lips. It was the expression of a master strategist who saw the board ten moves ahead. "You're learning," she approved. "The Scrip is the map, yes. It reveals the location. But the entrance is protected by a Dismissal Ward."
"Dismissal Ward?"
"Old Guild magic. Very simple, very effective. It's not a wall, it's a… bouncer. It registers the force and intent of anyone trying to enter. Then it pushes back." She gestured with her hand, a simple, outward shove. "A little push gets a little shove in return. Trying to break it down with a battering ram would be like punching the sky. The force required to repel you grows exponentially. It throws you back, hard. Hard enough to pulp your insides against a wall fifty feet away."
Ravi's blood ran cold. He was starting to see his role in her plan. "You want me to walk into it."
"I want you to stumble into it," she corrected him, her eyes glittering with intellectual curiosity. "I saw what happened to those guards. Force doesn't seem to affect you in the conventional sense. It… collapses. The Ward is just a complex application of force. My theory is that where others are violently repelled, you might just… negate it. Cancel it out. Like adding a negative number to a positive one."
So that was it. He wasn't her partner; he was her skeleton key. A strange, miraculous crowbar she had stumbled upon and intended to use to pry open a lock no one else could pick.
The worst part? It was a brilliant plan. One he would have admired if he weren't the test subject.
He wanted to refuse. He wanted to scream at her that he was not a tool, that he was terrified, that she was insane. But the old, familiar calculus of survival was already running in his head. His options were bleak. Stay in the ruins and get hunted down by the Warden's men? Or trust the razor-sharp woman who was offering him the one thing he desperately needed: a hiding place. A sanctuary.
"I provide the map and the knowledge of this world you so clearly lack," Lyssara said, laying out the terms of their contract with unshakable confidence. "You provide the… unique method of entry. Once we're inside, we are ghosts. The Warden can search until the sun burns out; he will never find us. It's the only logical choice."
She was right. And he hated her for it.
He let out a long, shuddering sigh, an authentic expression of his frayed nerves that also served as a perfect piece of his performance. "Fine," he choked out, making sure to sound like a man being dragged to his own execution. "Fine. But if it crushes me into a paste, you'd better feel really, really bad about it."
A hint of real amusement touched her eyes. "Deal," she said. "Now, stay on your feet. We move at the shift change. When the Watch is lazy and the light is worst."
True to her word, she led them out into the city's dying light a short while later. The sky was a bruised purple, and the shadows grew long and predatory. She moved like a phantom, guiding him with sharp, quiet hand signals, her path weaving through forgotten tunnels and over collapsed rooftops. He simply followed, doing his best to look clumsy and terrified, a role that required very little acting.
Every snapping twig, every distant shout, sent a jolt of ice through his veins. But Lyssara was his shield. Her senses were a net, catching every threat long before it reached them. She was his guide in this new, lethal world. And he was her un-dullable blade.
After what felt like an eternity of stealth and heart-stoppingly close calls, she finally came to a halt. They were crouched behind a crumbled wall, looking out onto a small, circular courtyard. In the center of the yard was a well. It was made of moss-covered stone, with a simple wooden crank and a rotted bucket lying beside it.
"That's it?" Ravi whispered, incredulous. "A well?"
"The best hiding places are the ones no one thinks to look at twice," Lyssara murmured, her eyes scanning the rooftops around them. "The entrance is thirty feet down. The Dismissal Ward is layered over the opening."
She turned to him, her face grim in the twilight. "I'll go down the rope first to check the Glyph-sequence. You follow. Whatever you do, don't—"
She was cut off by a sudden, rhythmic crunching.
The sound of disciplined boots on gravel. Coming from the main street that fed into their courtyard. And it was getting closer.
Lyssara froze, pressing herself flat against the wall. A new kind of tension entered her posture. "Patrol," she hissed, her voice a thread of disbelief. "They're early. Way too early."
Ravi peered over the edge of the wall. Four guards, their leather armor creaking, were rounding the corner, their spears held at the ready. Their path would take them directly through the courtyard. Directly past the well.
They were trapped. Their window of opportunity, the calculated moment of quiet shift-change, had vanished.
"They'll see us in seconds," Ravi breathed, his carefully constructed persona shattering under a wave of pure, primal fear.
Lyssara's eyes darted from the approaching guards to the well, then to him. The cold, analytical calm was gone, replaced by the sharp, feral glint of a cornered animal. All her careful planning had just gone up in smoke.
"There's no time for the rope," she said, her voice dangerously quiet. "There's only one way. In."