“So, what are we dropping down?” Selian asked as she peered down the dark void of the empty cave shaft. Her voice was almost at the right volume, the lingering effects of the blast almost fully faded. “Coins? Clothes? Books?”

“I don’t want to drop anything.” Flip grumbled. “It’s a shoddy testing metric.”

“Okay. What’s the plan then?” The elf turned to Dovhran, who was unable to provide an immediate answer.

Selian was, internally, furious that the wizard was acting so dramatically counter to how he had been behaving for the better part of their time in the tomb, but managed to stow that rage aside for later. It was not productive rage—something the elf had ever even imagined there would need to be a distinction for before her time with this group. But there had been productive rage, namely her own productive rage in saving Flip in the plant room and then again in the fire room. It seemed her rage towards the wizard was generally generated from her unfathomable obligation to safeguard him. But she knew, intuitively, that if their positions were reversed that Flip would do the same for her. Not out of obligation or because he was being paid to, but because it was the way his brain was wired. He had been programmed, somehow, to help, in any way he could, the people around him.

“I think,” Dovhran finally spoke up, “I think maybe we just climb down?”

“That’s…” Selian’s rage had begun to surface but Dovhran held a hand out to reassure her.

“With rope, Farwysher. With rope and pitons and someone watching from above.” Dovhran began to rummage through his small pack as he spoke. “I don’t have much left, but it might be enough to get us down to a drop safe distance.”

There was no objection as Dovhran produced a length of strong hempen rope and began to feed it from out of his pack down into the abyss. It hung strangely in his grasp as he held it out over the edge. Selian kept a hand on the changeling as he crouched close to the opening at the bottom stair, and Flip kept a hand on the elf to prevent her from losing her balance.

When the rope had been lowered ten feet down, a strange thing happened. Strange, not because it was in and of itself unexpected—the three tomb raiders were prepared to see anything at that point—but because it matched nothing else the tomb had thrown at them before. The rope began to float up towards the ceiling. The more than was fed down into the shaft, the more powerful the force that pulled it up. By the time twenty feet had been let out into the empty space, it was nearly taut. And the only reason that Dovhran had continued to lower the rope down was to test the effect.

Dovhran began to try and retrieve his rope, but the force pulling on it had made the act difficult enough that the changeling dared not attempt it so close to the edge. “Well, that’s odd.”

“It is a gravity spell of some kind.” Flip said with a hum as he observed the length of rope visible in the opening of the shaft. “Very powerful magic. It has to be to resist the draw of death that holds us all to the ground.”

“Pardon me?” Selian cocked her head to the side at the wizard’s words. “Draw of death?”

“That’s the way gravity works, you see. Our mortality binds us to the earth. The ability we have to die keeps us tethered. The gods, who cannot die, float freely. This is also why flying beasts have such short lives, they spend all their energy resisting their mortality and incidentally fall victim to hubris.” Flip only grew more and more sure of himself as he spoke, as if the memory of some foundational text he had read was returning clearly to his memory. “It is also why we bury our dead in the earth and why any magic that defies gravity requires such power. You are not just defying gravity, you are defying death itself.”

“That had better be a direct quotation from some esoteric text, and not something you just made up.” Selian growled, no longer concealing her rage.

“Oh, it’s in plenty of texts. Mostly primers on different forms of magic,”—Flip tapped the pocket in his robes where he had stored his copy of The Treatise of the Stars—”I even read of it in the book I took from Gmid’s collection. It’s all very reliable arcane theory.”

“Uh huh…” Selian level an incredulous glare at the wizard.

Dovhran, on the other hand, paused at the knowledge he was hearing. “Perhaps this is a literal interpretation of that principle. Perhaps mortals drop, but immortals rise.”

Selian narrowed her eyes towards the shaft and the rope hanging up into it. “I suppose your rope is immortal in that theory?”

“A piece of rope has no life force… so I suppose?”

Flip frowned, his expression very serious. “Though your rope is made from dead plants… Perhaps you could be right. It would be nice if we had a disposable living thing to test your theory with.”

“Maybe there’s another slime in a jar back up in the lab?” Dovhran offered. “We used one to make the explosive, so there might be extra?”

“If there was… it’s probably a stain on the wall of the lab now.” Selian said with a sigh of regret. “The blast destroyed most of the materials in there.”

Flip frowned as he leaned closer to the edge of the shaft. “Well, we must try a more practical approach then, mustn’t we…”

Without warning or regard for what might happen, Flip slipped past his companions and leaned out the opening. Were it not for the pattern of irresponsible behavior that the wizard had displayed consistently, he might have been able to make it off the stairs. But as it was, Selian had grabbed hold of his robe and pulled him back from the edge before he could put a foot out.

“That would have been, above all the stupid things I have seen you do to date, Faengil, the most stupid.” Selian hissed. “And hardly worth the risks involved.”

Dovhran, who had been shocked by the sudden turn in events, only managed to stammer out an agreement. “I wholeheartedly agree. Selian might not have needed to say so in such a harsh way, but that was incredibly foolish.”

“I think if anyone should jump, it should be Dovhran.” Selian completed her initial statement. “He has the highest chance of surviving if something goes poorly.”

“You’re… that’s… I mean…” Dovhran was stammering for whole new reason now. “I’m flattered, but that’s… I don’t think anyone could…”

“Oh shut up.” Selian huffed. “We’ll hold the rope steady and you climb in. If you float, climb back in and we’ll reassess. If you sink, than we know we’re getting somewhere.”

Without a word, for he knew that objection would be met with anger and argument, Dovhran made his way back to the edge. The elf was adamant on her method of testing the world that lay ahead, and though Dovhran considered himself in charge he had little sway over his navigators demands. She was, after all, in charge of leading the way. Even if that job had been more or less completed during their travel on the surface.

“If I die, I demand that you come down and collect my body.” Dovhran gave the order with a glare, attempting to take back some modicum of control over the mercenaries that he had hired.

Flip and Selian, who had taken hold of the rope that had been stuck in the changeling’s bag, nodded in silent agreement to their employers terms. The changeling appeared uncertain as to whether he believed he would live or die as he grabbed hold of the rope and swung his body out over the abyss. As he lost contact with the ground he could feel himself being pulled upwards to the spikes in the ceiling, but he found his body dropping slowly. If there was gravity present in the shaft, it was not acting as it should have. The tug upwards that Dovhran felt, he quickly realized, was not gravity or some gravitational magic; it was his clothing holding him up as each piece of fabric was being drawn upwards. The forces pulling him up, however, were not greater than the forces pulling him down. And with everything arranged as it was, Dovhran descended slowly down the shaft at a speed that reminded the two watching him of a feather.

“Remarkable.” Flip said in a whisper as he let go of the rope.

Selian watched silently as she also let go. The rope was moving with Dovhran, no doubt slowing him down somewhat. But the speed he was moving at meant he was not in immediate danger. Selian reasoned that the purpose behind the drop, having seen what she was, was to fool anyone trying to progress further through the tomb that they had reached a sort of dead end or lethal trap and that another route could be found. That in and of itself was absurd considering the trouble that she herself had gone through to uncover the stairwell they now stood in. It was madness, but a madness well thought out. So, without waiting for confirmation of what lay at the bottom, Selian Farwysher took a leap of faith and stepped out into the void herself. Her faith was, mind you, based on a pattern of experience in the tomb and her own logic. It was not blind, nor was it vain, as faith should never be.

Flip watched Selian descend at a comparable speed to Dovhran, perhaps a little slower—Flip hypothesized that their difference in weight accounted for the change in velocity. Without other recourse, Flip gathered the changeling’s abandoned bag and stepped out into the void calmly and let himself sink as he stood in a mostly upright position. To anyone watching from behind him, it might have appeared as if he were still standing as he descended.

Dovhran arrived at the bottom of the shaft first. To his relief it was flat, but there was a foot of water resting on the ground that made him uncomfortable. The discomfort came mostly from his unusual buoyancy in the shaft’s gravity. With his clothing and items pulling him upwards as they did, and the lightness he felt within whatever magic existed in the shaft, his boots only sank into the water part way and did not touch the ground beneath.

When Selian landed next to him moments after his own arrival at the bottom of the shaft, Dovhran was startled. Though a golden orb of light lay at the bottom of the water beneath him, it was difficult to see the upper reaches of the shaft above. So her appearance had been a surprise. And when she landed and did not sink at all into the water, both Dovhran and Selian shared a look of confusion. When Flip alighted beside the two seconds later, the shock had faded. His approached was natural. Though the wizard had been the least mindful about the dangers of where they now stood, he had arrived at the most safe position in their order.

“I see you were right once again, Faengil.” Dovhran said with a low sigh.

“Indeed. It as almost as though I understand the magic of this place intuitively.” Flip’s words, though on the surface quite sarcastic, were genuine. “Though I am glad a safer method than mine was decided on to test the safety of our descent.”

“If it weren’t a matter of us living or dying, I would be very upset that you were correct about this.” Selian managed to speak with a straight face despite the rage still boiling just under her skin. “You have no idea how frustrating it is to watch you accidentally stumble into success at every turn. Even if we’re the ones that hand it to you. It still feels like you winning every time.”

Hurt by the elf’s words, Flip was about to offer a word of apology, but she held up a hand to stop him.

“I know you don’t do it on purpose. I just wanted my feelings to be known.”

“Consider them known.” Dovhran offered the elf a charming and disingenuous smile. “But rather than continue to share our feelings, I believe we should decide on that.”

The changeling pointed to an opening near the base of the shaft. It was a hole roughly three feet in diameter, perhaps a bit larger, positioned with its base just below the level of the water they stood in. The water poured gently into the opening, but as Dovhran listened for anything beyond the hole he heard water rushing as if through a channel or aqueduct.

“You don’t think that’s the way we have to go…?” Dovhran uttered his question with a hope that it was not.

“Dovhran…” Selian uttered the changeling’s name quietly. “I know it is.”