Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon (5 page)

As fast as the norn shattered the bones, though, they came right back together again. The flying shards had sliced through her skin, and she bled freely from at least a dozen small cuts. Her eyes went wild for a moment, and for the slightest instant, Dougal swore she looked afraid. Then she pressed on with her relentless attack, determined to bring the creature down. Her efforts seemed as effective as attacking a sand dune.

“Yes! Keep fighting!” Gyda shouted at the creature, her bloodied face split into a wide grin, even as her
breathing grew more labored and the swings of her hammer became less vicious. “Keep growing! Bear’s jaws, give me a fight to sing legends about!”

Clagg was giddy. “If we defeat the guardian, we can raid Blimm’s bones as well. There may be greater wonders within the sarcophagus. Breaker! Help the norn destroy it!”

The stonework golem lumbered into the room, the asura still in its front harness, a struggling Killeen lashed to its back. With a sickening feeling, Dougal realized what was about to happen. He shouted at Clagg to stop.

It was too late. Breaker stepped out onto the wobbling floor, which immediately crumbled beneath its weight.

Clagg screamed as he, Killeen, and his golem tumbled through the floor and into the blackness below.

In his shock, Dougal forgot about the rope wrapped around his wrist until it went taut and nearly yanked his shoulder from its socket. The weight of the golem on the other end of the rope dragged Dougal along the undulating floor, right toward the Breaker-sized hole. As Dougal sped across the granite tiles, he swung his feet forward and tried to set his heels against any sort of edge he could find.

Dougal heard a massive, earthshaking crash from somewhere below, just as the heels of his boots caught on the edge of one of the wedge-shaped tiles. The impact caused the tile beneath Dougal to give way, and a brand-new abyss yawned under him. He tottered for a moment on its edge and then toppled backward into the darkness below.

Dougal fell only a half-dozen feet before the rope snapped taut. Pain radiated from his extended arm. He swung wildly, suspended from the edge of the hole above him. The rope stretched straight up to the edge, across a few bony tiles that had yet to give way, and then back down through the first hole to where Breaker anchored it on the floor below.

Spinning about like a pendulum, Dougal looked
down. Through a thick haze he spotted the blue glow of Breaker’s arcanic motivator gems moving around as it struggled to climb back to its feet. He could see the asura beat his fists against the rim of his harness.

“I should never have opted for strength over speed!” Clagg shouted. “Up, Breaker! Now!”

As the rope’s crazy swinging slowed, Dougal began climbing for the floor above and realized he was covered in thick, ancient webs, thankfully abandoned. They filled the lower chamber from one end to the other. These were what had made his vision down here so hazy. They must have been spun over decades by spiders that lived beneath the crypt’s floor, the ancestors of the trapdoor spider that poisoned Killeen.

Dougal understood then what had happened. Blimm had designed the floor of his crypt to give way under any significant force—like the pounding feet of someone racing away from a gigantic tomb guardian—but the staggering quantity of spiderwebs woven under the floor had lent the fragile floor strength. That had helped it hold far greater weights than Blimm must have intended—right up until Gyda weakened it and Breaker provided the last straw.

The analytical part of Dougal’s mind admired the nature of the trap. Originally, Blimm had probably meant for the victims of his trap to fall into the lower chamber, where the tomb guardian could have an easy time with them. Dougal suspected that a pillar supported the sarcophagus at the center of the room, keeping it from sharing the victims’ fate, but it was impossible to tell in the darkness.

The rest of Dougal’s mind concentrated on survival, and carefully he began to pull himself up the rope to the remnants of the chamber above.

Something overhead thundered and the room shook, the false floor above him twisting against the mortar of the abandoned spiderwebs.

Dougal had time to curse, but only just. Gyda and the tomb guardian broke through the false floor nearer the bier. More light spilled into the lower room, revealing the central pillar, safe and stable and completely out of reach. Gyda roared in triumph as she fell into the lower chamber, her last blow with her hammer having smashed the tomb guardian straight through the floor beneath them both. She landed hard but on top of the tomb guardian, which once more scattered into pieces before starting to re-form.

“This,” Gyda bellowed as she staggered to her feet, ready to do battle again, “is a battle worthy of a norn!” She sounded winded but no less enthusiastic.

Dougal didn’t stop to watch what happened next. Instead, he clambered up the rope as fast as he could. He reached the floor of the upper chamber in an instant and hauled himself onto it. From there he scrambled back toward the room’s entrance, hoping that staying on all fours would distribute his weight enough that he would not break through the floor once more.

Skirting the hole Breaker had created, Dougal reached the threshold of the doorway, which seemed stable. Only then did he loosen the rope, which had bitten painfully into his wrist.

Dougal’s brain, the analytical part that admired the
workmanship of a trap that had almost killed him, told him it was time to leave. He already had what they had come for, and he was safe. He could just find another asura willing to buy the Golem’s Eye and keep all the profit himself. Sticking around here any longer only meant risking death.

The norn was a bully anyway, and the asura was insulting, and the sylvari …

The sylvari. Dougal thought about it for only a second, the sound of Gyda’s hammer blows getting fainter and more infrequent. He cursed and muttered about never adventuring with people you would hate to see die.

Peering down over the edge of the hole, Dougal shouted, “I’m up here at the entrance! Let’s go!”

Suddenly the rope jerked out of Dougal’s hand as Breaker fell over on his side again. Dougal managed to grab the line again before it got away from him, but rather than allow himself to be dragged back into the lower chamber, he let the line play out through his grasp.

“Hold it, Clagg!” Dougal shouted, hoping the asura was somehow still alive at the other end of the rope. “I can pull you up. I’ve got the rope!”

“They’re shattered!” Clagg sobbed. “My Breaker’s beautiful legs. I carved them myself. They’re destroyed!”

“Forget about the golem!” Dougal said. “Cut your end of the rope free, and I’ll haul you and Killeen up!”

“Right, right,” Clagg said, blithering as if to remind himself of the details of this most basic plan. “Cut the
rope and you haul me up. To safety.”

“And Killeen too!”

“She’s dead,” Clagg said. “She
must
be dead.”

“No, I am
not
!” said Killeen weakly. “I just can’t find a way out of these straps!”

“Cut her free!” Dougal said.

“No!” Clagg said, his voice rising hysterically. “No time!”

A crash came from the other side of the lower chamber, and Gyda screamed, this time in pain. Then Dougal heard her hammer start pounding again, even faster than before.

“Cut Killeen free and I’ll haul you both up!” Dougal shook his fist with the rope in it at Clagg and snarled. “Do it now or I’ll toss the rope down and let you die with Gyda!”

Clagg squeaked something inaudible, then set to work with a knife.

“Thank you,” Dougal heard Killeen say to the asura.

Gyda bellowed from the other side of the room. “By the Bear! How many times must I slay this damned thing?”

Dougal peered deeper into the gloomy hole. The norn stood near the pillar, stooped with exhaustion, her body heaving to catch a breath, her warrior’s braid shredded, sweat and blood from a hundred small wounds pouring over her tattoos and fur. The fragmented tomb guardian continued to re-form, pulling replacement parts from the walls and floor. Gyda’s eyes met Dougal’s, and for the first time Dougal saw real fear in her face: the fear of someone who had realized she had picked an
unwinnable fight.

Gyda raised her hammer and pointed beyond Dougal and toward the tomb’s entrance. “Go,” she said, and turned back to the re-forming guardian, her hammer raised.

“Ready!” Clagg tugged on the line. “Haul us up now! Please ?”

Dougal backed up into the chamber leading into the crypt and set his feet against the top step. He began hauling on the rope as hard as he could, reeling it in an arm’s length at a time. Individually, the asura and the sylvari weren’t heavy, but together they added up to the weight of a good-sized man. Dougal let his fear of the beast below—and the knowledge that it would soon finish the wounded, exhausted norn—spur him on.

Then Dougal heard something that sank his heart. The hammering had stopped.

“Hurry!” Clagg screeched. “It’s coming!”

Now Dougal heard the rough clacking of dozens of bones smacking rhythmically on the stone floor in the chamber below, coming closer with each beat. Dougal tried to brace himself when he heard Killeen scream, and the rope yanked him up the top step and back into the chamber, toward the gaping hole. He strained against it, knocking several bones over the threshold before him. He watched them skitter into the hole as he came closer and closer to following them down.

As his feet reached the edge of the hole, Dougal held on to the rope with one hand and snagged the door frame with the other. The strain threatened to rip his arms from their sockets, but he somehow managed
to hold on, and planting his feet against the bottom of the frame, gripped the rope with both hands. Staring down the length of the rope, he spied Clagg and Killeen hanging from its far end. Clagg had knotted a loop under Killeen’s arms, and now he clung to her shoulders with a grip so desperate, his gray fingers had turned white.

Just below them, the blood-spattered, mostly shattered tomb guardian had snagged the sylvari’s leg with a composite arm fashioned from dozens of people’s limbs. Still reassembling itself, the creature swung a wild punch at Killeen and Clagg with its other arm, but the partially formed limb fell to pieces even as it swung. A wave of bone dust buffeted the two trapped adventurers.

“Help!” Clagg wailed. “Damn you, Dougal! Save us!”

The tomb guardian brought its already re-forming arm back again, stronger this time. Dougal looked around for an option, a tool, anything within reach, that could be used to distract, dissuade, or defeat the creature. Dougal closed his eyes and knew that it was over. He could do no more than hold on until his arm gave out or Blimm’s beast killed the asura and sylvari and hauled him in after them.

He couldn’t help them. He could only die with them. One hand went to his chest; beneath his shirt, he could feel the cold metal of his locket, a reminder of the last time he had failed this badly, when he had stumbled out of a haunted city alone. When he had left friends behind.

He knew what had to be done. His hand kept moving now, almost of its own volition, and fumbled to unbutton his shirt pocket.

A deafening crack sounded in the chamber below, echoing like thunder and accompanied by the sound of hailstones clattering on the stone floor. Dougal wrenched open his eyes to see that the half-shattered Breaker had stumped forward on what was left of its legs to smash its fractured arms into the tomb guardian’s chest. Blimm’s creature let go of Killeen’s leg and turned to face this new threat, leaving the sylvari and asura to dangle over its head. The guardian turned to the task of reducing Breaker to gravel.

“Haul us up!” Clagg said.

Dougal tried, but his aching arms would not comply. He’d already put every ounce of his strength into trying to save the others, and he didn’t have anything left. It was all he could do simply to keep himself from letting go. “It’s no good. I can’t!”

“You humans!” Clagg barked. “What good are you?”

Dougal closed his eyes again and strained with all his might. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t bring the end of the rope up an inch. He bellowed in frustration with the effort, but nothing he did made any difference. He felt the end of the rope begin to wobble like mad and realized that if he didn’t release it soon, he’d only wind up dead with the others.

The instant before he could finally allow himself to let go of the line, though, delicate fingers grasped his wrist. Then a sweet, desperate voice said in a ghostly
whisper, “Dougal, help me up!”

Dougal almost dropped the rope in surprise. While what was left of Breaker had kept the tomb guardian busy, Killeen had climbed all the way up the rope, with Clagg’s arms clamped around her neck.

Dougal moved his numbed fingers from the rope to Killeen’s arm and then fell backward, letting his weight haul Killeen and Clagg up over the lip of the hole to land upon him.

Blushing just a little, Dougal and Killeen disentangled themselves from each other and stood up. As one, the three of them leaned over and peered into the pit.

The tomb guardian gave Breaker one last stomp, and the blue glow in its central arcane motivator crystal faded and died.