Matt Forbeck - Ghosts of Ascalon

"I wasn't," the sylvari said.

Gullik waved off her point. "You know what I mean."

To Dougal, the norn said, "The deed is done. Rather than fight over that, let's make some use of it. Or would you prefer one of us to wind up sharing that woman's fate?"

Dougal groaned and looked at Wynne once more. Blood covered her from her head to her knees, to which she'd fallen after Ember had delivered the killing blow. Her mangled face was recognizable, but only just.

"All right," he said, shaking his head as he spoke. "Put her… it… in the front. Then we don't have to look at her face."

"What about the rest of them?" Riona said. "Do we just leave them like this? To be eaten by the rats?"

Dougal gave her a pained shrug. He shared her anguish, but he didn't see what they could do to fix it. "We can't burn them down here, and we can't bury them in stone. Someone will come looking for them soon enough." He grimaced. "We need to be as far away from here as we can be by then, if only so we aren't forced to thin the Vanguard's numbers even more."

Killeen put the shambling, dead Wynne in the lead. The sylvari followed right after her, with Kranxx on her heels. Riona trailed after them, and Dougal remained in the back of the line of people who could fit onto the walkway. Trudging through the stream, Ember and then Gullik swept along behind the rest of them.

They made their way through the last section of the sewer, which seemed to wind on forever. Dougal kept peering into the darkness, hoping to see even the faintest glow of light.

The first clue he had that they were near the exit was the way the walls of the tunnel seemed to vibrate in a tone lower than his ears could hear. He could feel it in the air, though, and eventually through the soles of his boots.

The silent thrumming slowly grew in pitch and volume until it became a dull roar. This, Dougal knew, must be the sound of the stream spilling out of the tunnel and tumbling down onto the mountainside beyond.

"We should be coming up on it soon," Kranxx said. Dougal detected a hint of worry in the asura's voice.

"You don't know? Haven't you been here before?" asked Riona.

"Of course not," said Kranxx. "Don't you know how dangerous this is? I've studied the maps many times, though."

Dougal did not find that reassuring. He was about to say something about it when Wynne disappeared.

The walkway in front of them had tilted under their weight. Pitching forward, it had thrown Wynne into the fast-moving waters. She floundered about at the surface for a moment, flapping her dead arms in some horrible mockery of an attempt to swim, and then disappeared beneath the surface.

Killeen screamed as she nearly toppled in after her undead servant. When the walkway tipped downward, she lost her balance and spun her arms in a vain attempt to recover it. Moving faster than Dougal had thought he could, Kranxx leaned forward, bending at the waist, and tapped Killeen on the shoulder with the hook attached to his back.

Killeen managed to snag the hook with her hand, but instead of the hook hauling her back, her weight pulled Kranxx forward, dragging him along to share her fate. However, this gave Dougal enough time to react, and he pushed past Riona to snag the asura by the top of his pack. For a moment he thought he might tumble in after the others, and the trap would manage to kill all three of them at once. But he dug in his heels and leaned back hard, bringing their forward progress to a halt. With Riona's help, he yanked both Kranxx and Killeen back to a solid part of the walkway, where they all collapsed in a heap.

"The bottom of the stream must drop off just ahead too," said Ember. "I can feel the undertow from here."

"Thanks for saying something before it became a problem," Riona said as she struggled to catch her breath.

Dougal checked to make sure the others were all right, then knelt down to examine the floor and see what had happened. Kranxx stood next to him, giving him plenty of light to work with.

There was a hinge on the floor, almost impossible to see, especially by a lantern's light. Dougal recognized the type of trap they'd triggered, and he cursed.

"Bear's breath! What's wrong now?" Gullik asked. "This filth is too cold to just stand here in it!"

"Lots of traps only work once," Dougal said. "This one resets itself automatically. From this hinge here onward, the walkway is actually a ramp. A set of counterweights underneath it holds it up horizontally, right up until there's enough weight on the end of the ramp. Then the ramp tips forward and dumps you right into the worst part of the sludge."

"And then you die," said Ember.

Dougal shook his head. "And then you find yourself trapped against the grating that covers the end of the tunnel, held up against it by the force of thousands of pounds of filthy water pressing you into it until you drown."

"And then you die," said Killeen.

Dougal nodded. "And then you're held there until your body rots enough for the water pressure to tear you into pieces so small that you flow out through the grate with the rest of Ebonhawke's waste."

Dougal pointed at Kranxx's glowing light. "Can you put that out?"

Kranxx pulled a heavy sack from his pack and hooded the stone with it, blocking its glow. Dougal stared ahead into the darkness until his eyes adjusted to it.

"Yes," he said, "I can see some light up ahead. I think we're near the entrance."

"Good," said Riona. "Now we just need to figure out how to get there-without dying."

Dougal glanced around, and his eyes fell on Gullik. He pointed at the norn's axe and said, "Give me that."

"You're as mad as Raven," said Gullik. "No warrior gives up his weapon until the fight is finished."

"I'm going to use it to fight the trap." Dougal put out his hands. "Trust me."

Gullik screwed up his lips as he evaluated the man and the moment, then reversed his axe and handed it to Dougal by the handle. "I expect it back in one piece."

Holding the weapon, Dougal realized just how heavy the thing was. He wasn't sure he could swing it over his head. Fortunately, he didn't have to.

He set the axe down on the walkway, then lowered himself into the sludge. It was just as nasty as it had been before. No matter how much he braced himself for the stench and the cold, it was horrible.

He took the axe and put it headfirst into the sludge before Gullik could stop him. Then he bent down deeper into the sludge until it came up to the tops of his shoulders. With a bit of wiggling, he managed to wedge the ax up under the ramp. He tested it for a moment, then let go. It was jammed in there hard enough that it stuck.

"I want my axe back," Gullik said. "I haven't lost a weapon since an icebrood I was fighting took my spear from me and used it as a toothpick."

"I just need to release the grating," said Dougal. "Then you can have it back."

He climbed out of the muck again and then beckoned Kranxx to come with him. "I need your lamp," he said, "and you're light enough to not trigger the trap with me." He looked past the aura. "The rest of you stay here. We'll be right back."

Dougal worked his way forward along the ramp on his hands and knees, waiting for the axe's handle to snap or to feel the telltale tipping sensation that meant his life would soon end. As he drew closer to the end of the ramp, he saw the outside.

The sewer exited the mountainside beneath a rocky overhang, which was why they could not see any daylight sooner. Even so, the light seemed muted, and Dougal guessed that the valley beyond the grate was probably still deep in shadow. The end of the sewer was sealed with an iron grate that had been coated with rust and slime over the past two centuries. The water surged through the grate, forming a cascade of muck that disappeared in fog below. The grate swung outward, but there was a lock on the grate that functioned only from this side, and it looked serviceable enough.