Matt Forbeck - Ghosts of Ascalon

"Fine, friend Kranxx!" Gullik twisted his neck to grin up in the asura's direction. "I shall permit you to do the figuring and to tell me when a battle is too odd!"

Kranxx clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from cursing.

Dougal chuckled as he strove to keep up with Ember. The charr was as fast and nimble as a mountain cat, and she had a longer gait, so keeping pace with her, even in the darkness, took some sweat.

The ground was fairly open, dotted by small copses of trees and the foundations of ancient habitations. Occasionally there would be a weathered crater, a remnant of a centuries-old battle between the humans and charr. Sometimes the center of the crater was empty, and sometimes the water that had gathered in the hollow winked like a crystal in the wan light. The grass reached up to Dougal's calves and in the daytime probably sported a host of wildflower blossoms.

They kept to moonlit sides of the hills, risking detection to keep from spilling into unseen pitfalls and gullies.

The six moved silently through the dusk and into the night, now not speaking unless necessary. The blue-white shades of the shrouded moon were only interrupted by the towers of flame erupting from the distant charr camps. These lit the undersides of the clouds, and the reflection of that light washed everything in a faint, fiery orange.

Sometime after midnight, Ember signaled for a halt. The others froze, then followed her to hunker down in the shadows of a skeletal charr war wagon, its frame long since scavenged for parts and left rusting in the moonlight. Silently she pointed toward a torch she had seen burning in the night. As they remained hidden, it wound closer.

Dougal glanced over to see Gullik fingering his axe, ready to leap into action at the slightest hint that they had been spotted. Killeen put her hand on the norn's wrist-which looked like a child reaching out to hold her father's hand-and he stopped.

As the torch drew closer, Dougal heard a number of charr voices growling and snarling at each other. The voices grew louder for a while and then tapered off as the torchlight faded in the distance. When it seemed safe, Dougal tapped Ember on the elbow, and she nodded and stood up. They spoke in whispers.

"That was a patrol from the Iron Legion," she said.

"Were they looking for us?" asked Dougal.

Ember shook her head. "No. Not yet."

Dougal had to agree. There was no tension among the Iron Legion charr. They moved like night watchmen making their regular rounds, neither expecting trouble nor encountering any.

They waited another ten minutes before Ember gave the signal to head out.

As a gray dawn threatened to break over the mountains far to the east, Ember steered them to higher ground and found a cave for them to hide in.

"Wolf's haunches, I do not care for burrowing into a dredge-hole!" Gullik said.

Riona nodded. "If a patrol finds us here, we'll have no place to run."

"This is Ascalon," said Ember. "We charr own every bit of it but the place we came from and the place we're going to. There are no places for us to run."

"At least it will be cool," said Kranxx. "My next research project must include methods for capturing the incredible heat that norn give off when exerting themselves."

"And the cave mouth faces south, so I can see the sun," Killeen said with a smile.

"And there's a great view," said Dougal. He gazed back over where they'd been. Far to the south, he could still see the peaks of the mountains in which Ebonhawke nestled. The mountains had given way to gentler foothills, like the one they were holed up in now. Once there had been forests here, but the war had ravaged the earth, and now verdant grasses had covered these rolling lands.

Dougal had not come this way out to Ascalon City the first time around-five years earlier, he and his friends had crossed through the Shiverpeaks instead-but he had studied maps of Ascalon for much of his life. On the other side of the hill, he knew, the land would become even easier until he and the others would find themselves racing across wide, open plains. Then they would be at the most vulnerable, with few places to hide; but if they stuck to moving at night, he thought they might be able to manage it.

"Get as much rest as you can," said Ember. "We will move out at noon."

"What? Why?" asked Dougal. Before he could say more, Gullik cut him off with a tremendous snore that echoed through the cave.

Riona nodded and spoke up to be heard over the rumbling. "I thought you said that traveling during the day would be dangerous."

"Yes, but we are close to the Dragonbrand," Ember said. "We would be better off not attempting to cross it at night."

Riona caught Dougal's eye and signaled that she would take the first shift today, along with Ember. He was too tired to realize that there wouldn't be a second, and he leaned against the back of the cave and tried to ignore the norn's snoring.

The time passed so fast that when Dougal woke up, he felt as if he'd not slept at all. He felt a hand covering his mouth, and his eyes flew wide open to see Riona hunched before him, a finger pressed to her lips. After Dougal nodded that he understood, Riona removed her hand from his face, and he sat up. She stood up and beckoned him to follow her. They crept past Ember, who watched them silently with her large eyes, then rose to follow them.

Riona led Dougal to the mouth of the cave, where she knelt down and pointed at a pair of pale figures meandering up the hill in the light of the breaking dawn. Dougal rubbed the sleep from his eyes and squinted down at the figures: an old shepherd and his young apprentice. For a heartbeat he wondered how such people could have possibly brought their flock this deep into Ascalon, and he even gazed around, looking for the sheep. Then he realized what the shepherds really were.

Dougal signaled for Riona to follow him back into the cave. When they reached Ember, they spoke in whispers.

"They're ghosts," Dougal said. "They must have been working the fields around here when Adelbern brought down the Foefire."

Riona rasped. "And their spirits have been trapped out here for over two centuries. Horrible."

"They seem harmless," said Ember.

Dougal shook his head. "Anything but. I run into a lot of ghosts in my line of work. Most restless spirits have some sort of reason for hanging around a place: an unfinished task, a wrong that needs righting, and so on. They're often coherent, and you can hold a reasonable conversation with them. They can be obsessive, or angry, but they're sane-sane for ghosts, at least."

"And those two are not?" asked Riona.

"The spirits created by the Foefire are frozen in time. To them, it's still the day of the Foefire, Adelbern is still their king, and the charr are still threatening at the gates."

"Like in Ebonhawke today," said Riona softly, but both Dougal and Ember ignored her.

Dougal continued. "When they run into someone still alive, they see that person as charr, or at best an ally of the charr. It doesn't matter who or what the person really is. It could be Queen Jennah herself, or a sylvari. To them, every person who invades their space is charr."

"The Foefire killed every human in the entire country," Ember said. "The Sorcerer-King's atrocity extended far beyond his city's walls."

Dougal nodded. "It affected every bit of the nation except for Ebonhawke."

"What should we do about them?" Riona asked.

"Nothing, unless they come into the cave," Dougal said. "We don't need a fight with them."

"That's too bad," Ember said. She moved back into the cave and picked up Bladebreaker's sword. The two humans followed her.

"You can't tell me you're going to go hunt those ghosts down," Riona said, shocked.

"I don't need to," Ember said, pointing her snout over Dougal's shoulder. "They're already here."