Matt Forbeck - Ghosts of Ascalon

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.