Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [36]
Garm did, too, alongside her.
Big Snaff and Big Zojja joined the charge.
“Ten more paces,” Eir cried, “and the Dragonspawn will be a pile of ice!”
But in five more paces, he was gone. The air folded around his frozen figure and closed on him.
Eir took three more strides before stumping to a halt.
Garm, Big Snaff, and Big Zojja pulled up alongside her.
“Where did he go?”
A sharp crack came from above. The comrades looked up to see an icicle the size of a fir tree break from the ceiling and plunge toward them. It didn’t seem to move, only to grow larger.
“Back!” Eir commanded.
The golems leaped back, skidding on the icy floor.
The icicle struck, its tip hurling out hailstones. The shaft rammed downward, disintegrating until it reached its center, which struck the floor like a hammer. The cavern shook.
Big Snaff brushed ice off his steel hide. “Lucky for us, we got out of the way.”
“We’re not out of the way,” replied Eir, looking up at the thousands of similar icicles hanging overhead.
Crack, crack, crack, crack!
“He’s trying to drive us out,” Eir cried. “Deeper! Run deeper!”
She ran forward, followed by golems that fissured the ice as they went. The four comrades ran headlong into the darkness.
Behind them, icicles fell. Boom! Boom! Boom! They hissed and burst like rockets. Frozen shrapnel rang across the golems’ metal skins. Boom! Boom! Boom!
One icicle grazed Eir’s elbow, dragging her sideways—away from another icicle that staved the floor before her. She spun past its disintegrating bulk over a field of slippery shards.
“Keep going!”
Garm leaped aside as an ice shaft struck before him, going off like a bomb.
Big Snaff and Big Zojja danced past two more columns while a third toppled before them like a felled tree.
“Jump!” Snaff cried.
The golems grasped hands and leaped as the icicle hit. Big Zojja and Big Snaff sailed side by side over the shattering ice. The two golems fell into a wave of crushed ice that picked up Eir and Garm and dumped them into another chute.
“Down we go!” Eir called.
For a time, there was only metal scraping ice and golems spinning and the wave breaking. Then the floor flattened out again in deep darkness. Eir, Garm, and the golems ground to a halt, and the last skittering shards of ice tumbled to silence.
“Now where are we?” Zojja wondered through her speaking tube.
Snaff replied philosophically, “Somewhere else.”
“Somewhere he was trying to keep us from,” Eir said as she rose. “This is probably his inner sanctum.”
Something moved in the darkness.
The golems turned to see.
Ahead, the black air unfolded, and the Dragonspawn took shape. His figure glowed ice blue, and his soul whirled in a cyclone about him.
“It all comes down to this,” Eir said, “the courage of four heroes—“
“And the golemancy of two geniuses,” Zojja added.
“Against the Dragonspawn.” Eir paused. “Spirit of Wolf, guide my work.” So saying, Eir transformed from a towering norn into the aspect of her totem animal. She became a dire wolf like Garm, only standing on hind legs, with eyes like fire and a coat as red as blood.
Side by side, the red wolf and the black wolf charged through the inner sanctum, bearing down on the ice champion. Big Snaff and Big Zojja followed.
“Kal-throk-tok!” the Dragonspawn cried in a voice like thunder. He raised his sword of eternal ice. Dark magic roiled around it. He plunged the sword into the glacier beneath him, cracking through the frozen floor. The crack spread like black lightning, splitting one side of the glacier from the other.
Eir and Garm leaped to one side and Big Snaff and Big Zojja to the other.
Still, the crack raced along, up the far wall of the ice cave and onto the ceiling. The split grew wider, and above, light poured through the glacier.
A mile of ice had ruptured, and the crevice gushed sunlight.
Eir and Garm struggled to stay upright as the ice cave shook, and Big Snaff and Big Zojja