Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [12]
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