Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [14]
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.
“Haul us up!” Clagg said.
Dougal tried, but his aching arms would not comply. He’d already put every ounce of his strength into trying to save the others, and he didn’t have anything left. It was all he could do simply to keep himself from letting go. “It’s no good. I can’t!”
“You humans!” Clagg barked. “What good are you?”
Dougal closed his eyes again and strained with all his might. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t bring the end of the rope up an inch. He bellowed in frustration with the effort, but nothing he did made any difference. He felt the end of the rope begin to wobble like mad and realized that if he didn’t release it soon, he’d only wind up dead with the others.
The instant before he could finally allow himself to let go of the line, though, delicate fingers grasped his wrist. Then a sweet, desperate voice said in a ghostly whisper, “Dougal, help me up!”
Dougal almost dropped the rope in surprise. While what was left of Breaker had kept the tomb guardian busy, Killeen had climbed all