Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [3]
“If it is a trap, can’t Dougal disable it?” Killeen asked. “Isn’t that what you hired him for?”
From any of the others, such a statement would have come laden with sarcasm and bile. The sylvari, though, meant every word in earnest. It was, indeed, why he was part of this expedition: his knowledge. Of traps. Of history. Of the way the world used to be.
“He hired me for my experience in recovering powerful artifacts,” said Dougal.
Gyda let out a deep chuckle. “Robbing tombs, you mean.”
Dougal ignored her. “Does anyone have something helpful to add?” Dougal asked.
“The petal-head’s comment stands,” said Clagg, prim as a schoolmaster, “That is why we brought you along, human. We know the trap is there. Now take care of it.”
Dougal reached down and picked up a skull, trying not to think about if this was an ancestor. He aimed for a spot about in the middle of the room and touched the locket beneath his shirt for luck. Then he pitched the skull underhand into the room.
Nothing. He pitched another skull to a different area. Nothing again. He pitched a third.
Gyda rolled her eyes at his uselessness and folded her thick arms with impatience. Clagg shook his head at him as if Dougal were an addled child.
“Not set off by noise,” said Dougal. “Not vibration or motion, either. That leaves weight. We should send in something heavy.” He looked at Gyda.
“I will not be an experiment for you,” said the norn quietly, her face clouded.
“Well, then, the golem,” said Dougal.
“Strike that suggestion,” snapped Clagg, “I did not craft Breaker from scratch just to see it blown to smithereens. This is your problem, human.”
“You care more for that walking statue than you do for the rest of us,” said Gyda.
“Untrue,” said the asura. “I just have less invested in you than in it.”
Killeen brightened, her eyes glowing a faint green. “Perhaps I can help.”
The sylvari set her chin and concentrated on a patch of the bones lining the left side of the passage. She swung her arms and fingers in a complex pattern and spoke words that made Dougal’s head ache slightly. A greenish glow formed in the wall of bones and coalesced around a human-sized set of remains.
As Dougal watched, the bones detached from the surrounding patch and assembled themselves into a coherent skeleton. The deep-green glow, rather than sinew and tendons, held it together. The right side of its skull had been bashed in, and its jaw was missing, as was the lower part of its right arm, which terminated in a pair of jagged breaks. It stood before them like a servant presenting itself to its betters.
Dougal shuddered as Killeen gave the creature a satisfied smile. She gestured again, and the skeleton tottered around and stumbled off down the passage toward the room beyond.
Dougal glanced up at the bone-covered ceiling and reminded himself there had to be some stone and earth up there somewhere behind the remains—that they weren’t just moving through a tunnel carved out of a mountain of bones. “Hold on,” he said, reaching toward Killeen as she smiled at the way her creation shambled away. “We should back up and take—”
The explosion cut him off. The animated skeleton disappeared in a cloud of flame and smoke.
Dougal ducked down and wrapped his arms over his head as a cascade of bone fragments rained down on him, bouncing and clattering on the floor. One flying shard of their animated helper shot into Dougal’s heavy leather shirt and stuck there like a revenant’s fang.
Dougal stood up and saw Clagg gazing into the cavern, pursing his lips. “Crude,” the asura said. “But effective.”
Gyda shouldered past Dougal and laughed. As she strode into the chamber beyond, she grinned at the scorch mark where the skeleton once stood. “Well done, sapling,” she said to Killeen. “At least you are earning your pay.”
Dougal winced at the implicit insult. To the group at large he said, “We need to press on. It may take minutes or days for this trap to reset. It may just