Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [34]
Dougal said nothing but nodded. Almorra looked up from the fire to Dougal, and her gaze drilled into the human.
Her next words were heavy with emotion and memory. “I was there. Four years ago, when Kralkatorrik, the Crystal Dragon, awoke. I was in the Dragonbrand.”
Dougal felt slightly ill. “I—I didn’t know anyone survived that.”
Soulkeeper grunted. “I served as a legionnaire in the Blood Legion at the time. Our centurion was in charge of interdicting enemy supplies and was overseeing the scores of our finest warbands stationed there. I was on patrol with my own warband in eastern Ascalon when the Crystal Dragon stirred.
“I felt it first rather than heard it. The creature’s coming warped everything around it, and the vibrations reached me through the air, not as a low thunder but a strange feeling that reached into my bones and made every bit of my fur stand on end.
“Harthog Soulslasher, my second-in-command, saw it before the rest of us, coming over the edge of the mountains behind us, flying in from the north like an angry sun come to Tyria to scorch us all. Harthog was one of the bravest charr I’d ever known, but I saw his eyes bulge with terror as he raised his arm to point at the dragon.
“The others turned to see what could terrify such a charr as Soulslasher, but I reached out and grabbed my friend by the shoulders to shake the fear from him. As I did, I saw the changes start to take him.
“His eyes began to glow an unearthly purple, and his muzzle shrank back into his face, becoming like the soft but toothy maw of a giant leech. His fur became transparent as his armor sloughed off his thinning shoulders and his arms transformed into flailing, shard-like claws. The skin peeled back from his face, and his lips and nose and eyelids shriveled up and fell away.
“And then he turned into living glass, crystallizing in an instant before my eyes into his twisted form. And at my back, I could feel a pressure, like a great hand was pressing down on the entire world as the dragon passed overhead.
“Despite the fact the dragon soared hundreds of feet above us, its passage turned the land beneath the path of its flight black and transformed the plants into crystalline monstrosities. At the same time, the screams from the rest of my warband tore at my ears.
“I drew my blade just before the creature that had been Soulslasher attacked, his splintered claws reaching for me as he screeched in horror at what he had become and the hunger that now drove him to drool at the thought of devouring me alive. I don’t know what spared me from sharing his fate. Every other member of our warband succumbed to it. I was standing no more than a foot from Harthog, and he and the others were warped beyond recognition, yet I was spared.
“I slew the thing that had been Soulslasher then, but after I tore out his throat, his body kept coming at me. I had to shatter him into pieces to finally put him down. Then I turned, in the deafening silence after the dragon’s passage, and saw the rest of my warband trying to kill each other, each twisted in a unique and horrible way.
“I waited for my warsiblings to tear each other apart, then stepped in and dispatched the survivors as best I could. When it was done, I looked before and behind me and saw that every part of the land that had passed beneath the dragon had been twisted in this same way. The grass shattered under my feet as I walked on it, grinding it into sand.”
“The Dragonbrand.” Dougal breathed the word with horrified respect.
Soulkeeper nodded. “The curse the dragon laid upon the land stretched for untold miles in the direction of the flight, coming from the north and reaching for the south. Everything in its path had been turned to crystal: the trees, the animals, even the land itself nearby.
“The worst part of it all is that the dragon didn’t care about the destruction it caused. It was going elsewhere, on a mission known only to itself. To it, the Dragonbrand was worth nothing more than your boot prints are to you. We might as