Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [56]
“Throw it in the cage and we can begin!” said the asura.
“Yes, Master Kranxx!” shouted Gullik enthusiastically. Riona and Ember both looked at the norn, their mouths open in disbelief. Gullik raised his eyebrows and said, “Just trying to help.”
“Good!” cried Kranxx in triumph. “Now administer the sedative and we can begin. I want to flay that creature alive!” And he calmly set down his lightning fork and said in a low voice, “That was very good, charr. Have you done that professionally?”
“I have had my opportunities,” said Ember, no longer as panicked as she had once appeared.
“Very well,” said the asura, listening for a moment to his door, then nodding to the others. “Come, we should be out of here. Lieutenant Stafford will not dare wake his commander, but you can bet he’ll be there in his office with the first dawn’s light. And don’t touch that.” The last was directed at Gullik, who had reached out for the lightning fork.
Kranxx pulled a bag from one side of his worktable and put the fork into it, along with a couple flasks of bluish liquid and a couple other tools. He adjusted a few things on his workbench. He looked around the workshop and let out a sigh, then turned toward a back wall stacked with barrels. He opened one of the barrels, reached in, and pulled a switch, and the entire wall, complete with false barrel fronts, swung outward, revealing a narrow set of stairs descending into the earth.
“Follow me,” said the asura, pulling a small gem from his pocket and blowing on it. It glowed with an amber radiance. As he walked down the stairs, other gems set into walls glimmered to life, with wan flames that provided a minimum of guidance.
Riona, still holding on to Ember’s chain, followed Kranxx; Killeen and Gullik went next; and Dougal brought up the rear. He looked around the empty, windowless workshop and thought he heard the sound of cooling metal ticking away as it contracted. He wondered how long the guards outside would be content with listening to a sedated charr behind closed doors.
As Dougal worked his way through the passage, he noted that the smaller gemstones were already fading. They walked for what he estimated were two city blocks, then turned right and walked another one. Dougal tried to visualize where that put him in the city, but failed.
They emerged in the large basement of another building, probably a warehouse, at the top of a ramp. The ramp switched back twice before opening up into a space large enough to be a throne room but stacked with storage shelves. Little sat on the shelves but a few basic supplies plus several slabs of stone and ingots of metal stacked in a haphazard way, all wreathed in shadow. Several half-built golems lay in a pile in one corner, and along one wall was the half-constructed form of an asura gate. The shelves had been cleared away from the front of the room, the centerpiece of which was a long, circular lab table set at the perfect height for an asura to work at.
Kranxx slapped a small panel as he came into the room, and a flame leaped to life under a pot sitting on a metal surface. “Pardon the mess,” he said. “I don’t often have guests.”
Ember crinkled her snout as she sniffed at the air. “I can see why,” she said. “It smells like something died down here.”
“No one can prove that,” said Kranxx, smiling. “And if they can, I wasn’t anywhere near here when it happened.”
He turned to Riona. “Are you in charge here, or were you just the only one willing to hold the charr’s chain?”
Riona nodded indignantly. “While we appreciate your aid, our business here is our own. We must leave this place as soon as possible, by orders of the queen of Kryta.”
“Right,” Kranxx said. “And I’m really Master Snaff of Destiny’s Edge.”
“I assume you are the general’s ‘man’ in Ebonhawke,” said Dougal.
Kranxx sneered at that. “She didn’t mention me by name? That sounds like Soulkeeper coming and going. She is too clever by half, sometimes. Thinks she’s running the Order of Whispers or something.”
“The what?” asked Killeen.
“Tactician Kranxx,