Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [87]
Dougal stopped and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout at the sylvari. “Killeen! Forget it! He’s gone!”
“No!” she said, still concentrating on her spell, her face creased in concentration. “He can’t die. I won’t let that happen!”
Glowing blackness stretched from Killeen’s hands to encircle the minion, turning the shadows of its flesh to a brilliant white and its glittering hide to night. The creature froze for a moment, then threw its arms over its head as if letting loose a silent scream.
Hope soared in Dougal’s heart, but it came crashing down an instant later when the blackness around the creature cracked, and the minion slammed its arms back down onto the twisted landscape, unfazed by the incantation.
Dougal glanced back to see Riona, Ember, and Kranxx in the distance. They had stopped running, probably locked in their own argument about returning. He turned to see the minion bearing down on Killeen, slowed only slightly by the fact that Gullik had removed one of its legs below the knee. The sylvari scrambled backward, but even on its knees the minion was gaining on her.
Dougal cursed. It was one thing to let Gullik take a stand against the minion by himself: he was a norn—and, more importantly, a norn who was a veteran of many battles and who hoped for a legendary death. Killeen, for all her strangeness, was guilty of nothing other than helping a friend.
“On my way!” he shouted, and charged forward to help the sylvari.
Dougal drew his black sword and wondered if it would have any effect on the creature at all, or if attacking it would be like slashing a stone wall. He dragged the blade against a glittering bush, and it fell apart in a satisfying shower of diamonds. The minion halted its progress toward Killen and focused its eyes on him instead. For a moment Dougal looked deep into the eyes of the beast, and could feel nothing but hatred in their depths. Then as quickly as it gazed into Dougal’s heart, it dismissed him and turned back to the necromancer.
Before Dougal could stop it, the diamond-hided minion drove an earthshaking punch down at the sylvari. Killeen dodged to one side to avoid the blow, but even so, the impact of the near-miss was enough to stagger her.
Dougal was upon them now, just as the minion was about to level another blow at Killeen. He lunged at it with his sword. To his surprise, the blade went into the creature as easily as if he’d rammed it into a sack of grain. Indeed, shining sand poured from the wound, glittering in the Dragonbrand’s unearthly light.
The minion shivered in protest at the blow and its attack went wide, smashing the ground far from Killeen. But the sudden movement wrenched the sword from Dougal’s grip, leaving him unarmed.
The minion wheeled and punched down at Dougal this time. Dougal dodged under the strike, diving past the creature’s one good leg. As he did, he spotted Gullik hauling himself up out of the crater of glassy dust formed when the minion had landed on him. Blood flowed over every inch of the norn’s exposed skin, and he looked as if he’d been run through a mill. Despite that, he grabbed his axe and let out a mighty cry—and then collapsed, disappearing once more into the crater.
Killeen started another spell while the minion reeled back to launch another blow in Dougal’s direction. “It’s shrugging off your spells!” Dougal said. “Get out of here!”
“I might not be able to harm it directly,” the sylvari said, her jaw set at a determined angle, “but there are other ways!”
Dougal dove away from the minion’s attack again and slipped on the crystalline glass. His legs flew out from under him and he fell flat on his back. He was close enough to the creature now to see right into its glittering eyes, which had taken on a redder hue.
The minion slammed down another fist at Dougal, but he rolled out of the way and scrambled to his hands and knees. The crystals splashed up from the blow’s impact lanced his sides and legs. A second punch rained down at