Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [92]
“But the charr patrols will be far more likely to spot us,” Ember pointed out. “How did you manage it the last time?”
“Poorly,” said Dougal. “We were more worried about the charr than the ghosts, and slipped past the patrols and into the city at midnight on a night with a full moon. It—it was a disaster.”
“But you, my friend, lived to tell the tale, to sing the saga of your friends and their deaths,” said Gullik, smiling wanly. “And their lives well spent.”
Dougal shook his head. “Don’t romanticize it. There wasn’t anything good about their deaths. We were stupid and we paid a price.”
“What happened?” Riona’s voice was soft but insistent. “We should know.”
Dougal pondered this for a moment and looked at the others. Ember nodded in agreement with Riona. Gullik was looking at him blankly, waiting. Even Kranxx had stopped chewing and sat there expectantly.
He’d put this off as long as he could. Dougal took a deep breath. “I have not spoken of this before. The ‘legend’ of my surviving Ascalon City grew up over time, and while I’ve done nothing to stop it and even have profited from it, I’ve never told anyone what happened there. So please bear with me, because this is one story that I cannot make myself the hero of.”
Gullik opened his mouth to say something, but Ember silenced him with a jabbed elbow to the rib. Dougal continued.
“You know Riona and I were in the same unit at Ebonhawke. One of our friends, Dak, had found the old map in some library in Ebonhawke. It showed the old city itself, where the towers and reception chambers were and, most importantly, the royal treasury. We all memorized that map, in case it was lost.”
“You think the Claw is in the royal treasury?” said Ember.
“I do,” said Dougal, and stopped there, not elaborating. He was thinking of what had happened next, and at last decided to skip over the part where they chose to desert and left Riona behind to take the blame. Finally he said, “Dak and I and some others thought we would become treasure hunters, and left Ebonhawke for Lion’s Arch.” He looked at Riona and she nodded: she was not going to bring up the matter here, in front of everyone.
“We collected as much information as we could find on Ascalon City and then set off from Lion’s Arch. Dak, Jervis, Marga, Vala, and myself. We were all close friends, and hired a group of locals for added support. The adventurers from Lion’s Arch thought we were just going to see what we could pick up in Ascalon City. We didn’t mention the royal treasury. We left Lion’s Arch, crossed over the Shiverpeaks, and came down into Ascalon, where we spent most of our time trying to dodge charr patrols. They were very effective, and we lost most of our associates before we even reached Ascalon City …” He let his voice trail off, the images of the past rushing up to meet him.
“What happened then?” asked Riona.
Dougal tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. He pulled out a waterskin and took a quick swig from it. The water didn’t seem to help.
“What happened, Dougal?”
He looked at Riona. If anyone deserved to hear about this, it was her. She had the right to know what had happened to their lost friends. He had to be honest with her. He forgot the others were there, and spoke solely to her.
“It was … awful. By the time we reached the city’s walls, only one of the Lion’s Arch group was left, a woman named Cautive, an elementalist. We should have turned back, but we decided that we hadn’t come that far to go home, so we pressed on into Ascalon City. That’s when it all went indescribably bad.
“We hadn’t been inside the walls for more than fifteen minutes when Cautive lost her mind. She had been a fragile thing to start with, and after seeing so many of her friends die on the way to Ascalon City, knowing that we were in a place infested with ghosts pushed her over the edge. When she saw the remains of all the bodies littering the streets, she started wailing, and no one could get her to stop. We all stood there, in a square