Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon Read Online Free PDF Page A

a name for myself, and despite working in the shadow of my legendary cousin Gullik, I have done a damned fine job of it. This is only the start of my saga, tales of which will be sung around norn campfires for centuries to come! And you, human, will be no more than an aside in it!”
    Dougal dropped the rope and put the coffin between himself and the now-furious Gyda. She lunged at him. Dougal ducked around the bier, keeping the mound of bones between them. From the doorway, he could hear Clagg laughing at his predicament.
    Calming the bullying norn was not an option, Dougal realized. He would have to make the best of his situation.
    The norn, her eyes burning with fury, lunged at him again, but he danced around the end of the sarcophagus. He did this to her twice more, eluding Gyda’s grip. On her final lunge, she launched herself at him over the top of the stone effigy, hoping to snare him between her massive hands, but she missed and wound up sprawled across the lid of the sarcophagus instead.
    That’s when Dougal snatched up the free end ofthe rope he’d dropped, reached out, and plucked the Golem’s Eye from its place at the head of Blimm’s stone form.
    Gyda’s bright blue eyes flew so wide that Dougal could see the whites all the way around them. Dougal grinned at her as he took three quick steps back. If something bad was going to happen, he was going to face it alongside a crazed norn. The gem glowed in Dougal’s fist like caged fire.
    The first warning of “something bad” was when the floor buckled and warped like the deck of a ship that had just run aground. Dougal was knocked from his feet. Gyda clutched the top of the sarcophagus with all four of her mighty limbs. Dougal looked about, and the floor appeared to ripple around him.
    Clagg yowled, “Don’t drop it, you fumble-fingered bookah! Toss it to me!”
    Scrambling back from the bier, Dougal hefted the gem in his fist. If he threw it to the asura, he was sure that Clagg would cut the rope and leave them both to their fates. Instead, Dougal dramatically dropped the gem into a shirt pocket and buttoned it shut. Then he grabbed the rope with both hands and started to pull himself back across the undulating floor.
    Before Dougal could start for the door, the walls shuddered as much as the floor. Dougal glanced all around the room and saw that the bier was coming apart.
    The bones peeled away from the sarcophagus’s stand one by one, hovered in midair for a moment, then came together in a cluster collecting at the headof the coffin like a swarm of skeletal bees. Within moments the sarcophagus slipped to the floor, crushing the remaining bits of the bier beneath it. Still clutching Blimm’s gilded form atop the coffin’s lid, Gyda roared in a mixture of terror and enthusiasm as the flying bones thrummed about her.
    Dougal struggled to his feet and made for the exit in a running crouch, working his way along the rope that still hung from Breaker’s waist. He saw Killeen prop her head up over the golem’s shoulder and goggle at him with her bright green eyes, her arms flailing as she tried to untie herself from the back of the golem.
    Now the bones had begun to tear themselves from the walls as well. They raced from all angles toward the thing forming at the head of the sarcophagus.
    Dougal shouldered his way through the tornado of skeletal hail toward the door. After a few more steps, he lost his footing on a spinning skull and hit the floor hard, knocking the wind from him. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he realized he’d fallen below the worst part of the sideways rain of bones. Glancing back at the sarcophagus, he saw Gyda standing there before the coalescing creature, roaring and swinging her massive hammer at it with double-handed force.
    The creature was roughly human in shape, but far more than that: It stood three times the height of a man, and each of its body parts formed from fragments and clusters of similar bones. Where its legs