Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon Read Online Free PDF

should have been, it had a serpentine bundle of femurs and tibias encrusted with random shards of bone and bound together with magic. Its skull was formed from at leasta dozen broken heads smashed into pieces and plaited back together to form a human shape. It towered over the norn.
    Gyda raged with determination and delight as she brought the battle to the newly formed bone beast. “At last!” she said. “A fight worthy of me! I will show you how a norn handles this!”
    Gyda’s hammer smashed the bones to bits over and over again, churning them from fragments to pieces to dust. It seemed as if the norn might gain the upper hand over Blimm’s construct, and for a moment hope rose in Dougal’s heart. Still keeping beneath the buzzing bits of bone, he wrapped the rope tight around his wrist to keep it secure.
    “Tomb guardian!” he heard Clagg say, excited now. “It’s forming a massive tomb guardian from the bones! A self-replicating, ambient thaumaturgic construct! I never realized that Blimm had solved that problem!”
    As fast as the norn shattered the bones, though, they came right back together again. The flying shards had sliced through her skin, and she bled freely from at least a dozen small cuts. Her eyes went wild for a moment, and for the slightest instant, Dougal swore she looked afraid. Then she pressed on with her relentless attack, determined to bring the creature down. Her efforts seemed as effective as attacking a sand dune.
    “Yes! Keep fighting!” Gyda shouted at the creature, her bloodied face split into a wide grin, even as herbreathing grew more labored and the swings of her hammer became less vicious. “Keep growing! Bear’s jaws, give me a fight to sing legends about!”
    Clagg was giddy. “If we defeat the guardian, we can raid Blimm’s bones as well. There may be greater wonders within the sarcophagus. Breaker! Help the norn destroy it!”
    The stonework golem lumbered into the room, the asura still in its front harness, a struggling Killeen lashed to its back. With a sickening feeling, Dougal realized what was about to happen. He shouted at Clagg to stop.
    It was too late. Breaker stepped out onto the wobbling floor, which immediately crumbled beneath its weight.
    Clagg screamed as he, Killeen, and his golem tumbled through the floor and into the blackness below.

In his shock, Dougal forgot about the rope wrapped around his wrist until it went taut and nearly yanked his shoulder from its socket. The weight of the golem on the other end of the rope dragged Dougal along the undulating floor, right toward the Breaker-sized hole. As Dougal sped across the granite tiles, he swung his feet forward and tried to set his heels against any sort of edge he could find.
    Dougal heard a massive, earthshaking crash from somewhere below, just as the heels of his boots caught on the edge of one of the wedge-shaped tiles. The impact caused the tile beneath Dougal to give way, and a brand-new abyss yawned under him. He tottered for a moment on its edge and then toppled backward into the darkness below.
    Dougal fell only a half-dozen feet before the rope snapped taut. Pain radiated from his extended arm. He swung wildly, suspended from the edge of the hole above him. The rope stretched straight up to the edge, across a few bony tiles that had yet to give way, and then back down through the first hole to where Breaker anchored it on the floor below.
    Spinning about like a pendulum, Dougal lookeddown. Through a thick haze he spotted the blue glow of Breaker’s arcanic motivator gems moving around as it struggled to climb back to its feet. He could see the asura beat his fists against the rim of his harness.
    “I should never have opted for strength over speed!” Clagg shouted. “Up, Breaker! Now!”
    As the rope’s crazy swinging slowed, Dougal began climbing for the floor above and realized he was covered in thick, ancient webs, thankfully abandoned. They filled the lower chamber from one end to the