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

other. These were what had made his vision down here so hazy. They must have been spun over decades by spiders that lived beneath the crypt’s floor, the ancestors of the trapdoor spider that poisoned Killeen.
    Dougal understood then what had happened. Blimm had designed the floor of his crypt to give way under any significant force—like the pounding feet of someone racing away from a gigantic tomb guardian—but the staggering quantity of spiderwebs woven under the floor had lent the fragile floor strength. That had helped it hold far greater weights than Blimm must have intended—right up until Gyda weakened it and Breaker provided the last straw.
    The analytical part of Dougal’s mind admired the nature of the trap. Originally, Blimm had probably meant for the victims of his trap to fall into the lower chamber, where the tomb guardian could have an easy time with them. Dougal suspected that a pillar supported the sarcophagus at the center of the room, keeping it from sharing the victims’ fate, but it was impossible to tell in the darkness.
    The rest of Dougal’s mind concentrated on survival, and carefully he began to pull himself up the rope to the remnants of the chamber above.
    Something overhead thundered and the room shook, the false floor above him twisting against the mortar of the abandoned spiderwebs.
    Dougal had time to curse, but only just. Gyda and the tomb guardian broke through the false floor nearer the bier. More light spilled into the lower room, revealing the central pillar, safe and stable and completely out of reach. Gyda roared in triumph as she fell into the lower chamber, her last blow with her hammer having smashed the tomb guardian straight through the floor beneath them both. She landed hard but on top of the tomb guardian, which once more scattered into pieces before starting to re-form.
    “This,” Gyda bellowed as she staggered to her feet, ready to do battle again, “is a battle worthy of a norn!” She sounded winded but no less enthusiastic.
    Dougal didn’t stop to watch what happened next. Instead, he clambered up the rope as fast as he could. He reached the floor of the upper chamber in an instant and hauled himself onto it. From there he scrambled back toward the room’s entrance, hoping that staying on all fours would distribute his weight enough that he would not break through the floor once more.
    Skirting the hole Breaker had created, Dougal reached the threshold of the doorway, which seemed stable. Only then did he loosen the rope, which had bitten painfully into his wrist.
    Dougal’s brain, the analytical part that admired theworkmanship of a trap that had almost killed him, told him it was time to leave. He already had what they had come for, and he was safe. He could just find another asura willing to buy the Golem’s Eye and keep all the profit himself. Sticking around here any longer only meant risking death.
    The norn was a bully anyway, and the asura was insulting, and the sylvari …
    The sylvari. Dougal thought about it for only a second, the sound of Gyda’s hammer blows getting fainter and more infrequent. He cursed and muttered about never adventuring with people you would hate to see die.
    Peering down over the edge of the hole, Dougal shouted, “I’m up here at the entrance! Let’s go!”
    Suddenly the rope jerked out of Dougal’s hand as Breaker fell over on his side again. Dougal managed to grab the line again before it got away from him, but rather than allow himself to be dragged back into the lower chamber, he let the line play out through his grasp.
    “Hold it, Clagg!” Dougal shouted, hoping the asura was somehow still alive at the other end of the rope. “I can pull you up. I’ve got the rope!”
    “They’re shattered!” Clagg sobbed. “My Breaker’s beautiful legs. I carved them myself. They’re destroyed!”
    “Forget about the golem!” Dougal said. “Cut your end of the rope free, and I’ll haul you and Killeen