by Matt Forbeck
"It's the real one," Dougal said.
"Bring it to me. Now." Clagg's voice betrayed a clear eagerness.
Dougal considered the gem for a moment. A faint glow swirled deep inside it, something that had lain dormant for untold years, hidden in this buried room.
"It's sure to be trapped," Dougal said.
"Do you see a trap?" Clagg asked.
Dougal scanned the gem from every angle. There were no wires, no gears, no hidden plates or moving panels in the coffin. It was magic. Asuran magic. He really hated asuran magic.
"No," he said finally, "but that doesn't mean it's not there."
"Bear's blood!" Gyda said. "You are the most worthless burglar I've ever met. I could have not spotted a trap myself!"
Dougal ignored the norn and spoke to Clagg. "Do you detect anything?"
The asura checked the row of glowing gems in his harness, then shook his head. "It appears safe."
Dougal snorted at that. He'd heard those exact words at such moments before. They never turned out to be true.
He gritted his teeth and reached for the gem. The glow inside it gained strength and swirled faster as if something within it meant to meet his touch. As he brought his fingers closer to its sharp-cut facets, the floor beneath his feet seemed to vibrate softly, although he wondered if that was just his nerves betraying him.
He drew his hand back.
"Get Killeen out of here," Dougal said. "This isn't going to go well."
"You spineless coward," Gyda said. "It's just a rock! Take it and be done with it."
"This requires care and precision," said Dougal sharply, "not brute force!"
"You know nothing of force! Cowardice holds your hand!" thundered Gyda. "I should come in there and show you!"
"You'd just make a mess of it," said Dougal automatically. "When I need a lumbering ox, I'll call for you!"
Dougal regretted his words the moment he said them. Sputtering in rage, the norn slung her hammer over her shoulder and stomped into the chamber, the floor shaking beneath her massive boots.
As she lumbered forward, Gyda snarled, "I came down to this filthy land of civilized cowards to make 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 of the 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 head of 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 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 least a 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 her breathing 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 wei
ght.
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 looked down. 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 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 the workmanship 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 up!"
"Right, right," Clagg said, blithering as if to remind himself of the details of this most basic plan. "Cut the rope and you haul me up. To safety."
"And Killeen too!"
"She's dead," Clagg said. "She must be dead."
"No, I am not!" said Killeen weakly. "I just can't find a way out of these straps!"
"Cut her free!" Dougal said.
"No!" Clagg said, his voice rising hysterically. "No time!"
A crash came from the other side of the lower chamber, and Gyda screamed, this time in pain. Then Dougal heard her hammer start pounding again, even faster than before.
"Cut Killeen free and I'll haul you both up!" Dougal shook his fist with the rope in it at Clagg and snarled. "Do it now or I'll toss the rope down and let you die with Gyda!"
Clagg squeaked something inaudible, then set to work with a knife.
"Thank you," Dougal heard Killeen say to the asura.
Gyda bellowed from the other side of the room. "By the Bear! How many times must I slay this damned thing?"
Dougal peered deeper into the gloomy hole. The norn stood near the pillar, stooped with exhaustion, her body heaving to catch a breath, her warrior's braid shredded, sweat and blood from a hundred small wounds pouring over her tattoos and fur. The fragmented tomb guardian continued to re-form, pulling replacement parts from the walls and floor. Gyda's eyes met Dougal's, and for the first time Dougal saw real fear in her face: the fear of someone who had realized she had picked an unwinnable fight.
Gyda raised her hammer and pointed beyond Dougal and toward the tomb's entrance. "Go," she said, and turned back to the re-forming guardian, her hammer raised.
"Ready!" Clagg tugged on the line. "Haul us up now! Please?"
Dougal backed up into the chamber leading into the crypt and set his feet against the top step. He began hauling on the rope as hard as he could, reeling it in an arm's length at a time. Individually, the asura and the sylvari weren't heavy, but together they added up to the weight of a good-sized man. Dougal let his fear of the beast below-and the knowledge that it would soon finish the wounded, exhausted norn-spur him on.
Then Dougal heard something that sank his heart. The hammering had stopped.
"Hurry!" Clagg screeched. "It's coming!"
Now Dougal heard the rough clacking of dozens of bones smacking rhythmically on the stone floor in the chamber below, coming closer with each beat. Dougal tried to brace himself when he heard Killeen scream, and the rope yanked him up the top step and back into the chamber, toward the gaping hole. He strained against it, knocking several bones over
the threshold before him. He watched them skitter into the hole as he came closer and closer to following them down.
As his feet reached the edge of the hole, Dougal held on to the rope with one hand and snagged the door frame with the other. The strain threatened to rip his arms from their sockets, but he somehow managed to hold on, and planting his feet against the bottom of the frame, gripped the rope with both hands. Staring down the length of the rope, he spied Clagg and Killeen hanging from its far end. Clagg had knotted a loop under Killeen's arms, and now he clung to her shoulders with a grip so desperate, his gray fingers had turned white.
Just below them, the blood-spattered, mostly shattered tomb guardian had snagged the sylvari's leg with a composite arm fashioned from dozens of people's limbs. Still reassembling itself, the creature swung a wild punch at Killeen and Clagg with its other arm, but the partially formed limb fell to pieces even as it swung. A wave of bone dust buffeted the two trapped adventurers.
"Help!" Clagg wailed. "Damn you, Dougal! Save us!"
The tomb guardian brought its already re-forming arm back again, stronger this time. Dougal looked around for an option, a tool, anything within reach, that could be used to distract, dissuade, or defeat the creature. Dougal closed his eyes and knew that it was over. He could do no more than hold on until his arm gave out or Blimm's beast killed the asura and sylvari and hauled him in after them.
He couldn't help them. He could only die with them. One hand went to his chest; beneath his shirt, he could feel the cold metal of his locket, a reminder of the last time he had failed this badly, when he had stumbled out of a haunted city alone. When he had left friends behind.
He knew what had to be done. His hand kept moving now, almost of its own volition, and fumbled to unbutton his shirt pocket.
A deafening crack sounded in the chamber below, echoing like thunder and accompanied by the sound of hailstones clattering on the stone floor. Dougal wrenched open his eyes to see that the half-shattered Breaker had stumped forward on what was left of its legs to smash its fractured arms into the tomb guardian's chest. Blimm's creature let go of Killeen's leg and turned to face this new threat, leaving the sylvari and asura to dangle over its head. The guardian turned to the task of reducing Breaker to gravel.