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.
"Haul us up!" Clagg said.
Dougal tried, but his aching arms would not comply. He'd already put every ounce of his strength into trying to save the others, and he didn't have anything left. It was all he could do simply to keep himself from letting go. "It's no good. I can't!"
"You humans!" Clagg barked. "What good are you?"
Dougal closed his eyes again and strained with all his might. Try as he might, though, he couldn't bring the end of the rope up an inch. He bellowed in frustration with the effort, but nothing he did made any difference. He felt the end of the rope begin to wobble like mad and realized that if he didn't release it soon, he'd only wind up dead with the others.
The instant before he could finally allow himself to let go of the line, though, delicate fingers grasped his wrist. Then a sweet, desperate voice said in a ghostly whisper, "Dougal, help me up!"
Dougal almost dropped the rope in surprise. While what was left of Breaker had kept the tomb guardian busy, Killeen had climbed all the way up the rope, with Clagg's arms clamped around her neck.
Dougal moved his numbed fingers from the rope to Killeen's arm and then fell backward, letting his weight haul Killeen and Clagg up over the lip of the hole to land upon him.
Blushing just a little, Dougal and Killeen disentangled themselves from each other and stood up. As one, the three of them leaned over and peered into the pit.
The tomb guardian gave Breaker one last stomp, and the blue glow in its central arcane motivator crystal faded and died.
Clagg howled in despair. "Do you know how much of my life that represents?"
As if to answer, the composite tomb guardian turned and stretched its arms up at them. Clagg leaped back, but Dougal stood his ground, confident that they were well beyond the creature's reach.
"I hate magic," Dougal said. "I mean, sure, we knew that grabbing the Eye was going to make something happen-an asura like Blimm wouldn't just leave it there unguarded-but with magic, you can't ever know what it's going to be."
Killeen leaned up against a wall of the bone-lined corridor, trying to restore the circulation to her legs. She looked like a newborn colt struggling to its feet for the first time. "Blimm must have been very determined to protect his crypt. Guarding a tomb with a beast like that strikes me as overkill."
Clagg snorted at them both. "You idiots. The Golem's Eye isn't just a pretty rock. It is an ambient thaumaturgic construct. It contains the construct's mind. That tomb guardian didn't even exist until we showed up to disturb it." He glared at Dougal. "When you touched the ruby, you activated the Eye. The Eye in turn created the guardian."
The tomb guardian slammed its limbs into the side of the chamber directly below. Dougal watched as pieces of the construct crumbled away. It hit the wall again and again, knocking loose more pieces every time until little of it was left but a few twitching skulls that seemed to stare up at Dougal and accuse him of thievery with their empty eye sockets.
"So passes Blimm's great creation," Clagg cackled. "And now the Golem's Eye is mine!"
Dougal started to grin, but his sense of triumph faded when the bones lining the corridor began to thrum.
Dougal looked about them. "You say the ruby is that thing's mind?"
The asura nodded, still delighted in his anticipated prize. "In a sense. Blimm designed the central cereo-impulse unit so that the guardian could assemble itself out of appropriate materials in the surrounding environment. I'd think even a human could grasp that."
"So, assuming the ruby is still intact, the creature could reassemble itself anywhere?"
Clagg's face darkened. "Isn't that what I just said, bookah? It could re-form anywhere it could find enough appropriate…" The asura's voice faded to silence as the rattling of the bones surrounding the three of them grew louder. Clagg's eyes opened wide as he realized what he had just said.
"… material." He finished softly, looking at the bone-lined chamber around them.
"We should run, now," suggested Killeen.
As the bones began to peel themselves from the corridor's walls, Dougal grabbed his torch in one hand, Killeen's hand in the other, and ran. He didn't look back to see if Clagg was keeping up.
Through the chambers and passages they fled, the dry clattering of bone against bone behind them. They slowed only for a moment where the spider had ambushed Killeen, and again where the explosive trap had detonated. Only after they reached the far side of both chambers without incident did Dougal call for a halt. Clagg bent in half, desperate to regain his breath. Killeen was practically yellow from exhaustion as well.
Over their deep gasps for breath, Dougal listened for the sounds of pursuit. Nothing.
"We've outrun it," he said at last, wiping the sweat away from his forehead.
"Not possible," panted the asura. "We are still surrounded by bones. Show me the Eye."
Dougal fished out the gemstone and held it out to the asura, but did not let go of it. The fire in the jewel's heart was gone, and the stone felt dead and lifeless.
"As I thought," said the asura. "It is deactivated. Exhausted the stored malagetic field. It could recharge naturally over time, or someone with sufficient skill"-Clagg paused just long enough to indicate he meant himself-"could reactivate it. Give it to me."