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.

“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.”

Dougal closed his fist. “Not yet.”

Clagg snarled, “I hired you to retrieve the Eye.”

Dougal said, “You hired us to accompany you into these crypts to recover the gem. We are still in the crypts. Once we are safely out and, may I add, paid, I will give you the gem.” With that, Dougal made a show of placing the gem in his breast pocket once more.

Only, this time he palmed the gem and kept it in his hand.

Clagg opened his mouth to abuse Dougal further, but looked at the human’s smiling face, said “Bah,” and stomped away in the general direction of the Skull Gate and daylight.

Killeen said, “You think he is going to cheat you.” It was a statement, not a question.

Dougal nodded. “Definitely. Well, likely. Best to be sure.” He looked at the sylvari, and she returned his gaze with a quizzical look. He coughed and followed the asura.

The Skull Gate, a main entrance to the crypts beneath Divinity’s Reach, was named for the long tunnel lined with the lacquered skulls of the deceased. Nameless souls whose bodies had washed up when Orr sank, and when that lost kingdom rose from the depths once more at a dragon’s command. Dougal thought of the power of the Golem’s Eye unleashed here and shuddered.

Up ahead, around a corner, was daylight. They had been underground for most of the day, but even in the deep shadows of the elevated main thoroughfares of the city, the natural light was welcome.

Clagg disappeared around the corner, then returned at once in a sudden rush—so sudden that he barreled into Dougal, knocking the human over.

Dougal felt small fingers snatch at his shirt. Instead of the gem, however, the asura came up with a closed gold locket hanging from a chain around Dougal’s neck.

Dougal reached up with his empty hand and pulled the locket loose from the confused asura. “I’ll take that, thank you,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“City guards,” said Clagg, recovering. “Seraph. We have to wait.”

“Show me,” said Dougal.

They crept forward. Going into the crypts was not illegal, but needed proper paperwork and passes. Paperwork and passes they, of course, lacked. Meeting the Seraph would be a bad thing at this point.

Clagg stopped at the corner and leaned out. Dougal leaned out over him, placing the hand holding the gem against one of the skulls.

The asura was not lying about the guards. Decked in heavy white armor trimmed in gold, the Seraph were the city guard of Divinity’s Reach and the army of Kryta. They should not be gathered in such large numbers in the plaza outside the Skull Gate, thought Dougal. They did not appear to be on alert, and were not apparently waiting for the krewe, but a battered human, asura, and sylvari coated with bone dust and stumbling into the plaza would no doubt be brought in for questioning. Questioning that would turn rather pointed when they found the Golem’s Eye.

Dougal slipped the Eye deep into the eye socket of the nearest lacquered skull. It was an unsuitable hiding place, but it was the best he could do for the moment.

“So, do you have a plan, human?” said Clagg.

“Let me see,” said Killeen. “Is there a problem?” The sylvari climbed up on Dougal’s back to see past him, putting her slim, booted foot on the back of his belt to boost herself up.

Despite himself, Dougal shook her off and wheeled on her. “What are you doing?” he said sharply. “Aren’t things bad enough?”

The sylvari shrank back from the reproach, and Dougal swallowed any further words. He turned back to the asura, towering over him.

“Here’s the plan: we wait.”

Clagg, visibly frustrated and tired, shook his head. “What if they are checking the crypts?”

“Fine, then one of us goes out and draws their attention. Then we regroup later for the split.”

“Dougal …” said Killeen.

“By ‘one of us,’ you mean me or the sylvari, don’t you?” spat Clagg.

“If you want, I will go first,” said Dougal, looking down on the asura, his own anger rising. They had been through too much to end it with a stupid argument.

“Dougal …” repeated Killeen.

“So you can fast-talk your way past your human friends and leave us here to be caught?” snarled Clagg.

“We can’t go out together!” said Dougal hotly. “They will get all of us!”

“Dougal Keane!” said Killeen firmly.

“What?” snapped Dougal, turning toward her again. This time she didn’t shrink back.

“We have company,” said Killeen.

Dougal turned back and looked down the drawn blade of a Seraph lieutenant. Two other Seraph stood behind her, their blades drawn as well.

“Dougal Keane—I believe she called you that,” said the lieutenant. “You and your friends are under arrest, Dougal Keane. Come along now.”