the archer/bleak falls barrows

[you must gather your party before venturing forth! part 1]

Arval the Swift lived up to his name. The instant his limbs were cut loose from the frost spider's web, he was gone: too fast for Faendal, too fast for Camilla, and far too fast for shambling draugr just stirring from their sleep.

Too fast, even, for his own quick eyes.

Perhaps he saw the plate before he stepped on it. Perhaps he never even saw it; never saw the danger, never felt it until he rounded the corner at full tilt, until he heard that fatal click and felt the steel.

There was only one certain truth: Arval the Swift wasn't quite so swift anymore.

Faendal stood with his bow drawn, eyes straining in dim mage-light as he peered down the corridor. Camilla riffled through the dead Mer's pockets, steady and thorough through her grimace – his death hadn't been particularly clean, after all.

The corridor was silent but for the sounds of their breaths, the soft rustle of cloth against Camilla's deft fingers; there was no tell-tale whisper of ancient steel unsheathing, no brittle click-clack of mail-clad bones bearing down.

Draugr. The barrows was crawling with draugr – because someone had, once upon a time, put them there. It was utterly baffling: Nords did not eat their dead like sensible people. Instead, they dug elaborate underground tombs that were as labyrinthine as they were large, armed their corpses, then buried said corpses in aforementioned underground tombs, after which the dead apparently rose again to go ahead and murder not-dead people.

'

As he'd thought: baffling. Bosmeri didn't have stories about their ancestors rising to kill them because it was never really an issue – that's what funeral feasts were for. Well, there was the comfort of knowing one would carry a piece of their loved one with them forevermore, but aside from that, well. They were dead. And then they were food. Old uncle Tamlin would never haunt the family as anything other than a brief case of indelicate indigestion.

Nords. Always so bloody backwards.

"Found it." Camilla's voice was as quiet as he'd ever heard it, but even then, the cavern bounced the whisper against the walls. They both tensed. Nothing.

"Let's go back." The archer had already started to shuffle back as he spoke; belatedly, he realized she was shaking her head. "Camilla." He didn't dare raise his voice. "You have the claw. We need to go back. While we're still breathing." She inched towards him, slowly, though the sound of her steps seemed to reverberate against his ears. He tried not to wince. Anything neither deaf nor dumb (in the simple sense) would hear her coming from yards away.

"You said the jarl needed something. Some stone. We should go get it now. Who knows how long they'll stay dead?"

He shook his head. "Not the jarl. The wizard. And I never said I'd get it for him." Faendal was grateful he couldn't see her expression in the near-darkness. It didn't sit well with him, looking like some – some – "Pointy-eared tree-banging milk-drinker" - in front of Camilla; it made him a little sick, actually, to imagine her face turned from him in disappointment.

But she'd be alive to be disappointed. They would both be.

He could live with that.

"We should go back," he repeated. It was difficult to sound firm and definite when one had to whisper. "It's suicide to go on."

"We made it this far." He did not need to see her face to know what expression had settled there; even in the near-darkness of the barrow he could see the silhouette of her jutting elbows, hands planted

on generous hips.

"Besides Faendal, think of the treasure! The draugr are obviously guarding something. There's something down there, Faendal, something big. It'll be the adventure of a life-time!"

Oh no. Faendal bit back a groan. It was absolutely true that the youngest Valerius had a penchant for daydreams. Her bookshelf was crammed with swashbuckling fantasies, and she always harried the rare mercenary that came through Riverwood for stories of dastardly deeds and deringdo alike. The thought of treasure never failed to bring a sparkle to her eyes; dashing heroes and madcap rescues bloomed roses on her cheeks.

Camilla smelled adventure, and Faendal was doomed.

"No." His whisper sounded oddly flat, even to his own pointed ears. "We can't. l won't let you."

He knew his mistake the moment it left his mouth; earlier, even, half a heartbeat before the words rolled off his tongue, too late to stop it but knowing too well to havoc they'd bring.

As the Nords liked to say: Well, fuck.

"Let me?" Her voice echoed off the walls. Faendal winced, casting a quick, furtive glance down the gaping maws of the light-less tunnels. ''Let me?" It really should not have been possible to pack in so much rage into two short words. The sound of it was loud – too loud.

"Camilla!" He gestured towards the tunnel with his chin. He couldn't see her eyes narrow, her mouth curl into a disgusted sneer – but he could feel it in the air, could feel it in the way her breath gusted, the chill in the empty space between them.

''Let me." Her voice had become a flat, dangerous sort of quiet, like the still surface of a late with a vicious undertow lurking beneath.

"That's not what I – l mean, I did mean it, but not the way you think -"

"How're you going to stop me?" Faendal tried not to gnash his teeth in frustration. He briefly debated the merits of hog-tying the girl and simply slinging her over his shoulder, but it occurred to him doing so would likely shorten his lifespan dramatically, thereby defeating the purpose of escaping the Nordic deathtrap full of too-lively rotting corpses in the first place.

Well, there was always option number three: let her thick-headed highness rot.

Faendal considered. It was rather tempting, but…

Nah.

Which left him exactly where he'd started: persuasion.

Bloody damn. The things he did for a pretty face...

"Camilla," he hissed,"This is insane. We're out-numbered by an enemy we don't understand while being fathoms underground, and we're running out of water. We need to go back - while we're still breathing."

She was already shaking her head. "You leave if you're so scared, you - you - milk-drinker. I'm going to get that stone for the jarl." He rolled his eyes. It didn't sting quite as much as he'd expected - not when she sputtered it out like that.

"You're an Imperial, Camilla. And you drink milk too. It's good for you." There was a pause.

"Well, I thought it had a better ring to it than 'lily-livered coward'. But if you insist…" Faendal sighed. Loudly.

Too loudly, apparently; there was the sound of shuffling steps, the noise of an ancient sword being dragged across the ground, and twin blue fires, baleful and far, far too alert for comfort, came from up the corridor.

Wait, wait, isn't that the way we…?

"Not again." Faendal readied his bow. Camilla crouched low, fist glowing blue as the air around her crackled.

Another draugr rounded the bend. "Oh ho," said Camilla, "you've brought friends."

"- Camilla, I don't think we should -"

And yet another draugr. There was a moment of silence. "Yeah, well you should have brought more friends!"

"Aav Dilon!"

"Dir volaan!"

"Kren sosaal!"

"Uh, Camilla, I think they definitely did!" Six of them. Six! And they'd been spotted. There was no way - absolutely no way - that they could handle six of them, six pairs of blue burning eyes fixed on them in a murderous glare, their eerie light glinting off their well-hewn, sturdy, and horrifically sharp weapons.

There was only one thing left to do. Faendal unshouldered his bow, gripped Camilla's wrist in a death grip, and bravely turned tail and ran.

the soldier/bleak falls barrows

They were dead, every last one of them. Hadvar turned over yet another bandit corpse, this one with an arrow between the eyes. Excellent marksmanship, he noted. Unusual arrows. No arrowhead, the whole thing's made of...what is that…? The legionnaire frowned. There was something familiar about these strange arrows, something he was forgetting. He'd never seen anything quite like it in the Legion, that was for certain; standard issue iron only within the ranks, unless one happened to be a particularly favoured officer.

There was no way Camilla did all of this. The girl couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with a vase, nevermind an arrow.

Sven minced over, stepping carefully around the puddles of blood and guts and the other assorted grim effluvia left behind by the dead. Hadvar refrained from rolling his eyes.

Just barely, though.

The bard was outfitted in Lucan's spare set of armour - old leathers from somewhere around the third era, if Hadvar had his guess - and he wore it badly, the shoulders a bit too tight and the bracers a bit too loose over his wrists. Hadvar had tried to get the man to adjust the damn bracers, but he'd whined about a bard's wrists and fingers being his life blood or some other such rot, and Hadvar had given up in disgust.

"Oh fearless leader!" Apparently Delphine's patrons found Sven's voice rather charming; Hadvar begged to differ. "They've gone in." Hadvar kept his expression neutral.
"They?" Sven sighed, sounding all very put upon.

"Yes, oh great one. They. Faendal and Camilla." Hadvar startled, though he hid it well as he rose from his crouch.

"Faendal and Camilla?" Sven sighed again.

"Yes, Hadvar. Faendal and Camilla." The blond man trailed his fingers over the fletched ends of the strange arrow; it quivered in place at his touch, a macabre little vibration between sightless eyes. "These arrows are bone. Only one tree-banging knife-ear in Riverwood, and that's Faendal." He swung his glittering green eyes to the entrance with a surprising intensity. "Must've met her on the road. Why he didn't just sling her over his shoulder and bring her back is - well, actually, no. It's obvious: he's tree-fucking milk-drinker, that's why."

Bone. Of course. He'd known it of course - he'd heard of bosmeri archery, their penchant for carving bows and arrows whole out of bones and bits of corpses. He'd never been clear on why of course - something about a sacred wood somewhere, or the like - but he hadn't connected that thought to Faendal.

And he hadn't expected Sven to hate him so. They'd been neighbors for years.

Eir - Sif, he corrected himself - seemed to glide from the shadows between the towering stone columns. She came to a stop at the very bottom step, not deigning to step into the slaughter zone. Sif had forgone armour of any kind, refusing even Hadvar's old training leathers from when he'd been a gangly little teen. Lucan hadn't had any apprentice robes either; Camilla had taken the only one. Hadvar eyed her, trying for nonchalance; Sven's amused side-ways look spoke his failure loud and clear. Hadvar ignored the bard's knowing smirk, wiping his hands over his leathers as he stepped around the dead.

"Right. Well, if Camilla's not out here -" he nodded grimly to the grotesque spectacle of bodies, "- then she's probably somewhere in there." He hoped. It was entirely possible she'd been eaten by wolves; Skyrim's predators liked to drag their kills off the road before eating them.

They picked their way towards the entrance of the barrows. Sif paused at the crude altar in the antechamber, her eyes betraying nothing as she gazed at the gutted body on display; Hadvar couldn't imagine how her guts weren't churning at the mere sight of the buzzing flies. It was revolting.

Then again, maybe they were churning; it was impossible to tell, with more than half her face covered by that make-shift scarf. Guilt surged in his gullet and he looked away, towards safer targets.

They started to make their way deeper into the barrow. Sif paused at the top, looking down at the sudden drop that would bring them into the barrow proper. Hadvar reflexively reached out to grip her elbows and ease her down, but she brushed past his reaching hands, crouching and hopping lightly to the ground instead. Sven's smug voice was low, pitched for Hadvar's ears alone:

"Had a spat then?"

"No." Yes. Sven moved to pass him, green eyes alight with sardonic delight. Hadvar's frown deepened in irritation. "We're not...whatever you think we are." One blond eyebrow rose in perfect incredulity.

"No? And here I was thinking you were just friends. Something sordid, then?" Son of a -!

"That is not what I was -" the legionnaire cut himself off, aggravated by his own reaction. "That isn't important. It has nothing to do with anything - and keep your bloody eyes and ears out. There could be anything down here."

"Yes sir, fearless leader sir." Sven had the gall give him a jaunty little salute as he finally moved past; Hadvar took a moment to ground himself then lowered himself down as well.

The three of them stood at the rough hewn entrance - padded dirt and uncut stones, at the precipice of the temple's civilized facade. The air that blew from the entrance smelled fetid - just like a tomb.

"All right," Hadvar said, "here's the plan. I'll take point. Sif, you're behind me. Sven, keep your bow out and cover me. We're going to go in low to the ground and we're going to be quiet. Clear?" Sif nodded. Sven gave him an insolent smile that he took for agreement.

Taking a final, deep breath, Hadvar plunged into the dark unknown.

A/N: The slur "tree-banging" was taken from Heroes of Might and Magic V (Agrael, you were awesome until you took off your damn disguise) and the slur "knife-ear" was taken from the Dragon Age franchise (because I am uncreative).