Breton and Bosmer

Dare you venture further?

Just here for gold	14.3%	[ 1 ]
Is this about Skyrim?	14.3%	[ 1 ]
Cool RP - the characters look interesting	0.0%	[ 0 ]
I like the story!	28.6%	[ 2 ]
What happens next?	42.9%	[ 3 ]
Total Votes:			[ 7 ]

[Purplish Space Rock]

Arwen continued to stare, ignoring Thessaly for a long while before she finally looked away, looking a little less troubled.

"Maybe it's my imagination," she said, though she didn't sound very convinced. "I could swear I feel something's presence. Maybe it's just a skeleton below us." At the mention of her personal god, she snorted, turning pink. "He's not my boyfriend!" she insisted, rolling her eyes. "I knew you didn't believe me! He was there, I swear it." She headed for the door, poking her head out before she did anything else.

"Everyone can use enchanted armor, yes," she offered, stepping out onto the rickety stairs. "Whether or not you have any strong magic, enchanted armor can only help you in your travels. It feels a little strange to wear, in my opinion, but some find it pleasant. I think we would most benefit from muffling armor. I could try the Oakflesh spell I just learned back there, in the room with the spell tome. Want to try? It improves your armor efficacy. Arrow might just bounce off this time."

[E is for Enigma]

"A spell that improves my armor? Like, patches it? Or enchants it? No, wait, you need a specific table for that, right?" Thessaly was pretty sure that's how enchanting worked. She'd seen it done once or twice. "How long does the spell last?"

Thessaly paused at the door to the lower level where they'd met the single skeleton and made sure that Arwen remembered the two traps that were there before preceding. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything more interesting than the remains of the battered skeleton, but there was an iron door leading them deeper into the barrow.

Opening doors beyond which she had no idea of the contents or layout was always the most thrilling part of these dungeon crawls for Thessaly. At once, she had no idea of the dangers or the layout of the room into which they were stepping, which could easily mean death for either of them. On the other hand, the deeper one went, and the more dangers they faced, the less likely there were to be more adventurers who'd made it this far to loot the place, and the more likely they were to find treasure.

The moment Thessaly opened the door, though, she knew there was trouble. The rasping, creaking sound of walking skeletons echoed clear into the next room--and if Thessaly wasn't much mistaken, it was coming from multiple undead.

She looked back to make sure Arwen saw her face, then placed a finger to her lips. Then she began creeping forward through the hall and into the open room beyond.

Luck was on their side. Crude standing walls stood between the two adventurers and their foes, as well as an entire floor of space. Thessaly gestured to Arwen to keep back as she snuck up to get a better look. She scanned the room carefully, then crept back out of sight and sound of the skeletons.

"Six of them," she whispered to Arwen. "All clustered around this shining spot on the floor. I think it might be oil. What's the range on your fire blast?"

[Purplish Space Rock]

"It's a spell, rather than an enchantment. I learned it out of the book back there, the one that suddenly turned old and ruined? It's called Oakflesh. It hardens leather and hide to make it more effective, but only lasts a few moments."

As Thessaly crept up, she stepped forward as well, staying just a bit behind her and watching over her shoulders. When she turned back around, Arwen backed up a step, surprised at their sudden close proximity.

"Not terribly far," she murmured, moving around her to check out the room for herself. She scanned the lay of the room and looked for other ways to disarm a small horde of walking dead, sure she was unable to cast that many fire balls in quick succession. Her gaze finally came up and she waved Thessaly over, pointing at the oil lamps above the pit. One was tilted, hanging by only one chain, the oil steadily leaking. "Well there's yer prob-lem. And solution," she said, malice in her grin. "Be quiet and don't move. I have one shot."

She lifted her bow and nocked an arrow, fully drawn. There was naught but the sound of rattling bones for a long while, almost a full minute, as she aimed and held her breath. She finally exhaled and let go; the arrow hit its target, and with a metallic clank, the link holding the oil lamp up snapped. It dropped into the pit, the glass shattering, and the oil slick suddenly went up in flames, a rush of heat filling the room. The skeletons below scrambled, trying to find an intruder or perpetrator, but they found none. They all dropped, one by one, and they went from a menacing group of undead to a large mound of old bones and burnt arrows and bows. The fire slowly died, and once it cleared, the oil slick was gone. The stone beneath it looked fresh and new, as if it had just been cleaned. Arwen turned around and grinned, satisfied.

"It could have been brighter, but I'm happy," she said, nodding. "It wasn't quite as good as an explosion, but I'll take it."

[E is for Enigma]

"Hah!" Thessa crowed as bones littered the heated ground, and let out a whoop. She didn't put away her one drawn sword, though, as she descended into the lower level to marvel at her companion's work.

"That'll do, Breton," she grinned, then picked up something and threw it at her. "Here, looks like these got away mostly unscathed."

It was another set of draugr arrows. The feathers were singed, but the arrows had been protected by the quiver.

Thessaly took a little more time gathering gems and stray coins dropped by the former dead before heading up the ramp to the other side.

"Brilliant shot, that," she was telling Arwen on the way up. "I only wish they'd had flesh on their skulls so I coulda seen the surprise on their faces--AAH!"

At the top of the ramp, two standing sarcophagi popped open, their stone covers slamming to the floor as two more undead stepped out to meet them. As soon as Thessaly had recovered from her near-stopped heart, she quickly drew her second blade and charged in, transforming her shout of fright into a warrior's roar. She ploughed right into the skeleton, swinging with the flat of her blade and knocking the top half of the walking bone right off its spine. But she didn't have time to turn around before the second undead, fleshier but underclothed, turned on her. Thessaly realized her mistake too late as it raised its hand towards her and a blue aura gathered around it.

s**t. It was a mage.

[Purplish Space Rock]

"Why thank you, Bosmer," she said, beaming. "I like when people approve of my shooting. It makes me feel like a competent marksman."

The bits of burned feathers sloughed off, and Arwen plucked the arrows from the charred quiver, tucking them away in her own. As they headed up the ramp, and the coffins popped open, she jumped and raised her bow again, pausing with Thessaly too close to either target. It wasn't quite safe enough to fire, for fear of hitting her instead of the undead. The draugr raised its hand, and in the second it took to cast its spell, she dropped her bow and cast her own.

A shimmering wall of white gas separated Thessaly and the draugr, its magic bright; it let off static, the air feeling electric, but behind the wall it only felt warm, like the light of the sun. The draugr withdrew its spell, and Arwen did the same. A ball of fire erupted from its body with a faint scent of sizzling flesh; the draugr turned its attention on Arwen, and she waved it over, grinning. The white wall returned on her side, though smaller, and she backed up, preferring distance between herself and her target.

The draugr cast its spell again, and her ward broke, dissipating into flying white flecks like a magical snowfall. Shocked, she seemed to tense up and stood very still for the duration of it, dropping to her knees when it withdrew. With her muscles continuing to twitch, Arwen sat up on her feet; one hand turned scarlet, and the other blue-white. She threw what looked like a ball of ice at it, and it shattered on impact with the draugr's chest, bursting open its chest plate. The glow in its hand disappeared, it dropped its weapon, and fell, tumbling off the platform onto the floor below.

Everything was still for a moment. Arwen slumped over a little, the opposite glows fading from each hand. She was no longer smiling, but neither did she look concerned. When she looked up, her face was ghostly white instead of petal pink as usual, and her eyes were bruised as if she hadn't slept in days. She got up slowly, still twitching, and went looking for her bow, almost ignoring Thessaly's presence.

[E is for Enigma]

Thessaly barely had time to inhale before the undead mage fired her spell. Suddenly, there was a wall of white cloud between them, and the electric shock of the spell was dispersed through it. The lights played across Thessaly's face as she gazed wide-eyed at the mist that had saved her--then at the caster.

A surge of fire flew at the draugr, drawing both its attention and Thessaly's to Arwen, who made a beckoning motion to the creature. The white mist abandoned Thessaly, forgotten for the moment, and flew over to protect Arwen from the undead mage's blast of fire.

The mist dispersed and for a moment Arwen looked unsure--but then two energies began gathering in her hands. One red, one white. When the draugr advanced, Arwen released the white energy and a blast of ice took the creature through the chest, felling it. It was only as its lifeless form clattered to the floor below that Thessa realized how useless she'd been--and what a stupid mistake she'd made, startled into a wild attack without assessing her enemy first. If Arwen hadn't been there, she'd have been in major trouble. This rankled her a bit, but she shrugged it off--it didn't half make up for all the times she'd saved the skinny mage from all the traps in this place alone.

"Nice work," she told Arwen, almost begrudgingly. "Quick thinking."

Then she noticed--Arwen wasn't flouncing and strutting as she usually did in a moment of triumph. In fact, it looked like the wind had gone clean out of her. Dipping her head to look, Thessa saw she was pale in the firelight.

"Hoy," she said. "You alright?"

[Purplish Space Rock]

The bow was somewhere- it had to be- but she couldn't find it. When asked about her state of being, Arwen looked up at Thessaly, eyes drooping, no longer wide and bright. She nodded and offered a half-hearted smile.

"I'm alright," she said. Her words were unusually quiet, and her voice was soft- it was lower than an inside voice, but stronger than a whisper. She pulled the ribbon from her hair and tied it back in a proper ponytail, pulling the braids back with the rest. With it out of the way, her pointed ears and several pink pock marks were visible on her neck, a reminder of past encounters with the supernatural. "I will be, anyway. I feel like an old woman now." The bow appeared in the darkness several feet away, its red veins shimmering ever so slightly in the dim light. With no desire to bend over and pick it up, she extended a hand and it jumped right to her feet. "Some magic hurts." She removed her gloves to rub her face, complexion returning to normal.

"I would show you, but I don't particularly like the way it feels, and I prefer living. Equilibrium will kill you if you aren't careful." As she pulled her gloves back on, the shadows around her eyes began to fade, and the life came back to them. She still looked off, still tired, and she moved as if her bones were made of glass; she looked better, regardless. "It feels like you've aged fifty years in ten seconds," she said, rubbing the back of her neck. "Makes you feel weak, but the power it gives you is incredible. It's a real rush. Better than skooma." She didn't sound very thrilled about it. "If we move slowly for the next several minutes, I would like that very much. I really do feel like I'm a hundred years on."

[E is for Enigma]

Thessaly's hand appeared in Arwen's range of vision. There was something in it--a bottle of red potion.

"Here," Thessa said. "Take this."

It was a restorative Thessaly had found on their way down through the barrow. She hadn't been planning on using it herself--she still wasn't convinced potions were the safest of things--but they usually sold for a nice handful of septims. However, she was willing to give up the profit to help her injured companion. Arwen limping around like a lost dog was making her uncomfortable.

"We can wait here a minute if you want," she continued, moving away to pluck up Arwen's bow. "Not like we're in a hurry or nothin'."

It was true. Thessaly may not have wanted to spend a whole lot more time down here in the dark, but she was in no hurry to leave. Underground spaces had never bothered her as they had some of her friends. But that was why Thessa got the good loot and they missed out.

"Rest here for a minute, okay?" she said. "I'll go scout ahead. Don't move. You might trigger a trap or something."

[Purplish Space Rock]

Arwen shied away from her hand at first, a little surprised by its sudden appearance. She took the bottle and undid the cork, sniffing it. It was very recognizable- many adventurers carried them, but she hardly ever ingested them. With good enough skill in restoration, she found herself needing them very seldom.

"Thank you," she said, tossing the cork aside. She tilted her head and drank it in one, grimacing at the taste. There were plenty of good things to say about potions and alchemy, but good words fell far short of "delicious."

While Thessaly moved ahead, she managed to stay still for the time it took for the potion to make its move, but she quickly grew bored. She kept the bottle in her hands as she followed in Thessaly's wake, creeping up behind her. They came up on the hall before a burial tunnel, and Arwen stopped just behind her travel buddy.

"Anything good in there?" she said, suddenly breaking the silence.

[E is for Enigma]

Thessaly scouted around the upper floor they'd emerged onto before trying the only door that would take them onwards. Unfortunately, there weren't any offering urns or other possible venues of riches to be had--maybe farther on.

She spotted the trip wire just on the other side of the door, and crouched to examine it. The string was taught and unworn. It would undoubtedly trigger something--but what?

Looking down the hall and up the stairs following, Thessaly spotted movement. More undead?

"Anything good in there?"

Thessaly let out a yelp, falling right over in surprise. The responding grunt from the other side of the hall confirmed her earlier suspicion of a draugr ahead--but then there was the telltale click of a trap being triggered. Her foot had kicked out as she'd fallen, breaking the trip wire.

Everything seemed to fall into place. The draugr, searching for the source of the noise, came at them down the hall, but it hadn't even reached the top of the stairs before the trap released and three swinging blades fell from the ceiling, chopping into the husk from either side and felling it in seconds.

Thessaly's following shocked silence was broken only by the continued rusty swinging of the bladed pendulums. She turned and looked at Arwen, perplexed look on her face, then back at the scene.

"Huh."

[Purplish Space Rock]

Watching the scene unfold, eyebrows raised, Arwen's expression didn't change, mostly a look of mild curiosity. The blades continued to swing, and she watched them with her head turning to follow them in each movement.

"'Huh' what?" she said, looking down at Thessaly. "Are you surprised something I did ended up in a positive outcome?" She smiled, looking much better than just a few moments before. Her skin was back to pink, her eyes big as ever, and she stood up straight. She was still holding the bottle, turning it over in her fingers. "I told you I have incredible luck. Maybe it's rubbing off on you. You came a little close to those blades, there."

[E is for Enigma]

Thessaly quirked her mouth at Arwen. Luck was a terrible thing to rely on. Couldn't carry a blade, cast a spell, or holler if you were being snuck up on. Thessa would take a good companion over luck any day. Even a half-mad one like Arwen.

"Was my boot what tripped it," she grumbled, getting up and going to take a look at their latest obstacle.

The pendulums showed no sign of slowing or withdrawing back into the walls. Must have been some kind of mechanism to keep them going. Thessa hugged the wall to get a better look at what was keeping them going, but couldn't get any closer without shaving the skin from her nose.

"I don't suppose you have any spells could help us out here, huh?"

[Purplish Space Rock]

"Nothing powerful enough to stop something of that momentum and weight." Arwen shrugged, eyes still on the swinging blades. "I suppose we have two options. The first is, you have the ability to go quite quickly with your...thing. You could shout yourself across the room, but there's no guarantee there is anything on the other side to stop them swinging. The second, we can both hop into the spaces between them, and hope we don't slip, fall, or step in the wrong spot and lose a nose, limb, or worse, our lives." Her grin broadened and she shifted on her feet, looking excited. "I vote for option number two. Or a combination of the two, maybe you can shout yourself across the room and I get to hop between the blades. That sounds like a great deal of fun."

Arwen reached out a hand to feel the air moved by the pendulums, looking like she couldn't wait to do fulfill option number two. She pulled her hand back and put both on her hips with a nod, looking around at Thessaly.

"Let's do this, I'm ready to jump."

[E is for Enigma]

Thessaly started--she hadn't thought to use one of her shouts to get herself across. It certainly made a lot of sense--but it was so hard to control where she ended up, as evidenced by her near-death experience on the mountain. What if she ended up going a little too far to one side and impaling herself on one of the blades with more force than even the swing could manage?

As reckless as it sounded, the latter of Arwen's suggestions was appealing more to her. She wondered what that could mean for their chances of survival.

"Alright," she said, fair confident in her agility. "Let's jump."

[Purplish Space Rock]

"YES!" Triumph in her voice, Arwen scooted past Thessaly and readied herself for the first skip, watching the blades intently. "One- two- three," she counted, hopping past the first pendulum just as it swung up into its sheath on the right. It was then clear how close the blades were to each other; if they were much closer, and their efforts were less precise, they would be in big trouble. She counted again, and on three, stepped past the next one, glancing around at Thessaly.

"This is fun!" she said, bouncing on her toes a little. She turned her attention back to the task at hand- trying to make it out of a deadly trap without losing life or limb. The counting came again, and on three she jumped past the last one, the blade missing her by a hair. Arwen quickly turned around, grinning across the trap at Thessaly. "I think we should go back and do this again. Or I could do that on my own, this is a nice little game!"

She backed up, further into the burial chamber, and at first examined the nearest dead body, shriveled and laying peacefully. On the wall, she noticed a chain with a large iron loop at the end, feeding into the ceiling.

"What's this do?" she said to herself, reaching out to yank on it. It made a loud cranking noise as the mechanism inside the wall turned, and as the pendulums swayed into the wall, they stopped and did not come back down. Arwen paused, looking surprised. "Oooh! Look at that, I pulled on something and it worked in our favor!" She stood on her toes and waved Thessaly over, beaming. "I'm getting better at this, see?"

As her back was to the chamber, something behind her moved. Three draugr slipped from their resting places and rose, nearly silent. One of them growled and Arwen finally noticed, spinning about on her toes. She shrieked like a little girl and drew the dagger from her hip, looking for a way to back up. Any way she turned held an undead, and quarters were too close to draw and fire an arrow.

"Help me, please!" she wailed. One swung at her and she cried out again as she ducked, hands over her head. With no real plan in mind, she shoved the nearest draugr against the wall, smashed the empty potion bottle in its face, and buried her dagger in its neck, looking over her shoulder at the others. One was on its way down the tunnel after Thessaly, its gait quick and purposeful.