A/N: In which Onmund and Rannve have their first real battle, and their first casualty
Chapter Twenty Five | Bound Bow
The downward trek of the spiraling stone path took them ever deeper into the bowels of the earth, which meant several things. The first was that the air became oppressing close, as if it meant to suffocate them before they ever reached their destination – some wayward trick of the fates, perhaps, as if they meant to spite them just for their blind audacity. The second, though, was what really mattered, for it meant a much faster death should they fall prey to it. It seemed that they had finally stumbled upon the Falmer's stronghold, for before they had descended very far, they met their first one.
Rannve had counted them very lucky to not have seen any prior to this moment. They usually had an awful tendency to roam the upper halls of these ruins, sending their scouts further up to ensure that all was secure. That this was to be their first encounter was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because they had successfully evaded them for so long; a curse, because their luck seemed to have inevitably failed them now, and put them in the path of quite a few of them at once.
This seemed to be their main encampment. The closer they got to the bottom of the enormous hall, the easier it was to see the ground, and Rannve did not much like the sight that greeted her. She counted at least half a dozen lingering there, and perhaps several more in the decrepit huts that they made out of the hides of their dead chaurus. On top of that, she heard the telltale sound of spiders. It was a sound that made shivers run through her. She'd always hated spiders.
Her and Onmund paused about a hundred feet above them, studying the layout of the group over the edge of the stone path. She knew better than to rush into a nest of Falmer without a proper plan. These were not dwarven automatons with pre-calculated attack patterns hardwired into their systems. They were living, breathing, thinking creatures who happened to be very adept when it came to fighting, for they were an instinctual race who were fierce and deadly in battle.
As they lingered there, Rannve pulled her bow out and strung it, chewing on her bottom lip thoughtfully as she considered the best course of action. There were simply too many of them in such an enclosed space to ever hope to sneak past them all. Even without Onmund, she doubted she'd be able to do it. Better to take a few out with her bow and shrink their numbers as much as possible before they realized where they were and started up the path. There was hardly any room on this stone ledge, and if they were forced to retreat, they would be led into a difficult situation, considering that the broken path above them wouldn't allow them to find a more strategic outpost.
"I can put up a ward," Onmund breathed to her. His voice was surprisingly strong, holding no trace of the shaky unease that she would have expected from him. Not that she thought he was a coward, of course, but it was his first run-in with Falmer and she knew how much he'd been dreading it.
She glanced over at him. He was closer than she'd expected, too, huddling beside her on the ledge as he peered down at the encampment below. She found herself studying the fearless quality of his expression in blatant bewilderment. There was a hard sheen to his eyes that she couldn't claim to have ever seen before.
Where was the bumbling mage apprentice who had quailed at the thought of facing a Falmer? Now, they were to face the lot of them in one fell blow, and he seemed to have managed to either successfully push his fear away or hide it altogether, for there was not a trace of it lingering on the planes of his face. But then she noticed the way he was clenching his hands as if to keep tremors at bay, and the hard grit of his jaw, and the stiffness of his shoulders, and she realized that it was most likely the latter.
Thoughtlessly, she nudged him with her elbow and sent him an arrogant smile – one that was purposefully brazen and cavalier. Her voice was just haughty enough to make him want to roll his eyes at her when she whispered, "Never fear, Onmund. You'll be safe in my capable hands."
In truth, she did not say the words without reason, nor did she imbue her voice with pretentious vanity without intention. She had seen him fight when he allowed his instincts to guide him. She might have been joking, a little, when she had told him that he'd become a master battlemage by the time they reached the surface once more, but he'd already proven that he did indeed have the potential for such a path. The trick, she knew, was to get him to stop overthinking. It was a trick that every untried fighter had to learn, whether mage or swordsman. She had learned it, too, and he was currently on the brink of it himself.
And so, though her words seemed to lack a specific purpose beyond teasing him, there was in fact a reason for her uttering them. She wanted to aggravate him just enough to spark that determination she knew was lurking behind the currently wry gaze he was now sending her.
"You're treating me like a maiden again," he muttered to her, slightly annoyed at her penchant for doing so. Rannve just hummed in agreement and eyed him.
"They are weak to fire," she whispered to him. "But their main weakness is that they are blind. If you run low on magicka, find a place to rest your reserves and don't move."
He nodded and turned to catch her eye. In a low voice, he breathed, "Erm…good luck, I guess?"
If she wasn't trying to be quiet, she might've laughed aloud at that. Onmund was so endearingly awkward. She settled for snickering below her breath and responding, "Indeed."
He would have flushed at the teasing way she said it, if Rannve wasn't drawing an arrow from her quiver and notching it to her bowstring. He watched as she drew it back, rolling his shoulders back and preparing his magicka. It would only be a few moments until the entire place was in an uproar, and he didn't want to act the blundering fool now. He'd gotten this far only because of Rannve's assistance, but Talos guide him, he meant to hold his own in this fight, hopefully with a finesse that had not been present in the last ones.
To be perfectly honest, Onmund had never given much thought to fighting styles. The reason for this was because he wasn't a fighter, and therefore there was little purpose in pondering such a topic. That, and considering that he was a mage apprentice and not a warrior, this sort of strategy went well over his head. He simply did not have the tactical experience for it, and he had never found himself lacking in that regard. After all, the College was no place for battles where one's life was on the line.
Not so, in the depths of Alftand.
Rannve clearly knew what she was doing, and as far as he could tell, she wasn't doing it thoughtlessly. As she pulled the arrow back and aimed it over the side of the ledge, it took her only a moment or two to expertly find the target she was hunting for. She released the arrow and had strung another one before it even met its mark, effectively skewering a Falmer in the throat within seconds. The creature dropped dead, but it did not go unnoticed – a fact that she had clearly taken into account, because she was already aiming for the stairway despite it currently being empty of any errant Falmer.
They practically walked right into aim. She took out three of them as they clamored up the stairs, somehow knowing even despite their blindness that their enemies were perched somewhere above. Rannve was right about one thing, at least, and that was that Falmer had superior hearing. How else would they be able to detect them based only on the trajectory of an arrow?
Adrenaline spiked through him as he watched their approach. He ducked behind Rannve, knowing that he would be of more use at a further distance. His magic sizzled in his palms; errant wisps of it conjured merely from the pure energy radiating from him. It was unfocused for now, not directed into any specific spell, and so it merely sparked from his fingertips in an almost absentminded way. Despite the somewhat lazy appearance of it, though, Onmund himself could not claim to have the same disposition at this moment. It wasn't every day that angry Falmer were storming toward you, gargling out frankly terrifying sounds that seemed to come straight out of a nightmare. At least, it wasn't an everyday occurrence for him.
Rannve was another story entirely.
She threw her bow into place against the trappings at her back and pulled out her swords, barely hesitating as she stalked several feet to meet them head-on. The downward momentum of the spiraling path sent her flying at them at a pace that was faster than it normally would have been on solid ground – a fact that she also seemed to use to her advantage as she hurled the edge of her blade into an unprotected chest.
Onmund raised his hands, casting a shield around her. It was done just in time to save her from a crashing frost spell that came hurtling at her from a Falmer spell caster, protecting her from the brunt of the damage. He silently thanked the Divines for the fortitude it cost him to successfully cast any spell at all. Despite his attempt at bravery, his fingers were shaking. Fortunately, the adrenaline coursing through him assisted him in churning his fear to better uses.
Spell after spell was shot forward in a barrage of magic-fire that he would have been quite proud of, if he'd had a moment to feel anything but determination. Determination to ensure that they both survive; that Rannve didn't get injured or worse; that she wouldn't be forced to leave him down here in the dark depths of Alfthand for the unforeseeable future – for however long he lasted by himself in a den of furious Falmer.
As for Rannve, he would have been mesmerized at her quick movements, too – the way her sword sliced through all oncoming attacks, the clash of steel and the almost brutal way she lifted her boot to kick one of the creatures right off the edge of the path to the depths below – surely, it would have enchanted him far more thoroughly than any spell, had he been afforded the chance to really watch the turn of events with any emotion besides the simmer of excitement and fright bred from adrenaline.
As it as, he could barely pay attention to his own actions. He was entirely focused on making sure that his spells did not accidentally veer too far to one side and hit Rannve instead of a Falmer. Besides that, he needed to be conscious at all times of his stores of magicka lest he overwork himself. He'd been chided far too many times by Tolfdir to forget the potentially deadly outcome that would come about were he to drain his reserves completely.
The battle appeared to be turning in their favor as Rannve sliced through the last Falmer on the path, pushing it into a spider and knocking them both over the ledge with a (spectacular) flourish of her sword. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with much needed air and staring at Rannve with eyes that probably verged on hero-worship. She turned to throw him a smirking grin over her shoulder, an expression that he was quite sure only she could pull off to such an effect. Her eyes gleamed with none of the fear that he had battled with himself, before he had gotten into the ebb of the battle. She looked entirely enthusiastic from the thrill of the fight. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were flushed just so, and – he doubted he had ever seen her so beautiful. Until, of course, a sneaking Falmer that had crept up the path without their knowing swiftly came up behind her and raised its dagger.
He saw it first and exclaimed, "Rannve – !" but it was one second too late, for she barely had time to raise her sword and block the oncoming blade with a sloppy twist of her wrist that was borne entirely out of her own surprise.
It was almost funny, how the tides of fate never seemed to want to stick to one course. Funny how, for such revolting creatures, the Falmer were apparently a lot smarter than they had any right to be.
The creature parried Rannve's sloppy blow easily, and before she could lift her other blade to fend it off, the Falmer's knife was slicing right through the slits of steel wrapped around her body, finding purchase in the spot where her pauldron connected to the back of her armor. And if the gargling sound of the Falmer hadn't been bad enough, it was really no comparison to the pained exclamation that left Rannve's throat. Nor, indeed, to the sight of the Falmer taking advantage of her momentary weakness to shove her down the stone path without mercy.
"Rannve!" he cried out, reaching out a hand for her even though he knew it was useless. She was already too far out of his range to reach her in time, and the momentum of the downward path pressed her down far too quickly for him to do anything to save her. As it was, he barely even had time to throw a ward up as the Falmer flung itself forward, directing its attention to him.