Sorry this chapter is a little shorter. Also, I was going to update last night, but I had a speech to work on, so there's that. Hope you all enjoy!

Rayla was not a fan of climbing up mountains, especially not right before a blizzard.

Sure, she'd done it before. She had a bad habit of getting lost whenever she ventured off of the roads—which was quite often—which usually meant that she had to do a bit of rock climbing. But the higher one got on a mountain, the colder it became, and the higher the risk of blizzards rose. As such, she had plenty of experience with knowing when a storm was about to hit. Like now, for instance.

She and Lokir had been on the road for at least two hours. It hadn't taken them long to reach Riverwood, but they'd immediately swung around and started to take the road up the mountain as soon as the town was in reach. With their different appearances, it was unlikely that any of the townspeople would recognize them, but it was best not to risk it. While Rayla was the Thane, it wasn't unknown for guards in small towns to bow to public opinion, especially when there were not many other guards around.

Rayla had just set her pack down on a rock for some rest when she looked up at the clouds. The sun was high in the sky (for it was about two in the afternoon), but she could see several dark clouds blowing in from the west. Dark clouds were typically a good indication of storms. And if they got caught in a blizzard on the side of a mountain, there was a very good chance that they could end up walking right off the edge without even knowing it in all the chaos.

She looked down at the map in her hands quickly as Lokir sat down heavily on another rock. According to the parchment, they were about an hour's walk from Bleak Falls Barrow. When she looked back up at the storm a few minutes away, she figured that the clouds would be above them in less than that.

She cursed and slung her pack back around her shoulders. She marched forward, grabbing Lokir's elbow right as he lifted a canteen of water to his mouth and dragged him after her.

"Wha—hey!" he exclaimed as he spilled water all over the front of his robes.

"We need to move!" Rayla said, letting the urgency she felt slip into her voice. "There's a storm coming."

Lokir stubbornly freed his arm from her grip and stopped walking. "Then why don't we find shelter? We've already been walking for a while."

Rayla growled in frustration. Clearly, this man was not well-traveled. "Look around, Lokir. Do you see any caves around here?" She gestured to the rocks cliffs around them exasperatedly. "We either get caught in the blizzard—which, I might add, we are totally unprepared for—or we can try to get to the barrow before that happens."

She saw that familiar fear flash over his face before he seemed to steel himself and nodded. Good.

"All right," he said. "Let's get to the blasted barrow, then."

Rayla nodded at him and rubbed her cold hands together. She hated climbing mountains.

When they finally reached the top of the accursed rufmountainside, Lokir was about ready to collapse. He'd never been very athletic (unless he was running from a guard, that is). He definitely was not made for dashing up a steep mountain incline in freezing weather just to outrun a stupid storm.

And it wasn't like they could stop for any rest. With the threat of a blizzard looming over them, the only thing they could do was move. Besides, the higher up the mountain they got, the colder it became, until Lokir didn't want to risk standing still for fear of freezing to death. He was sure by the time that they reached the base of the large stone steps leading up to the barrow that his face was at least a little frostbitten.

Still, he couldn't help but gape at the barrow that they had suddenly found, despite the fact that snowflakes were already beginning to fall from the sky. Massive stone arches reached into the sky, looking to be at least one mammoth in diameter. The whole barrow rested on top of a massive stone pedestal, one that overlooked the countryside far below.

Oh, and it was also infested with bandits.

Lokir yelped in surprise as an iron arrow landed at his feet, sinking three inches into the snow. He had just enough time to look up and see a bandit aiming another arrow at his face before Rayla shoved him out of the way.

He landed in the snow nearby with a grunt and rolled over in time to see the warrior slamming her shoulder into the bandit's chest and knocking him to the ground. Another arrow flew at her, but merely splintered on the shield slung across her back. She paused for just a moment to slip her helmet onto her head, and then burst into action.

Now, Lokir had seen many warriors fight before. Whether he'd witnessed a tavern brawl, a duel, or even a bandit attack, he'd seen quite a few battles. However, he'd never seen someone fight like Rayla before. When he'd seen other Nords like himself fight before, they favored big, bulky weapons and hitting the opponent as many times as possible, usually sacrificing their own health as a result. But when Rayla fought…there seemed to be a sort of art to it.

She was surrounded by three bandits in less than a second. Two of them, fierce-looking Nords, carried steel swords, and the third was an Altmer who held a rather large orcish warhammer. The two with the swords lunged forward simultaneously, but Rayla slid the shield off of her back and into her left hand in a millisecond and blocked both blows—one on her shield, and the other on her sword. She pushed the swordsman to her left with her shield and then kicked the one in front of her in the groin before she swung her sword into his neck.

Rayla quickly spun out of the way as the Altmer bandit swung down his warhammer and bashed his nose with her shield as she did. Then she ducked the sword swing from the other swordsman, slammed the edge of the shield into his ribs, and then brought it up to crack into his chin.

She backed away suddenly, holding up her shield in a ready position, her sword parallel to the ground. Behind her helmet, Lokir could see that her face was firmly set in a fierce expression, but she didn't appear to be out of breath at all.

The bandits, on the other hand, seemed to have suffered a fair bit. The Altmer's nose was bleeding profusely, and the Nord with the sword was clutching his chest with his free hand. With just a few moves, she had crippled them.

Lokir realized that he was still lying on the ground, his mouth agape, and quickly scrambled to his feet. As the two bandits rushed Rayla again, he heard the scrape of boots overhead. He looked up, only to see that two bandits with bows were aiming for Rayla, who was in the middle of extracting her sword from the Nord's body.

Lokir may not have been a fearsome warrior, but he did see the danger in this situation. Now that Rayla only had one opponent, one with a slow and clumsy weapon, she would be moving around much less—which made her an easy target for archers. And if they had enough time to aim, they might be able to find the weak spots in her armor; most notably the face.

He wasn't entirely sure what had gotten into him. Perhaps he felt emboldened by Rayla's obvious mastery of swordplay, or maybe his confidence had increased with his sudden discovery of magic. It was probably more likely to say that his intelligence was lowered by the cold. One moment, he was standing there, staring at the archers as they pulled back on their bowstrings, and the next he had lightning crackling on his hands.

Crack! Blue sparks of electricity exploded from both his hands, slamming into the archers loudly. The smell of burned hair and flesh mixed with the cold mountain air, and the two bandits leaped away, cursing loudly as Lokir burned their hands.

"Aha!" he exclaimed, lifting his hands into the air in victory. "I did it!"

But the bandits were back on their feet after a moment, looking at Lokir with hatred in their eyes. They both drew wicked-looking Nordic swords.

"Oh, Talos."

Then Lokir began to run, dashing up the stairs as fast as he could as the two bandits leaped down from the ledge to chase him. He jumped over the downed bodies of the bandits that Rayla had already killed and sprinted right past the warrior as she sliced the Altmer's throat.

"Rayla!" he yelled, nearly slipping and falling on his face as he turned left, around one of the massive arches. "Help!"

He heard a sudden shlock! and then a thump, and looked over his shoulder to see that she had downed one of the archers that had been after him.

Thud! Lokir felt a sudden flash of pain across his shoulders as he slammed right into the base of one of the arches and fell to the ground, staring up at the sky before he even knew what was happening. A juddered heartbeat later, the upside-down face of one of the bandits appeared above him, sneering down at him cruelly. He raised his sword, and—

—and then Lokir suddenly remembered that Danica had given him another spell. Frantically, he called the ward spell to mind and focused on pouring as much magicka as he could into it. The cobalt blue shield burst into existence right as the bandit above him stabbed down with his sword.

Clang! The ward caught the tip of the sword right before it would have sunk into Lokir's face. At the edge of his consciousness, he felt a resistance, but his panic made it hard to concentrate on anything but the point of a sword three inches from his nose.

And then it only got worse. With another loud crack, the magical shield began to fracture, small fissures forming a spider web pattern across the blue surface. And the more Lokir panicked, the wider the cracks became.

Then came a sickening squish sound, and the bandit above Lokir suddenly began dripping blood from his throat. A moment later, he fell to the ground, his sword in his hand, quite obviously dead.

Rayla crouched over Lokir a moment later, helping him stand as his ward spell finally dissipated.

"Come on, you icebrain," she told him. "We have to get inside."

He barely registered her words, but nodded along anyway as she led him inside Bleak Falls Barrow, where he was sure even more danger awaited.