Lokir jumped in surprise as the massive steel doors to the barrow clanged shut behind them. He was somehow aware, in the back of his mind, that he was incredibly tense, and he fully expected another attack from one of the bandits to come at any moment. His lungs were burning from his mad dash, and almost felt like they would burst into flames at any moment.
"Lokir," someone said. Then, again, "Lokir!"
Rayla's face appeared before him, her green eyes sparkling in concern. In the darkness of the barrow, her facial scar was hardly visible.
"Lokir," she said for the third time. Her voice was perfectly calm. "You're having a panic attack. You need to relax."
Was he? He had a hard time forcing air into his lungs, and the image of that sword mere inches from his face kept spiraling through his mind. Ironically, the voice of his father also fought its way in there as well.
"Panic is a thief's worst enemy," he'd once told his son. "Picking a pocket or a lock is harder than trying to steal a mammoth from a Giant's camp if you panic while you do it."
"Just breathe," Rayla told him, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. The pressure helped to anchor him for a moment, and he tried to do what she said. "Just breathe with me, okay?"
She took loud, deep breaths, and Lokir did his best to follow her example. It took a few tries to master the breathing technique, but after a minute or two, he managed it. Once he realized that, he also recognized that the swirling of his mind had calmed considerably.
He was still plenty shaken. Sure, Lokir had been chased by guards (and a few hired thugs) more time than he cared to count, but he'd never been as close to death as he had just been. If it hadn't been for the magic that he'd recently learned, it would be his blood spilled out there, not those of the bandits. An even deeper appreciation for his newfound gift suddenly filled him as he relaxed his shoulders.
"Thank you," Lokir told Rayla as she removed her hand from his shoulder. He took a moment to lean on his knees to regain the rest of his lung capacity. "That was…terrifying."
"That was your first fight, wasn't it?" Rayla asked him. Her head was cocked at him, though not in a domineering or condescending way, as he had come to expect from most Nord warriors. It was actually…rather understanding.
Still, Lokir couldn't help the flush that spread across his face. He'd known other thieves who could fight their way out of a bad situation if they had to, and they were usually seen as the best of the best. Lokir couldn't even look at a patch of blood without feeling nauseous. He nodded, looking away in embarrassment.
"You did well," she suddenly told him, clapping him on the shoulder.
He…what? He'd run face-first into a column and had nearly been decapitated by a sword-wielding madman! How could that be described as good?
Lokir snapped his head back to look at her as she removed her Elven helmet and shook out her snow-white hair. "I did?"
Rayla nodded, and sent him an encouraging smile. The expression was strange to see mingled with her scar, but not unpleasant. In fact, Lokir thought it was the first time he had actually seen her smile around him, despite her easy-going exterior.
"I mean, you did take out those archers," she told him. "Thanks for that, by the way."
He was confused. He really hadn't even done much. "You saw that?"
She shrugged. "Not until you got them to chase you."
"You're welcome," he told her dryly, running a still-shaky hand through his short hair.
But her words did bolster his confidence a bit, even as he realized that had been her intent. After all, he wasn't dead, was he? And it was thanks to his limited grasp of magic. Perhaps he wasn't as untalented as his life experiences had led him to believe.
"Come on," Rayla told him, wiping some of the snow out of her hair. "We've got a lot more of this crypt to cover before we're in the clear." She began to step forward.
As soon as she said that, Lokir stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Wait."
The barrow they stood inside of was wide and circular in build, made from dark, ancient bricks that smelled stale. Two large, cylindrical pillars held the ceiling up, hiding the other half of the room. Two dead skeevers sat a few feet away. However, the thing that had given Lokir pause was the flickering light of a campfire and the smell of smoke coming from the other side of the room.
It was probably nothing. If there were more bandits in the hall, they would have heard Rayla trying to calm Lokir down (she had a rather loud voice). That is, unless the crackling of the fire was loud on the other side of the room was amplified by the strange acoustics of the room, making it hard for any bandits to hear them. Or maybe he was just being paranoid.
As he looked at Rayla and saw her furrowed brow, he decided that he wasn't that lucky. Whatever was on the other side of the columns, she had obviously heard it as well.
Lokir held up a finger to his lips, and Rayla nodded. Then he began to creep forward, staying low and close to the ground as he'd been taught. He moved his feet carefully, but there wasn't much debris for him to step on. Behind him, he heard Rayla attempting to sneak after him, but she was very clearly terrible at it. Her armor kept clinking and making metallic hissing sounds as she moved, so much so that Lokir's jaw was in danger of locking in place after only a few moments.
Fortunately, it didn't seem to matter. Lokir stopped once he reached the edge of one of the columns, for one of the bandits was speaking.
"When is that stupid little dark elf supposed to get back?" a deep male voice asked.
Lokir leaned his head around the side of the column to peer at the two bandits sitting in front of the campfire. One was a large, burly man with not a wisp of hair on his head, and the other was a muscular woman wielding an iron mace.
The woman sighed. "Be patient. Arvel said he knew how to work the golden claw, so he'll figure it out. Unless you want to go into the crypt and look after him?"
Lokir felt a chill at the mention of the golden claw, even as the other bandit crossed his arms.
"I have full confidence in the knife-eared gray-skin."
Behind him, Lokir suddenly felt Rayla stiffen, and when he looked back at her, he saw that her face was twisted in rage. It looked unnatural on her face, and there was a dangerous gleam to her eyes that made her pupils almost glow in the darkness of the barrow.
And before he could stop her, she was stepping forward, sword drawn, directly into the line of sight of the two bandits.
"You know," she said, anger cracking like a whip in her voice, "you really should be careful what you say. You never know who might be listening."
For a split second, the two bandits just gaped at her sudden appearance, and then they were on their feet and drawing their weapons in a heartbeat. Hesitantly, Lokir stood and called the one offensive spell he knew to his hands.
But Rayla did not attack. Instead, she planted her sword tip in the ground and leaned on it casually. Her face was still plenty angry, but there was a coldness to it now that Lokir didn't like. Before the other bandits even took a step, Rayla held up a hand and began to speak.
"Now, now," she said. "We don't want any more bloodshed, do we?"
She shifted her sword nonchalantly, clearly illuminating the blood that had yet to dry on the surface. From behind the pillar, Lokir thought he could see the eyes of the bandits flick from her sword to the door behind them as they made the obvious conclusion.
"You're bluffing," the woman said, though she didn't sound too sure.
"Am I?" Rayla asked, her face perfectly blank. While she may have appeared relaxed to the casual observer, Lokir could see how tightly she was gripping her sword hilt and how tense her body was. This woman was daring the bandits to make a move, to give her any excuse to decimate them like she had their friends outside. He found it remarkable that she was able to hold herself back at all with all the anger that he had just seen on her face.
"Now," she continued, her mouth twisting into a sneer. "You are both going to leave here, never return, and turn yourself in to the nearest guards."
"And why would we do that?" the man asked. He seemed a little less fazed than the woman, but he still appeared plenty intimidated by Rayla.
"Because if you don't," she said, her voice suddenly quiet but full of that simmering anger, "I'll give you the same treatment that I gave your friends outside."
Both bandits tensed. For a tense moment, Lokir was sure that they were going to attack her, and he raised his hands to offer her any assistance that he could.
But they never did. The man was the first to move, muttering something incoherent under his breath as he sheathed his sword and turned to leave, gesturing for the woman to follow him. After a glare directed at Rayla, the other barbarian followed suit.
"And learn some manners while you're at it," Rayla added, not looking back as they walked past her.
The bandits both tensed, but neither made a move, especially when they saw Lokir crouching in the shadows with magic crackling on his hands. He watched them all the way until the door, and the woman had the courage to send an offensive gesture their way before the man dragged her outside. The door shut behind them with a loud clang.
Lokir relaxed immediately, though he didn't turn his back on the door for a full minute. When he was sure that the bandits were not going to return, he faced Rayla, only to find that she was in the exact same position as she was before, though her jaw was clenched and she was staring at the wall across from her.
"Uh…Rayla?" Lokir asked, creeping forward carefully.
She physically flinched, as if she had forgotten that he was present. But when her eyes flicked to him, it was his turn to flinch. Though she hadn't laid a finger on the bandits, Lokir could see just how desperately she had wanted to hurt them in her eyes. The green there seemed…darker. Haunted, somehow.
And then the look was gone, like a passing wind, and she was back to herself.
"Come along, Lokir," she said, sheathing her sword. "We're not even close to finished."
As it turned out, they were closer to finished than originally expected, because after only an hour or two of exploring the crypt, they were both exhausted.
The final straw came when they realized that the path they'd been taking for the past half-hour was a dead-end. Lokir had already been fatigued, mostly due to the absence of adrenaline after the fight outside the barrow. That, coupled with the legends of Draugr that walked burial crypts, made him want to sit down and rest for a while. So when he saw the dead end and realized that they would have to walk even further just to get back to a normal path, he plopped his bag down on top of a stone that formed part of the dead end and crossed his arms stubbornly as Rayla wiped some dust off her forehead.
"Tired already, thief?" she asked, though her shoulders were just as slouched as his.
"We've been going nonstop for four hours," Lokir huffed. "I'm exhausted. Aren't you, warrior?" His manners had a bad habit of dissipating when he was tired.
She seemed surprised by his blunt language, but after a moment she shrugged and set down her own pack as well. "Very well."
Lokir sat on the floor, not caring about the moss or dust that coated the ground as he leaned his back against one of the rocks. If only the others could see him now! While most Nords would have been hesitant to sift through an ancient burial crypt, a thief like Lokir saw it as an opportunity. Most Nords were buried with a considerable amount of money nearby. Still, he also knew that it would be the death of him if he wasn't careful. It was a good thing that Rayla was with him, otherwise he probably would have managed to either get hopelessly lost in the barrow or somehow triggered a dormant trap. They'd been lucky in avoiding anything of the like so far, but that didn't mean that there wouldn't be any further in. All he wanted was to get out of the blasted crypt and back in a warm bed. Preferably one that wasn't in a Thane's basement.
Rayla busied herself with cutting up some old roots that had penetrated the walls of the crypt to use as firewood, and an exhausted Lokir watched it curiously for a minute or two before he realized that she would probably snap at him if he didn't help out at least a little bit. So, dragging himself up a little bit, he began gathering loose stones that they could use as a sort of fire pit. While Rayla finished gathering the makeshift firewood, he piled the rocks in a rough circle a few feet away.
She nodded at him in approval and began setting the roots down in a strange pattern that he realized was rather adept. While the roots were shaped oddly and had a habit of rolling over each other as she placed them, she quickly had them set up in a pattern that would be excellent for burning.
"Usually," she grunted as she began to dig through her pack for a flint and steel, "roots aren't very good for burning, because they're green and give off a lot of smoke. But these ones are dead and dry." It seemed as if she were saying this to herself, because she didn't look at Lokir once as she searched the inside of her bag.
Lokir looked down at his hands, then at the pile of wood waiting to be burned, and then back at his hands. Why not?
Crack! He shot a small amount of lightning at the pile of wood and it immediately ignited. Rayla didn't flinch at the sudden flames that rose from the pile, but she did lower her pack and look down at the warm campfire that had just burst into existence with surprise. After a moment of hesitation, she nodded at him.
"I knew it was a good idea to keep you around," she said.
Lokir scoffed and began to warm his hands over the fire as she delved back into her bag and pulled out a small frying pan and a package of salt-preserved deer meat.
"Rations," she told him as she unwrapped the meat and saw his confused look. Then she chuckled. "What? Did you think I meant moldy jerky or bread or something?"
He looked down, a bit embarrassed. "Maybe."
Rayla snorted and placed the skillet over the fire. "Well," she said, sprinkling some sort of spice on the meat, "I may not be as talented as Lydia at cooking, but I wouldn't say my food is that terrible."
It wasn't like it made much of a difference. Lokir was so hungry that he could have eaten a mammoth raw—which he'd heard was supposed to taste horrible. He had to force himself to look away from the flames as Rayla began to cook the meat, lest his will break and he reached straight into the fire to grab the raw meat.
There was silence for a few minutes, save for the sizzle of the venison on the pan and the occasional crackle of the flames. Lokir thought about trying to make conversation with the warrior across from him several times, but what could he say? They were completely different people, and it wasn't like he'd offered to come with her out of the kindness of his heart.
Eventually, it was her who broke the silence as she stirred the pan with a long stick. Her face seemed paler because of the light of the fire, and she looked slightly uncomfortable as she spoke.
"So what's your story, Lokir?" she asked, sitting back just slightly. She looked at him with curious eyes.
He felt his brow furrow. He wasn't sure he had a story, per se. It was more like…a poorly written pamphlet. "What do you mean?"
"You know," she said, shrugging. "Where did you grow up, what gets you up in the morning, things like that." Rayla scratched the bottom part of her scar. "I figure if we're traveling together, we should know a little bit about each other, at least."
"Oh," Lokir replied. That didn't seem too harmless. And to be honest, no one had ever really asked him something like that before. In the criminal underworld, it was best not to ask too many questions. But now, it felt…nice.
He stretched his arms above his head as he thought about an answer to her question. He really wasn't even that interesting; most thieves weren't. The ones that he'd managed to work up the courage to talk to had all been forced into a life of crime by taxes that were too high or in just order to escape the monotony of everyday life.
"Well," he eventually said, "My father dropped me off to a caretaker in Rorikstead when I was but a toddler. He had a bounty on his head, so he dropped me off there so that I would be protected."
"He was a thief as well, I presume?" Rayla asked, flipping over the meat in the pan with the stick from before. Lokir expected judgement in her voice—considering her fairly obvious view on thieves—but instead all he heard was amusement.
"...yes," he said carefully. She didn't seem nearly as heavy-handed as she had been before. Perhaps it was just because they were in private.
He sighed, after a moment. "But he's much better than I am."
Rayla looked up at him with a skeptical eyebrow and a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "That's a…strange thing to be proud of."
Was he proud? He supposed that he was, because his father was one of the best in the Thieves Guild. He must have let some of that slip into his voice.
He shrugged and honestly replied, "Well, I don't have much else to be proud of him for. I didn't even really know him all that well until I was sixteen."
That got more of a reaction out of her, though that hadn't been Lokir's intention. She sat up, temporarily neglecting the food in the fire. That strange, fierce look was in her eyes again, though she didn't look as angry as she had when she was intimidating the two bandits. But when she spoke, it was with a soft, kind voice.
"Your father abandoned you?" she asked.
For a strange moment, Lokir was fascinated by her eyes. How could simple, green eyes hold such fierceness and such gentleness at the same time? This woman was full of conundrums. He wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
Then he realized what she had actually asked, and indignancy filled him.
"He did not abandon me!" he denied, even though he felt a flash of uncertainty inside him. "He…merely…he was protecting me!"
Even though he surely would have been able to clear his bounty after a month or two. And he hadn't returned…for thirteen years.
Lokir had not been abandoned.
Right?
Rayla seemed to realize that she had hit a sore spot. That look in her eye disappeared, and she went back to normal.
"What about your caretaker?" she asked. "What was he like?"
He smiled as he remembered the man. He'd much rather remember that. "His name was Jouane Manette. He was old back then, so he's probably even older now." He chuckled at the thought of Jouane hobbling around Rorikstead with the help of a cane. "He used to make me farm with the others, but that hadn't worked out too well."
That elicited another small smile from her. "Yeah, I know how that feels."
Now it was Lokir's turn to feel curious. Had she been forced to perform tedious chores as well?
"What about you?" he asked. "What were your parents like?"
He physically saw the wall slam down between them. Immediately, her body became more tense and her eyes cold, and she looked away from him and back into the fire, drawing back the skillet quickly. For a moment, Lokir was put-off. Her reaction was completely different from the kind, emotionally-open woman he had seen so far.
"They're dead," she said harshly.
A moment later, she was cutting up pieces of the meat and shoving a plate of it in his direction.
"Eat up."
Lokir did his best not to show his surprise at her sudden reaction, but it was like trying to sneak past a Giant in broad daylight. The next few minutes were filled with an uncomfortable silence, until he began to eat the meat as quietly as he could.
He much preferred the woman he'd been with just a few minutes ago. He really hoped that the rest of their journey wouldn't be like this, or he would lose his mind.
As he tried his best not to stare at her, he wondered if he already had.