One Shot 3: Fantastic Bandits and How to Snipe Them
Ragnar fiddled around with his new favorite weapon: a brand new crossbow from Sorine as he was traveling with Serana. With Harkon dead, the remaining Volkihar vampires were either in more peaceful roles like with Serana and Valerica or continued making life hard for everyone else.
"So...can you tell me now where we're going?" Serana, who spent the past few minutes trekking through Whiterun on Arvak in the middle of the night, asked.
"Bandit hunting, dear Serana." Ragnar smirked, still on Shadowmere. "Sorine wanted me to test this new crossbow and compare its power to the original one."
"Couldn't you have just...stayed in the fort? There are targets there." Serana pointed out.
Rather than say anything else, Ragnar had Shadowmere and Arvak come to a halt. They were near the Silent Moons Camp, one of many bandit hideouts in Skyrim. Serana sighed as she hopped off the fading Arvak while Ragnar loaded the Dwarven Crossbow with a Steel Bolt. Based on what she heard from his many housecarls in the major cities, bandits were the Dragonborn's favorite prey besides dragons. As they neared the stone structure, several bandits around the area took notice.
"We got intruders, boys! Rough 'em up!" A bandit hollered. Immediately as he said that, Ragnar took aim with the Dwarven Crossbow and fired, nailing the Steel Bolt through his head.
"Okay, that was a big kick compared to the standard crossbow." Ragnar remarked, looking at the dwarven weapon with fascination while ignoring the bandits that were charging at them. As the bandits closed in on them, Serana drew her father's sword and summoned a Frost Atronach to assist her. One went after a bandit with a battleaxe while another with a mace swung at her, ignoring Ragnar.
"Ragnar! A little help, please?" She hollered while dodging the bandit's mace. Remembering what was going on, Ragnar dropped the crossbow and charged the bandit with the mace with Chillrend. He pulled Serana's attacker by the shoulder, slammed his sword's pommel on his neck, and threw him on the ground in a painful daze before slashing the bandit across the neck, almost completely severing his head. He quickly rolled back to the Dwarven Crossbow and loaded another bolt, this time Dwarven, as a pair of mages descended from the stairway.
"Mages!" Serana called out, firing Ice Spikes at the mages, who responded with Firebolts. She managed to dodge the spells, but the mages dodged hers in return. As the Frost Atronach finally killed the battleaxe bandit with a brutal blow to the head, Ragnar fired at one of the mages, the Dwarven Bolt catching one of the bandit mages right in the knee. However, it didn't just stick to where it landed, it tore through much of that area before clumsily landing on the bloodied stone stairs. The unfortunate bandit screamed in pain.
"Ouch." Ragnar shrugged. In a strange twist, the fighting around the camp stopped when all they could hear was the prolonged screaming of the poor bandit mage. Serana's Frost Atronach went back to Oblivion amidst the shrill calm.
"BY THE EIGHT, I THINK I LOST MY WHOLE LEG!" The same bandit screamed, clutching the leg Ragnar shot at as it looked like it was on the brink of tearing itself apart by the knee.
"You're fine! It's only a test!" Ragnar called out from the bottom of the stairs as Serana looked on, faint smile forming and head shaking.
"I'll kill you!" The other bandit threw Fire Bolts at Ragnar, who promptly moved out of the way and began loading another Dwarven Bolt.
"This one's for you!" Ragnar aimed and prepared to fire the crossbow at the standing bandit mage, but his vampire companion beat him to the punch, sending an Ice Spike through the mage's chest after tearing through his Hide Armor. Immediately, Ragnar aimed the crossbow at the injured bandit mage and fired the second Dwarven Bolt, which pierced through his skull until all but the fletching was inside his head.
"Damn, that's gross, even for me." Serana remarked as they walked up the stairs.
"Sorine knows her stuff." Ragnar smirked, putting the crossbow away and ready to pull the bolts out of the corpses they were embedded on.
"We won't be fighting a dragon anytime soon, I assume."
"For that dragon's sake, I hope so."