The group has reached Helgen, a fortress that was destroyed by a dragon and overrun by bandits. What was once a symbol of Imperial military ingenuity was now in near ruins, but the state it was in now was more like it was recovering from a cleanup operation. It looked a lot like the cities in post-war Cyrodiil when they were in the middle of reconstructing, and yet lights were still lit and people still conversed to get past he bitter reality of where they lived.
The night has fallen, and the only light that shown was of the moons and the fires that were lit indoors to the poorly recovered buildings that were once a blaze. Though it was unexpected, the buildings had the noises of hearty laughter and song, as if they were celebrating something; possibly the retrieval of the famed Grimsever.
Arminius observed this up on a rocky ridge while kneeling, in a small space between two short inclines that looked down upon the fort, giving a clear view of almost everything inside. The rocky hillside itself had a steep incline that went directly down into the fort, so it was like it acted as a south wall itself, only much taller than the other sides.
The Dragonborn had with him a spyglass that was built into a small contraption that expanded outwards, and was made of Dwarven metal; thank the Dwemer for what they leave behind, and Jenassa for carrying these things around with her. With this spyglass he was able to capture a closer look at parts of the fort, and because of that, make better judgments.
"We're ready for your command, Arminius," came the raspy voice of Hadvar. Arminius took his eye off the spyglass and turned back to get a good look at him, and the rest of the group that emerged from behind, from the road that ran vertical along the rocky ridge. Mjoll came up next to him and kneeled with him.
"What do you see?" she asked.
Arminius looked into the spyglass again and said: 'A celebration , it seems; a couple of Nords are barely visible in the dark of the pathway that goes through the fort, but it looks like they are stumbling over drunk with mead in their hands." He said, and he continued to look around until his glass spied a couple of bandits walking into one of the buildings that had light in it just below, and in the shine of that light that illuminated the darkness in front of its windows were the shadows of dancing figures moving about. "Definitely a celebration of some kind, probably over the retrieval of your sword. Good enough that these events tend to distract a lot of them from a threat that they don't expect." He shifted his view over to the east, where a gate was, and over top of that gate was an archway, lit with several torches and held a roof over it with two guards standing watch. "They have little security over the only available gate we could enter through, but we shouldn't take that lightly. Plus it's bound to be locked." He shifted his gaze to the northwest part of the fort where the training yard was and above that was the wooden door into the keep. He noticed that there was a female figure with a horned helmet and iron armor, guarded close by with two of the same getup and she was talking to several other bandits in a light manor. What he did catch his eye was the type of blade that was in her sheathe: a glass sword, something that was very uncommon, especially with Bandit equipment. "Mjoll, is Grimsever supposed to be an enchanted Glass Sword?"
"Yes, why?" she asked. As an answer, Arminius handed her the spyglass and pointed to her the direction in which he was looking.
"Look down there at the north end, in the training yard just in front of the keep door," he said. She brought the spyglass up and looked into it, the end pointed in the direction he was speaking of.
In a few short moments, Mjoll acknowledged; "Yes, that's Grimsever right there in the Bandit Captain's sheathe. Wait…they are moving into the hold; damn it, we'll have to get inside now." She said, handing back Arminius the spyglass.
"How many are there?" Hadvar said.
"I can't tell you exactly, but they outnumber us alright; but we have four advantages: the cover of darkness, their drunken state, the element of surprise, and Jenassa." The others turned to look at the dark elf with the red eyes that seemed to light up in the dark. She stepped forward just behind them.
"What is it you want me to do?" she asked. Arminius leaned over the edge and looked down the steep incline that led into the south side of the fortress, and he made his judgment.
"Do you still have that rope in your bag?"
"Yes, why?"
"I'm thinking of sending you down this here incline by rope to sneak inside, and let us in from the east gate."
"What about the guard tower, just at the southeast side near the end of the ridge? If there are guards there, they would be able to see me with a clear line of sight even in the darkness." She said. Arminius put the spyglass back up to his eye and shifted view in the direction of the tall tower in which she was talking about. What he could see, were in fact, guards stationed on top of that tower, but they were the only guards stationed on a tower; each one else were left unoccupied. What was lucky for them was, they were…'distracted.'
What Arminius could see in the torchlight of the guard tower top were two guards alone, a male orc had bent over a small Imperial woman. They both had their pants down and the Orc was thrusting himself into the smaller Imperial woman's backside, and they were facing the other direction.
"Well you're in luck," he said. "Those guards are…distracted; and the other towers are clear." He got up on his two feet and closed the spyglass. "Here's the plan: Jenassa will do what she does best; me and Hadvar will hold the rope and Jenassa will rappel down into the fortress undetected. Mjoll and Erik in the meantime will approach the east gate and standby out of sight and wait. Once Jenassa is in, Hadvar and I will join up with you two at the gate and we'll wait for Jenassa to sneak her way through, eliminate the guards overlooking the gate and open it up for us to come in, but quietly. Are we clear on what we're doing?"
They each nodded, said yes or things of the sorts. With that, they went into action; Mjoll and Erik made their way down to the east gate, while Jenassa handed Arminius and Hadvar the rope she had and they set up. Jenassa had the end of the rope, Arminius stood on the edge to lower it, and Hadvar stood behind him to unravel the rope as she goes down.
Jenassa climbed down, her feet on the wall of the incline and her hands hanging on to the rope tightly.
"Jenassa," Arminius said, and she looked up at him. "Please, be careful."
"I am deadliest in the shadows," she said. "If they were to see me, it would be nothing more than a blur. If they were to hear me, it would be nothing more than the whisper of a ghost. You mustn't worry."
"I don't at all doubt you, just…for good luck; get back to me safely, okay?" he said, and in his eyes she could see that he meant his words, that he shown great concern. She looked into them for a few more moments, getting through her mind his concern, before nodding.
"I will," and then she began her descent down the summit. On the way down, pebbles and dirt would slide her foot, but nothing to lose control. These mishaps instead would just send a rock or two tumbling down, but they were too distant for any of these drunken fools to see or hear. When she slowly reached the ground, what Arminius could see her as was as small as a gold septim held out from his face. He could see her reach into her backside and she knelt down in sneaking position, pulling out a long sharp dagger, but he was too far to make out the features of the blade.
He was too involved of watching her dot as she snuck passed the open door where she passed like a shadow in front of the illuminating light, and into the darkness that was shielded from the moonlight, she vanished into it. Hadvar had been the one to roll back up the rope, and he put it away.
"Come on," he said, tapping Arminius on the shoulder. Arminius was snapped out of his gaze and he nodded, and they both flung packs over their shoulders and jogged their way off into the night.
One of the guards that were standing on the balcony over the east gate yawned, and he turned right, his back to the other guard as he picked at a hang nail on his thumb. Suddenly, he heard a faint whistle, a tap of flesh, and a thud. Startled he was, he turned around quickly to see that the man next to him lay on the wood boarding, motionless and with an arrow stuck in his neck, bleeding out a puddle that seeped through the cracks of the floor. In the darkness, he couldn't quite make it out, so he drew closer to the dead guard. But he was again startled by yet another thud, and several quicker ones after that on the wood floor approaching him speedily.
He turned only to receive a hand grab at his cheeks, the palm covering his mouth to prevent a yell, and a sharp blade to be driven roughly through his throat, the blood spewing and larynx torn open; he couldn't scream or yell or even breathe. That blade came out and was thrusted back into the middle of his chest, straight through the leathers of his torso, cracking the sternum, and severing a major artery that goes to his heart; the blade was pulled out again, allowing more blood to pour out onto his belly and drip on the floor, where his knees had been brought to in a weak shaky state. One last time, in the hand that wielded it, the dagger was flipped down, brought back up, and violently stabbed into his scalp, crushing its way through the skull and gouged into the brain; now he had lost his vision and all connection to real life. He was dead, and his body fell sideways to the floor once the blade was pulled out of his head, and the hand that held his face let go.
Arminius watched her shadow cut through another one, and then it disappeared; probable that she jumped down to ground level to open the gate. It was then that the gate was seen to budge, and the left door cracked open slightly swinging on the inside. Now was their chance to act.
Arminius emerged from behind the bush on the side of the room and raised his hand, signaling for the others to emerge as well, and they did, following his lead as they made a light jog while hanging their heads low. Jenassa stepped back inside and out of the way for them, readying her bow and her eyes covering the area around the gate as each moved in beside her one at a time. Arminius kneeled down beside a wrecked wooden house and he lifted his head to look through the ruptures.
At the far end of the place they were in was the other gate, and on top had another set of guards moving in the light of the fires overhead in the balcony. Arminius used a hand signal to alert Jenassa of the threat up ahead, and so she moved on into the shadow.
Patiently, they each waited in the cover of the darkness, and they watched as the two guards were brought down with ease, and the lights on the balcony were blown out. Now, Arminius signaled the rest of his members to follow him as he emerged from behind his cover and jogged his way across the stone path, in the northwest direction where it would lead them to the training yard.
He took cover at the edge of a stone wall, where around it was the opening into the yard; the others had propped themselves up against the wall behind him, forming a single file line. He peeked around and noted the area: a large opening with the one path leading straight through it. The door to the keep was just close by, at an angle from where they were now; all they would have to do is take out or slip past the patrol that was headed their way with a lantern in his hands. Arminius went back behind the wall and held his hands up to tell his comrades to hold as he slipped the hunting knife out of his lower back sheathe and readied it in his hands, blade down.
The guard walked past the opening, whistling a tune from a bard song that they were singing inside one of the buildings as part of the festivity. That was until a hand covered his mouth; his eyes went wide in panic and a long blade was brought down into his stomach. The muscles in his hand forced his fingers wide open, dropping the lantern to the floor in a shatter as the blade was pulled across his belly, sounding a gruesome noise of blood and guts spewing out. He tried to scream but his alarm was muffled by the hand that silenced him. The Blade was brought out of his wide open stomach and drove into the nape of his neck, blood squirting as it sliced clean through the major artery and cracking his spinal apart, dying instantly.
The guard Arminius killed fell lifeless out of his grasp and thudding onto the ground. The Dragonborn sheathed his blade and signaled for his followers to make their way with him to the keep door. As he turned and began a low jog, he saw that Jenassa emerged from the darkness on his right, and she joined them in their move.
They all reached the door and readied themselves to enter, and after they each nodded to Arminius whose hand was pressed against it, they entered quickly.
The room was circular, it's what would've made sense for the cylindrical tower they entered, with a table and two chairs positioned at the opposite end from which they entered, just under an old Imperial banner that the Bandits probably forgot to take down.
Just in front of them was a certain bandit that was turned facing away from them in the middle of the room, and at the table were two more, male and female, talking. The sudden bursting in of the door had alerted them, but not in time for Arminius to tackle the one in the middle. The bandit woman jumped out of her seat, drawing a sword, but Jenassa had shot an arrow that pierced her throat and brought her back to the wall where the bloody tip was caught in between two stones, pinning her to the wall as she choked and grabbed at it, coughing out blood in her attempt to save herself.
Arminius produced his hunting knife and brought it down once onto the man's face whom he tackled to the ground. The other bandit, struck by both the site of the one he talked to pinned against the wall and the other with a blade in his face, hesitated in taking out his greatsword, allowing for Erik to drive his greatsword through his chest. The bandit yelled in pain, and Erik raised a fist and punched him square in the nose, silencing him; then he kicked his body out from his sword. The last one alive was the bandit woman who was stuck to the wall by the arrow; she died with one last breath, reaching out her hand desperately to grab at nothing, but her lifeless body had brought it down to her side as the other remained stuck around the arrow.
Arminius got to his feet and signaled once more to hide on each side of the door on the right, this was when he heard footsteps and someone saying 'what was that?!'
They each stacked around, and the footsteps drew louder and closer; there were multiple, possibly three or four…no, four exactly. He readied his hunting knife, and then he heard 'oh shit.' Then one entered, weapon drawn, another with the same manor, and then the other, none of them seemed to see them as they were too busy looking at the bloody mess that was made. Then he sensed the last one, and with good timing, he pulled his blade around the corner and it struck through ones belly with a yelp. He jumped out to full view, pulling his blade out and stabbing it underneath the bandit's chin, and into his mouth.
The other bandits were startled, but the Dragonborn's companions easily jumped and fought them, cutting them down one at a time till Mjoll was able to reach the bandit captain wielding her sword. The clashed of the greatsword and the enchanted glass sword had created a show of ice being thrown out to each block made against each other, a crunchy frost sound covered by each ding of blades. The captain must not have been as good of a fighter as Mjoll was, and she sliced off the arm that wielded Grimsever, and then it was her head that rolled.
They breathed in relief, now with Grimsever back in the hands of Mjoll the Lioness, but not nearly in relief that they now had to escape, which they did, back through the east gate still under the cover of darkness, and the drunken bandits at their festivities had no idea on the events that unfolded in Helgen that night.
The group had found their horses, and off they went, closer to Riverwood they were now, they would find themselves there in merely a day or two.