Ch. 2: A massacre

"MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!" shouted musclebrain as he continued running where eyes could see "Ouch! Ouch! Fucking hurts! That piece of walking dead flesh was so sturdy!" complained Ravund

As they sprinted down the tunnels, more and more draugr became awake, making both teens question their choice

'Should we have tried to hide? Fu-' Volfir's musings came to a short end as an arrow grazed his neck

*Gasp*

He immediately put his hand against the wound, holding it for a bit, before checking to see how much blood he lost

'Just a graze' Volfir felt relieved as he continued running, instead of doing it in a straight line though, he started weaving and zigzagging

"Ravund?!"

"Here! Just keep on moving, you piece of tree bark!"

'Fucking piece of meat has time to ridicule my starving body'

Soon, a wooden door could be seen right in front of them, trying to dodge the occasional arrows zooming past them, they exchanged glances, Ravund having a calculated expression and Volfir having an exhausted and despaired one

'It would sure be a pity if it's locked!' thought Ravund before speeding past Volfir and ramming through it

*BANG*

"You idiot! What if it was locked with a bar?!" shouted Volfir with a bit of panic

No answer came as he ran into the room, but he didn't mind it, promptly grabbing the knocked out Ravund's arms and doing his best to drag him away to a dark corner

Volfir was dead tired, gasping for air with each breath... in fact it was a divine miracle they ran for so much considering their malnourished state, hunger and the fact that they were mining about right before this incident

The room was rather small, but more spacious than the tunnels they've been running through, it was dark, only a few barely burning candles lining the walls closer to the far end from the knocked down door

"...you can't be serious, did you not hear that loud noise?!" came shouting from up ahead, a series of clanking noises of armoured boots soon following

By now Volfir was pushing his body to the limits, doing his best in trying to make to the darkest corner in the room full of ancient looking urns that could be useful in hiding their teenage bodies

Just in time before the new guests welcomed themselves in, Volfir pulled Ravund with all of his remaining strength towards the space behind the urns before collapsing on top of him and losing consciousness

*Screech*

The old door was quickly opened, a group of well equipped bandits came pouring in

"Which one of you idiots knocked that door down? I made it clear not to go through the dungeon without my knowing or presence!"

*Swoosh*

A sharp arrow found itself into an unprotected and stationary head of one of the bandits, making the rest stare at the death of their comrade in shock

"Draugr! What did you idiots do?!" shouted the Overseer, fear evident in his eyes, but his body moved on its own as clear signs of magic casting filled the room and his hands started glowing with pure azure colour

*Swish*

*Swoosh*

The bandits spread out inside the room, the vanguard taking positions closer to the entrance door while the archers and the overseer kept further back, sending out arrows and spells into the dimly lit tunnel crawling with the now woken up draugr

The walking dead shot back arrows of their own, while their vanguard closed in on the entrance stumbling, but their swords steady, eyes glowing with an eerie glow of death and doom

*Clank*

Swords, axes and shield met at the entrance as the bandit vanguard jumped from the their positions and started battling the first draugr to come inside the room, their bodies filled with arrows and spell hits

"Why are there so many?! You dumb lizard, go and get more men in here! Today we finally claim the Embershard Mine for ourselves!" Screamed the mage, intoxicated by power and andrenaline, never stopping his barrage of ice spells

"Hiss... my pleasure..." whispered the Argonian which would be recognised by Volfir and Ravund immediately for his sadistic nature and torture tendencies

'Why do all the Imperials I work for turnout to be such a letdown? Can't he see we are losing this fight?' the Argonian gazed over the situation before unequipping his bow and taking out his iron dagger

The Argonian was already the closest out of the bandits to the Overseer, so he simply took a step towards the distracted Imperial, and with it, he took a swing of his dagger, letting the blade slide cleanly through the mage's back of the neck, immediately dropping him to his knees by severing the tendons

The Argonian grabbed the back of the overseer's head, pulling it down so that he could see the imperial's face

For a few seconds the Argonian happily watched as the shock and along with it - the light, dimmed in the overseer's eyes, before quietly removing himself from the scene back to where all of them came from. None of the presently battling and dwindling number of bandits noticed the absence of spells for they were too focused fighting for their lives

'Inexperienced fools' the lizardman thought as he found himself walking through the mining paths 'Yes... and fools don't get to live another day' he concluded with a wide, sadistic and bloodthirsty grin

"Hehe" he continue walking, sometimes breaking his pace with hops that could be mistaken for a dance, or perhaps they actually were "The Overseer requested everybody's presence in the lower area! Come quickly before we all get frostbitten to death!" he shouted along the mining halls while his figure disappeared into the shadows

-Scene Break-

"Ugh... crap... what in the-" Volfir woke up divine knows how many hours later, he tried to get up, but his body was so tired it started shaking if he put any effort or weight on his hands

A foul smell filled the room, the boy first dismissed it as Ravund's body odour, but was quick to realise how wrong he was

'Just what happened here?' from what he could see through the gaps of broken pieces of the urns, the room was filled with blood and bodies, most of them dismembered or unrecognisable in any way. The doorway through which he and Ravund came running from was nowhere to be found, instead there were scorched and melted rocks with signs of a cave in, probably from a large explosion

Feeling the importance of understanding his situation, Volfir felt a rush of adrenaline and picked himself up from the body of his friend and started moving through the urns

Now that he had a closer and more clear view on the room, it was even worse than he imagined, countless miners, teenagers and adults, were strewn about the entrance where the bandits came in

'Were they used as bait or something..? No... as a stopping force or meat shield...' piles of foulsmelling draugr lay atop the stairs leading to the exit from the room, in the small hallway of the entrance

Bodily fluids and innards painted the walls, along with slash and some more scorch marks, painting the picture of a massacre and a desperate fight for survival. Anywhere Volfir looked he would see a body, a bodypart, an arrow or a weapon

"Looks like a plane of Oblivion..." Volfir spoke aloud, he couldn't feel anything but astonishment at his and his companion survival amidst this chaos

'Why is Ravund still not up?' thought the boy, slowly walking through the grim scene towards his only friend in this hellhole, trying to avoid stepping on flesh and bones

As he walked up to Ravund he noticed that the older boy was motionless on his back, his arms covering his face because Volfir used them to drag him away before collapsing on top

"Hey... Musclebrain... wake up idiot" Volfir tried to shake his companion awake, but got no response

Feeling a bad premonition and a rise in heartbeat, Volfir moved towards the upper torso, aiming to move away the hands from Ravund's face

*Gulp*

Pale faced, now frozen in his crouched position, he looked at the arrow tip sticking out of his friends left eye, Ravund's face placed in eternal shock at the quick and unnoticed death

Tears started streaming down Volfir's eyes, as he eventually crumbled into a fetus position and started crying aloud and shaking uncontrollably

'Why... why him...' he kept repeating only thought as he lost consciousness once again

-Scene Break-

*Chewing sounds*

Volfir opened his eyes to the sound of fleshy sounds of chewing, only to notice two pairs of red eyes staring at him as they continued to nibble at his forearms

He immediately tried to shake them off, doing so successfully, making the rat-like beasts scurry away with the rest of the skeevers in the room, most probably believing that he is a draugr and not wanting to test that theory

Volfir looked at his boney hands, now adorned with bleeding bites, scratches and signs of infection, he ignored everything and looked at his dead friend

Apparently the skeevers feasted upon his corpse due to his bigger size, the body now lay unrecognisable as more tears fell down Volfir's cheeks

Spending some more time looking at Ravund, Volfir picked himself up from the groundand walked towards the dead overseer he noticed previously, opened his belt-fastened satchel, took something from it and started moving away from the room, up the stairs

'...I- I need something to eat... the Overseer's room will definitely have some good food...' he thought while drunkenly walking with his head down, his long, dirty, blonde hair sticking to his equally dirty face due to sweat

After a few minutes he came upon an opened door, one larger than any of the other in the cave system, most probably to symbolise a higher standing among the low lifes that used to live here. It was his first time being in this part of the mine, but not wasting any time gawking, the sickly boy entered the room that once belonged to a mage who used his magical prowess to tightly hold the reins on a bandit organisation

He was met with a cozy atmosphere of organised furniture and items of all kinds, most important and noticeable part of the room though, was the cooking station placed atop a firepit, its coals long gone cold, but a lid-closed pot still stood there with a half-empty bowl of some kind of grim looking mushy substance, most probably a stew

Volfir picked up his pace and almost ran towards the bowl, falling down on his knees, completely ripping apart the ragged pants around his knees, but he didn't care as the process of gulping down the barely edible stew began

As he finished the bowl, he picked off the lid and threw it away, dipping the empty bowl inside to fill himself up another portion

For some time Volfir just sat, kneeled down, in front of the pot eating and crying until there was nothing left in the pot and he didn't have any more tears to produce, then he just stayed in that position, looking at the ceiling with an unimaginable amount of dark thoughts going through his head

-Scene Break-

A group of men clad in armour lined with fur and loose pieces of fabric of yellow tones, their shields bearing the steed insignia, were walking up a slope leading to a mine that was just recently full of bandit activity

"Do you think that Argonian was telling the truth?" asked one of the men

"Yes, the bandits come and go all the time, for different reasons, that's why we need to see what happened for them to suddenly disappear" answered the man leading the group

"I think they had an infight over leadership and the winning forces are just recuperating" chimed in another

"Didn't you pay any attention to the talk back in Riverwood? A small group of battered, but armoured men passed on the settlement's outskirts" countered the leader

"They could be survivors of the overthrown faction" argued the man that was countered

"Hm... that's true, we'll see for ourselves in just a second... whoever survived still needs to follow Clan Gray-Mane's orders and we better remind them of that" the leader finished as the mine entrance doors came into view, none of the torches in the vicinity were lit up even though it was already dusk

"Well, that's weird, you three will continue to hold torches, one of you will lead with me, the other stay in the middle and the last one will close the formation, understood?" commanded the leader of the group

""Yes"" answered the group in unison

*Creak*

The heads of the armoured men snapped back to the mine doors as they opened, revealing a small, sickly boy, with piercing blue eyes that can easily be mistaken for a draugr if not for his insignificant stature and ragged clothes, standing still looking at the group in the dim light produced by his torch

As the group started unsheathing their weapons, feeling highly disturbed by the child's grim appearance, the leader was quick to intervene

"Stay your weapons, that's just a child" he said, while locking his eyes with the teen's dead gaze

The man wouldn't admit it, but he was also very disturbed by the boy's appearance, the only part of the face he saw were the blue eyes, as the rest was covered by dry dirt mixed with blood, his hair showed faint bleaks of blonde, but too, was covered by dirt and blood. The body parts that could be seen sticking out of the loose and ragged sorry excuse for clothes, although seemed pale and thin, showed signs of developed muscles

'A child forced into manual labour perhaps..?' thought the leader as he took a few steps forward, aiming to approach the dirty kid, only for the child to throw down his torch a few metres in front of him, before going back into the shadows of the mine

"...Was that a ghost?" nervously asked one of the men

"Don't be stupid lad, that was survivor, don't know for how long though" answered another one

"Tsk... seeing mistreated kids always leaves a bad taste in my mouth" added another

"Aye, bloody clans and their schemes... to coldharbour with them" said the leader, motioning the group to follow him, as he planned to finally enter the mine

-Scene Break-

'Ha... haven't seen Whiterun Hold guards in a long time...' thought Volfir with a chuckle, 'I remember how I used to pray to the divines for them to raid this bandit mine and free us all...' he continued, a sour expression on his face by the end of the contemplation

'Perhaps Ravund wouldn't be dead then...'

Volfir kept walking for a while until he reached a lit portion of the mine, not too far away from the entrance. There lay his dead and disfigured friend, sat against a wall. Volfir walked up to him, crouched down, picked him up on his shoulders and started moving towards the mine exit again, his previous escapade being for scouting purposes

As he walked, he again noticed the same group of guards that he saw outside, the guards once again stopped, but Volfir kept moving towards them, when he was close enough one of them asked

"Brat, what happened here?" in a nervous and condescending tone, probably because all them passed more draugr and bandit corpses along the way

Volfir didn't answer or stop, he continued walking without acknowledging their presence, making the group divide and let the teen and the body he is carrying pass through them

"Continue down all of you, I'll go follow the kid, I have a feeling that he is the only living thing inside this place so be sure to remember what you see, since we will have to report to Commander Sinmir upon return to Whiterun"

"We won't be going back to Riverwood?"

"Well, not all of us that's for sure, go do your jobs"

""Yes!"" the guards exclaimed in unison

'Now then... what kind of story will you tell me kid..?' the guard captain looked at the back of the teenager while the distance between them kept increasing