Dust falling down from the large amount of people in heavy armor walking up it, luckily it was strong enough to not collapse onto anyone but there was always the risk.
The hallway led to a large, open area. Cracks in the ceiling let down large rays of light in the dark, stone floor with ancient stone pillars holding the structure upright. Moss had overrun the stone, creeping along pillars and the floor and covered it all in the green, grassy substance.
There was a raging bonfire near the entrance of the spiral staircase, where Charles finally heard people, the living, speaking for the first time. He heard sounds of bottles and laughter as he saw them drinking quite merrily.
He took a second look at the group, though they looked like normal adventurers they were far too lax to be them. Their armor was far too cheap and beat up, while loot was scattered all around them.
Charles put up his hand for the ones behind him to stop, crouching down onto the ground which prompted all of them to do the same.
"Kralse, get up here"
Kralse carefully moved forwards, making sure not to hit any of the rocks to avoid alerting any of the people.
"Is it me, do those guys look like bandits?"
He had mistaken them for normal adventurers at first, but adventurers didn't wear studded armor. They also didn't keep crates and chests full of loot around them while laughing around a bonfire in the middle of a dungeon.
"That seems to be the ca-"
"Guh- Damn you bandits! The Jarl will have your heads for this!"
Kralse was cut off as he heard a shout from someone to the far side of the room. Charles popped his head up again, looking towards the wall where he had heard the voice. That was when he got the confirmation that they were bandits.
Three people in iron or steel armor were tied up in one corner of the room. They all had their helmets off, with a yellow cloth or strap across their armor.
The bandits who were drinking paused, before laughing out loud.
"HA! The only way he's getting to us is if he has the guts to send troops all the way here, up on a snowy mountain in the middle of nowhere. Face it, no one's coming here."
The bandit who spoke grabbed the person's blond hair and pulled it back, revealing them to be a female nord who was baring her teeth at the bandit, no doubt imagining how his head would look on a pike.
"Actually, now that I look closely you're quite the looker aren't you? You sure you won't be my lover? There's loot everywhere where we work."
"Go to Oblivion!"
The man shrugged before slamming her across the wall, causing cries of outrage from her compatriots.
"Heh, either way you're all dead. Blame you're beloved Jarl for killing off my brothers, we were just robbing a caravan, not sieging his city. He just had to kill off half of us."
As the man was rambling on, Charles turned behind him and looked at the rest of his subordinates. They could easily take out all the bandits without breaking a sweat (literally) and bandits were one of the people that he could kill without remorse.
However, he knew those guards' clothes. They were the guards from Whiterun, the city that was more or less accepting of every faction that didn't try to murder innocents. In other words, the first ones that could possibly accept him as a neutral or allied faction. He did not want his first interaction with Whiterun to be accidentally killing their guards when it wasn't neccesary.
He carefully reached around in his bag before pulling out a bow. A curved, deeply intricate bow made out of wooden metallic material deeply resembling an elven bow. However, this was anything but normal as it was known as Auriel's bow, one of the most broken bows in elder scroll history.
"Does anyone know how to shoot a bow here?" Taking the arrows out with it, he turned behind him and whispered quietly to his soldiers, before one of them took a step forward. This one had a quiver on his back. Charles had neither touched nor shot a bow and arrow before, though it looked easy in game he wasn't about to risk it and get people killed, especially on his first day here.
Charles handed him the bow, making the skeleton buck under the pressure the mythical weapon had. However, he recovered just as quickly as he was handed the arrows as well.
"Two of you, stay here with him at the entrance. The others spread out and stay low. I'll give you a signal to shoot and the rest of us will pounce them."
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Captured Guard P.O.V
"ARGH!"
The guard slammed across the wall before falling to the ground in agony. The scream echoed throughout the building, but the bandits just laughed at her pain.
"Anya! Goddamn you bastards, if you want a fight then let me go then we can brawl it out. She's a new recruit, leave her out!"
And that was when the bandit who was doing all the speaking pulled out his sword, a slightly rusty nordic sword that he had surely robbed off of a victim or a tomb.
"Perhaps you all need a demonstration. We have been much more courteous to you damned dogs than you were to us."
He brought the blade next to the older man's neck, making him glare but also stare at the blade intently. Though not nearly as sharp as it would have been in its prime, one stroke and his neck was gone.
"GRR, bloody cowards!"
The bandit turned around and looked at his compatriots, before letting out a booming laugh.
"HA! Of course we're cowards! Have you ever heard of a bandit that plays by the rules? What matters is you're in binds and I'm not, I'm with the weapon and you're not."
"NO! Boss, I'll take your place! I don't have a family anyways, goddamn coward kill me instead!"
The woman, Anya, was struggling to get off of the ground but forced herself upright. The bandit glanced at her before smirking.
"Not you pretty lady, I'm sure you would fetch a verryyy nice price in the slave market."
Raising the blade above his head, the bandit let out a smirk as he aimed for the guard's neck. The latter closing his eyes, accepting his doomed fate.
"NO!"
FWOOSH!
The bandit stood still, blade still in place but the blade didn't slice downwards.
CLANG!
The blade fell to the floor as the man clutched his throat. Where his throat originally was, all that remained was a small, smoldering hole that went straight through his throat and out the other side.
He let out one last gurgle and fell to the floor, much to the shock of both the captured guards and the bandits, watching him drown in his own blood.