Just Trying to Survive

When two longtime friends and a service dog get thrown into Skyrim without any warning, both are firmly set on staying away from anything that might kill them. But with injured Jarls, curious dragons, and polite Daedric Princes continuing to knock on their door, they know that they'll get pulled into the thick of things whether they want to or not. NO!Dragonborn, OCs, slightly OOC characters

Review Corner!

painxsmile: Thank you for the first review! Much appreciated, so here's a virtual cookie. As for your question about Ulfric, I don't believe everyone knows what Ulfric looks like (as no one else in the Inn said anything to Robyn, nor did Alvor), but with the War going on, no one really knows who is on what side, and spies for either side could be anywhere. As it's seen a lot in Skyrim, mostly everyone is 'act first, ask questions later', so it's almost certain that any Imperial spies, or Thalmor, would be more likely to simply arrest her (or kill her) for simply looking like him (because obviously they all know what Ulfric looks like). Hope that answered any possible questions!

The-Guy-That-Decide-To-Read: I'll be dropping hints about their backgrounds throughout the story, but when talking about their past, they normally won't come out and just say it unless they're talking to each other. Just keep a close eye on their conversations~

Warnings!: Description of animal skinning (not very graphic or long, but I thought I should put a warning out)

Disclaimer: I Silent Kage do not own TES:Skyrim or any of TES games mentioned. The OC's Alex, Robyn, and Liam, however, are mine.

It was late afternoon by the time Robyn and Alex, along with Liam, made it Honningbrew Meadery, which was located on the crossroads near Whiterun beside the White River. They had stopped by the smaller river, which ran into the White river, to have a small lunch and plan their next move.

"Damn it! I forgot to pick up a map of Skyrim back in Riverwood…"

Robyn shrugged and bit into one of the apples, "Oh it's fine. We can pick one up later. For now, I'm pretty sure I can get us to Witchmist Grove without getting us too turned around."

Robyn looked next to them at the two stone bridges. One crossed over the small river and followed the path North, while the other bridge crossed over the White river and headed East for a moment before turning North. If she remembered correctly, the path eventually turned back East.

"I think we should take the bridge that crosses over the White river. That road should lead us almost directly to Bonestrewn Crest, and then we can just head north to Witchmist."

Robyn tapped her chin in thought, "Kynesgrove is just North of Witchmist, so we could stay at the Inn there for the night before heading back to kill the Hagraven. Slightly off topic, but did you want to stop and get any vegetables from the farms here before we get going?"

Alex thought for a moment before shaking her head, her ears flopping a little at the quick movement, "No, I think we can survive on this food and whatever we can kill on the way, but what are we going to drink? I'd rather not die of liver failure…"

"Oh!"

Robyn turned around and started rummaging through her bag before pulling out the mead bottles from Riverwood. Emptying out the last of the mead onto the ground, Robyn passed one to Alex.

"We can fill it up in the river. Might not be the cleanest, but if we really need water, we can sip on it, and when we make camp some time tonight, we can boil it to make sure it's clean."

Alex nodded and stood up off the ground, soon followed by Robyn. They left Liam to guard their packs as they walked the short distance to the river where they carefully climbed down on the rocks to get closer to the water's surface. It took a few minutes, but both women had eventually filled up their bottles with cool water, and they made their way back to Liam and their bags.

Liam greeted them with a bark, and Robyn smiled at him, rubbing the top of his head in an affectionate manner as they repacked their bags. A few minutes later and the two women, and dog, were off, heading over the bridge. Just as they stepped off the bridge, however, they had heard a low growl, and when Robyn realized it hadn't come from Liam, her first instinct was to draw her bow and notch an arrow into place. Not a moment later and a large tan wolf charged out from the underbrush alongside the road, heading straight for them with lips pulled back in a snarl and teeth gleaming in the sunlight.

Robyn could see Alex summon her flames to her hands out of the corner of eye, and Liam was snarling next to her, but before the wolf could take another step she let the arrow fly from her bow. It sailed straight and true, and hit the wolf with a sickening crack between its eyes. The wolf instantly crumbled to the ground, dead before it even knew what had happened.

Slowly lowering her bow from its ready position, Robyn watched the wolf for any signs of life. When she deemed it dead, she sighed and put the bow back over her shoulder before turning to Alex, who was staring at her with a wide grin while her ears were perked up in an excited manner.

"That was awesome."

Robyn laughed, "I'll be honest, that scared the shit out of me. I thought it was Liam that had growled at first! Now I'm glad I learned how to shoot a bow when I was younger."

Alex nodded, "Same here. It's easy to call on my magic as quick as I did, but it still takes me a moment to actually cast the spell. I suppose I'll have time to practice while we travel though, right?"

Robyn smiled and rolled her eyes, "Of course, but first…"

Robyn turned back to the wolf and unsheathed her iron dagger from her waist. Kneeling beside the wolf, she plunged the dagger into the base of its throat and pulled down, slicing the wolf open with a single quick slice. From there, she began to skin the wolf if its fur. A few minutes later and Robyn held the hide away from her and towards Alex, who took it and draped it over a nearby rock.

"You know, I wonder…"

Robyn rolled the skinned wolf carcass onto its back and opened its inside cavity so that she could peer inside. Reaching a gloved hand inside the wolf's abdomen, she shuffled the organs around for a moment before she withdrew the wolf's stomach. It seemed slightly full from whatever it had last eaten. Robyn took her dagger to the wall of the stomach, carefully slicing it open to the point where it resembled a pouch. She found a patch of grass that wasn't covered in wolf blood and dumped out the contents of the stomach, only to give a triumphant cry.

"Ah ha! Knew it!"

Alex, who had been grimacing the entire time Robyn had been 'operating' on the wolf, peered curiously over her should to try and see what she had found, "What is it?"

"These!"

Robyn scooped something up off the ground and turned so Alex could see what she was holding. In the palm of her hands were two rings: one gold and one silver, both of which had some type of gems in them.

"Oh, I had always wondered where animals kept the jewelry on them!"

Robyn nodded and handed the bloody rings to Alex, who gingerly took them and laid them on the wolf skin behind her.

"That's why I had to check. I had first thought that maybe the rings were stuck in their teeth, maybe they had chomped down on somebody's hand and got their rings stuck, but then I continued with that and realized that maybe they had accidentally swallowed the valuables while eating their last victim."

Alex nodded her head in understanding and agreement as she watched Robyn flip the wolf carcass back on its side, "So now what?"

Robyn stood up and kept her bloody hands away from her hide armor and cloak, "Well, I for one am not up for finding out whether dog meat tastes the same as chicken, so I say we just leave it here for another wolf or sabre cat to eat."

"Yeah me either…"

Alex looked back at the bloody rings on the hide behind her, "Want me to wash the rings and try to get the blood out of the fur?"

Robyn shook her head, "No, just pass them here and I'll go do it. I have to go wash my hands anyways."

Alex nodded and passed the rings and the pelt to Robyn, who turned and carefully made her way down the rocks to the edge of the river. Thankfully, the water ran cold in the White river, so it was easy to extract the blood from the pelt and her gloves, and after a few moments of rubbing the rings in the icy water, they too sparkled, though they did have a few scratches on them. Climbing back up to Alex, Robyn handed the rings over to her.

As Alex was stashing the rings away in her own bag, Robyn moved a little distance away and snapped the pelt a few times, much like someone would do with a towel, in order to remove a lot of the excess water from it. Once she was done, Robyn turned back to Alex and held the pelt up.

"How do you suppose we could dry this while we're walking? I can't have it blocking my access to my bow or quivers…"

Alex thought for a moment, her tail swishing back and forth and her ears twitching, before she snapped her fingers.

"I have an idea. Here, give me the pelt and turn around."

Robyn did as she asked, passing the slightly damp pelt over to her Khajiit friend and turned around so that her back was facing Alex. She could feel Alex doing something with her bag, tugging at some of the straps, before a final tug and she was told to turn around.

Robyn glanced over her shoulder and could just see how Alex had tied it on her bag. It was held onto her bag with a few straps on the lower portion of it, so that it didn't prohibit her use of her bow. Most of the pelt, however, was hanging free in the air behind her legs so that it could properly dry. It brushed the back of her legs teasingly, just a little longer than where the Hide armor covered, but Robyn knew she could deal with the sensation until they set up camp in a few hours.

Checking everything over, once again, the women looked at each other with a joking expression.

"Now, let's try this again, shall we? Are we ready to go?"

Alex laughed, "I think so. Let's just be prepared for any more unwelcomed surprises this time."

"Agreed."

And, once again, Robyn, Alex, and Liam began their trek down the road. They ran into a smaller pack of wolves, only two, which allowed Robyn to get one while Alex got the other, though she had charred it to a crisp with her Flames, which made the pelt unusable. They did, however, take the time to skin Robyn's kill, and check both for any valuables. Neither had anything of value, so after washing the new pelt and tying it next to the first, they continued down the path. This continued for some time, killing wolves, and the occasional Sabre cat, and skinning them of their pelts and checking for anything valuable. After a combined effort of killing another Sabre cat, the misfit group rounded another corner on the hill side when Robyn looked up and stopped.

"Fuck, I forgot about the towers."

Alex looked up in confusion, "What are you-… God fucking Valtheim Towers!"

Across the way stood two towering stone structures that stood on either side of the river with a narrow but elaborately designed stone bridge between them. Even from their distance from the two towers, they could see two bandits walking the bridge back and forth, and at the base of the closest tower, the one that sat beside the road they were traveling on, they knew there was yet another bandit waiting to collect a "toll" from any travelers that walked by.

Alex turned to Robyn, "Got a plan?"

Robyn hesitantly shrugged, "Run past and hope they don't have any bows?"

Alex gave her a bland look before looking back over at the towers.

"How about this. There's normally only one person guarding the entrance and "collecting toll fees", so if we're quiet enough, we should, in theory, be able to kill him/her and get by without alerting the rest of them."

Robyn nodded, "Alright, but get ready to use your dagger just in case. We don't know how strong they are, and a single arrow might not take care of them like a wolf or a Sabre cat."

Alex nodded in acceptance and drew her dagger in one hand, readying her Flames spell in the other as they began creeping forward. Robyn was in the lead, closely followed by Liam, with Alex just off of her left shoulder. Idly, Robyn considered making Liam something of a horned helmet, just so he could actually do some damage when he charged in with something other than his teeth, sharp as they may be.

As they drew closer to the tower, the trio slipped into the shadows of the hill side and continued closer from there; didn't want the enemy to see them before they could have the surprise on their side.

And they were in luck. It seemed the bandit guard out front had decided to take a nap earlier, and was currently sitting with his back against the door, snoring quiet loudly. Robyn turned to Alex and the two had a silent conversation between the two of them before they decided to continue with the plan. The two of them hid in the nearby bushes as they watched the bandit sleep, and Robyn silently drew an arrow back. They could hear the bending of the bow, and the bow string tightening as she pulled it back farther and farther until the tips of her three fingers gently brushed the side of her cheek.

"Ready when you are."

Robyn's voice was a whisper as she spoke to Alex, but she heard her clearly from the short distance between the two of them, and she readied her Flames spell, ready to cast when it was needed.

"After I shoot, use your flames just in case. We don't need him jumping up and alerting the others."

Alex silently nodded, holding her hand out towards the sleeping bandit. Her ears were pinned back in concentration, and her tail was ramrod straight, stuck out behind her like a pole. Robyn breathed in once and slowly released her breath before releasing the arrow. Again, like the previous times, the steel arrow sailed true, if not a little lower than she had originally planned. Instead of his head, the arrow easily sunk into the exposed portion of the bandit's neck, waking him up with a shout of pain and agony, though no sound came out. Robyn ducked a little to the right when she felt the heat of the flames Alex sent out after, and it was long until the bandit laid dead, never able to get up to warn his fellow bandits.

Slowly, Alex and Robyn stood from their crouch in the bushes. They listened closely for any possible sound that indicated the other bandits had heard them, but when some minutes passed without anything, the two breathed a sigh a relief and stepped back onto the road. Robyn replaced her bow back on her back and turned to continue down the road when Alex, from behind her, let out a noise.

"Oh!"

Robyn turned around to watch as Alex ran past the charred remains and into the tower. Liam and Robyn shared a glance before turning back to the door to wait for Alex to reappear. A few moments later and she did just that, only this time she emerged carrying a medium sized clay pot that was filled to the brim with leeks, carrots, and potatoes.

"I'm not sure what reminded me, but I suddenly remembered that there was all of this food just inside the door there. And now we have something to boil our water in!"

Robyn rolled her eyes and pointed at the clay pot with a gloved finger, "I'll carry the vegetables, but you're stuck with the pot."

Alex's ears pinned back against her head as she complained, "What? That's not fair…."

Robyn gave her a look, "If you haven't noticed, I'm already carrying multiple pelts that are still damp and weigh a ton… I don't have a whole lot of room left for anything else."

Alex sighed, her ears drooping in defeat, "Fine, fine… help me tie it on my bag?"

Robyn nodded but motioned with her head down the road, "Sure, but let's put some distance between us and the tower first. We don't need another bandit accidently stumbling across us while we're repacking our packs."

"Oh, right. Yeah, let's go."

The two took off down the road, swiftly but silently as Liam kept pace just slightly behind them. The road began to descend downwards as it curved around another hillside, and once they could no longer see the tower, the group stopped at a small pile of rocks just off the side of the road.

Robyn made Liam lay down beside her while Alex sat the clay pot gently on the rocks, careful not to accidently crack of chip it. Robyn took off her pack next, and the two women loaded it with all of the vegetables that Alex had scavenged from the tower. Once the pot was empty, Robyn swung her pack back of her back and picked up the pot before motioning for Alex to turn around.

Alex did as instructed and turned around, which allowed Robyn to get to work securing the pot to the back of her pack. After some difficulty, which involved removing Alex's own bow and quiver to fit it on her pack, Robyn finally got the pot secured in a manner that she knew it wouldn't fall off. After that fiasco, Alex made a quick check on the pelts that were drying from the back of Robyn's pack, and confirmed that a majority of them were almost dry.

"I think we're almost to the halfway point. We should just be able to make out Bonestrewn Crest when we make the next bend in the road. I want to make it to the hot springs area before we set up camp, or at least nearby."

Alex nodded and jerked a finger over her shoulder, her tail swishing behind her in a playful manner, "Then what are we waiting for? Let's get going, we're burning daylight!"

Alex then turned and skipped ahead, leaving Robyn to roll her eyes in an amused fashion before calling Liam to her side and following after her friend. She wasn't too sure about the time of day, but she estimated that there was about four hours left of daylight. If they were lucky, they would arrive at the hot springs with enough light left to pitch camp and collect firewood for their dinner, but she didn't want to be too optimistic, especially since this was Skyrim.

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