The Fall of Battlehorn Castle

by Lohce Azcry

The jaws of Oblivion are shut, and the Third Era is dead. Cyrodiil and the rest of Tamriel stand on shaken feet as the Fourth Era begins, and on the far end of the Black Road a grand dream is dreamt. That is, until a strange island appears in the Niben Bay.

13. Journal 1

Anvil Castle Barracks

---

If I was any other guard I would say today was quiet. Hell, if I were anyone else I'd say nothing happened today: no drunks, beggars, thefts. My guard was bored and restless. Might have to expand their patrols, get them out in the wild, let them do something. But that doesn't mean this city is clean, not by a long shot. The docks are the worst. Guard gets lazy and distracted no matter how hard I train them.

But today...today it happened again. There was one report I personally attended to around noon, a minor one. A ring, tiny, bronze, gone missing. She swore she hadn't lost it, swore someone took it off her bedpost. I searched the house. Found something, but not the ring. Something someone else would've dismissed, but I fought the Gray Fox for years and I know...The front door has a glass decoration, sea shells. Classic Anvil. At the edge of the glass, not far from the keyhole, there's a small circle cut into the glass. Tiny, barley visible, but I saw it. Just big enough for a sliver of metal to slid through and tinker with a lock.

And others, too. I see it, everywhere, in these seemingly disconnected and isolated cases. A door closes awkwardly. A lock sounds different. A window's open. A shard of glass sits in a corner. A piece of metal that looks like a shard of lockpick. The air's disturbed, the row of silver is one too less, the look you get when you enter a room. That abandoned house they won't let me tear apart because it's got history tied to it. Just enough to give me caution but never giving me confirmation.

The sign of thieves. You saw it everywhere in the Imperial City, and I can't decide if it's followed me here or it's years of hunting finally taking it's toll.

Bah...maybe it has. I saw plenty of silver in her house. I don't get stacks of complaints at once about mass theft like I did in the City. It was just a ring. The Gray Fox would never let his flock take a ring where there's more to collect. Hell, regular thieves wouldn't leave a silver goblet just...just there.

I don't know anymore. I train the guards the look for these signs, see if they can catch it too. I scour anywhere they let me...but it's tiresome. And I nothing I'll do can touch the Fox here.

I probably never will.

Hieronymus Lex, 31st of Morning Star