Some time later

A week had passed since Faelith had arrived in Thornhold. Eni had been a saint and gotten her some everyday clothes she could wear but even then most of it was still revealing. She spent most of her time at the guardhouse, trying to sort through the endless list of requests, petitions, and inquiries. By the end of the week, she and Guardsman Oggars had gone through and filed all the documents from then to ten months prior. To her dismay, it seemed that recovering her items was a lost cause. There were only two things that she was sure she wanted: the sword and her money. Of all the stolen goods, those were the most important. Without the sword, it would be hard to defend herself. Not that she couldn't fight in any number of martial combat styles without it, she just preferred to rely on that specific weapon.

The second, the thousand gold she carried, meant that she was not only dependent on finding a job that could pay her wages, but it meant that she would be near wholly dependent on Eni's charity. Technically, Eni should just be letting her stay at the inn for free with accommodations. Faelith was a knight from the capital, after all. But Faelith didn't want to take advantage of the sweet girl. Thinking about her also made Faelith think about what she had seen with the orc. It made her a little uncomfortable, knowing that Eni would sell herself like that. Especially to someone like an orc.

Now that she thought of it... Faelith hadn't seen any orcs in town. Who was he? And where had he come from? The town had an incredibly diverse set of races but only humans occupied the tavern the past few nights.

"Excuse me, Miss Faelith?" Guardsman Oggars' soft voice snapped her out of her stupor. He had been working in the office as well. After seeing her organize the reports, he'd listened to her every suggestion. "I'm about to leave for my shift at the gate. What are you gonna do? Continue filing these?"

Faelith looked down at her own work. She'd hardly processed anything she had looked at since noon. "I think I'll go patrol and clear my head."

"Wait. Alone?" Oggars asked.

"Yes."

"I don't know..." The boy bit his lip nervously. "You haven't really been here all that long and the city isn't what it used to be. You sure that you'll be fine? I could..." Oggars was cut off when Faelith gave him a fierce glare.

"I am a Knight of the Goldenleaf Order, not a child. I can fend for myself." Faelith put the last file in its place. While cleaning up the building, she had found some old guard uniforms that she could use. She also took a sword with her, the best that she could find, but weapon maintenance was another thing that was severely lacking.

The town was at its usual semi-busy, afternoon crowd. Faelith attracted all sorts of stares of course, but the men who would normally ogle and call out to her, held their tongues as they noticed the guard uniform and sword on her hip. Their hesitation made the elf smirk. As she entered the East side of the town she found it much more empty than the West side. What looked to be like inns, taverns, and shops had been boarded up and seemingly abandoned for years.

Faelith spent a few hours patrolling the area, finding nothing of interest. There were loiters, homeless, but other than that, nothing. The sun was beginning to set and Faelith decided she would end her route. However, just as she turned to leave, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. Three men skulked in an adjacent street, just barely out of view. The three made their way towards a seemingly run down building. It was clearly an abandoned store.

Faelith furrowed her brows in suspicion. One of the men, bald with a scar on the side of his neck, tried the handle and found that it was locked. "Any luck, man?" His companion with unruly brown hair and a scraggly beard asked. The bald man shook his head and their third, a younger man in his early twenties took out a lock pick and kneeled down beside the door to examine it.

Faelith wasn't about to let a possible crime happen right in front of her. "Stop right there!" The elf commander ordered. Her eyes narrowed. She rushed towards the men. The three turned to see her running at them.

"Who the hell are you?" The scraggly man who asked revealed a blade and pointed it at Faelith. He had unruly brown hair and a scraggly beard.

"She's wearing a guard uniform!" The lockpick shouted. "But I thought that—"

The bald man shot him a silencing glare. He drew his own sword and he and the scraggly man readied themselves for a fight.