CHAPTER THREE ♔ what's done in the dark will be brought to the light

[wynn]

♬ god's gonna cut you down - johnny cash

WHO || The Knights
WHAT || The aftermath of Chapter 2
WHERE || London, England and variou
WHEN || Evening of June 7th --> onwards
HOW || Actionspam. Single thread.

In less than twenty-four hours, everything has turned on its head.

A Knight and her allies were kidnapped by Iscariot agents for execution in Rome, barely escaping with their lives.

A mission meant to free one Knight from the influence of a dark god succeeded - at the price of another's life.

A simple recon mission at a Keijen Blade concert nearly led to two Knights committing mind-controlled suicide in front of an eager crowd.

Several Knights went to see Draken Crombe, leader of the Church of the Lord's Humanity, speak in person, and learned just how sinister his religion's dogma is.

A call from Sir Hathaway alerted Wynn to the escape of the doppelganger from the Knight's dungeons, an escape perhaps aided by Elena Gilbert.

A demigod interrupted what might have been a simple smash and grab retrieval of an artifact.

And most horrific of all, in the middle of the night, hundreds of Shadowkind in New York City awoke, and walked in a mindless trance down to the Hudson River to drown themselves. Only the quick thinking and combined efforts of the Knights present and their allies prevented all of them from succeeding.

Beset on all sides, a dark time awaits for the Knighthood - who were already suffering from the capture of Dragon's Claw Sir Thomas Bancroft at the hands of their long time enemy Dimitris Sarandis of Andres Isle.

In times such as these, the light can be difficult to find. Hope itself seems somewhere just out of reach.

Comments

[theminotaur]

[ her nose wrinkles briefly. abigail is a survivor, self-sacrifice is not something she thinks about often. hi, she helped her dad murder people to keep herself alive. ]

[mydesigns]

Do you think she loved him? [PEOPLE DO STUPID THINGS FOR LOVE OK. HE JUST PUTTING IT OUT THERE.]

[ex_ric243]

No, I don't. [This was starting to piss him off a little tho.]

[mydesigns]

[omg he's letting it go calm your tits. he doesn't like talking to people. he just wanted to sit in the room and do his creepy imagination shit.] If she was coerced, I need to know if there were opportunities when she was vulnerable. Where someone with that sort of ability could have gotten to her. That's why I asked earlier.

[theminotaur]

There was that wedding yesterday, outside the castle. Do you know if she went?

[ex_ric243]

This guy's whole deal is making opportunities for himself to get people at their most vulnerable. He could be posing as one of you, and the other wouldn't know it. Elena's capacity for caring is both her greatest strength and biggest weakness. It's something he could have easily taken advantage of, especially if he'd spent months getting to know her beforehand.

[And then, in response to Abigail's question.]

Yeah. She and I went together. She wasn't in the best place after what went down at her knighting ceremony, but she wanted to be there for her friend.

Before that, she expressed to me that she felt she didn't fit in here. That no one knew her outside of a small group of people--and even then, no one really knew her but me. But she was also worried that people would assume she had something to do with what Kyp helped to orchestrate. Why would she turn around and help him if that's exactly what she didn't want people assuming?

[mydesigns]

I understand that part, but I honestly don't think Kyp did it to her. He wasn't trying to escape. It had to have been someone else, someone he had been working for. Someone who thought he was worth saving, and knew enough about Elena — if not her relationship with him, at least what she was — to use her as a piece in their chess game.

[brokenteacup]

[ abigail shifts uncomfortably. she doesn't want to upset this guy, but it sounded as it there was some nature versus nurture going on and she can't help superimposing kyp's narcissistic personality and elena's compassionate one over hannibal and will. will wound up in a cage, eating an ear (not that he remembers, thank god), and hannibal only gave him a gentle nudge in that direction. it's a really weird, creepy familiarity and she doesn't like it. ]

They could have threatened Elena's friends and family, you, in order to force her hand. [ a beat as she tugs on her scarf. ] Breadcrumbs. Would she have, would she have thought of that?

[ex_ric243]

[Wow this was not helping to ease his mind, y'all. Especially if he had somehow been part of the reason Elena was coerced into something she oterwise wouldn't do. He decides to focus on Abigail's question though, because at least in that scenario Elena is actively trying to help herself.]

I wouldn't put it past her. Elena's smart. If she was able to leave behind some sort of message or trail, she would have.

[notaroundme]

[Even a brief search of the room would uncover a few rather obvious things.

One, her bed is entirely unmade, the sheets and comforter in complete disarray. Given the face that the rest of her room is very tidy, it's safe to say that she's either been not sleeping very well lately or she's been spending a lot of time in said bed.

Two, her cell phone is on the nightstand next to her desk, still on.

Three, her bookcase has an entire row filled with books that have no spines. Pulling one from the shelf would prove them to be personal journals, which she has written in almost every day since she came through the Veil.]

[mydesigns]

[he takes all of the shit in her room in — he'd probably do a quicker job if people would stop talking and get off his dick, just sayin'. he sees the journals (spot 34) and picks one up off the self and flips through it briefly just to confirm what it is. and then another one, just to confirm they're probably all like that.] Did you know she kept journals?

[ex_ric243]

[Bitch, we used to live in The Vampire Diaries. Is that even a question.]

Yeah. She wrote in those things just about every day.

[mydesigns]

[he grabs the journal at the end, bcuz logic would dictate that that's where the most recent one would go right??? /actual detective working here. except not. but look it's either going to be here or hidden under her pillow or something and her room seems too neat and tidy otherwise. he flips to the very last entry in her journal, and walks back over to ric with it. while skimming over it himself.] If she left something in her journals, maybe some kind of code, do you think you'd know what she was talking about? [he's harking back to the breadcrumbs theory.]

[ex_ric243]

Possibly. [Assuming she'd leave it for him, but she had people here that she'd known longer. Or, at least that she could remember knowing longer than she could remember knowing him.

Oh I guess he is supposed to look, huh? I am just going to roll the dice and add the modifier once I know what type of check this is supposed to be (he got a 13 for the base tho).]

[notaroundme]

[The last entry is from about 24 hours ago, after she got home from Vi and Luthir's wedding. Her handwriting is neat, but still feels rushed, and there's a spot or two on the page where something wet hit the ink and made it smear slightly.

I finally had a clear dream last night, but I almost wish I hadn't. Because it looks like it wasn't a dream at all. It was real.

KB wanted to talk to me, of all people, and it looks like I wasn't the only one. He came to talk to B&D too, and I'm not sure he's lying about what he came to say.

I was relieved, at first, because I thought I might be going crazy. But I know that dream was real, because I wasn't the only one that had it. B&D didn't mention anything else, though, so-

-I don't know. Maybe I am going crazy, after all.

V's wedding was beautiful. Some things people said...got me thinking. I have to go see H tomorrow morning, to be sure. After that...that'll make the rest of the decision for me.

Or maybe I've already made it either way.

Other than the fact that she's replaced people's name with initials, there doesn't appear to be anything coded in the message.]

[mydesigns]

[i guess it didn't need to be coded to be suitably melodramatic. ~teenagers~.] Who are all these initials?

[ex_ric243]

"V" is obviously Violet. [Alaric use your brain, you're smarter than this (wisdom 19).] "B" could Buffy. One of her friends. [Thanks for the assist, Vi.] Not sure who "D" is [Sorry, Des, Elena never mentioend you.], but there's a group currently investigating some singer named Keijen Blade. I don't know what else "KB" would stand for. "H" is probably Helen Magnus. She's been fielding questions for Elena, and helping her understand doppleganger physiology.

[That was probably less helpful than they hoped, but apparently Elena wasn't in the mood to share this shit with him ever.] She looked tired at Vi's wedding. [It seems like a random thought, but since that entry just reminded/confirmed some shit that he had just assumed was her dealing with the fallout over Kyp and the state of her bed, he figured it might be relevant.] She never mentioned any of this stuff about a shared dream to me though.

[mydesigns]

Makes sense. I don't think she's been sleeping well. [he saw her fucking bed ok.] How well do you know Helen Magnus?

[ex_ric243]

[She's my wife.] We work pretty closely together. [Both in the Hoard and co-parenting wayward children. :')]

[mydesigns]

Can you call her?

[ex_ric243]

[Sure the fuck can. He's got her on speed dial. Ring ring, gurl.]

[mydesigns]

Put her on speaker. [he doesn't want to hold the phone and he also doesn't want to have to ... relay info back to ric. less talking for him ok.]

[ex_ric243]

You're on speaker. [Because it was just rude not to let someone know.]

I'm here with former FBI profiler Will Graham. [And his nameless sidekick.] We're looking through Elena's room right now, and her last journal entry mentioned you.

Specifically, it sounded like some big decision was dependent upon talking to you first. Did Elena happen to call or come see you at any point after Vi's wedding?

[theminotaur]

[ while this is all going down, abigail will just be silently rooting through elena's shit (search 25), listening carefully to the speaker phone conversation. doppelgängers are incredibly rare, she's v interested in elena's life. ]

[mydesigns]

[i'm just c-ping bc this is going to be too fucking obnoxious for me to keep track of like a month from now when i have to backread or smth lmao.

"Ric, I don't think this is something we should be discussing right now. She came to me as a patient." ]

Hi, this is Will. She said talking to you would make "the decision" for her, and she wrote that yesterday. What you know could help us find her. I understand doctor-patient confidentiality, but if she's in danger right now, you withholding information isn't going to help anyone, least of all her. [i'm not even gonna do a diplomacy roll bc will graham and tact don't live in the same neighborhood.]