iii. video. open, then unseelie-locked. backdated to the end of september, ~29-30th

[vrykolakas]

       [UNLOCKED: VISIBLE TO ALL.]

[Candlelight laps at the dim image of the Brucolac's face, showing up mottled scars along his cheeks. His expression is tired. Whether it's the light or exhaustion, his olive skin looks faintly greenish.]

Alyosha of Redgate is dead by the hand of Reynard the Fox.

[It's not a lie. She is exactly as deceased as he is. He sighs out a breath, tches faintly, and moves on, his hoarse, scratchy voice impassive.]

Unrelatedly, I require information on the thief who stole the feathers of the birdking. He wasn't found? Did anyone pick up a trail?

[He knows he wasn't found. Hence (partly) the current sticky situation he's in.]


       [LOCKED TO UNSEELIE.]

I'm at Caer Scima.

[He hisses through his teeth, rubs his forehead; his head is pounding, thick knots of tension twisting in his temples, pain shooting down his neck, bursting behind his eyes, tightening his jaw. Bone-dry and grimly humourous, he says:]

If anyone, preferably human, feels they have a surplus of blood.

[That sentence is left unfinished, the conclusion—in his mind, at least—obvious.]


       [LOCKED TO ALICE & BERSERKER.]

[Flatly:]

What the fuck happened.

- - - -

[ooc: I realised too late that dating it this way means it went up a few days before new arrivals, damn it! but PLEASE feel free to have any newbies reply a few days late, if you so wish. c: ]

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[erythristic]

[she shuts the door gently and crosses to take her own seat, folding her arms and fixing her gaze on him.]

Tell me everything.

[it's said in a tone that implies maybe I can help. she will not grieve for Alyosha, but she had hoped to see her again, and with Reynard...perhaps there was a way to get close to him, expose his weakness.]

[vrykolakas]

There is a vampir called Tzilan, a crime king, who holds court with his criminal subjects in ever-changing secret locations; he was a mentor to Alyosha when she first came to the Drabwurld. I accompanied another Unseelie Shardbearer to said court on a mission for Morla, to sway Tzilan's affections.

He was unimpressed. At first. There were complications. [He barks a dry laugh.] Safe to say I and my companion were about to be killed before Alyosha and her men spoke for me. [It was Harry, really, who had stepped out—but how much can he tell her of Harry's involvement? He doesn't know how loyal to Morla she is, but he knows she's more loyal than he.] There is a system of challenges in the Midnight Court. They are, by necessity, fights to the death; they take place on some—dais, some altar, a puissant, necronomical thing.

[His fingers flex and he sucks in air through his teeth.]

As I said. She challenged the Court before we could be murdered. Half rhetorically. [For a moment he looks like he might spit something about the sheer stupidity of it but he knows he can't talk, and so the expression passes by, just a brief spasm of bitter frustration.] She's known for what she is. Bluffing with her new scars and her old reputation, banking on others' fear. I assume she didn't know he was there. Her face implied as much when he stepped from the shadows. He accepted. He won.

It was set up. All to get the Fox on that fucking dais. The moment she was stuck and thrown clear, Tzilan's right hand man set Berserker on him, and Alice too. And then they brought the place down on him.

He got away. I don't know in what state.

[erythristic]

[she's quiet as he speaks and for a time after, taking the information and categorizing it, remembering it. this Tzilan...so he sacrificed his protege to go after Reynard. cruel but effective.

it was a regrettable loss, if you were the sort to regret things. it may mean they've lost Redgate as an ally and resource, it meant that there was going to be no leader at the front who could be appealed to with a certain rate of success, and this Midnight Court...six months felt like an even shorter amount of time than it already did, and for every answer they may unearth there are ten more questions.]

What of Berserker and Miss Liddell?

[she'll have to research as much as she can, as well as figure out who or what could be a reliable source of information of what was happening in Redgate in the coming weeks. and there needs to be a way of keeping an eye on the movements of Reynard -- if she has to do it personally she will. first what happened with the professor, now this.]

[vrykolakas]

[Cruel but effective. The Brucolac knows he'd do the same, given the information, given the time to come to the same conclusions; much as Tzilan may anger him, it's with a long-cold resignation that he accepts such necessary evils. What he's done to Alyosha, after all, is just as cruel, if far more rash. (And he can't help but pride himself, somehow, terribly, that he acted when Tzilan hung back, and that Fortuna had remarked on his master's uncertain ambivalence towards Alyosha's turning).

And yet where the hell is Reynard, and what have they actually achieved?]

Inexplicably alive.

[erythristic]

As expected.

[she lets out a long sigh after coming to her conclusions, adjusting her glasses and folding her arms.]

Must every diplomatic mission we are sent on culminate in catastrophe?