Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-5824038-20141217155427/@comment-5583506-20150120194306

Valkyrie had begun looking into the earliest known cases behind the killer. There was a pattern, yet she was too blind to see it.

"I don't get it", she sighed and slammed her forehead into the table.

"What is it that you don't understand, mistress?" asked Gastas.

"Everything!" she exclaimed and tipped the table with every document concerning the case. "I have gone through every bloody little detail there is to this case, but this one criminal is definitely something different than anything I have faced before. He eludes me all the time! Everytime I think I am seeing the pattern, he eludes me! I am so sick of it!"

She slammed her clenched fist into a wooden pillar. "Dammit all to hell!"

"Calm down, mistress. I am sure that..."

"Calm down?!" said Valkyrie and bit together. "I have never been proven wrong! Never! Except for..."

"Your sister?"

"Yeah..." She nodded slowly. "My sister... Rest her soul easy, because I know I don't get to rest easy. You don't have a saying in this, Gastas? How come a criminal can enter a mansion without as much as opening the window or using the chimney? The mansions were heavily guarded and I have found no proof that there was invisibility involved in the process so that rules magic out. How does he do it? How?"

The Dunmer could tell that his mistress was close to the breaking point. It was understandable. She dedicated her life for moments like this. This was what she lived for. And now she was being beaten in her own game by some criminal no one had ever heard about. It was... humiliating, to say the least.

"What if...?" he began but cut himself short. "What if he didn't break in?"

"Are you suggesting he simply walked in through the front door? That wouldn't make any sense. I have already ruled out invisibility spells and potions. The effect leaves a translucent and sticky essense which is almost impossible to see unless you know where to look and I couldn't find anything in the mansion. And I have already spoken with each and every guard, I could tell that none of them were lying and none of them were bribed to look the other way."

"No, what I am saying is that he walked in there without invisibility spells and without bribed guards. Have you checked whether or not their stories match each other?"

"What are you onto, Gastas?" she sighed and sat down by the wall.

"I believe... that this case might require you to open your eyes for the more... overlooked matters in most cases, mistress."

As the Dunmer left the room, Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. "What?"

She got up and adjusted the table and went back to scanning through the documents. She knew that the answer was there right in front of her, yet she failed to see it. Then it hit her.

''What Gastas said... The guards... He didn't use invisibility... He went straight in and shot the nobles... No potion... No invisibility... But what if... What if... The guards... Does their stories match each other?''

She checked through the eyewitness account and read the quoted texts of the guards. It suddenly became all the more clear to her. The guards stories matched each others perfectly, even though they had been positioned on different places all over the mansion, rendering it impossible for them to share the same story about the same night. Yet she knew that they hadn't been bribed or that they had been lying... They had been telling her the truth, only... that it had been a fabricated truth... created by a single mind...

She finally understood. "GASTAS!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, mistress?" asked the Dunmer as he entered her study.

"Do you... do you believe that this criminal could possess some sort of..." She shuddered at the very thought of it. "Mind-controlling ability? I don't mean like telepathy, but some sort of power that makes him able to make people say what he wants them to say? Makes them do as he commands? The power to edit memories and consciousness?"

Gastas smiled slyly. "Everything is possible, mistress. But I do believe... as I have said... that this case might require you to widen your view of what you deem is possible... and what you deem as impossible..."

She nodded. "I see. I'd really not like this to be the case. If it is true that this criminal possesses some sort of supernatural power of the mind, then I might not be able to defeat him. But as you said: everything is possible. If it's true, then it would definitely explain why the guards share the same story. He had simply come up with a story that they 'hadn't seen anyone that night' or something like that, and then given them some instructions on what had happened that night."

She shrugged. "He has made his first mistake. If he had come up with unique story for each and everyone of them, I would never have catched him." She smiled at the Dunmer. "Thank you, Gastas. With this new perspective I will be able to continue my research."

The Dunmer bowed elegantly. "Always a pleasure, ma'am."