Clusterfrag

Max exchanges a disapproving glance with Doc, and interjects,

"Are you saying your master was practicing blood magic?"

Dragesh frowns at Max.

"Absolutely not... Darius abhorred that sort of thing. He would never even consider it. I'd stake my life on that."

To Doc, the gaunt man shrugs.

"I passed by the library one day and heard him reading aloud, though I didn't catch any words other than blood magic."

The footage begins to tick back, frame by frame. The elf squints at the vid-screen.

"I don't think there was--oh, wait! There it is!"

He freezes the frame. In it, Darius McLeod is opening the door to his dormitory. In the corner of the frame, at the end of the hallway is a small, almost imperceptible blur.

Adams scratches his chin,

"Do you remember what day this was? Are records kept of which students and teachers checked out books?"

Tyros frowns, "I recognize the chitin. It comes from a Palestine Yellow Scorpion. An awakened insect. Its sting is very deadly. It may explain the penetration in Darius' foot. Doc, anyway to confirm the scorpion's venom was the cause of death? If it is the culprit, the question is how the hell it got here."

Turning to Dragesh with a serious expression, "You happened to be passing the library and hear our master reading aloud about blood magic? Why was he reading aloud and about such a taboo subject? Did you not confront him about this? I simply cannot believe that our master would be so foolish as to not only dabble in the study of that art, but to do so openly."

Val scans the freeze-frame image of the hallway.

"I don't see..."

Val raises an inquisitive eyebrow as his eyes find the indistinct blur on the monitor. He glances sideways at Sinjin. "Good fragging eye, 'mano. What the hell is it?"

Val stabs a finger at the artifact and addresses the elven security technician. "Can you zoom the frame in here and adjust the resolution to compensate?"

The technician pulls up a handful of programs.

"It can't be a visual artifact, not at this resolution..."

The image sharpens as bits of code work to adjust the image's lighting.

"It looks like... I mean, could that it..."

On the monitor is what looks like the open palm of a disembodied hand, floating towards Darius' door.

<Hey Tyros I think you need to get a look at this.... trideo picked up some sort of disembodied....hand...making its way to Darius' quarters shortly before his death. Im no expert, but I dont believe in ghosts. I guess that leaves magic as the likely source...>

As Sinjin's attention returns to the security monitors, Val cant help but notice that the whites of his eyes are slightly more defined than they had been. The orc's composure is under control, but every few moments his eyes flicker to the corners of the room, chasing phantoms.

Val's eyes flick from the monitor to Sinjin and back again. He stands up abruptly and makes a rapid circuit of the chair he had been sitting in.

"Oh, hell no. Frag this, 'mano. Frag this drek to fragging hell."

Val runs a hand through his hair, trying to calm his fraying nerves.

Max comms back to Sinjin with an affirmation,

<We're on our way.>

The elf moves decisively toward the security array.

Having searche the entirety of Darius' room, Tyros feels confident they've found everything that could be of value. Following Max out the door to go look at the security tape, Tyros turns his head toward Dragesh, "A conversation with someone would make more sense than reading aloud. When was this exactly?"

Switching to comm, <"Val, can you pull up the security tape from the library and see if Darius was talking to someone there a couple days before his death?">

"Perhaps last Thursday... yes, I would say last Thursday. Sometime in the afternoon."

Dragesh's eyes widen a bit.

"I just remembered--that was the day that the representative from the Brotherhood of the Fist paid us a visit!"

Adams raises an eyebrow,

"How about you explain who exactly that is while we walk to the security station?" He asks Dragesh.

Dragesh leads the remaining runners to where Val and Sinjin are reviewing video footage.

"The Brotherhood of the Fist is an order of mystical adepts. They're similar to our order in that they have a long history of Scottish lineage. We've tried several times in the past to form a sort of alliance with them, to help strengthen our cause--never to any satisfactory conclusion. Come to think of it, it is a bit strange that they sent a representative out of the blue. The more I think about this, the more suspicious it all seems."

Though still shaken, Val gathers some of his composure as the rest of the team enters the surveillance center.

"You're just in time. Our friend here was about to cue up the library footage. In the meantime..."

Val gestures to one of the monitors, where the footage segment of the floating hand plays on repeat. Val watches it once through, and discreetly averts his eyes.

Tyros watches the video of the hand, frustrated for the first time that cameras cannot record anything in the astral spectrum. (roll magical theory to see if I can pick up anything interesting about the spell. Could it be a physical adept ability?)

Tyros recalls a legend he heard, as a youth, of an awakened spirit that took the form of a disembodied hand. It could be called upon only to commit murder and the summoner had to pay a terrible price to coax it into obedience. The spirit's name was Zhiago. It was the stuff of campfire ghost stories... or so he thought.

"It can't be...", Tyros mutters, stunned by the possibility of the spirit's involvement.

"What do the tapes show of Darius in the library the Thursday before he died? If that hand is what I think it is, the murderer is capable of summoning extremely potent spirits, and there are probably a limited number with that ability within the brotherhoods. Certainly it would take a very special mystical adept to succeed in this area."

The technician dabs at the control panel a few times and an image of Darius sitting at a long wooden table appears on the screen. The man seated opposite him is hooded and is seated (perhaps purposefully) so that his face is not visible on camera.

"Having some trouble with audio," grumbles the elf with a frown. His fingers skip across the glass controls.

Val steps up behind the technician and peers over his shoulder.

"What sort of trouble? Maybe I can lend a hand?"

As Val steps up to the console, he snags a peek at what the technician is doing, before the elf whisks over to a different program. He's shut off the cameras in the room they're in!

Val's eyes widen as he absorbs what the technician just did. He's not sure of the elf's motive, but he's damn sure it isn't good.

Uncertain of what else to do, Val throws a hasty sucker punch at the back of the elf's head. "Secure the tech, now!"

Max rushes forward and puts the elf in a choke hold-- his left arm clenched under his neck with its fingers locked in the crook of the right arm. Max's right hand is craned around behind the elf's head, pushing it forward as his left arm constricts back. Pulling the tech to his feet, Max swiftly kicks his feet out from under him-- bring the pair of them to the floor on the security tech's face. It is a swift and brutal maneuver; Max has been practicing indeed.

"TALK, DREGBAG! TALK NOW OR YOU NEVER WILL AGAIN!"

Max continues to constrict his grip on his fellow elf as the tech gags and grasps fruitlessly at the arm around his throat.

Tyros steps forward, "Val, see of you can get the library footage back up with audio? We need to know who that is."

Turning to the tech who was tampering with the video feed, Tyros calmly places a hand on the man's forehead (centering) and delves into his memory (mind probe, f4; why was he tampering with the tape and what does he know about Darius' death).

Val nods tersely and steps to where the elf was standing at the surveillance console.

The fraggin' bag never hurt that much, Val thinks distantly as he quits massaging the back of his right hand and begins tapping away at the glowing display. His hand hovers over the command sequence for turning the cameras back on, but one glance at the technician's rapidly bluing face amidst Max's artful exhibition of submission techniques quickly dissuades him from executing it.

He flips through various programs and returns to the monitor control module. He reloads the video feed from the library and begins troubleshooting the audio track to determine if there was a problem in the first place, and if so, whether he can restore it.

The elf struggles in Max's grasp, teeth gnashing and spittle frothing on his lips.

Tyros dives into the swirling, complex miasma of sensations that is the technician's mind.

(( PM'd. ))

((I'm assuming Tyros doesn't recognize the hooded man's voice from the memory?))

Tyros frowns at the tech struggling in Max's grasp. "He is doing the bidding of the man in the hooded robe from the video under threat I death. The Hooded Man references the spirit, Zhiago, that we see entering Darius' room. We've got to find out who he is! Val, any chance we can follow this guy around with other surveillance cameras to see when and where he came into the building. He must have IDed himself at some point. Hopefully we can get an angle that shows us the face beneath his hood too." There is a hint of desperation in the big troll's voice. Tyros has tried to remain somewhat dispassionate during the investigations in order to keep emotion from clouding judgement, but the stress of doing so is clearly getting to him.

Knowing that the team has gotten all they will from the security technician, Max tightens his choke hold on him further until he feels the elf go limp. It is a not a sleep Max envies.

Val nods to Tyros without looking at him. His fingers dance along the illuminated glass display as he makes a last-ditch effort to diagnose the audio problem on the library footage. He then moves on to surveying footage from cameras at the periphery of the complex, looking for any sign how the hooded man may have gained entry to the Brotherhood's facility.

Dragesh squints at the display.

"That's the tabard of the Brotherhood of the fist... but, something doesn't seem right. They never cover their faces--it would be an affront to their honor."

Looking back to the monitor loop of the disembodied hand, Sinjin comments, "Something tells me whoever did this is not overly bound by honor..."

"Somebody wanted Darius dead and wanted the blame to fall on the Fists."

Dragesh sinks heavily into one of the chairs in front of the monitor. His gaze hovers over the still of Zhiago.