August 20th, 2025 – New York City
With Emily’s help, the party begins to monitor the local police and rescue bands. At the same time, Hugo decides to release his hostage, and the men retreat back to their vehicle and follow Hugo back to the theater, where he relays the story of discovering and subsequently catching the man following him.
The party debates for a while longer, but before long Daphne begins to sense the presence of one of the knights again, and it seems to be in the building. The party moves down to the theater, and are approaching the stage through the house when they recognize the Summer Knight in coveralls on stage. The man gives them a grin, kicks open a road case full of explosives, and hits a button.
There’s an explosion.
The party regains consciousness in the wreckage of The Castle. The lower balcony had collapsed over the top of them and protected them from the rest of the building falling in with little more than scrapes and bruises. The party exits the theater through the front doors and discovery’s the city eerily empty. There are no signs of life, including animals. There’s a haze of dust obscuring everything.
While the rest of the team debates what had happened, Jamie has a dark suspicion. He looks across the veil and finds a bustling city filled with emergency vehicles attending the explosion. He observes paramedics removing Emma’s body from the wreckage. He informs the party that he’s pretty sure they all died in the blast.
Emma senses that everyone’s life force is extremely dimmed compared to normal, but there are two very bright ones approaching. The party confronts two people, a man and a woman wielding long knives. Mike senses from one of them they they intend to “eat their souls”. Daphne attempts to summon her sword and fails.
The man and woman charge.
Most of the group rushed outside to see what was happening, and possibly to find a way to help Hugo, if he had gotten himself in trouble. They did not have the time to do much before he came walking up the street and into the alley, though.
He started explaining that someone had left him a message about them being watched, when Daphne said she sensed one of the knights again. This time, he seemed to be inside the building. The whole group headed off to look for him, and their search led them to the theater itself.
A group of people were in the process of setting up equipment for the night’s show, and among the workers, they spotted the Summer Knight. He saw them too, he grinned at them, and then kicked open a box next to him.
The world exploded.
When they woke up, the building was in ruins. A balcony had fallen over them, shielding them from damage, but Margaret suspected pretty much everyone else was dead. They carefully made their way out of the ruins, and realised that where there should have been chaos and screaming and most likely hysterical people running around like headless chickens. Instead, it was completely quiet.
As in, not just no people, but no birds, no insects, nothing.
Then Jamie poked his head through the veil for a quick look, and then told them he had just seen someone pull one of them out of the wreckage. Clearly, they were dead. Which made little sense to Margaret; she was already dead, and the last time she had tried to enter the realm of the dead with Jamie, it had seemed pretty obvious that she was not meant to.
Of course, it was no denying that this _was_ the realm of the dead. She had no idea what that meant; would she still need blood? Was there blood to be found here at all?
Then Emma broke into their discussions, saying that she was sensing two presences approaching. Since she had no idea if she could even find blood here, it was probably careless, but Margaret decided discretion was the better part of valour, and she faded from sight.
A man appeared, seemingly friendly, except for the knife he was wearing. Mike said something about the two intending to ‘eat’ them, most likely similar to what had happened to Beth. Oh, right, she had forgotten that. Beth too had been a vampire, and they had eaten her, or her soul, or whatever.
A woman appeared as well, both of them moving towards the group, their intent now clearly hostile. As they charged, Margaret moved into position to intercept one of them, intent on taking the knife away from him.