Played

We are all fools. We are cards in a deck, being shuffled and wheeled and dealed by a player that we all underestimated.

He was never incompetent. It was all part of his game. His game. Not ours.

Thage makes it sound like we're all pieces in a game but what she didn't know, what she never realised, is that any time our pieces engaged the Black Bishop, his piece started a game with our pieces and their pieces started a game with their pieces and while we were busy patting ourselves on the back for outwitting him in one game, he was flanking us in another. Every move he has made has been a gambit. He offers one gambit, accepts another and declines a third.

He's been manipulating us. It was all a game, a horrible, convoluted, ingenious game. He wanted her with him, he wanted me dead, he wanted Robert destroyed. He knew Ava and I would come for the Heel and he waited. He knew the Labyrinth would be too strong for me, he knew he would get Ava alone. If she accepted his offer, he would be able to get her on his side and have me killed. When she declined, he let us go, knowing that I would be delivered into his hands and that he could use Ava's love for me to manipulate her. He set up my game with two outcomes. If you all voted for me, then he would get to kill me, break Ava and bring her to his side. If you all voted for Catherine, then he would break me, turn me against you all and then I would drive Ava into his waiting arms for him.

Then Robert came along and tried to ruin his game. But he adapted the game. He knew Robert would be broken by the Path of Black Leaves, he had Fairfax under this thumb a few hours later and Robert's mind smashed a little after. He put Revenants on guard duty to make it seem like he didn't want us getting Robert, but it was just a ploy. The Revenants he picked were the least competent at his disposal, we fought our way past them easily. We got overconfident. We thought it would be a breeze and we were right; we got Robert and we were on our way.

But he took her. He took her and he knew that I would go back for her, like a bear running into a beartrap. He knew I would fight instinctively, forgetting that I was weak and human again. He beat me into submission with all the military precision of a war machine, the same military precision with which he makes all his moves. He tried to kill me and only for Tony's intervention, he would have succeeded. But it doesn't matter. My death would have been a mere bonus to his real prize.

Ava.

He took my Ava and I couldn't stop him. I couldn't even lift a finger in protest.

We've been played for fools. And I'm not just talking to my friends, I am talking to my enemies too. Tensor, Morningstar, if you actually think that you are his allies, then you are sadly mistaken. Redlight is playing his own game, a game of his own devising. Don't pretend to know the rules; the rules are all in Red's head.

I don't know what to do. He will anticipate any move I make. Oh, we've all been such idiots! Every time we sat behind our computers and iPods and pointed and laughed at him, mocked him for his incompetency, gloated in victory, it was all a lie! Every time we thought we'd struck a wound against him, any time we thought we'd breached his defenses, he was just distracting us while he built another wall around us!

I have to get her back. I can't let her go. I love her.