While Jonas had said that they'd give their prisoners a few minutes before they woke them up, Elmo was a little surprised when they'd only waited about a minute after finishing deciding what to do with them when Jonas told Elin to heal them.
He'd bound them, though Elmo couldn't exactly say with what or where he'd gotten the bindings from, just that he could tell that their captives wouldn't be able to fry and get away. Then as soon as Jonas stepped away from them, turned to Elin.
"Heal them. Who knows how long it'd take for them to wake up if we just let them wake up on their own," he said. "This will help us interrogate them faster."
Elin nodded and walked over to the men, kneeling down next to them. "Minor Heal," Elin said, touching each of them.
At first nothing seemed to happen. They stayed like they were, unconscious, other than the minor bleeding they had from Elmo's spell stopping. Then Elmo heard them let out a soft groan. He was confident they were coming to, though he still couldn't figure out what Jonas was intending to do.
The man who had spoken to Elmo seemed to be the first to realize that he had been bound while he was out. "Hey! What gives!?" he cried, clearly startled.
Jonas merely grabbed the front of his tunic or shirt, Elmo couldn't figure out what exactly it was, and pulled the man to his feet. "You're going to answer our questions now if you hope to see the dawn again," Jonas said flatly.
"You gonna put my eyes out if I don't?" the man sneered.
Jonas merely smiled as if they were having a casual conversation under normal circumstance. "Oh, that would be too easy for you," he replied cheerfully. "No, what'll happen is you'll die knowing that everyone you've ever cared about will be joining you soon. What you did will ensure that their deaths will be swift and clean while you'll be able to meet them wherever people go when they die. That will happen if you don't tell us what we want to know."
The man paled for a moment before he glared at Jonas. "The king would never allow that. He's too soft."
Jonas chuckled as if he found the man's response funny. "Maybe, but who's to say the king needs to know?" Jonas asked and the man paled again. "After all, you and your friends set all this up without the king knowing, right? So, it wouldn't be too hard to… exterminate a few pieces of vermin from the streets, right? It'll be written off as unfortunate 'accidents' or other criminal activity."
"H-hey, they have nothing to do with this!" the man pleaded, though Elmo suspected Jonas didn't have him in as much of a corner as he'd expected Jonas to have done already.
"Well, then answer our questions and you won't need to worry about that," Jonas replied. "You might even be able to return to them someday."
The man seemed to brighten at that, but his eyes, shimmering with tears in the moonlight, looked like they were trying to find any possible way to escape.
"Wh-what do you want to know?" the man said. "I'll tell you anything!"
Jonas motioned to Lance. "Ask him what you want," he said as he shifted the captive to face Lance.
Lance nodded and stepped close enough for the captive to see him in the darkness. "Why was my sister targeted?" he said, his voice thick with his anger.
"Sh-she wasn't!" the man protested. "The king was the target! Him and his son! When the first attempt failed, we were told that we wouldn't be allowed to let anyone leave until we could be sure the king and his son were dead!"
Elmo suspected the man was starting to get hysterical. He wouldn't be surprised if his answers stopped making sense soon. Especially with how threatening Jonas and Lance seemed to be at the moment. He wasn't sure how the guy would react if he learned the king was here too. One thing he decided he wasn't going to do, no matter what, was clean this guy up if he lost control of himself because he got too scared from this interrogation.
"Alright, who gave the orders?" Lance asked, sounding a little more reasonable, to the point the man let out a sigh of relief, though, his eyes still shone with fear.
"It was Keith," the man said.
"My father's chamberlain?" Lance snapped, anger returning to his voice in full force.
"Yes!" the man whimpered. "He said it was directed by your father!"
Lance's eyes bulged with anger and probably was about to kill the man, but Jonas quickly intercepted Lance's attack. "There's no way to confirm that your father was a part of this," Jonas said.
"My father wasn't a part of this!" Lance spat. "Maybe he'd be willing to let that happen to my, but not to Samantha!"
"Who's to say the one who gave the orders lied to this man?" Jonas asked. "It wouldn't be that hard to do."
"What're you saying?" Lance growled.
"That your father may be getting setup as the scapegoat in this," Jonas replied calmly. "I don't know what's going on here, but if there was some kind of disagreement or bad blood between him and the king, it would make it more believable. So-"
"I'm not going to let you accuse my father like this!" Lance roared, his eyes bulging with rage.
Jonas sighed and gave a quick chop to Lance's throat. "Calm down and actually listen," Jonas said. "I'm not accusing him. I'm merely stating that if there's some kind of issue between him and the king, then it would make him an easier target to place the blame on. After all, I'm pretty sure he's not here tonight, right? So, if, like you say, he's not involved, then we need to get to the bottom of this or it's quite possible that your father will be made to pay for this."
Lance's expression started to shift from between enraged and horrified, his mind clearly processing what he'd just been told.
"Lord Lance," the king said, stepping next to him. "If nothing else occurs tonight, I'll be sure to give your father the benefit of the doubt when it comes to investigating this."
Lance looked at the king for a few minutes before sighing. He didn't say anything more, but just nodded. He then shuffled back to where his sister was, looking like a shadow of how he was through the evening up until this point.
Elmo looked at the king, unsure if things would continue in this manner. He wasn't sure if he wanted to stick around if that was the case. Especially with how things were getting rather dicey with what they were learning from this one prisoner of theirs.
"Enough of this," the king said, his voice commanding and drawing Elmo's attention despite his efforts to look away. "Tell me what the plan was tonight. All of it."
"The plan already failed," the man said, sounding rather defeated at seeing the king. "You're still alive and out of the manor. Even when the catapults launch the oil and naphtha, you won't burn alive like you were supposed to."
"What if the catapults were disable somehow?" Jonas asked, his voice drawing the man's gaze away from the king.
"Then the doppelgangers would be released," the man said.
"Doppelgangers?" Elmo asked, the horror he felt at the lone doppelganger he'd seen before threatening to pull him under before he was even aware it was there.
"Yes," the man replied gravely. "Keith said there were four of them. That they would ensure no one escaped." The man paused looking like he was remembering something horrific that he'd much rather forget, but couldn't. "The demonstration also showed what would happen if we tried to back out of what we'd agreed to do tonight."
Jonas nodded. "I think I've learned all I need to know," he said, letting go of the man, who crumpled to the ground. Not that he showed any sign of being aware of that fact.
"Don't you want to know where these, uh, doppelgangers are?" the king asked.
Jonas shook his head. "I won't need to. They're coming for whoever is still alive," Jonas replied. "On top of that, it seems there's four of them. They'll find us sooner or later and when they do, we'll have to deal with them fast. Otherwise we won't be able to stop them at all."
"You say this like you've faced whatever these doppelgangers are," the king replied, his brave front starting to crack to the point that Elmo could even see that he was starting to get scared.
"Yes we have," Jonas replied. "A good friend of mine nearly died from that encounter. It was mere luck that she didn't die. Though, that was just with one doppelganger. I don't know what'll be the outcome with four, but we'll just have to wait and see when we face them."