of those swirling lines is actually an elvin rune, spelling out her name. But the symbol was used to mark the entrance to her original Nightfall facility in Atlantis, so calling it the Nightfall symbol is still accurate.
Sadly, I have no idea what this symbol is supposed to be—but it was on the letter that Lady Gisela made Keefe deliver to the humans she later murdered, so I’m sure it’s super important. I just hope we figure this one out before it’s too late.
Things I know about the Neverseen
They’re evil.
They hide behind long black cloaks with hoods.
They have some dwarves and ogres on their side—and I wouldn’t be surprised if they also have trolls.
The gnomes hate them, though, and won’t grow them any food. I don’t think they have any goblins helping them either. Let’s hope that doesn’t change.
They want to overthrow the Council and take over as rulers because they think they’re smarter than everybody. And they don’t care if people get hurt or killed in the process.
Mr. Forkle thinks they’re trying to weaken all of the intelligent species to make sure none of them could be victorious in the coming power struggle.
They have a Technopath working with them (but I have no idea who it is).
They have way too many leaders (and we have way too many enemies). I’m hoping that’s going to turn out to be their undoing.
Things I know about Lady Gisela
She’s Keefe’s mom.
She’s also one of the main leaders of the Neverseen—for the moment, at least.
She’s a murderer. The facts are blurry, but it seems like she killed two humans not long after she had Keefe deliver a letter to them in London. And it’s possible she killed Cyrah Endal—though she claims that was Gethen’s doing (and that Fintan gave the order).
Even if Gethen was the one to murder Cyrah, Gisela was the one who forced Cyrah to make a bunch of special starstones for her, which is why Fintan wanted to get rid of her.
One of those starstones seems to be missing.
Fintan and Brant had Gisela locked away in an ogre prison, which left a bunch of scars on her face (though she’s gotten rid of those somehow—and it makes her skin really tight and strange).
After she fought her way back to the top, she basically forced Vespera to work with her. So it’s probably only a matter of time before there’s another huge power struggle. I’m kind of hoping for that, actually.
She’s a Polyglot—and excellent at mimicking.
It doesn’t seem like she has a second ability (like most Polyglots do), but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s hiding something.
She’s also really good at lying to Empaths.
She tried to steal the alicorns several times.
One of her plans used to be called “the Lodestar Initiative” and had its own symbol and a bunch of fancy hideouts and stuff. But it seems like she’s mostly abandoned all of that—maybe because of stuff Fintan did when he overthrew her?
She built her own “Nightfall” facility, sealed the door with her son’s blood, and created the creepy gorgodons to guard the place. I don’t know what she planned to use it for—it looked like she stored all the soporidine there, but it was gone by the time we were able to sneak in. All that was left was Alvar, lying bloody and unconscious in a cell—which turned out to be another trap.
She wrote this book called the Archetype and locked it with a special key that Keefe found hidden at Candleshade. I guess it’s her long, boring explanation of all her theories—some of which are based on Vespera’s ideas (but Vespera seems to think Gisela’s wrong about a ton of stuff and that they actually have opposite visions). No one knows where the Archetype is right now. But we still have the key, in case we find it.
She tried to destroy Atlantis as part of some evil test for me and Keefe, to see if we’re ready to “make hard choices.” She also tried to kill Ro, to punish King Dimitar for the scars he gave her (and the time she spent in his prison).
She took Tam hostage and had Glimmer put these weird bonds on his wrists to force him to do whatever awful things she wanted.
She used Keefe for different tasks, like having him spy on his friends or deliver stuff for her—and then erased his memories (or shattered the worst ones) so he wouldn’t know what he’d done.
She also hid a tracker in Keefe’s Sencen crest pin