Book Five, Chapters 78 and 79

~Riley~

Somehow, we managed to squeeze all of us into that small hidden room behind the bookcase. We only had two chairs, so most everyone was left to cram amongst the stacks and hope there wasn’t an avalanche of books anytime soon.

“So, in the story we’re actually in, the woman in the painting is named Clara Withers, and she died mysteriously,” Antoine said. “Do we know how that affects the story?”

“Nope,” I replied. “I don’t think it has to affect this story at all. Every single bit of lore we’ve uncovered about the history of the werewolf curse has been through sheer effort. Carousel doesn’t seem to be pulling us in that direction.”

For a moment, we were all silent, as if waiting for the books to start speaking to us.

“Well, we need some of it to get a complete story,” Andrew said. “The question of the werewolf curse and its origins has been brought up to some extent, especially if it changes that the curse has gone through. It’s at least been established that our werewolves here in Carousel are different than the werewolves around the world.”

It felt like we’d had this same conversation over and over, just with different arrangements of the words as we all grasped it in our own time. As best we could tell, delving into the history of the curse was optional. And, of course, trying to pursue secret lore was extra optional.

“What does your guy say about the death of Clara?” Kimberly asked me.

She was very interested in Clara Woolsey—or, as Carousel had renamed her, Clara Withers.

“He started hearing some legends about this daughter they had some 10–15 years before he got there. From the legends, it sounded like she’d been killed by a curse, and he tried to explain that to her mother and father. They got very upset and told him he was supposed to be studying the werewolf epidemic, not their daughter. He concludes—at least at the point I’ve read to so far in the book—that Clara got the werewolf curse, and her parents killed her for it. And he believes that’s why the curse changed.”

“All right,” Antoine said, standing up. “At the end of the day, we’re either going to pursue this, or we aren’t. I’ve got nothing on it as far as any of my background stuff goes. My character’s father’s journal doesn’t have anything on it, from what I can tell, so if you want to pursue this older lore, I don’t know if I can help.”

Antoine’s character had inherited his father’s monster-hunting journal, which contained a bunch of news articles and occasional bits of lore about various beasts, including werewolves. He was taking his time to go through it as we were having our discussion.

“I have to agree,” Andrew said. “The background reports I have were entirely from a scientific point of view, which is increasingly becoming less and less useful in this story.”

“Does anyone else have anything about the older lore or the werewolf curse?” Antoine asked.

He looked around the room at each of us, even though it took a little bit of repositioning because Lila was under a table, and Michael had somehow wiggled his way in between two large stacks of books and had basically disappeared behind them.

“Lila, anything?” Antoine asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing I’ve tried has worked. Nobody would talk to me. I don’t know anything.”

Bad Luck Magnet seemed to have a much more profound effect on gameplay than we had ever realized. Perhaps it was just because she was a Wallflower, but every attempt she had made to learn anything using Savvy or Moxie failed. Any attempted exploration she had tried failed.

I could see that she was upset about it. She really wanted to be able to help.

From what I could tell, in her own way, she had. The rest of us had so much luck with exploration that we were digging up secret lore by accident. That was a powerful trope.

We understood these werewolves very well. We were on fire.

“How about you, Michael?” Antoine asked. “Anything?”

Michael didn’t say anything at first but then said, “Nothing.”

I thought that was weird. If anyone was going to have good lore about the history of Witherhold Manor, it should be Michael’s character, whose family had lived in the area for multiple generations.

“See?” Antoine said. “I just don’t think we have a lot to go off here. We have to focus on the fight that is coming. Even if we miss a few points for not getting the secret of the curse, that’s all right. Survival is too important.”

“I have an idea,” Kimberly said. “I can use Convenient Backstory to say that I’m having visions or maybe I had a dream about Clara. That should steer the story, right?”

Kimberly was adamant. She was on a quest for answers.

Antoine looked at her, and she looked him right back in the eye, and they had an unspoken conversation. Then he turned to me.

“Do you think that’ll work?” he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “In a normal story, I would say to go for it. We know that this is a supernatural story. We know that psychic power works here. And we know that there is a strange link between Kimberly and this old dead chick.”

“Is this a normal story?” Antoine asked.

I wasn’t sure.

“There’s clearly secret lore going on here, and we don’t know how that will affect things. It seems that every time we dig for the truth of the storyline, we dig a little too far and end up with more than we asked for. I’m having a tough time sorting through the information in this old guy’s journal because half of it isn’t canon to the storyline—it’s canon to the reality of where this story is from. If we pursue the lore, we may end up triggering secret lore, and that’s great, except that could make things way harder.”

I wanted to trigger secret lore. We needed to, for some reason, that had yet to be revealed, but we didn’t know enough about it to know what would be safe.

Antoine nodded. “So maybe we come back, and we do the base storyline, and we get the secret lore then,” he suggested.

I threw up my hands. I didn’t know.

"It's a novel problem," Andrew said. "I don't know exactly what you experienced when you triggered secret lore before, but I know that if we accidentally reveal secret lore On-Screen, we'll be sent Off-Screen, and that could have immense consequences at the wrong moment."

He had a point. If I didn’t successfully sort out what was true and what was secretly true, we could end up ruining the story, and that could have all kinds of consequences.

"I think I speak for the rest of us when I say we should just steer clear of digging into the lore on this one," Antoine said, looking at Kimberly.

Kimberly did not look pleased.

"What if more of the story reveals that I am the reincarnation of Clara? Or maybe a distant relative? Do we pull that thread then?" she asked.

I was starting to wonder if I should have put that idea out there.

The trope of having a main character be a reincarnated historical figure was an old one and a predictable one. Kimberly looked too much like the woman in the painting for it all to mean nothing.

"The fact is," I said, "our win condition is beating the clock. We have to kill the pack leader before the last full moon of the cycle. If we had a different win condition, maybe the backstory would be more important."

"Agreed," Antoine said.

I didn’t know why he was on this side of things, but I had to suspect it was because his character had nothing to do with this side plot, and he didn’t want to emphasize a part of the story that he couldn’t help with. But I was just guessing.

Maybe he liked the clarity of a simple game of kill the werewolf. I couldn’t know.

"Well, that leads us to our next problem," I said. "First Blood is coming up, and we need to be ready."

It took us a while to actually change over to that topic, as no matter what logic told us, we really wanted to get to the bottom of the werewolf curse lore. I certainly did, even if I knew the risks.

And Kimberly never backed down. It was like she took it personally that we were suggesting we might have to abandon that subplot for the sake of survival.

She was fighting for it, but ultimately, what mattered was whether or not the story moved in that direction. We could not force it—or at least we shouldn’t. Not when we had a very clear objective in front of us.

"Riley, you got a look at the tropes. What do you know about their first attack?" Antoine asked.

I thought back to the various rules and abilities that the werewolves in this story had, according to what I had seen on Logan when he transformed.

"The first attack is going to be an individual. They won’t attack us all until Second Blood. To kill a werewolf, you have to make its death special, so a long-distance shot probably isn’t going to do it. It’s not personal or climactic enough. You’ll probably have to put yourself in danger."

The wolves could not die mundane deaths. Even if the lore said they were deathly allergic to silver, the meta said you could only kill them at the zenith of battle—whatever that meant. My interpretation was that they had to have a special death that had to be set up and executed.

"They’ve also got that annoying trope from Ranger Danger," I said. "Everyone Is a Suspect."

"Great," Antoine said. "I thought you had said that. I was hoping I misheard you."

"What trope are we referring to?" Andrew asked.

I couldn’t see him from where I was sitting, so I just spoke aloud to the room. "You guys played Ranger Danger, right?"

"Yes," Andrew said. "It was one of our first storylines."

It seemed that was a pretty typical starter storyline around Camp Dyer.

"Do you remember the part, around the time the murder happened in that storyline, where everyone got separated, and no one saw where any of the suspects were?"

There was a moment of silence, and then Andrew said, "Oh, that. Yes, I was called away to help someone with an injury. I was a medical student in that storyline."

"Exactly," I said. "In this story, it’ll be even worse, though, because in this story, there’s a chance that one of us actually will be the killer. I mean, if we turn into a werewolf."

"What are the implications of this?" Andrew asked.

"I’ve been thinking about this," I said. "The way I see it, at the end of the night—and it will almost certainly be tonight because of where the plot cycle is—everyone in this room is either going to be a victim or a suspect. So don’t fight against it. During First Blood, make sure that you’re away from others—hiding, running, whatever. But don’t go too far because we need to regroup right after First Blood."

After First Blood, anyone could die. Well, most likely, it would be me because of my low effective plot armor, but the point remained. After First Blood ended, Rebirth started, and while deaths were not guaranteed during Rebirth, they were possible.

"Except me," Lila said. "I’ll definitely be a victim."

She didn’t sound like she felt sorry for herself. She was just correcting me, and she was almost certainly right.

Most of us had been in that situation before, knowing our death was to come. That was part of the game. Bad Luck Magnet made her the first target. Always.

"I’ll be right after you," I said. "Most likely."

"This is all a shame," Andrew said. "I was hoping that some of us could hold up inside this room tonight. Perhaps we would get lucky, and Sanctuary would set up a bit early."

"I thought about that too," I said. "But if everyone ends up being a suspect or a victim, that means if two of us ended up in here, one of us would end up dead. Or else we would get forced out somehow. You can stay here, though. If it’s just you, you should be safe."

"Unless I’m the werewolf," Andrew said.

I laughed.

"That’s true," I said. "Though if Kimberly’s right, it sounds like the blonde mercenary might be the werewolf."

"So, do we kill him?" Michael said—the first real sentence he had spoken in a while.

"No," Antoine answered. "He’s gotta be our suspect. We’re supposed to draw out the mystery aspect, so we can’t acknowledge we know he’s a werewolf On-Screen."

"We have to pretend to suspect each other then," Andrew said. "That could be difficult."

That was an acceptable plan, but personally, I wasn’t sure how much Carousel would go along with our plan to cast suspicion in every direction, hoping to draw out the murder mystery aspect of the story.

At first, I thought that’s what we were going to do. The Atlas even suggested it. But the more I got a feel for this story, the more I began to question whether Carousel would go for such a subplot.

"Let’s just be cautious about accusing each other," I said. "Earlier when we discussed things On-Screen, we decided that that little pinprick of werewolf saliva wasn’t enough to transform us this quickly. If that’s the case, Carousel may not want our characters accusing each other for too long."

"Why not?" Antoine asked.

I tried to find a way to phrase it delicately.

"It’ll make us seem stupid," I said. "Maybe once the full moon hits, but we can’t be overly paranoid too quickly."

"So we play it by ear," Antoine said.

"We play it by ear," I agreed.

~-~

~Kimberly~

What did it mean not to resist the trope Everyone Is a Suspect?

I knew what Riley meant when he said that. He meant we shouldn’t stay in groups because if you’re with someone, neither of you can be suspects, and then Carousel would have to do something to split you up.

But how were we actually supposed to do that? Was I seriously supposed to wander off on my own, knowing full well there were werewolves in the forest?

At least in Ranger Danger, we were just clueless college kids who wouldn’t have realized something bad was about to happen. But in this story, we were supposed to be seasoned werewolf hunters. How could we ever get so separated that there’d be no witnesses to our innocence?

Turned out, it was easier than I thought.

We trickled out of the mini-library one by one because, as Riley pointed out, it didn’t make sense for our characters to stick together like that—not yet, anyway.

As we walked back toward the stone walls of the fort, I saw Hetty Morgan, the silversmith, heading our way. She was carrying a large, heavy bag, clearly struggling with it.

On-Screen

“Miss,” she called out. “Miss Kimberly, could you please help me with this?”

I didn’t hesitate. I jumped forward and grabbed one of the bag’s handles to help her out.

“I just need help getting it to my cabin on the other side of the valley. It’s a ten-minute walk, no more.”

“I’d be glad to help,” Antoine offered, always eager to lend a hand.

“We ladies have it,” Hetty said, waving him off. “Now go back over there with your guns and your army men, young fella.”

Hetty really didn’t like the mercenaries.

And just like that, I was separated from the group. It was nearly dark, the moon already up and hidden behind some clouds—almost full.

Hetty and I walked one way, and the rest of the team stayed back at the fort.

As we walked, Hetty stared straight ahead, focused and quiet. If we hadn’t been On-Screen, I’d have expected her to stay like that.

Maybe I was supposed to fill the silence, so I started to form a question about Clara Withers and the werewolf curse. But before I could say anything, Hetty spoke first.

“You got something weighing on you, girl?” she asked. No, she wasn’t asking—she was telling me.

“A lot of things, actually,” I admitted.

“I heard what Mr. Kirst did to you folks. I feel awful sorry about it. If I’d known that was what he was up to, I would never have helped him,” she said.

Carousel wanted us to react to the betrayal. Getting injected with werewolf saliva should’ve been a traumatic moment, but we all just sort of shrugged it off. Maybe we took it a little too well.

“You get into this business, you expect to get bitten one day,” I said. “Werewolf hunters don’t live long.”

“Sometimes they live forever,” Hetty said, cracking a sly smile I could barely see in the dim light. “They get bit.”

I laughed softly.

“I guess that’s true,” I said. “Maybe if I do end up a werewolf, at least I’ll get answers.”

“I knew you were a woman with questions,” Hetty said. “You ain’t the first woman with questions to come to Withers Manor.”

I stopped walking, gripping the bag tightly. Hetty kept going a few steps before she realized I wasn’t moving.

“Did they look like me?” I asked.

Hetty turned back, giving me a curious smile.

“There’s a painting of a young woman in the house,” I said. “She looks a lot like me. And I’m starting to think the reason I’m alive is because somehow all of this involves me. Do you know anything?”

Hetty laughed, the sound soft but knowing.

“I only know the story,” she said. “Come on, we gotta get in before dark.”

Antoine and Riley had been worried about digging too deeply into the lore of this story. Antoine’s Rescue Trope might not reward the search for deeper truths, and the risk of uncovering secret lore that could derail the storyline was too big.

But if Carousel was offering me a lead… I wasn’t going to let it slip away.

~-~

~Riley~

Andrew was going to stay in the stacks. I pushed the bookcase closed as I left him there. He said he was going to stay up researching.

“Remember to keep an eye on your statuses,” I said. “Being locked in a room with all these candles can’t be too healthy on your oxygen intake.”

“Yes, but as long as I survive until Rebirth, I’ll be fine because this room will become a Sanctuary, and I won’t be able to die here,” he said.

That was technically true. Maybe he just didn’t want to walk all the way to the fort to find a gas lantern. Heck, they might have even had electric.

What was flashlight technology in 1986?

I was headed down into the tunnels underneath the manor. I had wrangled up a cot and a sleeping bag, and I was going to find the furthest room from the cages filled with werewolves that I could find, close myself in, and spend the night.

I would occupy myself by digging into the walls, searching for silver or anything else that might be hidden there.

I had it all pictured out: I was going to use my large silver spoon to budge the stone out of its mortar while whispering to myself, What were you hiding down here? in hopes that Carousel would hear me and decide to give me a gift or a lead.

I had noticed something odd about the property. There was no graveyard. Nowhere to bury the dead. Witherhold Manor, as it was now called, was a picturesque location for a spooky cemetery, so the fact that there wasn’t one was quite strange.

So where did they put the dead people?

The catacombs underneath the manor were my obvious pick. So, when we all decided where we were going to stay during First Blood, that was my choice.

I had asked about the young woman, Clara Withers. I had researched her, and now I was following a lead—or maybe a hunch—and Carousel didn’t seem to be getting in my way.

As I was carrying my supplies into the manor to bring down to the basement level, I heard a helicopter in the sky.

Egan Kirst was leaving for the night.

That was good news and bad news. The bad news was that he wasn’t going to get killed as a scripted First Blood, which could have been very useful to us. Extending Lila’s Bad Luck Magnet would have been great.

The good news was that we could take him out of the equation for a while.

Now, all I had to do was make my way down into the catacombs, past the caged werewolves, and into the safety of the tunnels beyond, searching for dead bodies.

I brought my camera with me—the one that was in the back of my car. The lighting wasn’t good enough to really use it down in the tunnels, but it was a great prop and allowed me to talk out loud without sounding like a crazy person.

I had a full night ahead of me. If I found nothing, that would be okay. If I found the resting place of a tragic young woman, well, at least Kimberly would be happy.

That place would likely have to have tons of clues about the origin of the werewolf curse.

~-~

~Michael~

I took watch again. Sleeping during the day worked fine for me, especially now that I’d botched my subplot.

I should’ve known better.

I was supposed to go find my grandmother’s house, hear her stories about werewolves and Witherhold Manor. I waited too long, figured I had time until Rebirth to make the trip. I was wrong.

Now, I couldn’t even tell Andrew. Couldn’t look him in the eye.

One minute, I had a clear map in my head, pinpointing her house out in the woods. The next, when I chose to head to the abandoned summer camp instead, it vanished. Just gone.

I’d let it go too long. That part of the story was erased. Now there’s just a blank spot where the answers used to be.

What stories would she have told? How to kill werewolves? The truth about Witherhold Manor? Guess I’ll never know.

Researching wasn’t my strong suit anyway. I got my levels in combat—fighting monsters, not learning about them. Sometimes bare-knuckle, if it came to it.

That’s how this would play out too. I’d take down a wolf, put on a show, make it count. People would say I did well, maybe even saved the day.

I’d make up for the rest.

Riley and Andrew had the library. They didn’t need some old family story. Tonight, the wolves would come out, and I was going to get one.

Whatever it took, there’d be a body on the ground by morning. A monster, gone.

The stone walls had a narrow walkway, and my Hustle kept me steady as I patrolled. Up there, with the moonlight cutting through the dark, I could see everything.

I moved along the maze of walls, quiet as a shadow.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Lila. Her character didn’t bunk at the fort—she stayed in town.

Riley had spun a whole scenario for her. She’d leave the fort as the sun dropped, dragging a big, overstuffed bag full of supplies. Sewing needles, provisions, a weapon or two. Whatever seemed plausible, but definitely more than she should carry.

The bag would rip. She’d scramble to fix it, picking up her things while the light faded, the dark closed in, and the moon rose.

How did Riley know that’d work? No clue.

He said it’s the kind of thing that works in movies. Said the audience wouldn’t care if her character got killed doing something dumb, as long as she wasn’t playing a smart character to begin with.

Lila was going to play dumb. She wasn’t, though.

When the werewolf attacked—and it would attack. Thanks to her trope Dying Last Scream—she’d scream, go Off-Screen, and her character would die in the script. But Lila herself? She’d survive.

That’s when I’d move. I’d find the wolf, track it, and kill it.

That was my role. Just doing the job.

I kept my eyes on Lila, watching her shuffle On-Screen and Off-Screen. She hurried when visible, slowed down when not. She was following the plan.

And Riley was right.

Carousel loved it.

The wind shifted, and I knew the monster was coming. I pretended not to notice, but my body was ready. I just had to wait for Lila’s scream—then I’d move.

After Lila’s betrayal, I didn’t think I’d ever forgive her. Maybe I still haven’t. But watching her now, setting herself up like bait to help bring back Logan and Avery—even though she was terrified—it meant something.

Even though she wouldn’t really die, sitting there defenseless, knowing she’d be attacked, that was the bravest thing anyone could do.

Everyone said that Lila ended up as a Wallflower instead of a Hysteric because she was so afraid of being On-Screen that she could never be a proper Hysteric.

I didn’t think that was true.

I thought Lila couldn’t be a Hysteric because, even though she doesn’t like being watched by the audience, she wasn’t afraid of dying.

I’d seen her once in the Astralist’s lair, tied to a chair, about to lose her soul. On-Screen, she screamed and begged. Off-Screen, though? She looked the ghost straight in the eye and said, “You going to pull the lever or not?”

That ghost grinned, and so did I.

Lila wasn’t scared of death. She feared the things she couldn’t control—forces that bent life and death for their own amusement.

Maybe that was the better thing to fear.

The plot cycle ticked forward. The party phase was gone. Somewhere, a small death approached.

~-~

~Antoine~

This truck is not in the forest, so I must not be in the forest.
This manor is not in the forest, so I must not be in the forest.
This fort is not in the forest, so I must not be in the forest.
These soldiers are not in the forest, so I must not be in the forest.
Kimberly is not in the forest, so I must not be in the forest.
Lila is not in the forest, so I must not be in the forest.

“What happened here?” I asked.

Lila lay on the ground, many gathered around her. Michael held her unmoving body.

That didn’t make sense. There wasn’t supposed to be a body. She was supposed to get the dead status and then be able to walk around Off-Screen.

There was no blood.
There were no claw marks.

Last night, there had not been a scream. I was on patrol.

Where was my gun?

I patted myself up and down. My clothes were fine. My gun was missing. The big one I carried. I still had one in my boot and another strapped to my belt, but my big rifle was gone.

I had gone into the woods on patrol. I should not have done that. But it was my turn. Everyone was counting on me.

I must have zoned out and let the monster in. Now Lila lay there, dead.

“Move out of the way,” Andrew said as he rushed forward to check on Lila.

“Is she a wolf?” the captain asked. “It looks like her wounds have all healed.”

Andrew examined her body, looking her over up and down. He looked up at me, then over at the captain, and then at Kimberly.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Andrew said. “She wasn’t bitten or scratched, that I can tell, and she certainly hasn’t healed. Her clothes are intact.”

He stuck his fingers near her neck. Was he checking her pulse? No.

“Contusions around the neck. It looks like she was strangled,” he said.

Strangled. Why would a werewolf strangle someone and not leave another scratch?

We all reacted with confusion On-Screen for a while, and then we went Off-Screen.

Michael was there. He said he saw the whole thing. He said the werewolf didn’t even try to bite her; it just crushed her throat, and he chased it off. Couldn’t get a hit on it.

Riley showed up just after that. He had dirt under his fingernails. Dirt all over his skin and clothes. What had he been doing all night?

We caught him up to speed.

“I was listening for a scream, but I never heard one,” he said. “What happened?”

He had been using his Quiet On Set trope to try to listen to First Blood.

After we had explained everything, he got this look on his face like he had just figured something out.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Why would a werewolf strangle someone?” he asked.

We didn’t have an answer, so we waited for him to answer his own question.

“Because it knew that it couldn’t let her scream,” he said.

At first, I didn’t understand what he was getting at, and then I realized. There were suspects—people—who knew they couldn’t let her scream.

Because if she screamed, they would go Off-Screen and wouldn’t be able to attack her anymore. It’s what her trope did. The Dead status was powerful on a living player.

So whoever killed her, whatever killed her, knew about her trope.

And who knew about her trope?

All of us. Her teammates.

We were all suspects.