Lucky was already there when we arrived at the food court. As distracted as we were by the various exhibits at the zoo, we tried to hurry, dodging every Omen that came in our path.

Funny enough, not all of the Omens had to do with animals in a direct way that I could tell. Some just used the zoo as a setting but were otherwise run-of-the-mill, which was interesting; you don’t see a lot of horror movies set in zoos.

Zoos probably wouldn’t give filmmakers permission for that. They would have to film them guerrilla style.

There was a vibe around the place, like you could turn a corner and end up on a strange continent by accident.

The NPCs at the zoo seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, and a lot of the exhibits were nothing but extraordinary animals. There was a termite colony on display that had taken over an entire mansion; you could still see the outline of where the building used to be. I couldn’t find a single Omen attached to it. It was like Carousel found it and was proud of it, so it put it on display.

We walked past the wolf enclosure, which included a worker who had accidentally gotten locked inside the pen and was asking for help. That was an Omen that would result in a strange wolf curse from what I could tell, which was different than a werewolf curse.

Lucky barely acknowledged us when we got there.

His eyes were on an NPC across the food court who walked strangely, as if he wasn’t used to legs. His arms were out in front of him like they were heavier than they should have been, but otherwise, he was an ordinary man, staring at the animals and the people with a smile on his face. He began digging in the trash can and pulled out half a plate of nachos, which he quickly devoured.

Lucky smiled at that.

“No worries,” he said. “There’s an ape in the primates’ habitat that can swap souls with people who make prolonged eye contact. It doesn’t do anything harmful on its own; it just likes to leave the cage every once in a while to see the sights.”

We continued watching the man with him, who was apparently an ape on the inside, as he calmly walked off back toward the primate enclosure. Again, I saw no Omen associated with that, but perhaps the Omen only appeared when the ape was ready to find a body to walk around in.

“So what are we doing here?” Antoine asked, the first to summon the courage to talk to the Narrator.

Lucky was wearing the same clothes he had been the day before. In fact, I got a sneaking suspicion that only minutes or hours had passed for him between these conversations.

“Oh, I’m just watching the apes,” Lucky said as he scanned across all the people in the crowd enjoying themselves. And then he stared at us.

It actually was a great place, but maybe that was because there were so few Omens.

“I had a theory that the reason for Carousel’s little sanctuary for NPCs was this,” he said, waving his arm around at the people. “It wanted to watch people. It wanted to learn how they reacted when they weren’t being scripted, so it could create places like this—places that almost feel real. But I don’t know anymore.”

At that moment, we were standing around awkwardly, but I got closer to Lucky and took a seat on a bench under a shade tree right next to him.

“Do we have to assume that this neighborhood of yours exists for a logical reason?” I asked.

Lucky leaned back in his seat and stared up at the sky.

“We don’t,” he said. “But one does not dissect the mind of God looking for coincidence.”

He then turned his attention to the rest of the group.

“Spread out. Take a seat. You’re safe here, I promise. We didn’t finish the zoo. The Omens here aren’t as aggressive or common as they are in other places—that’s why it looks relatively peaceful here despite the… eccentricities.”

He leaned forward in his chair, and just like that, we were having the conversation. No more awkward pauses. No more talking about Carousel’s grand ambitions.

“I had a group of players once, seven of them. I could rely on them for anything. They did what I said, and they loved Carousel. They enjoyed it in a visceral way, like you might expect a gladiator to. Some of you might understand. They were well-trained, but Carousel didn’t like them as much as they liked it. They didn’t make good stories. They made action. They bloodied things up. But it resisted them because they were unoriginal. I never asked anything different; it didn’t seem so important at the time. They weren’t really playing the game, you see. They were working for me.”

“And then they disappeared,” I said. Having met him before, I knew that he was prone to add backstories and long-winded tangents.

“They did. Not long after they discovered the sanctuary, actually. A neighborhood separated from Carousel proper, where meta-aware NPCs roamed in relative peace. No storylines and no script. Just the occasional monster hunt. Before I could go there myself, Carousel reset and took back most of the control we had. We’re still working on that.”

He let his words hang in the air. The other players were tense. Hearing about the Manifest Consortium was one thing, but when they start talking about the multiversal death game you are trapped in like it’s a malfunctioning machine, it could be unnerving.

“And when we get to this sanctuary for meta-aware NPCs,” Antoine said, “are you hoping that your team will be there?”

“Yes, I do hope so. I was very fond of them. The trouble is, I don’t know how they got there. Finding the sanctuary may be quite difficult. It took long enough the first time, but the first time, they weren’t looking for it.”

That didn’t make a lot of sense, because as far as I knew, pulling the proverbial thread led you in the direction you pulled it.

“Didn’t you say that they were working on a throughline of yours when they disappeared?”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“They were,” Lucky confirmed. “A through line designed to map Carousel. Unfortunately, such a feat is relatively hands-off for a Narrator. We can’t manipulate elements unless we know what they are. It takes time, more than planning. That’s why my team was fit for the job: they had all the time in the world, and they were disciplined.”

“Are you saying you don’t know how they got there?” Antoine asked. “How could you lose track like that?”

To Lucky’s credit, he did seem fairly tolerant of being talked to like a normal person despite us being mortal.

“It’s easier than you’d think to lose things in Carousel,” he said.

I’d actually put a bit of thought into that even before I knew about Lucky’s situation. One detail of how Carousel worked always intrigued me.

“The time differential,” I said. “You set them to mapping Carousel, and then you just let time move forward, didn’t you? Years pass for them, and you get results quick.”

When I had made my trip over to the other side of the mountain, it was readily apparent that the way time moved was different between Carousel proper and the place that the immortal sorcerers called home. Sometimes, Carousel would be frozen in time while the Manifest Consortium worked, and other times, weeks would pass as players didn’t do anything interesting. Still, to the Consortium, it would be mere minutes.

“Time is so trivial in Carousel,” Lucky said. “It makes you wonder if that, too, was a trap. Carousel was nearly finished with its takeover when we realized what was going on. Our records were destroyed. We have little knowledge of what exactly happened during that time. I had last made contact with my team after they first arrived at the sanctuary and started looking for the shortest route back to Carousel proper. As far as I know, they are still there, but as the kid says, I did, unfortunately, lose track of time.”

He was being open and answering questions, and maybe that was because he was overconfident, or worse, he might have just been honest. Honesty was harder to deal with, because if you distrust people, you’ll never be fooled by a liar, but there’s no way to account for someone who tells the truth, especially if they are selective about it.

“So what do you want us to do?” I asked. “Start passing around flyers with their names on them? Pull the thread until we find them?”

“That would work eventually, but I have a better idea. I want you to work on finding the sanctuary. Hopefully, they’ll be there, and fortunately, my idea should be faster.”

“And what’s your idea?” I asked.

“Well, my team made it there the first time,” he said. “Maybe instead of trying to track them down with nothing but thread-pulling, you simply follow in their footsteps; get a jump on things. They were always methodical. They took notes. They planned things out. I’m certain that whatever path they took to get to the sanctuary, they must have records. So what I propose is this: you find their base, unlock it, and see if you can find a clue as to where they went. That should knock quite a bit of time off your search.”

We knew that other players had bases, but we hadn’t even imagined we would be able to find one. We assumed that they were gone. But to hear Lucky talk about it, it sounded like an obvious first move.

When the topic of bases came up, Kimberly finally spoke up. “Where is their base?” she asked—but in a way, it felt like she was asking, I hope their base is nowhere near ours.

“They took up camp at a place called Lark House,” he answered. “You should be able to find it inside your Atlas.”

“Lark House?” I asked. “That sounds like it’s some type of haunted estate.”

About half of all the big houses in Carousel had a name like that, and most of them had at least one ghost.

“Far be it from me to spoil anything about that storyline,” Lucky said.

Camden already knew a bit about it. He had been studying the Atlas.

“I think it’s one of the McMansions up in the northeast, maybe a gated community, I can’t remember,” he said.

“How do we know that it’s still there?” Kimberly asked. “Didn’t Carousel wipe everything out?”

“I’ve never known Carousel to waste a good prop,” Lucky said. “If you can unlock it, I’m sure their base and all of their loot will be there. Take what you like, it’s yours. But find out how to get back to that sanctuary.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Dina said, perhaps because she heard we had to unlock something. “How do we unlock a base? I thought they were safe because of the contract or whatever.”

Lucky laughed.

“I’ve forgotten—you aren’t well-versed in subterfuge with other players. Carousel added those elements without our knowledge, to say the least. They will have locked their base with a storyline. It should be the main storyline for that location. Defeat it, and you will find yourself rifling through their old belongings. Everything from their weapons to their drug stash should still be there. Heck, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll be there waiting for you.”

It seemed like a pretty straightforward request: run a storyline, invade another group of players’ base, and try to find out where they went so we can get a jumpstart on Lucky’s adventure Throughline. I wasn’t expecting anything that straightforward.

“It’s that simple?” Nicole asked, speaking up for the first time. “We do this little quest for you, and what, are we suddenly on a throughline?”

“Not you specifically,” Lucky said, “no. My audience expects the Party of Promise. I’m afraid I can’t give them anything less, though I certainly wouldn’t refuse a ringer or two.” He looked around the group, eyeing some of the higher-level players on the other teams. “I am counting on whatever momentum the Party of Promise has to help me complete this tiny throughline. That’s the appeal you have to me.”

“And that’s a good question,” Antoine said. “When do we get stuck on your throughline? When is it official?”

“You’ll know when you know,” he said. “Usually, whenever Carousel proper starts to shift its reality to fit the throughline. That is what Silas Dyrkon attempted with you all, isn’t it? To change Carousel so much that running his throughline was the only real choice?”

That sounded similar to my understanding.

“All right,” I said. “So we check out your team’s base and see if we can find a clue. If there is no clue, are we off the hook?”

“My hope is that you will see this mission for what it is—a humanitarian effort,” he said. “The Many Worlds are infinite, but the Consortium is not. There are finite citizens of the Manifest Consortium and infinite refugees from worlds at their end. Carousel may very well be a haven for these people. We don’t have infinite space to keep them in. We don’t have infinite resources to secure and supply them. Carousel does, if we can find the conditions under which it will be willing to help.”

When I had found a way to the other side of the mountain, I had heard some of the immortals talking about this, the idea that Carousel, an eldritch entity, might be a refuge to people fleeing destruction. It seemed so silly, but Lucky spoke about it like it was obvious.

“Are you talking about the refugees from the Manyfold Hunger?” I asked. Those had been the ones I met.

For the first time, Lucky looked surprised by something we said.

“You really were spying on us, weren’t you?” he asked.

“I’m a film buff,” I said. “I always watch the behind-the-scenes content.”

“Whatever the case,” Lucky said, “we will find a cure for the Manyfold Hunger, or else it will eat itself to death like many other multiversal crises known to the Many Worlds. That is of little concern here. Most—almost all—of my fellow associates in the Consortium are refugees from worlds that were destroyed by any number of ills. We trade tickets to the Barker, offering what help we can give to other refugees from such worlds. If others had not done the same for us, we would be dead, or worse, we would be alive in empty universes wishing for death. This, above all else, is the calling of the Manifest Consortium.”

That was the calling of the Manifest Consortium? The fact that they would literally get paid in magical tickets in exchange for their generosity had nothing to do with it, but I wasn’t going to say that to Lucky. It was possible he actually believed it, and even if he didn’t, I didn’t want to argue about it.

“We’ll check it out,” I said.

“I hope you will,” he said. “I have an unquenchable feeling of urgency I cannot explain. My destiny lies this way, and I am eager to meet it.”

At that, he rose from his seat and wove his way between the players in his path, waving behind himself as he walked to a random door on a random building on the other side of The Watering Hole, which was the name for the food court.

As he left, there was silence in his wake.

We didn’t have time to think. We needed to get out of there before the Omens started waking back up.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep