We were no strangers to paragons acting like meeting us was a big deal, but then never explaining why, and Bones Ibarra was no different. Strangely, I didn’t doubt his sincerity. My expectations were just tempered.

He was out of breath, and not just from the theatrics he’d just pulled with the gunman, but he looked tired, like he’d been on the go for a long time. His clothes were dirty, and he looked like he was relaxing for the first time in a long time. When he jumped into the boat, he immediately started casually directing us to change course.

“Right up this way,” he said as soon as he got settled down and began getting a fix on the river.

“We can’t,” I said. “We’re already following a path. We have a tracker up ahead, and we have to stay behind it.”

“I am aware of your plans,” he said. “The device you use will lead you directly to your friends, yes?”

I nodded my head.

“But getting to your friends is not the goal, is it? Not when you know you have to clear a storyline to save them in the end. You need to find the Omen for the storyline they’ve been captured in, correct?”

He was right. We’d been so dead set on following the magic cue ball that we hadn’t adapted our plans when things changed. Even if the cue ball led us directly to Ramona, wherever she was, that wouldn’t help us much, because now that they were trapped in a storyline, finding her wasn’t enough. We needed to beat the storyline. So what we were actually looking for was the Omen. We had assumed the two would be near each other.

When Antoine and the others ran The Sunken Cradle, they used a mobile Omen, which they had stolen. It was a map, if I remembered correctly, and once they held it and headed in the right direction, it triggered.

We had no way of getting that Omen. It would have been surrounded by the circus at that point.

“So where is the Omen?” I asked. “I assume the map isn’t available anymore. We were hoping we would find a way in once we got there.”

“Trust me, we’ve been working on it,” Ibarra said. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing that you equipped that trope when you did. If you’d waited until you were too close to the enemy encampment, it might have been too late. Do not fear. I will guide you.”

Still, the thought of abandoning the cue ball filled me with dread. It had been our north star for days, our only path to save our friends, and if we changed directions, we would lose it.

But at the end of the day, Bones Ibarra was a companion whose entire job was to lead us to our destination. Surely that was an upgrade over a cue ball that we had to follow down a river.

“Where to?” Antoine asked, having likely come to the same conclusion I did.

“Right up here. It’s a right. Even as the river gets thin, stay to the right.”

So, a half a mile later, the plastic bag with the water wing/fish tracker/cue ball device went left, and we went right, and we had to hope we made the right decision.

We sailed on slowly. We weren’t in any hurry to find out that we had made a mistake.

While we floated on, I stared at Bones Ibarra so that I could see the tropes he had equipped. He only had three at that moment, and I recognized them both from movies and from what had just happened. One was for navigation, another for combat. The third, I had just seen him use.

It was called Exit, Pursued, which allowed him to reconnect with an ally during a chase scene in order to make a quick getaway. It was a classic scene, with the hero taking off in a plane while a hail of bullets threatened to turn him into mincemeat.

Of course, it worked just as well with a pontoon boat as it did an airplane.

“Did you get those guys to chase you so that your trope would lead you to us?” I asked.

“We have a thinker over here. Yes. If you want to get around Carousel quickly, you have to be creative. Luckily, I knew some very bad men who would chase me if I stole from them,” he said as he polished his gun and reloaded it.

It was almost an exploit. The trope was designed to help you get out of a sticky situation by running into an ally who can help you escape, but he used it in the reverse. He got some bad guys to chase him so that Carousel would connect him with us.

The question was, why was that necessary at all?

“Why exactly did you need to do that?” I asked. “It’s a companion trope. Wouldn’t you be guaranteed to show up and greet us somewhere in the storyline?”

Jules always did when Bobby used his companion trope.

He nodded his head. “Yes, I would. If you ever found the storyline, and if you didn’t get killed before I could arrive. No, in this circumstance, I had to think on my feet. But don’t worry. That’s the place I think best.”

He grinned suavely at Anna and Cassie and holstered his gun.

As I understood it, paragons weren’t good or bad. They just had jobs to do in the story. Narrators could employ them for all manner of uses, as we had seen with Silas Dyrkon, and it seemed that some of them, at least, knew of the internal workings of plots far above my pay grade.

There were questions I would have liked to ask, but if my past dealings with paragons were any indication, he wasn’t going to answer the interesting ones, so I figured I would wait a while, let him choose the topic of conversation.

And the topic he chose was napping.

He told us to watch for an elaborate set of docks with torches on the right side of the river, where the water slowed down to a standstill, and that there would be a building there with lots of lights.

And then he lay down on one of the seats on the front of the pontoon and put his hat over his eyes to sleep.

–

About an hour later, we were in thick jungle when we found the docks he was talking about. Antoine pulled the pontoon up to the dock, and Camden tied it off. There were many other boats there.

The dock was attached to a large wooden building that jutted out into the riverside. It was exaggerated in size and featured impossible architecture, with much of the place supported by ropes hanging from the branches above. It had been built around several trees to help hold it from falling into the river. Music was playing inside, and many NPCs could be seen on the outer decks of the building, drinking and eating.

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The place reminded me of the Speakeasy.

Because that was exactly what it was.

The seedy bar that had been underneath the laundromat back in Carousel proper had moved, possibly because of the circus invasion, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

I knew it was the Speakeasy because there was a sign that said so, and the bartender was a familiar-looking man whose name changed on the red wallpaper constantly, another paragon that, to the best of my understanding, was the criminal paragon.

Right now, his name was Tommy, but his last name kept changing.

The clientele was similar to what I remembered. It was definitely filled with criminals, but much more rough and tumble than previously. Muscle men and mercenaries filled the seats. Femme fatales and assassins could be seen around every nook and cranny as we entered the building.

But unlike the first time we had been to the Speakeasy, we weren’t ignored.

As we walked in, the entire bar went quiet, and they stared at us.

At first, I thought we were in trouble, and Antoine must have too, because he stepped up to the front of the group instinctively, but it turned out it was all some sort of scripted action, because everyone went back to talking amongst themselves after a few seconds.

It was almost funny enough to laugh out loud about, but this wasn’t exactly the crowd I was relaxed enough to laugh around.

“Are they here, my friend?” Bones asked the bartender.

The criminal paragon turned to him and nodded. “They’ve been waiting a while.”

“Ninety percent of life is waiting,” Bones said.

“Yeah, and the other ten percent is wishing you had more time,” the bartender answered. It seemed these two knew each other well.

“This way,” Bones said as he led us toward the back of the bar.

The aesthetic was altogether different. There were lots of pictures on the walls here, and it didn’t look like a 1920s Speakeasy as much as it used to, but more like some sort of deep jungle criminal hideout.

There was live music, though, so that helped liven things up a bit, even as we passed by a pool table where two men were holding a third man down against the felt, accusing him of cheating.

The back of the bar was more private and quiet. The people waiting for us had picked out a private booth and even had chairs waiting, so there would be enough seating.

I recognized almost all of them. They were all dressed for an expedition, which wasn’t the way I had seen them previously for the most part.

There was Tar Bellows, the proprietor of the pawn shop, but now he was dressed for a fight. He had a machine gun sitting next to him on the booth. I had never seen him without being dressed casually, like he was going on a beach vacation, so it was quite a shock. He didn’t say much.

I always knew he was some type of bruiser paragon, but I still wasn’t sure which kind.

Next to him was Jack Goforth, who was dressed like an explorer, but none of his clothing was worn or frayed. It was like he had just purchased it. In fact, it looked high-quality. It made sense. My best guess was that Jack was the socialite paragon, which meant the character he might play on an expedition would be something like a benefactor, or maybe just some famed explorer who struck it rich. Either way, it made sense that he would be wealthy.

In truth, he wore those clothes with disdain. He was more of a high society kind of guy. I doubted that his curly blonde hair had gone more than a few days without washing in his lifetime.

Next to him was Hawk Kipling, the Monster Hunter paragon who had helped us fight some werewolves once upon a time. He didn’t speak much. He wore a necklace made of large teeth from various animals, but he dressed mostly the same as when we had seen him. He had a rifle still slung over his shoulder.

Next to him was Detective Marcus Blackwood, the detective paragon himself. With his dark hair and piercing gaze, he made quite the addition to the group. He was wearing a suit and a fedora, which didn’t really fit the expedition theme that the others were dressed for, but maybe that was just his personality. The detective usually comes in after the fact in a movie.

Finally was a paragon I had seen but never actually met. His name on the red wallpaper was Peter Who Knocked on the Door. He was the Eldritch Conduit paragon, and when I had met him at the Dollhouse, he was in a coma. To my knowledge, the only way he could wake was if he had a story to run.

Which clued me in as to why all these people were here.

Were they going to help us run Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle? How was that going to work?

The final person at the booth was not a paragon at all. It was a man dressed like a professor on a field trip. He had crooked glasses that hid haunted eyes. He was the drunkest out of all of them, and the least comfortable being there.

On the red wallpaper, his name was Hosea Greenside. He had a plot armor of thirty-five, but I couldn’t get a fix on why he was there.

“Welcome,” Detective Blackwood said. “I see you failed to stay out of trouble.”

He was talking to me.

“Trouble has a way of finding me,” I said.

“Yes, we all know a bit about that,” he said.

“Maybe you’re wondering why we’re all here waiting for you,” Jack Goforth said. “Maybe I’m wondering why I’m here, too.”

He was drinking a mimosa and had a fairly good humor about him once he started talking.

“The trope that you equipped allows you to hire a companion,” Bones Ibarra said, “but technically, you get a choice of companions. That’s not to say I don’t want the job, but I thought maybe you would want to see some alternatives.”

The five of us were pretty overstimulated by the environment and by the presence of so many paragons, who made us nervous even by themselves.

“Wait a second. Am I supposed to choose one of you to be my companion? I thought he was already my companion,” Antoine said, pointing to Bones.

“He is your companion, or at least he should be,” Jack said. “But you do get a choice. Just so you know, I am the wrong choice.” He looked at the others. “Am I allowed to tell him that?”

“It’s true. You should pick the adventurer as your companion,” Detective Blackwood said. “But there was still value in giving you the choice. I’m sure you’ll understand why.”

I did.

“Because if you guys are the applicable companions, that should tell us some information about the storyline, right?” I guessed.

“Told you he was bright. I guess that means we can go home,” Jack said.

“Speak for yourself,” Peter Who Knocked on the Door said. “I’m not leaving until I’ve eaten everything on the menu.”

He was awful skinny, having been in a coma for some meaningful fraction of eternity.

“So these are our options,” Camden asked. “A detective, a Monster Hunter, a bruiser, a socialite, and an Eldritch conduit. Not to mention the adventurer. Sounds complicated.”

“There’s one more,” Bones said, “but she likes to make an entrance.”

I looked around and didn’t see anyone.

“What is he here for?” Cassie asked, looking at the drunkard next to all the paragons.

Detective Blackwood looked at the man she was talking about, and then he said, “This one took some tracking down, but we eventually found him. Thought you might want to meet him.”

“And why would we want to meet him?” Antoine asked.

The paragons looked each other in the eye, and then one of them volunteered to speak.

“Because he’s you,” Jack said, “or at least he’s the person you’ll be playing. Isn’t it nice to finally put a face to a character?”

I took a moment to let that sink in.

In many horror movies, we aren’t just playing generic stereotypes. We’re standing in for actual people who lived through the storylines back before they were storylines. Were they saying that this was the actual man who lived through the events of Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle before it was given that silly pulpy name?

“He may have a story to tell. We thought you might want to hear it,” Bones Ibarra said. “It’s been an ordeal setting this up.”

I looked around at them. Antoine had only equipped my companion trope for a few seconds before we first saw the adventurer paragon, and yet I was certain that from their perspective, a lot longer time had passed. They had been planning something. Was it a plan to help us, or were they serving some other master? I might never know.

But that question was drowned out pretty quickly, because the final member of this paragon squad arrived late. She really did want to make an entrance.

I turned and saw a woman I recognized. She looked a bit older than I remembered. Her hair was a dark auburn. Her skin had seen some sun. She didn’t look as girlish as I recalled. She was dressed for a part on an expedition, with short cargo pants, a Henley shirt, and a light tactical jacket. She had firearms, as to be expected, and knives, too.

With one guess, I knew that she was the Femme Fatale paragon, even though I didn’t know her as that before.

On the red wallpaper, her name was Roxanne Surratt.

But back in the days of Camp Dyer, I knew her as Roxy.

“What did I miss?” she asked with a smile. I always thought her smile carried a secret.

I never would have guessed this would be it.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep