“I don’t know why he brought me,” I said as we walked down the stairs into the basement. “The only thing I can shoot those wolves with is my camera.”

It may have been the wrong time for a joke, but I wanted to establish that my character was not prone to becoming emotional or losing his cool. That was an important part of setting up Oblivious Bystander, among other things.

Like everything else, the stairs and the basement were lit with lanterns, and as we went down, I started to smell the people we were about to meet. They smelled like wet dog.

Before long, we followed the corridor to a large clearing that appeared to have been hollowed out of pure rock, more like a cave system than a basement. In the center of that clearing were two cages of thick iron bars, about the size of jail cells.

Two people—a man and a woman wearing hospital scrubs with claw marks cut through them—were in those cages.

When they looked over at us, they were shocked to see us—or, to be more exact, they were shocked to see Andrew and Michael.

Something I hadn’t anticipated had happened.

As I looked at them on the red wallpaper, I noticed that the tall blonde man and the short, redheaded woman were Logan and Avery—not NPCs acting as surrogates, but the actual players. Their plot armor was set to 0, and they had no tropes equipped, but it definitely appeared to be them.

Logan was probably in his late twenties or early thirties. Even in his pitiful state, he had knowing, clever eyes. Avery might have been my age. She was scared witless.

Luckily, they were aware enough of their situation that they didn’t break character, given that we were On-Screen. Perhaps they were being controlled by the script. Either way, I could see immediately that they knew what was happening. They must have been so confused because they weren’t aware that Rescue tropes existed again.

“Logan,” Kirst said, “here comes the cavalry. The best paranormal investigators and monster hunters money could buy.”

“You’ve got them in a cage down here?” Hawk said. “I suppose this is where you got the werewolf saliva. I half expected they were out there roaming in the wild.”

“No, not for long,” Kirst said. “The first thing Logan did after realizing his affliction was call me.”

“That’s a rare amount of trust,” Hawk said. “Most newly turned wolves abandon their lives completely and get killed hunting cows if they don’t find their pack soon enough. They’re too ashamed or too uninterested in returning.”

Logan and Avery stood there confused, drained of every ounce of energy.

“Of course he wanted to return,” I said. “He’s a rich kid; he doesn’t want to be a vagabond by day, dog by night.”

Logan looked at me. I could see his eyes blur out as he read about me on the red wallpaper.

“He returned because he knows his father loves him,” Kirst said, “and that I would do anything for him.”

Kirst was really selling it. I didn’t like the guy after what he did, but he was very compelling.

“How much longer do I have before it’s permanent?” Logan asked, straining. “It’s hard to remember.”

“That’s okay, son,” Kirst said. “The werewolf infection has a way of confusing a new host. We’ll get you fixed. We have plenty of time. Everything will be okay.”

He got genuinely emotional. Must have had practice.

“I can feel it coming,” Avery said. “The moon’s about to come up, isn’t it?”

“Yes, dear girl,” Kirst said. “Don’t you fret. We will rid you of this curse.”

As she mentioned the moon was about to rise, I became hyper-aware that I might be infected. Kirst said there was a one-in-four chance of being turned, and the Infected light on my status bar seemed to reflect that, blinking slowly about every four seconds.

But that got me thinking—if it was almost nighttime and he had just infected us, shouldn’t we be locked in cages, too? And wouldn’t it be awfully inconvenient to try to hunt werewolves when you turned into one at night?

I didn’t want to ask those questions On-Screen because doing so would have made my character look like an idiot who wasn’t experienced.

Luckily, Hawk did an explainer a few minutes later On-Screen that covered all of that. Kirst had stepped out.

“Odds are only one of us is going to transform, and even then, I doubt any of us will start showing signs until the latter part of the week. Fast transformations only happen when you’re injured, and the greater the injury, the faster they happen. It’s like the werewolf in you has to slowly replace the rest of you. With us, we weren’t injured, so the replacement will be slow. Heck, it may be a whole other cycle before we fully transform. I expect Logan and Avery here weren’t just pricked with a little needle of werewolf saliva.”

Logan shook his head. “They ate my heart,” he said.

“That’ll do it. That’s why werewolves go for the internal organs. They don’t just like the taste; if their victim ends up catching the curse, they might even transform that night. Just a little prick of saliva? I’m not sure how long it’ll take us.”

“What do you think the odds are that there was no saliva in those syringes?” I asked. “We’d never know—not if we get the job done.”

“I don’t think you understand the kind of man we’re dealing with,” Hawk said. “A man like that isn’t going to cut corners. Now, let’s stop talking. We don’t want to antagonize these two. If my estimate is right, we’re about to see the enemy.”

And his estimate was right.

As we stood there, backed against the wall as far away from those cages as we could get, Logan and Avery started screaming in pain.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

It was strange—they didn’t sprout ears or a tail immediately. No, the wind started to blow through the cavern of the basement, and the lanterns around us began to flicker until only the biggest one was still lit.

There was no mistaking it: these werewolves were magical. Why else would the wind come to greet them as they transformed?

The large lantern flickered, and as it did, the room would grow dark, and we would watch them transform one little burst of light at a time.

First, the arms lengthened. I could hear the bones stretching. Then, their bodies started to grow larger. It was hard for me to tell exactly what was happening as they began to sprout fur in patches sporadically with each flicker of the light.

One flicker of the light, and suddenly they had a snout—not quite a full wolf snout.

Another flicker, and finally, their heads were completely replaced with those of wolves, and their cries turned to howls.

Another flicker and the long-armed wolves stood before us, almost identical, with only the slightest difference in the shade of gray to tell them apart. Logan’s fur had a slight lightness, possibly thanks to his blonde hair, whereas Avery’s had just a hint of auburn.

I expected it would be harder to tell them apart when mixed with other wolves. The only real difference, other than the slight variation in fur shade, was the slight sexual dimorphism: Avery kept whatever curves she had, and Logan’s torso was triangular in shape like he’d been hitting the gym his whole life.

And then, as they shifted from player to enemy, I could finally see their enemy tropes on the red wallpaper. Thanks to their nonexistent plot armor, I could see all of their tropes, which was quite useful.

Werewolf

Plot Armor: 0

__________

Tropes

Quick Change

Artist

This villain can change into and out of their disguise without being seen or getting caught.

Hidden In

Plain Sight

This villain cannot be attacked On-Screen until it attacks the player or is otherwise identified as hostile. Attacking it will not be effective, nor will it change the story. It will cause the player to go Off-Screen for a time.

Stop Motion Transformation

This creature transforms in phases, with each phase becoming more monstrous. Each phase occurs out of frame and out of sight.

Silver Bullet

This monster has a weakness specific to them that renders them dead or vulnerable.

Join Us

This enemy has some means of increasing its numbers through conversion.

Everyone Is A Suspect

No characters or players will have an alibi for the murders occurring before the finale.

Repress And Deny

This villain will not remember their evil deeds and will adamantly deny any accusations until confronted with undeniable proof on-screen.

Fatal Attraction

This creature is prone to romantic obsession, displaying an intense and often destructive allure.

Otherwise Impervious

This creature regenerates from all damage, recovering quickly from any wound that isn’t inflicted by its unique mortal weakness.

Paranormal Hierarchy

This creature’s effective Plot Armor is determined by its rank on the chain of command regardless of base Plot Armor.

Animals Are Psychic

The villain demonstrates knowledge that it has no logical means to acquire, an instinct to kill or survive.

Tidy Monster

This villain inexplicably becomes clean and almost free of evidence of their violent acts by the time they are next on-screen, making them harder to identify.

Patient Hunter

This villain avoids attacking the entire group at once until Second Blood, choosing instead to pick off members one by one.

Occasional Contagion

This villain’s infection is not guaranteed to take hold; victims remain in suspense until the reveal, which depends on the needs of the story and nothing else.

Climactic Imperative

This villain can only be defeated at the zenith of a conflict or interaction, requiring a dramatic, pivotal confrontation or clever trap rather than being easily dispatched or overwhelmed with conventional means despite all logic.

Carousel’s Uncertainty Principle

This villain’s lore and weaknesses only become true once they are discovered, but if they are contradicted on-screen before being revealed, the lore shifts and is no longer valid.

Shifting Protagonist

The role of the protagonist shifts between different characters throughout the story, maintaining suspense and unpredictability until a single main hero is solidified during the finale. The audience will not know who the main character is until the Finale.

At first glance, it became clear that their tropes weren’t just monster tropes; they had several that were usually used for masked killers and slashers. As the Atlas had forewarned, there was going to be a small murder mystery element to these wolves as we tried to guess who killed whom. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

As soon as we went Off-Screen, Antoine turned to us and said, “Four days, 11 hours, and 37 minutes.”

His Rescue trope gave him a timer, telling us how long we had to kill the pack leader, save Logan and Avery, and save ourselves.

I read their tropes off to my teammates, and we discussed them as we stared at the wolves, which banged against the bars of their cages, hoping for freedom.

Hawk just stood there and listened. Could he not speak about meta things? Were the rules for Silas’ Dyrkon’s fake tutorial different than the norm, or had Carousel nerfed Paragons?

We could see elements of the plot ahead of us inside of these tropes, but we could also see how terrifyingly difficult this fight was going to be. While they did have an absolute weakness to silver, their Climactic Imperative trope would nullify that advantage quite a bit.

It also appeared that researching the lore was of huge importance, as whatever additional weaknesses or mystical properties they may have would only be available to us if we found them—probably somewhere in the library that this abandoned old house most certainly had to have.

Finally, we got to the last trope of the lot: Shifting Protagonist. That one was interesting because it almost counteracted Kimberley’s Celebrity trope to give each of us a turn at being the main character.

I wondered if I might be the main character. Hard to imagine that.

I supposed it could end up being anyone.

~

~

….. Click “Next Chapter” to find out.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep