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.

We had two items on the agenda. First, we needed to decide whether we were going to dig further into a possible hidden subplot dealing with the history of the werewolf curse even if we might accidentally hit secret lore and ruin the storyline. Second, we needed to get our plan together for First Blood because it was upon us.

“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. It is mostly concerned about us killing the pack leader.”

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.

“Amadeus Sing started hearing some legends about this daughter the family 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 journal—that Clara got the werewolf curse, and her parents killed her for it. And he believes that’s why the curse changed but good luck trying to understand his logic.”

The journal I had been reading was a nightmare to pick through, but I found it engaging. Unfortunately, we were under a time constraint.

“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 news articles and occasional bits of lore about various beasts, including werewolves. He was taking his time going 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. The script is almost blank. 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 a way, she had helped. The rest of us had so much luck with exploration that we were digging up secret lore by accident. Bad Luck Magnet 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 more than usual.

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.”

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“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 should come back, do the base storyline, and then get the secret lore,” 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 mentioned the possibility of secret lore or hidden subplots.

The trope of a main character being a reincarnated historical figure is an old and 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 beyond mere research and improvisation—or at least we shouldn’t try. 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 at once 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. “Delta Epsilon Delta 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, tonight—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 the 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 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 hole 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.”

That would be a little too easy.

“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.”

That was the hard part. We could devise a way of detecting a werewolf in our midst, but if we did that, the mystery would be solved too soon, and what would we fill up the rest of the movie with? Carnage?

“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 at first.”

“Why not?” Antoine asked.

I tried to find a way to phrase it delicately.

“It’ll make us seem stupid,” I said. “The lore says it takes a while to transform unless you are gutted in a werewolf attack. Maybe once the full moon hits, we can accuse each other, but we can’t be overly paranoid too quickly.”

“So we play it by ear,” Antoine said.

“We play it by ear,” I agreed.

The problem with that, of course, was that Carousel could play it by ear, too.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep