Chapter Ninety-Eight: Self-Inflicted Injuries

I stood in the alcove right at the edge of the magical seal that kept people from entering the area of the cask room where the bodies were kept. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I fought the urge to even try. It wasn’t time yet.

Cristobal went to the end row behind the casks and started to push them off onto the floor. They hit the floor and burst open like black magic eggs. He got half a dozen casks broken on the floor before he decided to stop.

“That should help convince them when they come down,” he said quietly as he approached us. “Midnight, you and I will go up the back entrance and then join our followers outside as they clamor to see the destruction. Red Rock, you stay here until the last moment. Make sure that you are seen. Then I want you to get up into the hallways and make sure you get seen there too. We need witnesses. Try not to get that body killed–we still have to question it, but if you do, I will not cry over it.”

Mrs. Midnight walked over to me and pulled a small, green bit of cloth out of some concealed pocket–a mask. “The masses must find their killer,” she said, as she placed the mask over my eyes. My name on the red wallpaper changed from Riley Lawrence to Riley Lawrence (Mr. Evergreen).

They were going to frame me. How did that always happen?

“I won’t disappoint you,” Red Rock said with my mouth.

“I know you will not. I will be sure to reward your loyalty,” Cristobal said. “Pain is a brick in the tower of eternity. decanter vitae.”

“Decanter vitae,” I/Red Rock said.

With that, he and Mrs. Midnight went up the hidden stairway before they were seen. They must have had real trust that none of the bodies in the casks would be able to see them. Even those that had just been spilled out onto the floor were not a risk to them, apparently.

Something about the entire event struck me as odd. Why had Cristobal, one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world, not used any magic? He handled me physically. He knocked over the casks with his bare hands. In fact, the only instance I had seen him use magic was when he used lightning bolts to get the crowd’s attention earlier. And of course, when he appeared on the ballroom floor in a cloud of smoke.

That’s when I had a revelation. Did the cask room prevent people from using magic? Had I heard that earlier? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps that was one of the clues that Grace found that had her smiling when she said she knew how the murder was done.

But if Cristobal hadn’t used magic, how had the murder been committed?

I would have to wait for Grace to unveil that secret.

I expected that any minute, party guests would start piling down the front stairs into the cask room. Then they would get a look at someone they believed to be Mr. Evergreen, and that would be enough to convince them of his guilt.

That wasn’t the first thing that happened though.

The back row where Cristobal had knocked over several casks started to make noises as the bodies in those casks began to move.

Red Rock did not move me any closer, so I didn’t get a good view. He did not seem particularly interested.

I watched as one of the figures, a woman whose age was indiscernible due to the prolonged period she had spent in the magical elixir, stood with great effort and started looking around.

“Help!” the old woman cried out. Her voice was cracked and almost unrecognizable as human from how long she had spent in the cask.

“There is no help for you,” Red Rock said with my mouth.

The woman turned around immediately. I could see that her eyes were practically white with cataracts. The way these Society members had let their bodies deteriorate in their quest for immortality was horrifying.

“Mr. Gray Amber, is that you?”

She had recognized my voice. Her eyes had become nearly useless with old age, but her ears had not.

I looked up at the row she had been on and saw that I was looking at the “blue” row.

The woman before me was Mrs. Cloudburst. The real Mrs. Cloudburst. Time and disuse had not done her body well. She was both shriveled and bloated. Her wispy white hair nearly reached the floor.

“Mr. Gray Amber,” she cried out in a feeble voice, “Something has happened. I need your help.”

“No, Mr. Gray Amber here,” Red Rock said. “I’m Mr. Evergreen.”

“What? No…” She croaked. “I know your voice. It can’t be.”

She struggled to see me with her poor eyesight.

It was then that I started to consider the limitations of the masks. When we arrived, I had assumed that the masks were designed to hide the identities of the partygoers. But I slowly realized that the partygoers didn’t care about the identities of their hosts nearly as much as they cared about letting other society members know who they were, regardless of what body they were wearing.

Any anonymity the masks provided was just an added benefit meant to prevent the members from recognizing the host bodies and breaking the illusion of their hedonistic paradise.

Mrs. Cloudburst could recognize me by my voice in the same way that my team and I could recognize each other. That would also go to explain why Grace had been able to recognize her friend, Mary Lee Parrish, despite Mary Lee wearing a mask.

The masks took some getting used to. Even with their powers, it took practice not to look at the body of a person when trying to recognize them instead of their mask.

Mrs. Cloudburst couldn’t see the mask, so she had no idea it had been switched.

Red Rock was growing impatient with Mrs. Cloudburst.

“Look lady, I don’t know you, and if you don’t stop talking to me, you’re gonna regret it.”

Mrs. Cloudburst started to cry and back away, but the movement was difficult for her atrophied limbs. She fell onto the ground and started attempting to crawl.

Despite knowing that Mrs. Cloudburst was a terrible person who enslaved a young woman in order to use her as a host, I felt bad for her. Her desperation to just live another day had driven her to this, and now Red Rock was threatening to take away that chance at life.

Of course, he couldn’t do it. He would be no more able to pass through the magical seal that protected the cask room than I was able to. Not without consent. Given the fact that he was wearing the Mr. Evergreen mask, I doubted he would get permission.

So we stood together in my body on the outskirts of the room, waiting to be seen by witnesses.

It didn’t take too long for them to arrive. At first, they surveyed the damage in the cask room that Cristobal had caused. Then they caught sight of me.

“Is that…?” one of the women shouted out. “That’s Mr. Evergreen, he’s back!”

As more of the society members started to get a look at me and advance in my direction, Red Rock decided that he had done enough.

He turned tail and ran up the secret staircase, flipping a switch on his way up that closed the door behind him. I was along for the ride. But not for much longer if I could help it.

Because this, too, was a part of my plan, more or less.

Step One: Find important plot information for Grace.

This part was simple but time-consuming. The members of the society were very loose-lipped, and there were little bits of information to be found in almost every conversation. Most of them were redundant or useless for our purposes, but still, all I needed was the slightest crumb of a clue. I didn’t need to know the complete motivation; I just needed something to help Grace make her case.

Finding out there was a power struggle was not surprising, but it was necessary.

If I was able to get that information to Grace, that would be wonderful, but in many ways, it was fortunate that I wasn’t able to get it to her.

Yet.

Because by having important information, Grace’s “Don’t Shoot the Messenger” trope buffed my Grit by a huge amount. Ten whole points. I would need those for later.

Step Two: Get caught and possessed for Second Blood

There was no avoiding it. If things were to go to plan, I would have to make the sacrifice. Mary Lee Parrish was a stock character whose entire job was to demonstrate the stakes of the storyline. This storyline was about body snatching. In a way, I was happy to find out that the fate the victims of this storyline suffered wasn’t death. Dying was taking a toll on me. Strangely I was looking forward to helping out my team without having to get injuries on or around my neck.

I had run down into the secret laboratory and gotten caught by the magical seal. I did my best to make it look like my character was going in there to investigate the room, and he had no idea he would barely make it past the staircase. It needed to look like I fell into a trap.

As I expected, I wasn’t killed. I was turned into a puppet. I existed in the dark recesses of a foreign mind. The experience was terrifying. I tried not to think about it because the real test was coming up.

Step Three: Willpower

There was a reason that I was happy to find out that I couldn’t deliver Grace her little piece of information before I was possessed. As long as I still struggled to get that information to Grace, I would have buffed Grit. I wasn’t sure how far I could exploit that but so far, everything seemed to be working.

As Red Rock moved my body up the stairs, I realized that this passage led straight to the underground laboratory with the caged hosts.

Cristobal and friends hadn’t had to move me very far at all. There was a large overstuffed chair in the corner away from all the magical equipment and industrial-sized vats filled with potions.

In it, Red Rock’s original host slumped over like a puppet with its strings cut wearing his mask. Whenever Cristobal had force-fed me the mind control potion, Red Rock must have lost control of his original host body.

It was time to make a move.

I started fighting. I focused with every part of my being on resisting control from Red Rock. He tried to take a step forward, and I fought it. The first time it made no difference, but the second time, he tripped. I stumbled forward and smacked my face against the floor.

Still, I fought.

It felt like I was trying to peel my own skin off, but my heightened Grit pushed me through it.

Having high Grit was particularly useful in this storyline because of another trope in play: Chris’ “Willpower is Magic” trope.

That trope guaranteed that all magic was resistible through sheer effort. I was counting on that meaning that possession would be too. With my temporarily high Grit, I stood a real chance.

I fought and pulled and screamed and banged my arms against the floor.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Red Rock yelled, to the best of his ability, but I was fighting him when he used my mouth too. “You’re going to kill yourself!”

That was likely part of the motivation that kept other hosts from fighting back. By the time they were willing to destroy themselves to fight, they lacked the ability. That, and they were basic NPCs with at most 1 Grit. I didn’t know how strong Red Rock was, but I could feel that my Grit stacked up well against his prowess.

“So what?” I yelled out, to the best of my ability.

I jerked my neck forward, slamming my face against the ground again so hard that I felt a tooth come out.

That jarred me for a moment, but luckily it stunned him too.

I pulled as hard as I could to get control of my limbs. To my satisfaction, it was working.

But at a great cost.

As I pulled against him, I could feel parts of my body breaking under the pressure of the spell. Three ribs broke in succession. They were so loud I could hear them popping.

My left arm started folding backward, and then it snapped at my elbow joint, bending unnaturally.

But I kept fighting because Red Rock was also suffering as I damaged my body.

Some of the host slaves in the cages stood and watched me struggle. A few even had enough control over their bodies to cheer.

I could feel myself winning. I could feel it with every broken bone, torn muscle, and ruptured organ.

With one last burst, I pulled against Red Rock’s influence and attempted to crawl forward with my one good arm.

My right leg started to twist until my foot turned backward, and I heard a pop in my ankle.

Just a little further.

Only a little.

And all at once, I could feel myself regaining control.

I could barely breathe; it felt like one of my lungs had been pierced in the effort.

I did my best to stand. Despite my broken ankle, I was able to do so. High Grit really was useful. I knew the pain was there, but I could bear it somehow. It reminded me of the healing tropes that had been used on me during the Grotesque storyline. The injury was there, but like in a horror movie, I could power through it.

Moving made me tear up. But I had to go. With one glance back at Red Rock’s limp body in the overstuffed chair, I began climbing the stairs out of the hidden laboratory.

Every step was excruciating. I just kept focusing on how it would be over soon. We were in the finale, and all Grace had to do was reveal the truth.

Such a shame. I was really looking forward to watching Cristobal’s plan play out.

After I managed to pull myself back into the Aquarium Room where the secret staircase led, I made the effort to go back to the couch where I had hidden my Mr. Gray Amber mask. There were powerful sorcerers roaming the halls. One look at Mr. Evergreen, and I would get trapped in a painting or something.

I doubted my Grit was high enough to stop that.

I stuffed the Mr. Evergreen mask in the couch in its place.

Once again undercover, except for my extreme injuries, I began limping out into the hallways toward the door that led down to the cask room. I could only hope that my teammates would be on the periphery of that crowd like they had been before.

I wasn’t let down.

The entrance had been clogged up with terrified partygoers. There was an uproar, and people were screaming and fearful. Cristobal and Mrs. Midnight were among them, assuring them that they would be safe, that they would capture Mr. Evergreen.

People started to notice that I was horribly injured, and I worried that that would cause problems with the plan. Luckily, most people were quite distracted. The tales of my horribly mangled body couldn’t beat out people screaming about Mr. Evergreen being seen in the cask room.

My team, as expected, was on the outside of the crowd, and they spotted me as soon as I got in their eyeline.

They approached me quickly and took me to a side parlor where we wouldn’t be seen. I had been off-screen for much of my escapades. Perhaps if I had been on-screen, Cristobal’s guilt would have been revealed to the audience too soon. I wasn’t sure how much of my fight against control from the puppet serum had been on-screen because I had been distracted.

As they approached me, I went on-screen.

“What happened to you?” Kimberly asked, her voice dripping with concern.

Chris reached forward and flipped my mask off just to be sure that I was who he thought I was and that I wasn’t possessed. Without the mask, my teammates would be able to see whether I was infected or not.

“I’ve had a rough night,” I said. Then I told them everything that had happened. Every detail. I didn’t know which ones would be important.

Grace nodded as I went along. She clearly knew some of the facts that I had revealed.

“So Red Rock is out of commission now?” Grace asked.

“Yes,” I said.

There was one last piece of information I had to give to Grace. It was the piece that had buffed me to the point of being able to break free from the spell.

“Mr. Midnight wanted to go out on his own and start his own Society of some kind. He never did. Some people would have followed,” I said. Then I told them how I had learned that.

Almost instantly after the words left my mouth, my Grit dropped back to my measly 2 points.

I started choking on my own blood.

Breathing was nearly impossible. It felt like I had an anvil on my chest. My arm hurt so bad that I wished it would just be cut off, and my leg might as well have not been there at all. Without all that extra Grit, these injuries were more than I could bear.

I passed out.

It was hard to tell how injured I was with that massive Grit. I ended up dying anyway. Such a shame. At least this time it felt like falling asleep. Note to self: That was another really good reason to start equipping my Out Like a Light trope–ending my suffering painlessly.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a movie theater, my eyes magically fixed on the screen, watching my team finish the story.

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