Chapter Ninety-Six: Who, Why, and How

As I waited for the interviews to end, I started to survey the bodies in the casks. My Trope Master ability worked on them. As I looked around the room, I found that all of them were enemies. That made sense. It was unlikely that they would be NPCs. Body snatching pretty much ensures an evil alignment.

Unfortunately, they only had two to three tropes. Some were so old they would die with ease, apparently. One of their tropes appeared to block my ability to see anything more than that. Their Plot Armor ranged from standard NPC all the way up to 51.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t see any of their names, not even their colorful codenames. As I saw it, if I didn’t “Wake the Beast,” they would remain feeble test tube terrors.

I hoped.

Society Member

Plot Armor: 3-51

__________

Tropes

On Death’s Door (85% of the casks had this trope)

This villain is nearly dead and exploiting their weakness will easily procure a victory.

Don’t Wake the Beast (all of them had this)

This villain is asleep or in a similar condition. They will not stir without outside intervention. Waking them will transform them into a more dangerous form that plays by different tropes.

Decorative Danger (all of them had this)

This Villain’s presence is scene dressing. It would be best not to change that before the proper time comes.

After everyone had been interviewed, the party guests started to filter back upstairs. Many chose to walk up and down the hallways in between the casks, double-checking to make sure that they were safe. For a time, I joined them.

I was able to confirm to the best of my ability that none of the seals had been broken. Again, we always ran the risk that some sorcerer might be able to reseal their cask from within it, but I had not run across any information that would confirm that.

Based on the framework that Grace had given us, we could trust that assumption. Carousel didn’t want to make things easy, but it also had a movie to make, and watching players stumble around in the wrong direction for hours did not make good cinema. We were not there to dive deep into how the storyline’s magic system worked; that was the subject matter of other types of stories. We could rely on certain, uncontested facts. Still, it was difficult for me to give up on the idea.

When I finally made it back to the row with “my” cask, I saw that Grace had struck up a conversation with a gentleman by the name of Mr. Pewter.

I drew close so that I could listen to what they were talking about.

“Of course, I was an engineer by trade before. It was how I made my millions,” he said. “Are you familiar with locomotive lubrication? No of course you don’t want to talk about that; why am I asking? When I joined the Society, learning how magic works was a natural curiosity. I am quite the sorcerer in my own right. Well, I am learning the ropes. Say, have you seen the new rooms overlooking the pool?”

“No,” Grace said. “Are they nice?”

“They are beautiful, truly beautiful. Not unlike yourself… err… Say,” he cleared his throat, “What would you say if I asked you to go back t—”

“Do you know anything about the magic of these casks? I find it all so confusing,” Grace interjected. “I’ve been meaning to find a real sorcerer who could explain these to me. With recent events, I can’t stand not knowing.”

“Oh, of course. Yes, these casks are something else. Cristobal and Mr. Midnight designed them themselves. You’re looking at new magic,” he said, slapping the side of the nearest cask. “Oops, sorry,” he whispered to the cask, apparently remembering that a person was inside of it.

“In the international world, these are very impressive. Designed off an ancient sorcerer’s cogitation. Their special Draught of New Life does the job for you. Puts you in just the right mental state for the magic to work automatically and keeps you alive indefinitely. Genius. Truly.”

“That’s fascinating,” Grace said.

Mr. Pewter smiled and nodded his head enthusiastically. “I’ve always thought so! For years they just tried to teach new members to do it the old-fashioned way, but it takes decades to learn, so… that didn’t work.” He cleared his throat again and continued. “I still think they should explain this to new members, but they told me that most people don’t want to know the details given the… uncomfortable nature by which we get our new bodies. But how are we supposed to produce new sorcerers if they don’t teach the basics?”

“That’s a good question,” Grace said. “You know a lot about this.”

“Well, like I said, I was an engineer before I came aboard. And all magic really is, is engineering. That’s what I say. So, I was wondering if you might want to go see one of the rooms by the po—”

“You know what,” Grace said. “I just remembered I’m supposed to meet my friends in the ballroom. It’s hard to believe how forgetful I can be. Thank you for talking with me! I’ve really enjoyed it.”

Mr. Pewter nodded. “Right, I’ll uh… see you on the dance floor.”

Grace walked around him and left for the exit. I followed.

Mr. Pewter looked utterly disappointed.

Back in the ballroom, the band had started playing again, and some people had returned to dancing. I felt that was callous, considering someone had just been murdered, but these people had stolen innocent people’s bodies and turned them into mind slaves. Cognitive dissonance was probably the only thing holding them together.

We took turns revealing everything that we had learned. In that regard, Grace won first prize.

“I know who did it and I know how. I could probably guess why,” she said. “There are two problems. I cannot reveal what I know until the Finale so that my Here’s What Happened trope will function properly. The second problem is that we need evidence. Knowing what happened is only the first battle. We need to prove it. I want you to focus on evidence for motive. That is usually where Carousel likes to throw its curve balls. Without the motive, we can’t win, so I want you to devote all of your efforts for the remainder of Rebirth toward figuring it out. It’s possible that it’s a standard motive. Love triangle, power struggle, you understand. I need your help substantiating that.”

“Wait,” Kimberly asked. “If you can’t tell us who did it, how are you supposed to find the motive?”

“If I’m right, we can probably guess who did it,” Chris said. “We don’t have many true suspects. The real mystery is the how and the why, and Grace has that half-finished already.”

Grace nodded.

Grace’s Here’s What Happened ability would take the team off-screen while she explained who the killer was. That could stop a killer from retaliating. I could understand her reluctance to ruin its potency, but I was frustrated that I wasn’t allowed to know what had happened. If Chris was right and it was the obvious person, that meant that it had to involve Cristobal. He was the only named character, and his interaction with the victim was suspicious at face value.

But how had he done it?

The “why” could be simple. Mr. Midnight’s mysterious death had been hung out as an obvious clue. It was established that Ms. Monarch knew something about it. Someone had to hide it. We just needed actual proof. In the case of this storyline, proof likely meant rumors and gossip. I felt under-equipped for such a task.

Antoine and Kimberly hadn’t come up with any new information since our last group huddle, and Chris had come to pretty much the same conclusion I had about the seals on both the cask room and the casks themselves. Either way, it was old news to Grace.

They knew pretty much everything that I did from our last conversation about what I had seen with my tropes and discussed with Mrs. Cloudburst. I told them about the tropes I had seen on the vegetative sorcerers downstairs, but that was all I had to offer.

“I want you to go out and find the information we need and bring it back to me. Don’t blow your cover to do so. I have contingencies if we don’t find the information soon enough, but I don’t want to have to use them. You have done a great job so far. Let’s finish this thing,” Grace said. She was trying to stay positive and keep a strong face, but I could tell she was worried. If not about us, then about her brother, Reggie. I hoped he would be okay.

A few minutes later we had to have that whole conversation again in-character for the benefit of the cameras.

With Grace’s mandate that we go find the motive for the crime, I finally had the freedom to search the mansion for the information we needed.

I left the ballroom and wound my way through the vast hallways of the estate. I put on my headphones and started walking casually. Up until that moment, my Oblivious Bystander strategy probably wouldn’t have been that meaningful given the fact that I already had a disguise, but as Second Blood approached, I knew that soon enemies would be at the gates, and I would need to be ready.

My strategy was to find people talking and do my best to listen in. I wasn’t sure if Carousel would go along with it. Normally, using Oblivious Bystander was a meta-strategy. I was pretending to be an oblivious character. This time, I was playing a character who was pretending to be oblivious.

This was a unique situation where my character would, in the context of the story, be acting aloof to the conversations and people he perceived. My character was a reporter of some kind who worked for a celebrity gossip magazine. I was undercover, trying to figure out information about a magical secret society, as tabloid journalists are known to do.

I started to wish that we had attempted an escape earlier. I expected that the doors were locked and that we wouldn’t be able to leave the property. That might give my character more narrative foundation for trying to figure out the truth. It was too late for those types of regrets.

I was going to have to find out if Oblivious Bystander would work when my character wasn’t actually oblivious but was just pretending to be. I silently begged Carousel to go along with it.

I made my way through the halls and slowed down at every conversation, listening for important information.

For a mansion filled with wicked, rich world travelers, those people sure had some boring conversations. They talked about makeup and their favorite alcohol. They talked about their favorite bands and lamented that they had been dead for decades.

Eventually, I wandered upon a woman who said, verbatim, “I have a secret about Cristobal.”

When I listened in, the secret was that she had a huge crush on him. I should have known it wasn’t going to be anything meaningful, given the fact that I wasn’t on screen at the time, but I still got my hopes up.

I continued on.

I passed Chris, who was still talking to Miss Forget-Me-Not, but I didn’t stick around to listen to their conversation because it would be a wasted effort. Chris knew what he was doing.

I walked around for what felt like an hour until I finally found something worth my time.

I felt like a fool when I realized that there was a memorial near the entrance of the mansion. I hadn’t noticed it when we entered because I was concerned with a dozen other things, and I didn’t know who these characters were yet. But as I found that area again, I was finally able to lay eyes on a high-resolution color photograph of Mr. Midnight.

I wasn’t sure if that would help, but it was nice to match a masked face to a name.

There were some women there standing in front of the memorial, paying their respects.

I wondered how long they had been there, going through those same exact motions, waiting for someone to talk to them.

“I would have followed him,” one of the women, Mrs. Rosemary, said.

“In a heartbeat,” her friend Ms. Sassafras agreed.

“This is a nightmare,” Mrs. Rosemary said. “I wish he had just done it. Gone through with the plan. I think that lots of people would have left with him and Mrs. Midnight. More than he ever knew.”

“We can never be sure now,” Ms. Sassafras said. “I need a drink.”

I got away from them so that they wouldn’t notice me.

My Grit jumped up 10 points.

There it was. A power struggle. A small brick that could be used to help construct the motive for why Miss Monarch had been killed. Apparently, to cover up the death of Mr. Midnight. Grace’s “Don’t Shoot The Messenger” trope had given me a buff to my Grit so that I could bring this information back to her. It was a rumor, but a rumor was better than nothing.

My information would only be a piece of the puzzle, but I was glad to have something to offer.

The needle on the plot cycle ticked toward Second Blood. I would need to get the information to her soon. If my estimate was correct, I had less than half an hour. I didn’t want to think about what was about to happen to me. I secretly hoped that there would be some plot nonsense to explain why I wouldn’t be Second Blood, but I couldn’t think of any. I had the lowest effective plot armor on the team, so I would be next.

The only question was: Where was Grace?

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