Book Five, Chapter 72: The Stone Fort

~Riley~

I was getting all kinds of footage as we walked back up through the basement path that would lead us into Witherhold Manor. The Dailies triggered around the time the werewolves started transforming.

I thought I would zoom through the footage and give the group the highlights.

“There are so many hikers, campers, and people staying at cabins along the river,” I said. “Carousel’s been taking footage of them all day, but I think some of them are werewolves. I don’t know which ones, though. I can see the way it focuses the camera on some of them, but I’m not sure exactly what the language of film is trying to convey here. Are all of these people werewolves?”

I was talking to myself out loud at that point, but the others were listening closely.

“What exactly are you seeing?” Antoine asked.

“Just nature photography mostly,” I replied. “But whenever I see a group of people, sometimes the camera will look at them from a certain angle that in movies means they’re evil—exaggerating the size of their head, the sharpness of their features, catching them in shadows. That’s how you know someone’s bad before you know they’re bad.”

It could be hard to explain, but you knew it when you saw it.

“So you’re saying we may be surrounded by hundreds of werewolves? We’re going to get our butts kicked?” Antoine asked.

“Or chewed,” I said. “I’m not getting as much footage as I’d like, which should theoretically mean that we have a high-Savvy enemy… but that doesn’t sound right at all. Unless Kirst’s Savvy is what I’m fighting against, which is a can of worms itself.”

Maybe one of the werewolf tropes was interfering with The Dailies. I didn’t know.

“Are you getting locations with this data?” Andrew asked. He wanted all the facts as much as I did. More facts meant better planning. Even though he was high-Savvy, his tropes were mostly centered around healing, and he wasn’t great at finding out information unless he was cutting open a dead body.

“Vaguely,” I said. “They’re all situated along the river, and there have been a lot of shots following the river all the way up toward the property the Manor is on. Wait a second…”

“What is it?” Antoine asked.

Flashes of carnage flickered in my mind. Was there an attack recently? No. That wasn’t it.

“I got footage of the werewolves mauling Logan and Avery,” I said. “It’s cut up and pasted together, but I think it’s actual footage.”

“They’re using the footage of when we trespassed onto the monster lair?” Andrew asked.

“That’s my best guess,” I said.

From the way they shot it, it almost felt like they didn’t know how it was going to be used in the final film.

“I, for one,” Kimberly said, “Am glad not to have footage of someone being mauled in my head.”

As we made our way up into the Manor from the basement, we were greeted by Kirst’s butler, who insisted on leading us outside.

“Wait, you’re not putting us outside when we know there are werewolves around, are you?” Kimberly asked the butler.

“I don’t think you have anything to fear here, my darling,” he said in reply.

I didn’t know this guy’s story, but he had way too much personality for a random NPC.

He continued leading us out of the Manor and back onto the property where I could see some type of… well, it wasn’t exactly a castle, but there were lots of stone structures and walls.

On-Screen.

“What is that?” Kimberly asked. She was always ready for a scene.

“That, my dear, is the palisade—the Fort. Or at least, it was once.”

Palisades were made of vertical sticks stuck in the ground. This was not. I’d have to let that slide.

What I saw in front of me was a network of tall stone walls, many of them crumbling but still upright and imposing.

“That’s a death trap,” Antoine said. “A werewolf could clear those walls without even thinking about it.”

The butler smiled his devious little smile and said, “I think we’re counting on that.”

“You’re planning a trap?” Andrew asked.

“Werewolves are mindless creatures,” the butler said. “Many of the resources we’ve found confirmed that.”

What resources were they looking at?

“That’s a bad bet,” Hawk said. He was mostly quiet. He was one of those men that you could just see the intelligence in his eyes. He understood what we were talking about Off-Screen, whether he spoke about it or not.

“Oh?” the butler asked. “Then, I suppose you will have no difficulty imparting your wisdom to the captain.”

“Imparting wisdom is always the hard part,” Hawk said. “The werewolves around Carousel are not stupid like many of the wolves in other parts of the world. Here, they’re as smart as you are—once they mature a bit.”

That hung in the air for a beat.

“Perhaps you can design,” the butler said, pausing as the sound of a wolf could be heard in the distance, “a better trap then. Go straight onto the palisade wall; there’s an entrance. You’ll be able to see it when you get closer. I should not have to tell you that Kirst’s men know you have been infected, and each one of them is ready to take your head off if you cause problems.”

I really hoped that wasn’t a source of drama in this story. That would be lame.

“If the legends are true,” I said, “I imagine we won’t be the only infected ones soon enough. Something tells me you picked a really bad week to try to antagonize the wolves.”

I wanted to come back at him in equal force while being vague.

“What are you, some sort of psychic now? I didn’t remember reading that in your dossier,” the butler said.

“No,” I said, “that’s my grandmother—that’s the psychic. Me? I just have gut instinct. Lots of would-be hunters think it’s a werewolf’s ferocity that kills, but that’s not it. It’s their playfulness.”

I wanted to set this movie up as a battle of the wits, not just a fight to the death. We could win the Savvy and Hustle fight. The werewolves had the advantage in direct combat.

For the first time, the butler seemed to have been tripped up by something one of us said.

Antoine leaned over to the butler and said, “They’re thrill-seekers, werewolves, and my money says they already know we’re here. In fact, my money says they’ve already walked amongst us, watching us. I hope you kept track of the meatheads.”

He must have understood where I was going.

The butler didn’t have much to say to that. He just did a strange little bow, turned tail, and walked back toward the Manor.

Off-Screen.

Before we got to the palisade, Kimberly decided to tell us about her backstory. She told us about a woman who was her friend and former camp counselor who had somehow survived the attack that Kimberly thought had killed her.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“If she’s alive, that means she was turned,” Michael said. He didn’t make a peep On-Screen.

I agreed with him.

“You’ll have to play that up,” I said. “Really focus on that relationship. Should take up screen time and make a good subplot.”

Kimberly nodded.

She didn’t have a lot of information on the woman—Sarah, so she was probably going to have to make things up, but that was okay. Sarah would go along with pretty much anything Kimberly said and would probably even add to it.

Usually.

Once we found the entrance to the Fort, hidden in the stone and not easily visible from afar, we followed a path of overgrown grass and dead leaves that had recently been trampled on.

Inside the Fort, a large courtyard was transformed into a battle station. Two dozen armed mercenaries, many firearms, and explosives were set up. In the corner, a blacksmith appeared to be creating silver bullets en masse.

“Cannon fodder,” Michael said, looking over the men.

“Dead meat,” I agreed.

“Lila’s not here,” Andrew said. “I haven’t seen a trace of her yet. It’s always difficult with her being a wallflower and all. Did you see her while watching the dailies?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “She might have been there, but there were so many different people I didn’t notice her. She might not have ever appeared On-Screen yet.”

I remembered she was good at that.

“It’s a pity,” Andrew said.

Andrew, like Cassie, had the ability to detect the health status of all of his teammates from anywhere, but he had to actually interact in some way with them in the story first. Even a mention from someone who had talked to them might be enough. He hadn’t done that yet with Lila.

Was he afraid that she had run away or that she was up to something? I didn’t know, but I could tell that some of us were thinking it.

“All right,” Antoine said. “Spread out. See if you can get any information. I need to find this captain person and have a talk.”

“Get a lay of the land as best you can. Just do some exploring,” Hawk said, speaking for the first time Off-Screen. “I doubt the wolves are going to come out tonight. It’s too overcast—they get lethargic without the moon, even with this pitiful little sliver shining through.”

He was looking up at the sky, and while the moon was not visible, there was a glow through the clouds—just enough to tell where the moon was, but not enough to make it out completely.

So Hawk could speak to us—just not out of character.

~Kimberly~

I spent a while looking around the fort.

I wanted to know the exits, the people, the vibe. I wanted to know where we would be sleeping and if I could find a change of clothes.