Book Five, Chapter 74: Exploration and Research

~Andrew~

By far, the most accurate measure of success during research was the On-Screen/Off-Screen indicator.

The difficulty with playing a character who is supposed to be an expert on the supernatural is that, in the pursuit of research, you often find yourself learning things that your character was already supposed to know.

It can be deflating to stumble across an interesting tidbit—a tiny morsel that you believe might unlock clues to the mysteries of the paranormal—only to realize that the entire discovery occurred Off-Screen.

No matter how important the discovery, if it occurred Off-Screen, it was likely that Carousel did not intend for that line of research to bear much fruit.

The role of the researcher in a story is incredibly consistent, and discovering lore that could enable you to destroy evil always follows a pattern: you start with a problem and then seek a solution. You find one, but you don’t fully understand it. After initial failures, you reach a better understanding, and then, if you are clever, you can find a way to implement your discovery into a solution that can win the day.

Carousel will obtain footage of you all along the way, so if you come across something interesting in a book and the cameras are not rolling, you can almost certainly assume that you have not solved your problem.

The books in the stacks within the Witherhold Manor certainly contained lots of information about werewolves. Much of it was redundant, so Riley and I were left searching for errant phrases, small paragraphs that contained information we didn’t know among seas of information that we already did.

Riley had found a journal that fascinated him and contained enormous troves of information about the history of Witherhold Manor, but the information was, as he claimed, not canon to the storyline itself but rather to something deeper. He believed he had found information about this story from before it was a story, from back when it was real in its own world. I wasn’t sure if he was correct about the nature of his discovery, but we stayed Off-Screen as he read it, so it didn’t really matter.

It gave me no small amount of pride that I was the first to find something substantial, something that brought us On-Screen—though I soon wished I hadn’t.

On-Screen.

“Look here,” I said.

“You got something?” Riley asked, his voice eager but cracking from hours of disuse.

“I believe I do,” I replied, flipping open the brittle pages. “This is an oral history from a man named Ephraim Stokes, a jailer in an asylum far to the south. He was charged with the responsibility of feeding a group of ex-soldiers, locked in the deepest, darkest dungeon of that asylum—men afflicted with a curse, men who howled at the full moon.”

Riley’s eyes sparked. “That sounds right up our alley.”

I nodded, letting the weight of the words settle between us. “Here’s what Stokes said,” I began, my voice steady. “‘They be men lost, but only in flesh, for their spirits have long gone from ‘em.’ Stokes saw more than just beasts; he saw broken men, shattered in ways deeper than scars of flesh. ‘Several of the men,’ he says, ‘were scarred in the war—not scars of the body, but of the soul.’”

Riley listened on, no doubt curious as to why Carousel saw this information worth broadcasting.

“‘As the curse takes hold,’ Stokes said, ‘they find themselves back on the battlefield, haunted by old fears, old wounds. In their desperation to escape, they take refuge in the wolf, surrenderin’ their spirit to it. And to keep from falling apart, they look to the pack leader for something steady, something to hold onto.’”

I paused, the candlelight flickering across Riley’s face.

“Some, Stokes believed, would never be men again,” I read.

I let those words hang in the air. First-hand knowledge of having dealt with wolves was useful when most of our research involved legends or secondhand information.

“That’s the best explanation for why they’re so loyal to the pack leader that I’ve found,” Riley said.

“Yes, most accounts seem to hand-wave that away, as they can’t explain why creatures of human intelligence would resort to an animalistic hierarchy that does not appear to be based on reproduction or territory.”

We continued to squabble with small comments, hoping to provide Carousel with whatever lines it needed for its movie, but the plot cycle never shifted one centimeter. The story wasn’t moving forward, which, to my understanding, meant that there was something we were supposed to do or say.

Luckily, Riley was adept at figuring out these particular problems—more so than I had seen among the veterans.

“It would seem,” he said, “that those who have trauma before being cursed have the worst of it.”

He stared at me with accusatory eyes.

“It would definitely seem that some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder would exacerbate the curse if this account is to be believed,” I said.

“Well, I hope none of us have any such baggage,” he said with a cough.

And just like that, the plot cycle started moving forward again—just enough for me to notice—and we were Off-Screen almost instantly afterward.

For a moment, Riley and I just stared at each other, and I was certain he was preparing to mock me. It was suddenly quite clear what Carousel’s plans were.

“Antoine may end up being more of a liability than we anticipated,” I said.

“Yep,” Riley replied. Was he being smug, or was he being so tight-lipped to avoid gloating?

I cleared my throat. We would certainly have to plan around whatever it was Carousel was scheming.

~-~

~Michael~

“Michael Brooks is not in the forest,” the big guy, Antoine, mumbled under his breath. I thought that’s what he said, at least.

“Did you say my name?” I asked.

Antoine turned to me and said, “No.”

I could have sworn he did. He must not have said any of that because I was in the forest. So was he. I was hearing things.

He started looking around the forest trail, then turned to me and asked, “How far are we?”

“Just a little over half a mile further to go,” I said. I knew my way around. A parks map was attached to the red wallpaper in my mind, pinned there with a hunting knife. I could see the map, and I could see us on it. I was the master of navigation. It wasn’t the type of map we used back in the army, but I wasn’t going to complain. I never complained.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Not until lately.

“A lot of the popular walking trails are up this direction,” I said. “Try not to look like we’re on our way to assassinate somebody. We don’t want to scare the shit out of some family on vacation.”

“We’ll just tell him we’re out on a hunt,” the blonde mercenary said. “It’s true, ain’t it?”

The men laughed. I didn’t.

Back at Camp Dyer, they told me that if I didn’t learn to act, I was never going to level up, but that if I always acted intensely and quietly, I could just be that character—the strong, silent type.

It had worked.

We had packed light for this mission. This was reconnaissance, but I could tell that the mercenaries were itching for a fight. I was, too. I put off following up with my character’s subplot to make sure I was here in case things went wrong. I had time.

During daylight hours, the wolves would be at their weakest, and we could end this movie before it started. We could make this a blowout.

We did that once with some snakes. Made the whole story about killing metric shit tons of vipers. Best storyline we ever ran.

As we walked forward, I kept thinking about something the nerd had said: that we needed to be sure someone was a wolf before we killed them. Because if we didn’t confirm they were cursed, they almost certainly wouldn’t be. Carousel would make sure of it, and we would lose all moral high ground, making the story impossible to win. However it was that worked.

I didn’t see how you could possibly know that, but then, I wasn’t sure how he knew most of the stuff he claimed to. Film Buff sounded like a snob of an archetype. The folks at Camp Dyer managed to get by without film buffs, but now we were supposed to act like he was an expert.

I didn’t know what to think. Andrew said that we should trust him, that he thinks Riley is so in tune with the game that we can trust him to help us win it. I think he’s just obsessed. Spends all his time in the Atlas like it’s his best friend. Only talks about the next mission or some other part of the game.

I couldn’t wait to find out what Logan would have to say about all this. Logan always had good takes on things. He seemed to understand them so quickly. The Logan in the basement was… different. He wasn’t himself. He was sick. His tongue was tied.

All we had to do was rescue him, and I would do that if it cost me my life.

All I knew then was that I wanted to see a werewolf in front of me so I could shoot it.