Book Five, Chapter 77: A Nursery Rhyme

~Riley~

Even with my life on the line, I couldn’t stay in that little room filled with books forever.

I had to get out and stretch my legs. If there were some narrative thread that required me to be around, it almost certainly wouldn’t reach me if I was locked away behind a hidden bookcase.

Truth be told, I wasn’t so certain that my character was innate to the story. I might not even really have my own subplots the way that Kimberly and Antoine certainly did. I had checked the little film canisters I had been given for clues and came up empty.

That’s what it meant to be a Film Buff, though. I was a meta character, which meant that I was forever a side dish, never the entrée. But supposedly, in this story, anyone could be the main character.

So, who knew?

At the point that I finally found my way down the stairs into the basement to get another look at the caverns beneath the Manor—in case they ever came into play—I was confident that I was not going to be central.

After all, most of the research I had done seemed to revolve around secret lore or otherwise hidden history, which was not going to come up unless we found the trigger. And in truth, even if we did, it might be better for us not to pull it.

The only storyline we had done with secret lore had been butchered by it, and we really needed this storyline to go off without a hitch—and to score high points.

I made my way down to the dank caverns beneath the Manor with nothing but a Lantern and a small pea shooter I had picked up. There was really no use in me having a big gun when I didn’t have a big Mettle stat to go with it.

Sure, I could hit anything I aimed at because of my high Hustle, but the damage was going to be pretty similar no matter what gun I used.

Carousel always had its tricks to make sure that you played your role and lived with your choices, including your choice of where to apply your stat tickets.

The smell hit me again before I could even see Logan and Avery in their cages. As I walked into the clearing where they lay in their cots behind iron bars, I realized that I was not the only person there.

Egan Kirst himself sat in a chair next to a table in the room. He sat, and he stared at his son.

We were Off-Screen.

I wondered if he was just waiting for a Player to show up and run through a dialogue tree or something, or if perhaps he was here of his own volition, for his own purposes.

He wouldn’t tell me, even if I asked.

Whatever the case, as soon as I made it a few steps into the room, I went On-Screen. So, we were going to have our conversation—whatever it may be—in character.

Truthfully, his character was a glorified plot device, so I didn’t expect him to know a whole lot.

He had largely served his purpose, and as far as I knew, the only thing left for him to do was buy stuff if we asked him to. We had already run through a list of things that we wanted—things like grenades with bits of silver in them, or at least the supplies to make them. We wanted tranquilizer darts and everything we might need to set up traps.

His servant, the Butler—whose name I constantly forgot—was able to supply us with those things within a day—maybe less.

“I hope your research into the history of this manor has been fruitful,” Kirst said with a stern but melancholy tone.

“Surprisingly so,” I said. “I think we may have rediscovered a powerful weapon against werewolves.”

Kirst nodded but did not look excited. “How long until it is operational?”

“We’re putting all of our resources into it right now,” I said. Then, on a whim, I asked, “Have you, by any chance, heard of the term rolling silver?”

Kirst thought for a moment and then shook his head. “I’m afraid I haven’t.”

Somewhere, dice had just rolled, and I came up short.

“Supposedly, it has a powerful impact on any werewolf nearby. There’s a bit of a language barrier between us and the author of the text I’m reading, but once we overcome that, we should be able to have quite an effective weapon at our disposal.”

“Wonderful,” Kirst said.

The man was going through some depression. It was as if the performance he had put on for us had drained him, and now all that was left was for him to wait.

“In your research, did you learn anything about this Manor or the people that owned it?” I asked.

He took a deep breath.

“The Withers family,” Kirst said, “died out just over a hundred years ago. The house has been abandoned since until the town purchased it. I bought it directly from them. Supposedly, Witherhold Manor was plagued by werewolves for many, many years, and it is the setting for all sorts of campfire tales.”

His face was doing the acting. His heart wasn’t in it.

“I’m actually interested in one of those tales,” I said. “There’s an inscription on the fountain out front. It sounds like an epitaph for a child—a young woman or girl. Can you tell me anything about that?”

I was really pushing it. I didn’t know how much footage Carousel had of the fountain out front or of me reading it, but I felt it only logical that I would have this knowledge after snooping around the place long enough.

Kirst must have sensed that I was pushing boundaries because he gave me a look that didn’t belong to his character. A look that told me to be careful.

“Rumors only,” he said. “The young Clara Withers. A nursery rhyme. I barely remember it. I thought it was inconsequential, but it was in the information packet that I managed to acquire from various oral historians. I had no idea it might be useful. But then, I am dabbling in a field far out of my expertise.”

Clara Withers. Before Carousel, her name had been Clara Woolsey. I understood why Carousel had swapped it out. The Woolsey Manor didn’t have the same spooky vibes. Carousel had done the same thing to the Halles and probably the Geists.

“A nursery rhyme?” I asked. “Do you happen to remember it or still have the information on you?”

“No need for that,” Kirst said. “The poem is written on the back of the painting in the small dining room we ate in. You can go see it for yourself.”

“I will,” I said.

I kept my eyes on Logan and Avery, who were seemingly wasting away in their cages for reasons that hadn’t been established in the lore. Newly transformed werewolves were often quite energetic and erratic.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Are these two sedated?” I asked.

“No,” Kirst said. “Though most of the tunnels are collapsed now, they were originally dug for the safety of the Withers family. They lined the walls with silver powder. Imagine that.”

“Of course they did,” I said. “Werewolves are nose-blind to silver.”

“That is what I understand,” he said.

It was strange. You would think it would be the other way around—that werewolves would be intimately aware of any silver nearby. But that wasn’t the case when it came to their sense of smell.

So he kept his kid and his kid’s girlfriend down here to keep them safe from the wolves—or to weaken them in case the worst scenario occurred. Either way, Kirst was shaping up to be a largely pragmatic man by some definition.

Not long after we got to that point in the conversation, we went Off-Screen.

I decided to do a quick walk around of the remaining tunnels. Kirst was right. Most of them had caved in, and those that didn’t went in loops or led to dead ends or safe rooms.

I did learn an important lesson. Always explore the tunnels.

Actually, no. Most of the time, tunnels are dangerous. Never explore strange tunnels.

Except when you are fairly certain you will be safe.

When I was searching an empty stone room at the end of a long tunnel, I found something. I had gone On-Screen off and on long enough to establish I was snooping around. That told me there might be something down here.

I had my gun out, ready to bop a werewolf, but I didn’t find one.

Instead, I found a place where a wall was crumbling.

On-Screen.

“Not just silver powder,” I said.

Where the wall had fallen, several different items had been sealed in the wall. Silver platters, cups, and forks all closed up to keep the werewolves at bay. Talk about loot.

Those trinkets weren’t what concerned me.

It was the item in the mess that had a trope attached that I cared about.

I reached down into the pile of stone, mortar, and silver works and pulled out a large pure silver serving spoon.

The trope was called “Selective Sharpness,” and it had a remarkable effect. It prevented users from cutting themselves when wielding a bladed weapon and helped them perceive sharp objects on the red wallpaper.

And it was attached to a large, heavy spoon.

I stared at it for too long and remembered I was On-Screen.

“What in the world?” I whispered to myself.

I stared along the tunnels and saw that the walls were all lined with the same stone as the fallen wall. Had they covered the whole place with silverware and goblets? Just to hide their scent?