Book Six, Chapter 27: The Wait

“It’s too early to worry like this,” I said. “They’re still within the time frame allotted for the story. Just have faith.”

I didn’t know what I was saying, but it was my attempt to comfort a worried friend.

Anna paced back and forth across the living room floor. “I’m telling you something is wrong. It says Lila is doomed. It says Michael is doomed. Kimberly is panicked. And Antoine, why did we send him back into the forest? Why did we allow that?”

He had wanted to go back into the forest. His trope, The Mountain as a Metaphor, could gradually cure his psychological troubles, he believed, if he only attempted a proper challenge. They had taken precautions, and the storyline they were entering was not over-leveled.

He had made leaps and bounds in progress since the werewolf storyline. What had happened there had been a huge breakthrough for him. We couldn’t exactly keep him on the bench forever.

“What does Antoine’s description say?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me. “It says he’s struggling to put it all together.”

“How about Logan or Andrew? They’re strong players. Are they okay?”

“It says that Andrew is numb. And Logan is annoyed.”

“Great,” I said. “If things were going off the rails, Logan would be far worse than annoyed.”

Anna had just acquired a new trope called Are You Okay in There?, which allowed her to check in on her allies to see if they needed help and gauge their emotional state. It seemed like a great tool to have in a storyline.

But it didn’t only work in storylines.

The other team was still running Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle. It had been two weeks since we had parted ways. They were definitely on the far side of the time frame we expected.

“Do you want to see the trailer again?” I asked.

As soon as I could after we had completed our storyline, I had used my Coming to a Theater Near You trope to watch a trailer for the storyline the other team was playing.

It was a habit of mine. The trailer didn’t always reveal huge spoilers because it was most powerful if you actually had it equipped in the storyline you just ended, but you could still see trailers if you equipped it a short time after running a storyline.

“Yes,” Anna said.

“You know that this isn’t going to update unless we do another storyline, right?” I asked. “It’s going to be the same trailer.”

She nodded. This new trope of hers was more trouble than it was worth. At the end of the storyline, everyone would be panicked and annoyed. What use was it to watch their emotions change?

Especially if they ended up losing.

“We could run a new storyline. Something that only takes a few hours,” Anna said. “You can equip your trope so that it’ll be more powerful.”

“We can do that,” I said, “but I don’t think we should.”

To tell the truth, I was nervous too. But we couldn’t both act nervous. Somebody had to be solid and logical. And it wasn’t going to be Camden, because he was checked out. Something to do with his own trauma from failing a storyline.

The rest of the players at the Loft had given Anna a wide berth. Her usual calm demeanor was a real boon to the team at large, but watching her panic while tracking the emotions of her closest friends as they faced death was hard to see.

I thought maybe her emotions stemmed from the trope itself. It might be making her feel this way. My Hysteric scouting trope sure did a number on my anxiety. I didn’t want to say that because that would sound dismissive, and it might not even be true.

Anna’s experience with a failed storyline was different than Camden’s. She had been rewarded for continuously persevering through everything, even as her nerves ground to dust. It almost felt like she was afraid that if she didn’t worry, something might happen.

It was just me, Ramona, Camden, and Anna in the living room.

We sat down in front of my old TV and used its trope to show them what I was seeing on the red wallpaper: the preview for Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle.

The trailer opened with wide, sweeping shots of a vast jungle and the weathered remains of ancient ruins, their edges hidden beneath creeping vines. As the morning sun broke over the trees, the shapes of long-lost structures emerged from the undergrowth, momentarily visible before vanishing again into shadow.

Over the footage, Andrew’s voice spoke calmly. “You once searched for the Cradle,” he said. “They say you almost found it.”

Antoine answered without emotion. “They say a lot of things.”

Andrew continued. “They say you found it in the wilds off a trailhead near a town called Carousel.”

The image cut to a close-up of Antoine’s face. His expression didn’t change, but the silence lingered.

“Who’ve you been talking to?” Antoine asked.

Andrew laughed. “Everyone. Everyone who might’ve known about your voyage. You found it, didn’t you?”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Antoine’s voice came slower now. “All I found was blood.”

The screen flashed gold-stained deep red, gleaming artifacts half-submerged in what looked like liquid metal, pooling thickly like oil. “If you’re half as smart as they say, you’ll walk away from this. There are safer treasures out there.”

“Perhaps I would,” Andrew said, “but it’s too late for her.”

Antoine straightened. “You don’t mean, ”

Kimberly appeared on screen, caught mid-spin in a slow dance with Antoine at a black-tie gala, eyes closed, smiling, untouched by danger.

“She wanted a piece of the legend,” Andrew said. “She wanted to finish the journey the great Antoine Stone was too afraid to complete.”

“When did she leave?”

“A month ago.”

The music picked up tempo as a recruitment montage began. Michael stood at a firing range, nodding grimly as he lowered a rifle. Bobby crouched in a clearing, two silent dogs beside him as he tracked something unseen. Dina was watching them from a distance.

For a few seconds, it felt like an adventure film. Then it didn’t.

The tone shifted fast and hard. Jungle turned to darkness. Rain poured in sheets. A flashlight beam shook as someone ran. A jeep skidded out, tires screaming as it careened off a waterfall. Mercenaries screamed orders, grabbing rifles in panic, not control.

The sounds shifted, too. Birdcalls and leaves gave way to something deeper. Beneath the natural noise, something else stirred, an artificial hum just low enough to be felt more than heard. Sub-audible, heart-syncing, wrong.

Then came a glimpse. Just a flash of a silhouette, a man, or something like one, with a long shape twisting around his head. A snake, maybe. Or maybe not. The trailer didn’t give it time to make sense. Just long enough to leave it burned into memory.

“You never should’ve come here,” Kimberly whispered.

“I know,” Antoine answered.

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