Chương 305: Book Six, Chapter 67: The Circus

"See, there it goes again!" Ramona exclaimed. We stood in front of the flea market, which was the same place we had bought the painting that acted as an Omen for Stray Dawn. It was one of several destinations on our shopping trip. We weren't really trying to load up on trope items or spend our money; we just needed a break. Somehow, Kimberly always used her influence to push us in the direction of shopping. It was inspiring in a way.

Carousel had broken us all one way or another, but it still hadn't killed Kimberly's favorite hobby.

"I see it," I said as I tracked a flyer tumbling through the wind before it got stuck in the long hair of an elderly hippie woman who was working a booth at the flea market.

"Okay, now watch," she said. I did, as the woman casually grabbed the flyer, glanced at it, and then released it back into the wind.

"She's a terrible hippie, just littering like that," I said.

"Just wait for it," Ramona insisted. I did as I was told. After a few minutes, Ramona got excited and pointed back toward the hippie woman. I turned my head just in time to see a flyer, just like the previous one, tumble through the air and get tangled in the woman's hair again. She released it back into the wild just as she had previously.

"It's blowing in a circle," she said, laughing.

"We have to do something," I said.

"To stop this cycle of littering." Looking like a fool, I was sure, I ran and caught up with the paper before it was too far gone, and after the woman let go of it, I grabbed it out of the air. It wasn't an Omen or anything, so I felt safe. It was just another flyer like those we had seen before: Low Top & Co. Present: The Red Chalk Circus. In truth, they were all over the place—in trash cans, posted on fences next to signs that said Beware of Dog.

Occasionally, NPCs would be holding them amongst other papers or folders. I saw them underneath windshield wipers on cars and being torn apart by lawn mowers. This couldn't be ignored for any longer. Ramona and I walked down the aisles until we found Camden, who was in a group of players being led around by Lila because she was able to see Omens. I held the flyer out toward him.

"Pass," he said, as he read the text.

"Well, me too. You looked up the circus in the Atlas, right?" I asked. He nodded casually as he stared around the flea market and rested his eyes on a birdcage hanging in the shade, which was filled with vampire bats, according to the Red Wallpaper.

"The circus is a normal feature. It has a bunch of dangerous Omens, though," he said.

"Nobody mapped it out. The general consensus is to stay away."

"Yeah, I figured," I said. He had other things on his mind.

"After this shopping trip, we have to focus on getting all of the players at least into the thirties," he said.

"Pretty much everywhere is off-limits to me right now. It sure would be a load off my mind."

"I know," I said.

"Isaac has a rescue trope that should help you level up." He nodded.

"Not my favorite one," he said, "but he does have one." We had a lot to get done, and all the while, we had to manage stress. It was harder when you were at a lower level. Things really did open up around level 40. Or at least they would if I weren't the only person at that level.

"We'll work on it," I said.

"What I was thinking," Camden added, "was that we could use your rescue trope, and you could use your Behind The Camera trope, and go with us."

"That's definitely possible," I said.

"But you don't like it," he said.

"I didn't say that. I just think we should explore all of our options, including grinding for rescue tropes of your own." The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Truthfully, I didn't want to use my rescue trope in a storyline where I would not level up at all. I only had one available to me at the time, and if I used it, I wouldn't get it back until I was at least Plot Armor 50. I didn't want to get caught around PA 40 and stop leveling.

We had so far to go. Maybe I was being selfish. I had to think about it. I remembered how scary it was being in Carousel at a low level. Heck, I was still at a low level in the scheme of things. There were Omens in this very flea market that could run us over like a truck, more of them than I could count.

"Excuse me," Lila called out to us from the head of the group she was leading.

"Riley?"

"Yep," I responded. She timidly walked back toward us, and the group she was leading followed her like little ducklings, afraid that they would run into one of the Omens accidentally. It was possible, but unlikely. Most of the Omens were pretty straightforward: you buy it, and you activate it intentionally. But I understood their fear of accidentally activating one.

"Were you talking about the circus?" she asked.

"We were. You wanna go?" I asked. She shuddered at the thought.

"No," she said, "but there's an Omen over there for a storyline in the circus." She pointed over to a stack of items on a table, one of which was a big roll of little orange tickets, the kind you might win in a carnival game or, more appropriately, the kind you might get in a raffle. The roll itself was an Omen. I glanced at it on the Red Wallpaper and almost thought nothing of it, until I realized that those tickets were not for a circus. I actually recognized the storyline that those tickets went to.

It was called Temple of Odd. We had briefly looked at it while researching for Stray Dawn. I knew for a fact it took place at the Museum of Oddities in southeastern Carousel. The poster featured a picture of a large group of people with someone in the center holding up their hand with a red ticket between their thumb and forefinger as an announcer up on stage looked on cheerfully. The tagline was: They rigged the raffle, hoping to win big, but the only prize they got was a sur prise.

It was cheesy, but I actually kind of liked that sometimes. Anyway, the title, which should have read Temple of Odd, instead read: Low Top & Co. Present: Temple of Odd at The Red Chalk Circus That was certainly strange. Maybe the Red Chalk Circus padded its numbers by adding in storylines from around Carousel that would fit the circus theme. Isaac had also been leading around a group of people using his scouting trope…

and holding his fishing pole so that the lure would point toward the nearest Omen, and he would then know to investigate it. It was funny, but effective. Kimberly and Antoine had been with him. I explained to everyone what I was seeing, and since they remembered Temple of Odd from our research, they also thought it was interesting.

"Where exactly is this circus at?" Antoine asked.

"Lot Seven," Camden replied.

"Right," Antoine said, "and where is that?"

"You know the big hill with the hooded God statue on it in southeastern Carousel?" I said.

"If you head toward Carousel proper from that statue, that's the neighborhood that Lot Seven is in." I had already looked it up after finding the same flyer at Eternal Savers Club.

"So it is over there by southeastern Carousel?" Antoine asked. It kind of was, but there was forest and hills between the two parts of town. Still, it didn't mean anything for a storyline that existed outside of the circus to suddenly be in the circus. But it didn't hurt to double-check. I walked toward the back of the flea market, where a man was selling paintings of dubious origins: cursed paintings, haunted paintings, that sort of thing.

Right on cue, when I got there, an NPC was haggling to sell a painting that he found. A painting that at first looked a lot like me, but then, when he turned, it looked a lot like Kimberly, the picture changing as Kimberly arrived. It was the Omen for Stray Dawn. Or should I say, it was the Omen for Low Top & Co. Present: Stray Dawn at The Red Chalk Circus.

"That's a strange circus," I said. Back at the loft, we examined a map of Carousel so that we could get a basic idea of where these storylines were in relation to Lot Seven, where the circus was supposed to be.

"That's quite a little chunk of land," Logan said.

"What's the play?"

"I don't know," I said.

"We still don't know for sure if this means anything at all."

"It sounds like Carousel is running away to the circus," Isaac said.

"It's being consumed. This must be the apocalypse, right? Because you said the apocalypse takes over other storylines." Interesting thought.

"Maybe," I said.

"But let's just calm down. We don't know that this is spreading. Southeastern Carousel is within walking distance of the circus, and let's face it, a lot of the storylines that take place there would also fit a circus. So this may mean nothing at all." Some wanted to check it out; others wanted to doom and gloom. Camden looked through the Atlas with a panic that wasn't characteristic of him because he couldn't find anything about it.

"Come on, everybody, just relax," Antoine said.

"It's a circus. It'll pass through town."

"Yeah, remember," Isaac said, "it's one night only, every night. Whatever that means." That was in the circus ad: One Night Only, Every Night. We continued discussing the issue, but we didn't really come to any positive conclusions. When the apocalypse took over other storylines, it was the name of the apocalypse itself that did so. But the Red Chalk Circus wasn't a storyline; it was more like a special event. It could mean nothing at all.

It could be no more special than the job board, which took storyline Omens from other places and put them in one neat location. Heck, the library was similar. But it didn't take much to get people worried in Carousel. After a lot of squabbling that didn't really go anywhere, at least part of which I was responsible for, I said, "Look, at the end of the day, Kimberly has a writ of habitation. We're safe here for now.

And even if this is an apocalypse, we still have almost two months to figure out how to solve this problem."

"At the rate we solve problems, two months might as well be days," Isaac said. I didn't respond. No one did. It wasn't an invalid point; I just wished someone other than him had said it.

"On that note," Antoine said, "we need to get to bed. We have to run a storyline tomorrow." It still took another hour for everyone to stop discussing the clown apocalypse that, of course, was already upon us if you believed some of the more panicked members of our group. All I knew was that I was going to be using my sleeping trope that night, because as much as I wanted to calm everyone's fears, my mind was racing. What if the circus really was spreading?