Chương 394: Book Eight, Chapter 61: Intermission

Even while I was sitting in a cage with nothing to occupy my mind but planning out the final stages of the movie, I still didn't know how Antoine, Anna, and Cassie were going to resolve the plot. Sure, there was the stated plan of throwing the maps into the brew, thus broadcasting that knowledge to the masses. It had come together well, but at the end of the day, walking into the room and throwing canisters into a giant pot wasn't very satisfying. Carousel wouldn't allow it.

So what was going to be that satisfying conclusion, or at least something close enough to satisfying that Carousel wouldn't actively try to stop it? I stood from my seat in the theater and walked to the end of the row, passing by a few people who were sitting and staring up at me. I didn't have to go anywhere technically, but I didn't want to be in the theater at that moment. I had never used the Intermission ability when it mattered, but I knew that it was actually pretty powerful.

It was Savvy-based, which meant I was going to get approximately a whole scene beat back. That would be enough time to make one new decision, to fix one mistake. But what would it be? I headed toward the exit of the theater, where my adoring masses stood silently. They must have been watching the movie and realized how bad our odds were. They must have known that we were a hag's breath away from defeat. They must have, because even the paparazzi refused to call out my name. It was like a funeral out there.

They still took pictures, though I couldn't see most of the cameras except for the flash. The silence was more annoying than the constant hounding that had happened last time. Eventually, one brave soul, a woman, some kind of journalist who dressed like she was from the nineteen twenties, called out, "Riley Lawrence, are you aware of the current state of your fellow players?" I wanted to ignore her, but the question was so weird. I was literally watching the movie with my fellow players in it. How could I not know?

Unless she wasn't talking about the current storyline.

"Which ones?" I asked.

"Ramona Mercer, Bobby Gill, Isaac Hughes, and Kelsey Van Note," the woman said quickly. I looked around at all the people around me. My initial plan was to ignore everyone. I would stick to the center part of the red carpet and not answer any questions, but now it was me who had the questions.

"Lost on the river last I knew. Playing a storyline," I said hesitantly.

"Why? Do you know something? Have they triggered an Omen?" The woman began to answer, but she was interrupted. The voice was someone I recognized. It came from down at the end of the red carpet, where all the narrators and high-level executives stood. I was going to travel down that way and talk to Lucky, if only to see if he had something to say, but when I looked for him, he was sheepishly standing in the back, looking at me like I was walking to my death. As best I could tell, he was trying to avoid eye contact.

It wasn't him who talked to me. It was Vincent St. Vane, the Proprietor of Carousel, as he called himself. Carousel probably didn't care for that name. He was the man upstairs who glowed in violet lights. He was taller than the rest, wearing a suit of red and gold, his signature colors, and smiling, playing his character just like any captive of Carousel, except he played of his own volition. I hadn't seen or heard from him since I had tricked my way backstage across the mountains so long ago.

"Come here, my friend. I'm afraid that we have some bad news," he said before the reporter could tell me anything. And so I did, my face red and numb. This was out of the ordinary. These people usually went out of their way not interact with players, but circumstances were unprecedented, and I knew as I walked to him that I was only going to get bad news. Somehow, it was going to be worse than the fact that we were about to lose a storyline.

"What is it?" I asked when I walked to the end of the roped-off area that I was permitted to walk around in.

"Come here, my boy," he said, unhooking one of the velvet ropes and letting me out of my little play area. I walked through. When I did, he put his arm around me and began speaking softly in my ear. The worst part was that he actually sounded human, like he cared. And what he told me made no sense.

"Unfortunately, the four players who fell in the river have now been captured. They will need saving," he said. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. I looked over at him, certain that he was playing at something.

"What do you mean by captured?" I asked.

"They triggered an Omen?"

"Unfortunately not," he said.

"It is rare, but on occasion players can be captured in a storyline without triggering it, only able to be saved by players who do."

"I don't understand," I said.

"What exactly happened?" The last I had seen, they were playing through a storyline. Anna had reported they were in fairly good spirits with her trope. What could have changed that in the meantime? I was vaguely aware that something like what he described could happen. After all, the bad guys were cordoned off to monster lairs when they weren't in storylines, but not all monsters killed. Some kidnapped.

I had heard a campfire story about a player who was held captive by a cult, winding up brainwashed and acting as an enemy, so much so that he had to be abandoned and never rescued some time later. I knew that the game had its twists and turns, but I didn't know the details.

"How?" I asked.

"It would seem that one of the antagonists to a storyline your group has run decided to capture some bait to lure you back into the fray,," he said.

"An unfortunate situation, but being outside of Carousel proper leads to many unfortunate situations. It was a… bold choice for you to take to the river." I racked my brain, trying to figure out which enemy could do something like this. My mind went to the lady demon from By the Slice, our antagonistic relationship, and her challenge to me to come back at a higher level where she would have more freedom and power.

"Who was it? What storyline?" I asked.

"It was Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle," he said. Great. I hadn't even run that one. All I knew was that the players who ran it didn't like to talk about it.

"Are they safe?" I asked.

"Are they hurt?"

"Their situation is quite perilous. Unfortunately, the only way for them to be saved is for you to run the storyline," he said. I must have asked half a dozen questions after that about rescue tropes and whether or not we needed them, about the level of the story, and all he could tell me was that he wasn't optimistic about our chances. I asked, and he answered, over and over again. I could hardly even hear or process what he was saying. All I heard was a ringing sound. He seemed so kind and caring the whole time.

Of course, the media were watching. He would want to seem caring. But underneath it all, I knew that this was a win-win for him. If we managed to survive our storyline and defeat the next, it would be some good programming; he'd sell a lot of tickets, but if we lost, he'd also win. Wasn't one of their goals the last time I was there to shut everything down so that they could reset? The truth was, I had a hard time reading him. At the end, he said, "I really do hope you pull this one out.

I believe it could be your best work if you manage it, but you should know there is a time limit. Your comrades are alive, but they won't be forever. Whatever narrative momentum they carry with them will fade if they die. It's all quite technical. You need to get to them." I backed away toward the red carpet, but I didn't leave. I just stood and looked at the proprietor. I looked over at the narrators. Their names were hard to remember, but I remembered their missions.

To cure a multiversal hive mind of some kind, to bring back their lost love, to uncover lost scientific knowledge, to bring about some sort of religious apocalypse, or to stop it. I couldn't remember exactly. They all had their themes and their gimmicks. But here, they all looked so sad, like they felt sorry for me, for us. They must have planned that. The one that looked saddest and sorriest of all was Lucky, and he didn't even have the nerve to talk to me.

He had already walked away and was staring from afar, like he was afraid I would ask him a question. I remembered the first time I had met most of these people. Such brave immortals. They were not afraid of Carousel at all allegedely, but they were terrified that I might bring them into the story by filming them. The great irony was that even though these people had conquered death, it was them that was most afraid of it. I wasn't afraid to die. I had just done it, egged it on, begged for it.

I was afraid, however, to have my death be meaningless. As I stared at Vincent St. Vane, he gave me the most courteous bow, as if he knew I wasn't long for this world or any other. I had an idea of how we might survive our storyline so we could go conquer another. But it would all come down to whether or not Anna would understand what I was trying to tell her. I turned tail and ignored the reporters, who had finally built up the courage to ask me questions.

I took a look back at the building, the high ceilings, the beautiful architecture, and I remembered once again that the fight wasn't about one storyline. It was about all of them, and if they wanted a show, they were going to get one. I walked back into the theater and took my seat. A few moments later, the movie started back up again, right at the beginning of the fight between the hag and Antoine. I jumped right into action. I knew exactly what I needed to use the Insert Shot on.

I focused on the very first moment I got even a glimpse of it on the screen. As soon as I saw footage of the cage that Anna was trapped in, and the suit that my remains were currently wrapped in, I saw the edge of black plastic that I recognized as the shoulder-mounted camera I had been forced to wear by the plot. I used the Insert Shot on it. In an instant, Anna reached over, grabbed it, and started breaking it out of its container. She began fiddling with it.

Technology was so easy to use in Carousel; the only real restraint was the plot and narrative momentum. It all came down to how the Insert Shot actually worked. While it had the ability to increase the narrative weight of any object that I used it on, that wasn't because of the trope itself. All that would happen is that the object would suddenly start getting a lot of screen time, and the more the audience saw it, the more powerful it would be, as they wondered how it would play into the storyline.

That's why the Insert Shot lost virtually all of its power the longer into the movie I waited to use it. But the camera on my shoulder was already in a lot of shots for the movie, most of the shots with me in them, in fact. I was the only character who had one, and the presence of the camera had been mentioned several times, including by the Arbiter. It had plenty of narrative weight to it.

The Arbiter had said it was in some kind of safety mode to prevent damage, but that was probably meant to explain why it didn't get footage of me in the hovel with the witch. It was primed to come into play. If only Anna could figure out how to use it.