I got tired of Bobby staring in my general direction and decided to take a cup of coffee outside onto the porch. There was a table there that I could use. I needed to examine my tropes and decide which ones I would be taking into the next storyline. I finally had enough of them that I couldn't just take them all without exceeding my limit.

We had been told that background tropes would affect the storylines we were in. I had understood that but I never really grasped how significant the impact could be until our most recent storyline. I questioned whether I even needed to have that background trope given the fact that I only had one trope that could be equipped with it.

Maybe it just rubbed me the wrong way that Carousel had incorporated my actual Grandmother into its story.

It was true that the scouting trope it allowed me to equip was useful, allowing me to gain tons of valuable insight into any storyline we might come upon, but ultimately I could just take the trope off once we had decided what storyline to enter. That would clear up two spaces for me to add tropes that might actually have value within the story itself.

My Director's Monitor trope gave me the Deathwatch ability. It had been pretty stressful and ultimately not very useful in the last storyline, but if I used it a lot I could probably get more tropes to go along with it that might actually make it so I could help my friends. Flashback Revelation could be a game-changer but it would take some major prep work to get working. Being able to send a message from beyond death, even if it was just an echo of something I had said earlier, might make the difference between winning and losing.

I knew for a fact that Lara had a trope that gave her Deathwatch. I needed to find her and discuss it. I hated the idea of dying in every storyline, but I hated the idea of being useless more than that.

I sat at the table and I took out my tropes. As usual, my growing stack of tickets was far larger outside of my pocket than it seemed to be when it was inside of it. The tickets' magic was perplexing even when you were aware of it. In fact, it was like the tickets weren't even in my pocket to begin with.

Unfortunately, a huge percentage of my tropes were those that I had gotten after the Grotesque storyline. They were the ones that I couldn't even use because they were for the wrong archetype.

But there was a message hidden in them. I was sure of it.

~

Friends in High Places.

Watching Over You…

Stick to the Plan

A Glitch in the Matrix.

Accidentally Captured on Film.

Back to where it all started…

A Story Within a Story.

Who you truly are…

This is going to sting a bit…

The Intrepid Guide Who Knows The Way.

~

Friends in high places | Watching over you…

That much I was certain was correct. There was someone with the power to manipulate Silas the Showman who was interacting with us for better or for worse. The NPC employee at the pawn shop had been clear that this was a pairing.

A glitch in the matrix | Accidentally captured on film.

That had been the other pair that he had shown me. The only glitch we had seen was a result of finding secret lore and a Lovecraftian monster whose powers appeared to be strong enough to disrupt the red wallpaper. It was difficult to separate what was a glitch and what was actually a feature of secret lore, but there was definitely something like a glitch in that storyline.

As I contemplated this, Dina came out on the deck to join me. She didn't say anything but she made eye contact and gave me one of those forced half-smiles that I had come to know as her greeting. She must have seen that I was looking at these tropes again.

“The glitch can't be the unknowable host,” Dina said. “That was your theory last time we talked, right?”

We had been over these tropes half a dozen times already. Each time we walked away less certain of what the clues were actually pointing to.

“Still my theory,” I said.

“Have you watched it yet?” She asked, referring to my new ability to rewatch old storylines.

“Yep. It's a short anthology. Most of it doesn't even make sense because entire scenes were missing. Not just the stuff that was off-screen but a lot of the on-screen stuff got cut. All of our scenes after I picked you up on that wagon were cut from the storyline with the cloven women. All I can see is Anna's storyline.”

“Are you sure there's not anything else?”

There were a few things, but nothing notable. Watching through the Straggler storyline was pretty normal. I had been able to do it in 15 minutes that morning. Carousel managed to piece together a nice tense “Are you Afraid of the Dark?” style short from the footage, culminating in Antoine being left behind.

“There's nothing,” I said. “I spent the last two hours watching it and I'll probably watch it again half a dozen times. Anything that even hints at the existence of the unknowable host is completely cut. Honest. That entire final thing with the storyteller was gone too.”

If I were being honest the freakiest thing about that entire film, other than the fact that I was watching it in my head, was the complete lack of context for much of what was happening. If I hadn't been there I wouldn't even know what the plots of some of those stories were.

“What else could a glitch in the matrix accidentally captured on film mean?” Dina asked. “We should go find Carousel Family Video and watch the actual tape.”

I shrugged. She might have been right.

Carousel Family Video.

“Just one more thing we need to ask the veterans about,” I said.

“Don't tell them why you're asking,” she said.

“I won't.”

Upon hearing the story about the psychic who tricked a bunch of players into entering overpowered storylines to their doom, Dina had grown to trust the veterans even less than she had before. I wasn't even sure that she trusted me or my friends, but she was stuck with us.

Truth be told, I was glad that I hadn't seen anything noteworthy when rewatching the Campfire anthology. That entire ordeal left me sick to my stomach and not just because of the effects of the unknowable host's aura…

It was time to go inside for the brief on the western excursion. A lot of the players who had been there a while were excited about this particular endeavor. I tried to force myself to be optimistic about it too.

I would have to wait to decide which tropes I was going to bring into the next storyline. I had let myself get distracted.

Arthur stood in front of everyone and waited for us to get quiet. This was the first time since I had gotten to Dyer’s Lodge that every single player was there all at once. Over a dozen teams worth of people gathered to hear about the Hail Mary plan Arthur and the other high-level vets had prepared.

“We used to do these briefs because if a team didn't come back we wanted others to follow in their footsteps and rescue them,” he said. “Now we do them for the opposite reason. We're going to show you what the plan is. If we don't come back, That means our idea is bad and you shouldn't do it.”

With that, he took a seat.

Valorie was up next to actually explain what was going to happen.

“We've spent all of our time since obtaining the excursion ticket scouting out any destinations west of Carousel. We knew of The Hanging U Ranch, but after doing some thorough digging at the travel agency and City Hall we were able to determine that there is another stop that's closer. Unfortunately, the map at the train station doesn't actually show its destinations in their actual physical location relative to Carousel, it only shows that they exist

“Malison’s Last Resort & Spa in a mountain town called Snowblind is the closest. It's only forty miles west of town. From what we can tell there are at least two dozen different storylines in the Snowblind area. There are six that we could find in Malison's Last Resort. Of course, we're not actually sure how accurate our intelligence is given the distance, but we have a lot of experience working off of partial information as you well know.

“Arthur was able to determine that there are a variety of monsters in the area including a Yeti and a Wendigo, so we will be surrounded by nature. Sam tells us that there is an abundance of buried treasure on the mountain and that the skiing there is top-notch.”

She was trying to inject humor into her brief. People laughed but there was an uneasiness in the room. Whatever this place was, it was part of the unknown. If there was one thing that I was beginning to learn from Carousel, it was to fear the unknown.

She told us which team members would be making the trip, but we already knew for the most part.

Arthur the Monster Hunter.

Valorie the Final Girl.

Chris the Athlete.

Todd the Comedian.

Jordan the Doctor (Coroner aspect).

Sam the Adventurer.

The first four were around 60 Plot Armor, but Jordan and Sam were in their 40s. Valorie explained this. The fact was, doctors and adventurers were particularly useful. A doctor for obvious reasons and an adventurer because a lot of their tropes dealt with things like climbing mountains and surviving in the wilderness. They would be fools not to take one with them. Using background tropes to try and replace them would mean that they couldn't equip other more important tropes.

Because of this, they made the cut when several other higher-level vets didn't. The unknown did not reward redundancy. It rewarded preparation.

They had actually found a map of Snowblind. Funny enough, it was labeled as Snowblind, Carousel. As if Carousel was both a neighboring city and the state or country that Snowblind existed in.

“We found this in City Hall,” Todd said. “I had to make this poor lady behind the desk laugh for 10 minutes as a distraction while they searched for it.”

“It was more like 3 minutes,” Chris said.

The map they showed was old and incomplete, but it was pretty interesting, though there wasn't much to it. I could imagine a few of the storylines that could have been found in Snowblind. I'd bet any amount of money that there was at least one evil snowman there.

All laid bare, their plan was simple. They pointed to a place on the map that they said should have a road. The map was old and not complete so it was possible that there was a road there. They wouldn't know until they made the trip.

Based on their understanding of the physical location of both Snowblind and Carousel, any path between the two should lead directly to the mountain with the lights.

It was strange how badly the veterans wanted to know what was on the other side of that mountain.

They had allowed themselves to rest all of their hopes and dreams on the exit being there. Players in Carousel had been trying to get to the other side of that mountain for decades. To hear them talk about it was almost like they forgot about why. It was just this impossible goal that represented everything to them.

I wasn't even sure that they knew the full history of how many players had gone missing trying to sneak over to the mountain on the other side of the lake.

But the veterans were not the only people who got excited. Dina was also sold on the mountain with the lights because of what the poker-playing demon had said about needing a man and some violet lights. She had his whole frantic speech memorized.

The brief went on for a while as they went over every single piece of information that they had found. It was amazing what scouting tropes could do if you collected enough of them and used them wisely.

I listened intently because even if they didn't succeed there was still a lot to learn.

Of course, even if they made it over to the part of Snowblind they were trying to get to. And even if there was a road that led back toward Carousel.

There was no way that Carousel would make it that easy.

I knew that.

Arthur knew that.

Everyone in the room knew that.

And yet when the presentation was over, we all clapped and cheered and talked about home just as they had when Secret Lore became viable again.

Even false hope had its place in keeping spirits high.

I felt the tropes in my pocket. If our friend in high places was really there and really was trying to help us, then soon we would have a real chance of escape.

I hoped.