"Don't go out on the walkway," Anna said sternly as Camden inched himself closer to the destruction.
"I'm not," he said, pointing away from the ocean. "I'm just looking at these buildings over here."
Those buildings that had been built on solid ground were mostly intact, yet there were no signs that anyone had survived there. At first glance, that would seem an odd idea. Surely, most people during the storm would make their way to higher ground. Then again, people who survived this storm might not have even been brought into Carousel. There was no telling.
Eventually, Camden did stop moving closer to the buildings. He stood there in the gray light of the cove, doing his best to try to theorize on why the original town destroyed by a hurricane still had to exist on the island.
"Maybe it's some kind of exhibit," he said. "Maybe the Consortium expects guests to come explore this place."
That was asking a lot, even of the Consortium.
"There are real dead bodies over there," Antoine said. "I doubt even those psychos want to see real flesh and blood unless it's on film.”
"So it must have something to do with the spell, right?" Camden said. "Maybe it's about balancing rule sets, and what's more balanced than having two versions of the same town? One that's destroyed and one that will never be destroyed."
I didn't know whether we would ever have to understand the magic between the worlds, or if it would just remain on the periphery of our goals forever. At the end of the day, the rules we needed to understand were the rules of Carousel and its game. A multiversal magic system somehow became a mere distraction in these circumstances.
We didn't dare get too close, not only because we were worried about messing something up with the spell that was supposed to keep Saltspar Island safe, but also because there was something hallowed about this place, as if it were a graveyard. It was silent except for the waves that gently rustled the broken boards that littered the shoreline. White seabirds circled overhead so thick they brightened the sky, but they never actually came down to feed.
It was strange. We had seen this kind of carnage before. Carousel had never taken great care of its NPCs, but somehow knowing that the Manifest Consortium was involved made it seem worse. I didn't know whether their actions resulted in more blood being spilled than would otherwise have been the case, but it still felt wrong.
We were talking about heading back to the other side of the island when suddenly a pounding could be heard from the building nearest to Camden.
We were alarmed because we assumed that this would be some sort of survivor from the massacre around us, but we still didn't want to get too close to the actual structure.
It took us a while to identify exactly what was happening because our line of sight was off, but eventually we nudged over until we could see it. One of the doors on the building was moving. Someone was trying to open it, but a large piece of timber that had fallen from a nearby structure had wedged it shut.
"Hello," a voice called from inside the house. "Hello. Party of Promise? Riley Lawrence? Are you there?"
These people and their doors. They could travel around the Carousel through just about any door. When I was wandering around their hideout on the other side of the mountain across Lake Dyer, I had seen many doors leading into various rooms around Carousel proper.
It appeared that they could, through some combination of magic, find the door nearest to where we were and walk right through it. Some powerful members of the Consortium could literally have a building built right next to us just so that they would have a door to walk through.
I got a sense that whoever was on the other side of this door was not a powerful member of the Consortium.
"Hello. Can one of you help me, please? I have a message for you," he said as he struggled to push the door open.
"Just tell us the message," Antoine called out.
"This is rather unorthodox," the man on the other side said, his voice breaking from frustration. "Our time is very valuable."
"So just tell us the message," Kelsey said, repeating Antoine.
"Very well," the voice said with a clearing of their throat. "Lucien Graves would like to meet with you at the Shipwreck Tavern as soon as you are available."
We hadn't talked to Lucky in quite a while. I wasn't sure we wanted to speak to him specifically, but it was better than being ignored.
"We'll make our way there," I said.
"Very well," the voice on the other side of the door said as he slammed it to the best of his ability, but because he had only managed to open it a crack to begin with, it wasn't much of a gesture.
"Finally, they need us," Camden said. "I just hope he's going to tell us that the apocalypse is over so we can go home. Well, not home, but you know what I mean."
We did know what he meant. Home is relative, and in Carousel, even more so.
"You know what?" Isaac said. "When he said that his time is valuable, I should have said, 'You're immortal, so your time literally has no value,' you know, because they have infinite time, and also they can manipulate time. Kind of."
"That would have been funny if you'd said it," I said, although I wasn't sure if that was true, given the fact that the guy couldn't even see us.
Before we started walking back, Antoine pulled out a brochure of the island, one designed not for players or decoration, but for potential Sweepstakes winners who might want to journey to Carousel. It had a map of Saltspar on it. It wasn't particularly useful because it only encompassed the town and a few attractions on that side of the island.
"Want to give it a whirl?" Antoine asked.
"It is pretty low stakes," I said.
We had been itching to try out his Map Travel Sequence trope, but we were really nervous about it. It would allow us to do a montage-style fast travel both in and out of storylines, but it had a drawback in that there was no guarantee the place you ended up at the end of the montage would be safe.
We figured that if there was any place we could do a dry run of it, it would be Saltspar, a place magically made safe.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Freewebnovel; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
We all gathered around Antoine as he stared at the map. The problem was, it didn't work. No matter what we did, we just stood there looking stupid at a map.
"See? I knew this would be too easy," Camden said. "There's always gotta be a catch."
The trope itself didn't reveal why it wouldn't function. We knew its ability scaled with the difficulty of recent storylines we had run, but it should still work, especially since reaching the other side of the island was not exactly narratively important. In fact, this type of travel was exactly what the trope was for.
So we just gave up. We'd try it again on a different day.
We hightailed it back through the maze in the forest, across the beach where our picnic had been set up, then we took a long dirt road back to town until we found the Shipwreck Tavern.
It didn't take us that long to get to the entrance, and when we did, something strange happened.
I felt like I had some sort of time loss or deja vu, the kind of thing you expect to happen after an alien abduction. I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
I looked around at my friends, and they looked back at me as NPCs moved around us on the wooden walkway.
"What just happened?" Ramona asked.
"We just walked here," Camden said. "Right? We went through the maze and passed the beach, and then we walked right to this spot, didn't we?"
To tell the truth, I remembered it happening exactly like that, but it was only in glimpses.
"Wait a second," Antoine said. "Did we do that or did we not?"
I had no idea. I had a memory of walking back here, but at the same time, it felt weird, as if those memories were artificial.
We stood outside the tavern just talking through our feelings, and we all came to the conclusion that in some weird way, the trope must have worked. We had all lost time and felt confused, and the memories of walking here felt alien.
"Let's hold off on using that again," Anna said. "I think I'm going to throw up."
Eventually, we managed to collect our wits and make our way inside the Tavern, where we found Lucky sitting there waiting for us. He was dressed casually again, like we were used to, wearing a bomber jacket and jeans. He looked shockingly normal. He was sitting next to the immortal I knew as Mortimer the 304th, who dressed in a wool cloak and suit. His sharp, thin features made him look quite severe, especially when he was annoyed.
"There you are," Mortimer said when we finally got to his table. "We sent that messenger hours ago. You really shouldn't keep us waiting. Our time is very valuable."
"You're immortals who can control time differentials," Isaac cracked. "Your time couldn't possibly have less value."
Mortimer glared at him and then rolled his eyes as the rest of us tried to suppress a giggle. There wasn't enough room at the booth they were sitting in, so we all pulled up chairs. We hoped that they would get right to the point.
"We were expecting to meet with Dr. Rose," I said. "He was supposed to update us on the Manyfold Hunger throughline."
"Yes, well, his attention is much more valuable elsewhere," Mortimer said. "So is ours."
"Speak for yourself," Lucky said. "I'm always happy to talk. I've just been busy lately. In the last few weeks, we have learned invaluable information about how Carousel goes about absorbing other entities like itself. It's like watching a master magician in slow motion. Truly great stuff."
Weeks?
"So there's been progress?" I asked.
"Lots of progress," Lucky said. "But we're not anywhere near ready for you right now. I came here because I want you to be mentally prepared for what might be next."
He was leaning forward in his seat and smiling, his eyes sparkling as he talked. He ran his fingers through his reddish-brown hair, a nervous affectation I remembered seeing on him many times.
"It appears as if Carousel is bringing in the Manyfold Hunger as an apocalypse storyline," he said.
"It appears," Mortimer repeated with emphasis. "We know nothing for certain, only that the bindings being used are similar to those of apocalypses."
"Yes, well, I think at this point we should prepare for that eventuality," Lucky said. "Can you imagine something capable of manipulating the many worlds taking over Carousel proper?"
I didn’t want to imagine that.
We didn't really take the information in the way he wanted us to. It was like he expected us to be excited, but I couldn't quite figure out why.
"So we're not going to run it," Antoine said. "Apocalypses are too strong."
Mortimer and Lucky exchanged glances.
"Too strong for you right now," Lucky said. "But if you level up, we believe that you'll actually be able to beat whatever story Carousel is cooking up. Right now, we're devising a throughline designed to help you get to that point."
"We are in the very early stages," Mortimer said. "It is entirely possible that we will never call on you for help for such a sensitive matter."
"But more than likely, you will be involved. You're the only players that we have who aren't dead set on staying in the sanctuary, and we've seen you tackle creatures with just as much ferocity as whatever the Hunger has. The shapeless ones were probably just as powerful in their time. It's exciting to think what Carousel might actually do with the Hunger. So many possibilities."
Except that I knew what the Consortium apparently didn't know, that the shapeless ones had run to Carousel, being pursued by the Hunger.
"How do you even beat an apocalypse story?" Camden said. "All the advice we have is that you should avoid them."
"Yes, well, it's trivial to beat apocalypses theoretically," Lucky said as his eyes searched back into his memory, trying to recall what he knew about the subject.
"Okay, but how?" I said. "They're so high level."
"Well, of course, they're high level," Mortimer said. "They function to sanitize Carousel, scrubbing it clean of any alterations from stagnant throughlines or thread pooling. They aren't designed to be unbeatable. They are simply designed to be scary, but we've ensured that the rewards for surviving these events are substantial."
We spent some time picking their brains about apocalypses and the Manyfold Hunger, and they talked at length about things, but usually about things we weren't as interested in, like the difference between how an apocalypse and a normal storyline are structured, magically speaking.
"Obviously, it is quite complicated," Mortimer said. "We need not explain the details."
Honestly, I thought he had already explained the details because of how much of the conversation went over my head. When he started talking about the magic between worlds, my brain automatically tuned out as if I were listening to exposition in some science fantasy movie.
"When you say complicated, do you mean because we can't understand it," Camden asked, "or because you can't?"
Mortimer was absolutely offended. Lucky smiled and laughed.
"A little bit of both," he said.
From what I understood after the conversation, apocalypses were, as one might expect, survival situations. They were less about beating the enemy, allegedly, and more about simply reading the situation and constantly adapting. Plot was often incidental, and while they all had them, you didn't even have to engage with them to win.
Basically, they had all the rules for a zombie apocalypse, with minor adaptations here and there. All the characters are in the same boat. The question is, can they keep from drowning?
To be honest, that was terrifying to me. One of the only things that allowed me to thrive at Carousel was the rules I understood. An apocalypse made it sound like there were no rules because the plot was a means to an end.
"Well, anyway, now you know where we're at," Lucky said.
I knew where they were at. I also knew that when he described their time working on the Manyfold Hunger, he said weeks had passed, even though for us it had been days, which was disconcerting, but I didn't call him out on it because I wanted to keep him on friendly terms.
"Speaking of apocalypses," I said, "is the one back in Carousel proper ever going to end? This is getting ridiculous. The Black Snow didn't last half this long."
"Yes," Mortimer said. "But the black snow was much easier to trigger. The balance of apocalypses can be quite finicky, but overall, the easier it is to get caught in an apocalypse, the less time it will last, the less severe it will be. This current apocalypse, I believe it's called Ringmaster, is incredibly difficult to trigger, and therefore, it can last an unknown amount of time."
I didn't really like his logic. The way he talked made it sound like the black snow should have been a walk in the park because of how easily it was triggered. Simply touching the snow falling from the sky could bring you into the apocalypse, but it was also a very dangerous story where being infected would get you turned into some sort of mutant amalgamation. That didn't sound too easy.
After a while, it became clear that the immortals before us were not going to tell us anything else that interested us, especially things concerning the sanctuary. It would seem that was a need-to-know situation, and they didn't think we needed to know anything at all.
I found all of this quite frustrating. Bobby had warned me that if we passed the midpoint of the meta-narrative, we needed to kick things into gear and push the story forward ourselves.
Now it was looking like that would be incredibly hard to do. The Consortium was gatekeeping both the Manyfold Hunger and the sanctuary itself.
Luckily, there was more than one way to push a story forward.
