Roxie screamed.

We went Off-Screen.

She started to run, and I followed. Due to the effects of her Mystifying Geography trope, my Hustle was on par with hers. With her boosts to Hustle, we were fast enough to escape the Grotesque pretty easily.

“Roxie!” Arthur yelled from somewhere in the darkness.

I could see a flashlight moving back and forth in the distance. It wasn't coming from the church, no, it was coming from out in the graveyard. In the distance, I could see Arthur and Janette running toward us. Janette appeared none too pleased to be running toward danger.

Now that we had joined up with Arthur, we were back On-Screen again. Roxie's A Scream in the Distance trope had passed the camera to him, apparently.

“What happened?” Arthur screamed.

I almost said that we saw a live Grotesque, but before I did I realized that my character didn't know what a Grotesque was yet. That word hadn't been established within the narrative.

“It was a….” I gave myself a moment for my character to come to terms with what he had just seen. “a gargoyle.”

“No,” Arthur said. “it was something else.” He produced a large leather-bound journal with tons of bookmarks, dog ears, and inserts. “It’s called a Grotesque.”

Arthur had a trope called Legacy Hunters Journal. It allowed him to bring his own source for researching monsters into a storyline.

Arthur hugged Roxie. She was his baby sister in this story after all.

“Come on we found a shed over on the outskirts of the graveyard. We'll be safe there for a while,” Arthur said.

The Grotesque that we had seen on the path toward the church had not continued to pursue us. That makes sense. It wasn't First Blood yet.

Arthur led us across the graveyard through rows of mausoleums and monuments. Every shadow made my heart jump. Every cherub statue looked like it could come to life at any moment.

“Valorie is following a lead at the church,” he said. “We're trying to figure out where these creatures are coming from.”

Roxie shook her head. “They aren't coming from anywhere,” she said. “It looks like they can infect other statues.”

“Infect?”

Roxie explained what we had just seen.

“Then we are in bigger trouble than we thought,” Arthur said. “Come on.”

Arthur opened the door to the shed that he had been leading us toward. It was a sparsely decorated, windowless building. It had nothing but some crates and a table in the middle.

Arthur retrieved a small electric lamp from inside his duffel. He sat it on the table and turned it on. Next, he began thumbing through his hunter’s journal.

“At first, I thought the statue was a garden-variety cursed object. But then Reggie said it had come to life and run off. I went through Riker’s journal. He wrote about these things,” he said.

Riker was the fictional person who had given him the journal within the narrative.

“Possessed statues. Towns completely destroyed in a matter of days. He said that they follow a pattern. They wake, they spread, and then they hibernate. Sometimes for decades.”

He started thumbing through the hunter’s journal and showing Roxie and me the entries. They were blank. Or rather, they were nonsense. His journal was comprised of a bunch of random reading materials stuck together to make it look like a real journal. It was just a prop. He must have been getting the real information on the red wallpaper.

“People found a way to shield themselves from them centuries ago,” he said. “They would carve their own gargoyles onto their buildings. The theory was that the Grotesque would see the gargoyles and think that the curse had already been spread there. Supposedly it worked.”

“Why isn't it working here?” Roxie asked. “That church was covered in gargoyles.”

Arthur shook his head. “I don't know.”

“Okay well, how do we kill them?” I asked.

Arthur continued flipping through the pages. “It says here that fire has some effect. I can't tell you more than that.”

“Why is it we always just end up burning things to death?” Roxie asked.

“If it ain't broke…” Arthur said as he unzipped his duffel to reveal that he had brought supplies for a variety of hunts. Most relevant to this story, he brought a lighter, a flare gun, and supplies to make Molotov cocktails.

Once we were Off-Screen, Arthur started to relay the plan to me. When First Blood approached, I would stick with Roxie in order to help her survive as long as possible after she was attacked. Not that I could be that helpful. When she died, I would take a huge bonus to Savvy because of her Tragic Beauty trope. In fact, we would all get bonuses.

Once I had a lot of Savvy, I would regroup with Arthur then he would use his Master and Apprentice trope to teach me to temporarily use Mind Over Monster. After that, I might actually be a threat against these things.

Seemed straightforward to me. Except for the part where Roxie was supposed to survive for 15 minutes against these creatures. I wasn't sure how that was going to happen.

While we planned, Janette sat on a crate not saying anything. None of the plans involved her. She had insisted on it.

Somewhere, Valorie was exploring. She had Reggie as a backup. Not that she would need him. We didn't know what she was seeing but we had some idea of when something important was happening because of the Off-Screen indicator flicking on and off, likely swapping between our two groups.

The needle was nearly to First Blood.

I could hardly sit still because of the nerves. I wasn't sure if I'd even get to use Oblivious Bystander in this scenario. That had been my security blanket up until that point.

There was a rustle outside.

The Grotesques’ Where's the goat? trope made them ideal sneak attackers. The question was would they attempt to use that trope? Or would they consider a more direct approach because of the fact that we couldn't see outside?

We were On-Screen.

Thump.

Something hit the side of the shed.

Direct attack it was.

Thump. It was there again.

If this was real life, barricading ourselves inside the shed would have been a bad idea, but this wasn’t real life. We were here to give Roxie her best shot at getting a maximum survival time for her Looks Don’t Last ability.

The next part was tricky. We needed Roxie to be attacked. The timer didn’t start until then.

Arthur retrieved a shotgun from his duffel. He aimed it at the door.

Roxie moved to open the door.

“Shoot anything you see,” she said to Arthur. Her character didn’t know that Arthur’s shells would only do marginal damage. He had 21 Savvy. With his Mind Over Monster trope, those points would replace his Mettle in damage calculation against the Grotesques. Even with a one-point advantage, Arthur would not be able to get a clean kill fast enough to prevent the creature from attacking.

She opened the door up just an inch.

Crash!

One of them tackled the door just as she opened it. Roxie was knocked back into the table. The door opened wide, revealing several Grotesques clamoring to get in.

Arthur fired on the closest one. It clearly felt the blow, but only for a moment. It would take more.

“Molotov,” Arthur said.

I grabbed one of the cocktails and lit the rag that we had placed into it as a wick. I handed it to Arthur. He needed to be the one to throw it. His tropes would give him stat advantages for it.

He threw the Molotov at the three Grotesques nearest the door. They lit up in flame.

I heard a crackling noise coming from them.

The beasts appeared to be partially immobilized. They struggled to move. It took a moment to notice why.

Parts of them had been turned to stone.

Arthur aimed his shotgun again. He fired. One of the gargoyle’s heads broke into cracked pieces of rubble. White dust rose from the wound.

Arthur let off two more shots. One shot split a smaller gargoyle in half. The other shot appeared to miss its mark and hit living flesh.

“Reload,” Arthur said. He started pumping more shells into his shotgun.

We were Off-Screen again.

Roxie closed the door and she and I moved a couple of crates in front of the door.

“That do it?” Arthur asked.

“Yep,” Roxie said.

She had been attacked. Her Looks Don’t Last timer started. Fifteen minutes to go.

A barrage of banging started to surround the shed from all directions. The shed wouldn’t hold up to it. One of the walls was already buckling under the weight.

“Once they break through, exit out the door and make a run for it,” Arthur said.

Roxie and I nodded.

Arthur retrieved a pistol from his duffel and handed it to me. It wouldn’t be very useful in my hands, not unless we lit more of them on fire, but it made sense for me to be armed.

“Make it stop!” Janette screamed.

Arthur gave her a fierce look. “We’re fine. We’ll be okay.”

He had to be careful of what he said to her because we were On-Screen.

“Make it stop. You said you would protect me!”

“And I will. We just have to follow the plan.”

Janette wasn’t having it. “Why did we even come here? We should have stayed at the church. We would have been safe.”

Of course, we weren’t trying to be safe.

“We’ll be okay. We do this sort of thing all the time.”

The wall that had buckled was starting to splinter. They would be through any second. Roxie and I got close to the door to make a run for it.

“I don’t want to play this 'game' anymore!”

Arthur cursed. He tried to regain his composure. He had to stay in character. “I’m not playing with you. We can handle this!”

It was like she couldn’t even hear him. Some part of her refused to believe that Arthur didn’t have some power to end all of this.

“I don’t want to do this anymore! I quit.”

The first thing I noticed was the plot cycle. Normally it ticked forward at a slow if inconsistent speed. Suddenly it started to move backward. At first, I thought I was just imagining things but then it was clear.

It was moving backward.

Not a whole lot but just enough that First Blood started to move further and further away from the tip of the needle.

Then I noticed the light through the cracks in the wooden planks that made up the shed. The sun was coming back up. As it rose, the Grotesques that had surrounded the shed went quiet. I could only assume that they had turned back to stone.

I will never forget the look I saw on Arthur's face. Normally Arthur didn't display any emotion. But I could see that something affected him tremendously. He got really quiet. He dropped his gun onto the table.

“What's happening?” I asked.

No one answered.

“I knew it,” Roxie said.

“You knew what?” I asked.

Again. No answer.

Arthur began placing all of the items that he had taken out of his duffel back inside of it. Roxie went and unbarricaded the door.

“We need to go,” Arthur said. He put the strap of his duffel bag over his shoulder, opened the door to the shed, and began walking out.

Was the storyline over? Had we failed?

Roxie followed behind Arthur. I followed her. For a moment, Janette stayed in the shed but after we had walked 15 yards or so from the entrance, she ran to catch up with us.

“Is it over?” Janette asked.

“Don't take another step,” Arthur said. “You're on your own now. You didn't want to play. We've done everything we could for you.” He tried to sound firm and strict but in the end, he tacked on, “I'm truly sorry. I wish we could have helped you.”

Jannette looked totally taken aback by what he had just said. “You told me that you would protect me.”

Hearing that appeared to sting him, but he didn’t respond. He, Roxie, and I continued walking.

“Why are we leaving her?” I asked in a rushed whisper to Roxie.

Roxie looked at me with a mournful expression on her face. Suddenly, a look of fear replaced it.

“Hope you like keeping secrets,” Roxie said.

I followed her gaze, but I didn't see anything.

And then I looked behind us.

I heard a loud pop. I could feel hot liquid start to gush from my ear canal. I put my finger to it.

It was blood.

Arthur and Roxie turned to look in the same direction. For the first time since coming to Carousel, I saw actual fear on Arthur and Roxie's faces.

Standing on the other side of the field, was a man.

A chill ran up my spine.

I tried to figure out who he was. I looked at the red wallpaper.

He wasn't an enemy.

He wasn't an NPC.

He wasn't a player.

He had no presence whatsoever on the red wallpaper.

Despite this I recognized him.

I had seen him hundreds of times since arriving. Every time I looked at a fellow player.

On the red wallpaper, every player archetype is represented by a movie poster. Camden’s had a picture of him studying in a library. Mine depicted me eating popcorn and sitting on a couch watching a movie. Anna’s had her running with a flashlight.

They all had one thing in common, however.

Standing behind us in each of those posters, was a figure.

It was a man wearing a dark cloak carrying an axe.

That's who I saw on the other side of the field. I could hear him breathing even though he was hundreds of yards away.

He started to walk toward us.