“It looks like they just did a photo shoot,” I said, as the narrators were walking toward us. It was true that they were all dressed up, playing their characters, but I said it because I didn't want my friends to be intimidated. I thought maybe if I made fun of the immortal sorcerers, that might signal that everything would be okay.

Despite my run-ins with the Manifest Consortium, I had to admit I was shaking as they walked toward us. The last time I had faced this many of them, I was in the middle of pulling the wool over their eyes, and I felt powerful because of it. This time, I felt vulnerable. That didn't mean I was going to cower. Not with everyone watching.

And everyone was watching, because soon after the narrators made their way out, a gaggle of reporters, several of whom I recognized, found their way through the cabin door.

I turned to my friends and said, as boldly and clearly as I could, “Do not act afraid. You have to pretend that none of this bothers you. Pretend that you're a celebrity or something. We need these people to support us, but they do not pity us, so don't try to ask them to.”

What else could I say? Normally, people in a desperate situation can reliably ask for help from other humans, but these immortals were out of touch, or at least willfully apathetic to our plight.

Vincent St. Vane was in the lead, in his crimson and gold suit, with Lucky right behind him.

“Mr. Lawrence,” St. Vane was saying as he approached, “we never had any doubts in your success.” He looked back at what I assumed must have been some sort of invisible camera and smiled. Then he turned back and said, “That final strategy, acquiescing to the enemy's desire even though it destroyed the world just so that you could finish the storyline, was truly marvelous. We had countless viewers calling in, metaphorically reaching through the silver screen to urge us to do anything we could to help you. They should have known you would pull it out in the end, as you always have.”

Little did they know how close we came to failure.

“I like to keep you guessing,” I said.

He combed his fingers through his auburn hair as he threw back his head and laughed. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “You certainly do. Now, if you'll excuse me, we have a very exciting undertaking ahead of us, and I must be at the helm.”

He reached out to shake my hand as flashbulbs burst somewhere in the ether, capturing my image on cameras I couldn't see. I shook his hand, as much as I didn’t want to.

The strange thing was, I was aware of the cameras. These weren't like the ones that filmed our storylines. It was almost as if the camera was a part of my body, and as soon as it got close and started filming me, I became aware of it. It followed Vincent St. Vane as he walked away to go talk to the reporters before he let them come feast on us.

“Congratulations,” Lucky said. “See? I knew you could do it. You just had to believe in yourselves.”

A spout of rage rose up within me, and I had to do everything I could not to tell him off. Again, we had to play our roles, and I knew that making him care about our well-being was a lost cause. As honest and relatable as Lucky had seemed, at the end of the day, he was just another immortal. To him, we were only tools.

Though if I were honest, I did see shame in his eyes. Embarrassment, perhaps.

“Just wait here. We'll make sure that you have good accommodations. After a storyline like that, you've earned a little relaxation,” he said.

Antoine stepped forward, and I nearly put my hand out to stop him because I thought he was going in for a punch, but instead, he held out his hand for Lucky to shake, and Lucky, smiling, obliged him.

I looked over at Antoine, and he looked back at me, and I could see he understood what I was trying to tell them.

A voice came from the back of the pack of narrators, most of whom were preoccupied with excited chatter.

“Why, Lucien, here I thought the extent of your capability lay in gambling and drinking.”

I recognized the voice as belonging to Silas Dyrkon. It was a stage performer's voice dipped in cynicism.

He made his way through the pack and stood next to Lucky as he surveyed the other players and me.

“Don't go telling people that,” Lucky said. “It might ruin my image.”

Lucky wasn't dressed casually as he had been before. In fact, he was wearing some derivation of a safari outfit, playing the character that the audience knew him to be. Silas wore a dark suit with subtle frills, like some sort of boring Addams Family cousin.

“It looks like you've found a way to motivate this group,” Silas continued. “I must say, you made my efforts appear quite misguided.”

“I just told them the truth,” Lucky said. “Mortals can surprise you when you let them.”

Silas looked over us, then back at Lucky.

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“No, they can't,” he said with a forced smile before turning his back and leaving.

Lucky looked at us like he was searching for someone, and then he asked, “Where's Bobby? He should be here, shouldn't he?”

Did they not know what happened to Bobby?

“I don't know,” I lied. “He disappeared.”

“He disappeared?” Lucky asked, hoping that I would offer further clarification. “Oh, I see, like his wife disappeared. Well, that certainly is curious. We have teams looking into that phenomenon.”

He looked at me sharply, hoping to see some sign in my face, but I couldn't say what. He never brought up the subject of Bobby again, although he seemed to understand the implication, because that small amount of shame I had seen in his face before now became his general expression.

Luckily, he managed to hide his emotions after a few moments of concentration.

“Well, come over this way,” he said. “It's time to claim our prize.”

He began walking away, back toward where all the other narrators had headed.

“I thought you said there was no prize for your throughline,” Camden said, catching up with Antoine and me at the front of the pack.

“No,” Lucky said. “I said that I wouldn't give you anything. I didn't say there was no prize at all.”

There were several men and women huddled around a small wooden table object, about the size of a small bedside table. I assumed that most of them were narrators based on their costumes alone. While all members of the Manifest Consortium dressed funny, it was easy to tell the ones who were playing things up and who were just wearing their work clothes.

All around us, various low-level immortals were working under the direction of Vincent St. Vane. It wasn't clear what they were doing at first, but then trees began to grow, and new buildings started to be built, much in the same way the original cabin had been.

I didn't know why they were building here. Perhaps it was a settlement, or more likely some sort of strategic base of operations, but it was truly a wondrous sight to see all these buildings being put up around us. The immortals didn't seem to care one way or another and were far more interested in the small wooden table.

I did my best to squeeze in to get a view. When Lucky saw I was being pushed out, he turned to me and said, “Riley, come take a look,” signaling his fellow immortals to let me through.

What I saw looked to my eyes like a very antique wooden version of that spinner used when playing the party game Twister, but I would bet everything I owned that wasn't the case. There was a ton of ornate writing on it in tiny copper script. It was octagonal in design, with all eight sides separated by lines that ran to the middle, where the spinner was.

One of the immortals, I didn't know who, because, of course, these people didn't show up on the red wallpaper, called out, “Place your bets. I think this supposed sanctuary is that direction,” he said as he took a ticket from thin air and placed it on the table within one of the eight sections.

The ticket was for a refreshing shave.

Quickly, other immortals did the same, each of them placing a ticket that they had won in the Sweepstakes on a different section of the small table.

When the final space was about to be filled, Lucky stopped the sorcerer who was going to do it, and then he looked to me and said, “Would you like to play?”

The other immortals cheered me on. I felt like a child getting to drink his first sip of beer, and to tell the truth, I was excited. All of the writing on the table was the same stuff I had seen on those Sweepstakes tickets, as well as the ticket that had been on the lanyard around my double's neck when I went to the tower beyond the mountain.

This was a magical device enchanted by what the immortals called MBW, which they pronounced as imbue. No amount of anger or fear could wash away my curiosity about real magic.

I reached into thin air and pulled out one of the tickets I had been given by the narrator, Dr. Masha Striga, who at that time was working in some capacity to help build a large building at the center of the forward base.

I had several tickets, but the one I chose was supposed to make a perfect casserole. I had been tempted to use it many times, but I never did. I placed it in the one remaining spot on the table that was not taken. Others had offered up tickets of similar value. One seemed to be related to liquor, and another to tailoring. I didn't get to see all of them.

The crowd was clearly amazed that I even owned a Sweepstakes ticket.

As soon as the last bet was in, the spinner in the middle activated, twirling so fast I could barely see it. The table also let loose a cheerful little tune like a music box would. All of the immortals began clapping like they were playing some silly drinking game, and then, after about thirty seconds, the spinner slowed down and eventually stopped altogether while pointing away from the valley and to the left a bit.

It landed on the opposite side of where I had put my ticket. As soon as it stopped, everything everyone else had bet disappeared and then reappeared on top of the ticket wagered by the winner. He eagerly scooped them up and put them in his pocket.

“Looks like it's thataway ladies and gents,” one of the immortals cried as the whole group began to march away. One of the lower-level Manifest Consortium members grabbed the little spinning table that we had bet on and folded it up in a way that didn't seem physically possible, folding it in half several times until they could put it in their pocket.

I looked back at my friends, and we were all undeniably interested in what we were seeing.

Lucky stayed back and looked at me, ready to answer any question I might ask, and so I did.

“It was just a game?” I asked, which admittedly sounded stupider than I was hoping. I had been told a bit about how this magic worked, but I was hoping for an overview.

“Of course it's a game,” Lucky said as he began walking in the direction that the needle had pointed. “You'll find that everything is a game if you've got enough imagination.”

I had been told briefly how MBW worked. It wasn't usable magic in and of itself, but it did have the ability to enforce and balance rule sets. I knew what that meant in broad strokes; I knew that it was the power by which the Sweepstakes worked, and the game at Carousel as well, but to see it applied to such a simple betting game amazed me.

I looked back at the others and saw a smile plastered on Camden's face.

We quickly followed the narrators.

I walked as fast as I could to catch up to Lucky. I was going to ask him a question, but Camden beat me to it. I had told him everything I knew about the magic itself, which wasn't much, but it was enough to form theories.

“So I assume there are limits to what that little betting game can do, right?” he asked. “Or else you would have found this place all on your own.”

Lucky laughed, apparently thrilled at our amazement.

“I reckon it's possible that we could find something to wager that would have been worth the directions to the sanctuary, but I can't imagine what that might be. Magic table or no magic table, Carousel's rules still apply, and there's nothing it values more than a good show. That’s why we needed you.”

It was nice to feel needed.

We followed the group away from the base camp. We were eager, but in Carousel, fear was never far from our minds.