Chương 189: Book Five, Chapter 92: Blue Moon Rising

~Andrew~ Phase Two: The Funnel"Light the fuses!" Riley cried as he fired another shot uselessly at a wolf bounding toward us. The wolves crowded the fields to the front and sides of the palisade walls. Some tried to climb the back wall with little success. I aimed my pistol at a small black string sticking up over the side of the left wall of the palisade. Focus. Control. Fire. The bullet struck the black fuse against the stone of the wall, and a spark flew, igniting the fuse.

The fuse started to burn down, down, down into the ground outside the wall, and out across the outside of the wall itself. To my surprise, the wolves seemed to understand what was going on—or at least they thought they did—as they braced for an explosion. Riley extolled the value of a fuse being lit On-Screen. He said everyone loves the shot of a fuse burning as it snakes along the ground. Great for tension, he said. On the right side, Riley had shot another fuse.

The payoff was huge because the fuses were not connected to bombs. The design was based on an idea Riley had that I perfected. His idea came from videos involving Diet Coke and Mentos. I had seen them when I was younger, and I saw how scientists in white coats would rig up Diet Coke bottles so that Mentos would fall into them in a coordinated display, causing the soda to spew into the air like a fountain. We created many containers of silver nitrate and distilled water.

We laid them out strategically, burying some and hanging others on the outer walls. We affixed the fuse so that it ran over the top of the container—mostly glass jars and bottles—and then used copper wire to hang copper scraps from the fuse above the open mouth of the container. It was tricky finding a way to bury the containers and the fuse then, but we managed it with the help of the diligent mercenaries and some roofing shingles that could be used to stop dirt from falling into the silver nitrate.

When the fuse burned, the copper wire would have nothing suspending it any longer, and the copper scraps would fall into the silver nitrate, beginning the process of precipitating pure silver. I would never sign off on this plan in real life, but in a movie, it was practically guaranteed to work with our high Savvy. And, it was technically a feat of Hustle because of those accurate shots we did. Riley wanted us to use Hustle.

The fuses burned as planned, and as I watched over the left wall, a blue glow, artificially inserted by Carousel to match the natural hue of copper nitrate, started to light up the battlefield as the fuse ran from container to container, creating an intricate pattern of light that seemed to come from the dirt and grass itself. I could almost hear the reactions, even though they should have been silent. What I did hear moments later were the wolves.

The wolves climbing the walls were immediately incapacitated and fell. Those standing in the fields to the left and right of the fort ran like they were on fire—those that could. Others dropped to the ground immediately. They were in excruciating pain as the jars we had buried began to react, purifying silver and, in some manner I didn't quite understand, causing immense pain to any nearby werewolf. The werewolves were smart.

They learned their lesson quickly: if they were going to get to us, they'd have to do it from the front wall. We were funneling them toward us. An ebb and flow. The funnel had been successful. And yet, as I observed the wolves' reaction to the A. R. S., I noticed something odd. Several of the wolves began to flee. That might not have been unusual, but every scrap of literature I had found suggested that wolves were unflinchingly loyal to their pack leader.

That was the reason so many were charging enthusiastically to their deaths. Why were some just now losing heart? Some of the wolves fleeing didn't even appear to be substantially damaged. As I watched, shooting any wolf that leaped over the front wall, I felt I could see a faint shimmer in the blue glow, a shimmer… a line that shone over the wolves. I could have been imagining it, but either way, a hypothesis started to bubble into my mind. What if the connection the werewolves had wasn't metaphorical?

What if it wasn't hand-wavy nonsense magic or some animalistic dominance behavior? After all, we never figured out why rolling silver worked. Perhaps there was some interaction inherent to rolling silver that we didn't understand. What if the reaction wasn't simply for the story, created by our dogged pursuit of the rolling silver subplot? Perhaps this reaction was a real observable phenomenon that Carousel was using. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. I had to think on it.

Phase Three: The Frying Pan As the funnel succeeded, we enjoyed a renewed effectiveness of silver bullets for a short time, but then they began to fail again. The courtyard below started to fill up with wolves that would soon be in the range of our platform. I carried a jar of silver nitrate in my hand, and as soon as the werewolves started threatening to jump up to us, I dropped copper bits into it and shook it gently. Oh, Carousel had fun with that.

The wolves would leap—twenty feet into the air, almost reaching us—and as they neared our chemical-rolling silver, they'd go limp like fish and drop back to the ground, howling the whole way down. They wouldn't get back up. The mercenaries placed strategically around the courtyard made sure to shoot any wolf immobilized by the silver nitrate concoction. But they couldn't get most of them.

The wolves were fleeing—not all of them, not enough of them, but many of them were fleeing as soon as they came in contact with the purification traps. If I wasn't mistaken, it looked like the wolves were pausing and thinking for a moment before they ran. Thirty, forty, fifty wolves… the numbers were unfathomable. Fleeing into the night. Dozens died there, of course, and others took their moment of clarity to decide to continue the fight. Time wore on in the courtyard below, which was filled with wolves.

We went from fighting successfully to being overwhelmed within moments. As nearly seventy wolves entered the courtyard, climbing and leaping, we realized we were at capacity. It was time. This time, we didn't use the fuses. Riley wasn't sure they'd work again. He couldn't articulate his reasoning well. Instead, we used a simple string method. Twenty large jars of silver nitrate had been buried in the courtyard.

They were fitted with lids and a unique mechanism that allowed me to thread a string through the lid and dangle bits of copper from it. When I pulled the string, the copper would drop into the silver nitrate. Similar to the fuse. So, I did. I pulled the string, and suddenly, the jars at the front of the courtyard started to activate, their unnatural blue glow filling the fort.

I continued to pull as the string activated more and more jars until all that was left were the cries of wolves in a pain I wouldn't wish on anyone.

"It's time to go," Riley said after we had activated it. And so it was. Phase Four: The Grenades We had also employed devices with a much simpler design. We took Mason jars and soda bottles, added silver nitrate, and glued bits of copper wiring to the tops inside. As they sat still, the copper didn't touch the silver nitrate. But when turned over, thrown, or rolled—well, the reaction was obvious. As we ran, these "grenades" had been laid out for us along a path.

All we had to do was knock them over, and they would activate, leaving any wolf that managed to follow us with a nasty surprise. During our experimentation, Riley and I had argued about different techniques and tactics to employ. This kind of peer review was invaluable in academics—and, apparently, in setting traps for werewolves. We had developed some truly useful ideas, some only theoretical.

"You know those silver nitrate tests you wanted to do on the effectiveness of the solution itself against werewolves?" Riley cried out to me.

"Yes," I said.

"Let the testing begin!" he shouted, throwing one of the jars of silver nitrate into the air toward a group of wolves standing in our path to the next phase of our plan. I knew what he wanted. I grabbed my sidearm, aimed at the bottle, and fired as it sailed over the wolves. It turned out that silver nitrate was quite effective as an acidic solution against these creatures.

Even though it wasn't pure silver and the effect wasn't as extreme, it was clear the acid was doing tremendous damage—melting their fur right off. It almost appeared as if parts of them were turning human again, but they never fully did.

"Where is the pack leader?" Riley screamed. How prophetic. He had to have seen her. Across the ground, by the light of the moon, and surrounded by the largest wolves of the bunch, was a gigantic wolf whose title on the red wallpaper read, "Serena, the Cursed Lover." She had other character posters on the red wallpaper that were not lit. She probably had many different versions of herself, depending on which subplot won out.

One for Michael's subplot involving his people, another for my medical research subplot, another for Riley's documentary, and another for Antoine's brother subplot. Riley explained that all of those possibilities had fallen away, some by neglect or bad luck, others by intention, as Kimberly's story came to the forefront. Now, Serena, or Sarah, or whatever other name she had, was the Cursed Lover. Beside her was a rather large wolf whose entry on the red wallpaper differed from the rest. It was Antoine.

Now, a full enemy. Kimberly and Riley seemed to have noticed this, and even the three surviving mercenaries looked on in awe. We had drawn out the big bad. Riley said we needed to give the pack leader and Kimberly an opportunity to interact for story reasons. That would surely happen now.

"I've got one right here for them!" he said, holding a jar in his hands, ready to throw when the time came. So far, we had used Riley to great effect. Him being the target in the meta and Kimberly being the target in the story made the werewolves predictable. But it couldn't last forever. The jar Riley was holding shattered, and he quickly dropped to the ground, clutching his gut. We looked around, trying to figure out where the shot had come from. In the distance, I saw the blonde mercenary holding a rifle.

It was so easy to forget that humans were weak to silver bullets, too. The blonde mercenary quickly fled out of sight. Riley lay on the ground, still alive, but barely. This was a wound someone with higher Grit might have survived, but he was bleeding fast. I thought about stopping to help him as the resident healer, but he sent me away, screaming for me to run. So, I followed Kimberly as she raced toward the field where the next part of our plan was to take place.

I looked back at Riley and was surprised to see him sitting up. I didn't understand how he could survive that wound. But I noticed many wolves—twenty, maybe more—gathering around him. Their acid burns enraged them, their human parts seeping through their wet, burnt fur. He looked up at them and, in a tired, defiant voice, said, "You fellas ever seen a mummy movie?" And with that, his stats jumped. He gained Grit, Hustle, and Moxie. What was his plan?

He stood to his feet and started to run—not toward the field, but toward the manor itself. The wolves didn't care about me. They followed him. After all, he did have the lowest effective plot armor, even with his buff. Was he really going for it?