With the vault door uncovered, all that was left to do was wait for Dina to get it open.
We had several theories on the plot going into this. Was getting into the safe something that would happen in the finale, or was it the thing that would trigger the monsters to come out and kill us? We ...
2025-11-17 07:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostWe tried to do one of those scenes where everyone in the heist gets together, and we learn what everyone is good at. The kind where the audience meets the hacker, the hitter, the face man, stuff like that, but Carousel didn't go for it.
As best I could tell, Nicole's Written by the ...
2025-11-17 02:35:54 +0000 UTC View PostAfter I finished talking to Camden, I needed to find out where my character lived so I could have a good home base. Since I was the guy in charge, AKA the mastermind, it was probably the location where the team would meet up before the heist, so I should know where it was.
I did the trick t...
2025-11-14 01:42:03 +0000 UTC View PostRiley Lawrence is The Film Buff
His aspect is Filmmaker. The Filmmaker has a comprehensive understanding of the filmmaking process. They can manipulate the game environment effectively, altering the game's dynamics in subtle but impactful ways. Their abilities are a mix...
2025-11-12 20:11:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Our first stop for the day was Eastern Carousel. It was early morning, so some of the various nature spirits that lived among the crops and scrub trees in the area were still out and about, roaming through the fields.
Bobby's house was in the distance. It had been a while since I had been t...
2025-11-11 01:11:47 +0000 UTC View PostLark House, as near as I could tell, was set in the 1990s. The neighborhood looked like the kind of place that rich kids in movies of that era would live in. A simple line about their parent being a surgeon or a lawyer would explain how their house was so big.
It was nothing compared to the...
2025-11-08 02:55:27 +0000 UTC View PostAlright, I'm in the home stretch for Book 4's manuscript, so I am devoting a lot of attention to it. I have to take a break from posting here for quality control. I'm just too distracted, and I don't want to post filler chapters.
I have one in the pipeline for you, but that is it until I tu...
2025-10-27 02:16:39 +0000 UTC View PostLucky was already there when we arrived at the food court. As distracted as we were by the various exhibits at the zoo, we tried to hurry, dodging every Omen that came in our path.
Funny enough, not all of the Omens had to do with animals in a direct way that I could tell. Some just used th...
2025-10-21 02:57:14 +0000 UTC View PostI stood inside the restaurant beneath Kimberly’s loft, eating pork chops with my hands as I watched what was going on in the street.
Isaac, Cassie, Anna, Camden, and Ramona were standing there as a group because they had recently run a rescue together, and now the two players they had sav...
2025-10-20 22:32:18 +0000 UTC View PostI quickly found my way back to the theater seat that I had come from.
The others didn't need my help at that point. Camden had taken the lead and had planned the entire storyline, Crawlspace, out with the goal of being able to copy the Carousel Atlas, one of several things that had...
2025-10-20 20:46:58 +0000 UTC View PostPerhaps you are wondering how this is Book Eight. Shouldn't it be Book Seven? Well, hawk-eyed reader, you are correct. The last book was Book Six. However, in hopes of preserving all of Book Five, I have had to divide it into two books. So Five became Five and Six, Six became Seven, ... 2025-10-20 01:20:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Please leave any movie monsters or story types related to creature features or adventures that you want to see in the comments. I have one storyline still open for the next book. I will put up a vote later in the week.
Remember, I will post all chapters late in the week, possibly on Sunday....
2025-10-15 02:34:31 +0000 UTC View PostAfter the incident with Janet in the night, I had to use Out Like a Light if I wanted to sleep at all, and yet I found myself waking up well before the sun rose. I sat and listened as the city held its breath before dawn.
Once my eyes adjusted and were no longer blurry from...
2025-10-13 23:35:43 +0000 UTC View PostLike many nights after coming back to the loft from a storyline, we eventually found ourselves on the roof, relaxing.
But it wasn't that we were completely comfortable with each other yet. We were getting there, and a few mixed drinks under the stars couldn't hurt. Normalcy wasn’t the def...
2025-10-13 16:55:52 +0000 UTC View PostThe trip back to Kimberly’s loft wasn’t exactly silent, but people weren’t talking loudly.
Pushing an entire caravan of shopping carts multiple miles to get back to the downtown area was grueling work. When we went uphill, it was backbreaking, and when we went downhill, it was terrify...
2025-10-13 04:39:56 +0000 UTC View PostThe next two chapters will be coming out ASAP, probably by noon. They just need some editing.
~
Carousel must have really liked my plan because, in part due to this being a rescue, I earned four stat tickets. I was thrilled because it made me feel like I was...
2025-10-06 18:56:39 +0000 UTC View PostWhoever said that decapitation was a humane execution method? When all you have is a head, it always feels like you're falling, even when you’ve rolled to a stop. I couldn't tell if I felt the impact of landing on the ground or if I just imagined it. It was hard to know with my consciousness fa...
2025-10-06 10:29:58 +0000 UTC View PostKimberly thought they were making great headway.
The offerings that they had made to the Heaven King worked wonderfully to counter any magic that the cultists could brew up, and since most of their opponents were unnamed, lowly hooded figures, they acted like it.
She couldn’t expres...
2025-10-05 00:55:16 +0000 UTC View PostI wondered why I hadn't been pulled apart in the way that Lorne had been.
He had far more Grit, and even though he was the Second Blood sacrifice, I didn't see any good reason for Tom to take his time with me, any good reason, of course, except for Carousel to get the footage it needed.
... 2025-10-03 00:30:16 +0000 UTC View Post(Bobby Chapter)
One year later…
The words appeared on the script so plainly, and yet they represented such an accomplishment. Bobby Gill stared at them while his eyes glazed over.
How had Riley been so confident that Carousel would accept such a bargain? One time skip, and sud...
2025-10-01 04:52:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Come, my brothers and sisters,” Tom said as he began walking down toward the front of the room where Antoine was tied up. “Let’s save the world.”
Everyone cheered.
That illustrated the importance of word choice in the formation of cults. If he had said, for instance, “Let...
2025-09-29 04:24:54 +0000 UTC View PostThe most frustrating part of playing the game at Carousel wasn’t the dying. No, dying was easy, physically if not emotionally, and there were plenty of monsters around to help you do it.
The most frustrating part was that even when you knew who the bad guys were and had some idea of how t...
2025-09-29 03:04:42 +0000 UTC View PostHow the cops got there so fast, I would never know. It was obviously movie magic. Carousel would cut things to make it seem like they were inbound the whole time. The audience wouldn’t even notice until they saw their universe’s version of CinemaSins.
Still, I didn’t see them show up....
2025-09-26 22:25:15 +0000 UTC View PostI will still release four chapters a week in the coming weeks, just not on the normal days. I am in...
2025-09-25 02:54:18 +0000 UTC View PostWe walked through the temple at the crest of the largest hill in Southeastern Carousel. Since this was a sound stage, the circus was nowhere to be seen.
A lot of research had led us to this place. It was beautiful.
On-Screen.
“So, is it true that the gods used to live as giant...
2025-09-23 04:47:22 +0000 UTC View PostOn-Screen.
“Dammit, Riley, it’s been a year. A whole year. We’re days away from the window for them to perform the ritual, and we are no closer to defeating them than we were months ago,” Kimberly yelled at me as she paced around her mansion, tossing papers from our research into th...
2025-09-20 07:34:46 +0000 UTC View PostYou may have seen that the Royal Road schedule moved down to three posts a week. That does not apply to Patreon, even after I make up for last week. I am trying to publish at least four a week on Patreon, though the actual days of posting might be erratic for a while. I know that...
2025-09-19 00:35:17 +0000 UTC View PostAntoine’s show ended with a prayer. Every head was bowed, every eye closed, except, of course, for Antoine’s, because he had never seen this prayer before and needed to read the words off the teleprompter.
The show had been a major success, even bigger than I had originally planned. The...
2025-09-18 05:26:33 +0000 UTC View PostI didn’t remember pushing the red button.
I didn’t even remember Silas the Mechanical Showman being there.
Where was I?
My character’s studio apartment. Or… a copy of it.
Before I even took my hand off the button, I found myself staring out the window. It was dark ...
2025-09-17 01:01:53 +0000 UTC View PostNote: This chapter is experimental.
~
~
~
We needed time. Time to plan, time to research, time to form an attack.
If we were going to get it, we were going to have to steal it.
So let the heist commence.
“First...
2025-09-16 03:38:16 +0000 UTC View Post