Last night, the Ox was murdered.
I take my tower apart, then carefully try each person’s door. His room’s unlocked, I’m greeted with the usual thin yer of blood, and in its glistening reflection I witness my own perplexed face. I’m being confronted with two main dilemmas.
First, the remaining wolf’s behavior is quite strange. If I really were the seer, then leaving me alive would guarantee that the vilge wins the game. Everyone knew that the Ox was a vilger based on yesterday’s seer report, so tonight I would have either checked the Rabbit or the Horse, and if my report was that one of them was a vilger, I’d know the other was guaranteed to be wolf. Either that, or I’d simply find out that the person I checked was a wolf herself…
Since the remaining vilger “knows” that I’m seer, she’d trust me and vote for the other pyer. In other words, if the wolf thinks I’m the legitimate seer and also has at least one brain cell, they should have noticed my survival would lead to their end.
I can boil all my logic and confusion down to a single question, the same one that I had st night…
Is she stupid?
Second, I still wonder about the “conclusion” about game rules that I came to. While inside the Ox’s bedroom, I hesitatingly dip my finger into the pool of guts and blood, bringing the speck closer to my lips before licking it.
“Gross…”
I gag, before running into his bathroom to wash out my mouth. It tastes of salt, iron, and a mysterious “something else”—whatever the substance is it’s certainly not ketchup. After some wondering why I let my intrusive thoughts win, I head to the kitchen to have some real food.
I’m no good at making pancakes, so I take a carton of Cherry-Os and pour myself some cereal. I open up the fridge, searching through a slew of cartons and jars. Salsa, peanut butter, marshmallow fluff; pancake dough, waffles, and delicious banana bread; and of course, several brownish-red biohazard containers stacked in the back.
“I think I might be able to guess what’s happening, both with the final rules and that final wolf. But, I still lose everything if I’m wrong about even a part of it… and I don’t want to die, right now.””
I tilt my head, and fetch some one percent milk. My mind keeps on churning: at some point, I’m going to need to talk to someone else or my thoughts are going to start leaking out from my skull. I sit down, tear open the carton, and when I pour, I’m so distracted that I miss the bowl.
Right as I become aware that the milk’s leaking down onto my skirt, the Cat God interrupts my thoughts on the intercom. His contrived, virtual voice makes my skin crawl more than my ongoing spill.
“Due to meowtenance, the trial chamber will be closed this Friday, February 6th. Instead, we’ll be using a selector screen on each pyer’s Card.”
My card buzzes and rumbles, as its dark led fshes with a familiar UI.
PICK A PLAYER
ID
Status
ID
Status
X
X
X
X
Snake
IN
X
X
Horse
IN
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Rabbit
IN
“Please complete your votes before 12:00 PM noon. It is our heartmeowst wish for you to enjoy werewolf’s final round.”
“Enjoy it? This isn’t like any game of Werewolf I’ve ever seen. But the Rat was still right to trust me,” I say to myself, staring at the voting screen. “As long as I strike first, I’ll win.”
***
I find them in the library.
I had already searched the entire first floor. The trial chamber had been locked tight, while I had heard a suspicious noise behind the carved entranceway, there was simply no way to investigate further—not when the timer keeps ticking down. So, I naturally find the pair of remaining pyers in the only other meeting room.
The Horse is panting, dripping water from a bright white pstic bottle right down her throat. She fans herself by stretching one of her tracksuit’s sleeves, and leading up to where she sits by the table are a set of dirt footprints; she must have just returned from a run. She sets the bottle on the table, and pokes at the Rabbit resting beside her.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” the Horse repeats, apologizing for seemingly no reason. The Rabbit next to her continues to snooze, slumping over the desk.
As always, the pink-haired girl comes across as a human fluff ball, wrapping herself in jackets and bnkets and with a head that’s always deep in her synthetic clouds. She emits little puffs of breath as she snoozes… it might be a bad time to think this, but to be honest, she’s almost a little bit cute. No one can hold a candle to Lily, though.
“That heavy breathing…” Rabbit murmurs. “So noisy…!”
She stretches, arching, arms raised far above her head and clothes cascading around her body’s bulky form. The low mplight grants this library a cozy warmth, and the dust she pushes into the air makes this feel like another dream.
“I was waiting for you,” she blinks up at me.
“There’s less than two hours left,” I snap. “What if we hadn’t bothered to search for you? You’d have never woke up again!”
“Horse has a lot of energy, so I knew she’d run here eventually…” Rabbit says, pointing at the athletic girl. “And you have weirdo energy… so… I knew you’d come by…”
If I didn’t have a “weird”’ expression on my face already, I definitely do right now. I take back every nice thing I’ve ever said about that girl, even as she looks at me with wide, innocent eyes.
“Your injury’s gone?” She asks.
“I got better,” I reply, and Rabbit maneuvers her head, gazing between me, the Horse, and the Card that’s demanding her vote. She shakes herself, light hair falling, and sps her cheeks with both hands.
“Good! Cause I’m also ready to rumble… to wake from this bad dream.”
Her eyes are wide and sparkling, now, and her face is flushed a pleasant pink. “I might be tired, sometimes, but I can use timers and arm clock just fine. And what’s a better countdown timer than one that brings this game to an end?
You were both so slow… that I’ve already had time to come up with a pn. Right now… our best move is to—”
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait!” the Horse stumbles into the conversation, spping a slim notepad onto the table. “I wrote out what I want to say… just wait!”
They’re both eager to take the lead, but polite enough to wait a few seconds to see whether the other will interject first. They lean forwards in their chairs, and a tension charges the library’s dusty air.
I shiver: this is no good. I can understand people when they act in groups, or when they’re pyers with clearly-defined objectives and goals. But when it comes to someone’s character, their personalities, I’m still often caught completely off guard.
I didn’t expect them to talk game this quickly, so they’ve already forced me to confess. I swallow, a lump pressing against my throat. Then I speak:
“The murders, the votes—I’m the one responsible for everything. I’m the st wolf.”
