4. Ghost of the Cabaret (5)
4. Ghost of the Cabaret (5)
<Count Wolfenstein> was one of the works penned by Christian, the celebrated genius playwright.
Christian had been among the first to weave song and dance directly into the fabric of his plays—a pioneer of what we would now call the musical.
The Tril Trillo series kept its deeper lore locked away.
Most of the backstory had to be pieced together by players from elements scattered across the games themselves.
From the roles the actors played,
from the songs the singers sang,
from the collectible books,
from the paintings that appeared in the backgrounds.
The stories reconstructed in that fashion were all compiled on the TT Strategy Wiki.
Count Wolfenstein.
I remembered the broad strokes of its plot.
A young count enlists the power of a sinister "Black Magician" to resurrect his dead sister.
To gather the components for the dark magic, he seduces a kind-hearted princess, while his own maid watches her master's gradual corruption and unravels into madness.
The sister he succeeds in reviving is incomplete—she cannot smile—and among those drawn to make her laugh, a jester falls in love with her expressionless face and wastes away with lovesickness.
A conclusion in which no one found salvation.
It was exactly the kind of play that suited the grim and grotesque Tril Trillo series.
I stood backstage with Paris and watched Ella work through her scenes with the actor playing the count.
Clad in a maid's uniform and wholly immersed in the role, she looked as though the play's maid had stepped straight off the page and into reality.
Her face gone pale, she looked at the actor playing the count and cried out.
"You intend to seduce the princess for the heart of the one you love?"
"Yes. There is no other way. To raise the spell's chances of success, I need royal blood, in which the most potent mana flows. And I need the heart of someone who loves the black magic's subject—me. I must make the princess fall in love with me."
The actor playing the count was a soft-featured man in his early thirties. According to Paris, he was one of the theater's marquee stars. Even my untrained eyes could see the grace in his expressions and gestures.
"Someday I want to stand on that stage myself," Paris murmured, taking in every nuance of the count's performance.
His eyes burned with fierce intensity.
Knowing the future as I did, I gave him a confident nod.
"You will. I guarantee it. Four years from now, that will be you up there."
"A leading role at the Rose Windmill at twenty-five? Ha, thank you. Even just hearing you say that means a great deal."
The count and the maid.
The two voices grew sharper, the scene approaching its climax.
The maid demanded to know if he could not feel her heart beating. The count retorted that the maudlin affections of a lowly servant could never match the power of royal blood.
"The count advances. He seizes the maid roughly by the arm. He forces a kiss upon her."
Paris was muttering the stage directions under his breath.
What I knew went no further than the rough plotline recoverable from the game. I had no knowledge of the specific scenes.
"A kiss?"
"Ah, yes. Midway through Act 2. It happens in the scene where the maid begs the count not to leave."
Paris delivered this as though it were nothing worth remarking on, then lost himself once more in the rehearsal and his murmured notes.
A kiss, then.
Well, I supposed that was just another day in the life of a performer.
The same as confessions or embraces.
Ella had said she'd memorized the whole script, so she must have known what the role entailed when she accepted it.
"Can you prove it? Can you prove your love?"
The count advanced slowly toward Ella.
She backed away with a startled, halting step.
His hand closed roughly around her arm.
Ella stopped as though her back had hit the wall.
The count's face drew close to hers—
"Miss Ella!"
My shout drew every eye in the dressing room toward me.
Ignoring the stares, I strode over to her.
Her eyes went wide.
I knew I was breaking the flow of rehearsal, but I had no choice.
I'd forgotten to tell her something important.
Honestly. How could I have nearly let that slip my mind?
"What is it? Has something happened?"
"I need a quick word outside."
I steered her, still bewildered, out of the dressing room.
A few minutes before the performance was set to begin.
In the corridor where staff were rushing about, she folded her arms and fixed me with a look.
"What's this about, all of a sudden?"
"There was something I nearly forgot to pass along." I smiled with practiced ease.
Times like these, I really did owe the Smiling Man my gratitude. Over and over.
"What is it?"
"The choreographer, Miss Mare, has upgraded our seats. Center of the second floor. She also threw in an invitation to the late-evening show and coupons for a free fruit-platter set."
Ella tilted her head.
"Hmm... and?"
"I thought we should factor this in. This puts us in her debt, doesn't it? If tomorrow she asks you to perform again after accepting all of this, could you really refuse?"
"Ah... you're right. Turning her down would be awkward."
A troubled look crossed Ella's face.
Excited as she might be to stand on stage again after so long, she was fundamentally someone with a strong sense of duty.
As Deputy Leader, she couldn't just abandon the troupe's rehearsals to flit in and out of another company's theater.
"So why bring this up right now?"
"As soon as your role is finished, come straight to my seat. If you get swept into the after-party or a debriefing, you might hit it off with everyone and end up agreeing to yet another commitment tomorrow, wouldn't you say?"
Ella nodded at my tightly reasoned argument.
"All right. I will."
She paused a beat, then spoke again.
"That said, this is unexpected."
"Pardon? What is?"
"Nothing, really. I was just thinking that you're finally giving some thought to these matters. Running the troupe or negotiating between people—you always left all of that to me."
"Ah. My brain decided to engage, all of a sudden."
"Tch. Try engaging it more often, please."
A bell shrilled.
Three minutes to curtain.
The actors spilled from the dressing room in a mass.
"I'll be going, then."
Ella headed backstage with the others.
I watched her retreating figure.
"You certainly seemed in a hurry earlier."
Only the choreographer, Mare, and I remained in the dressing room.
She gave a soft snort and shook her head at me.
"What do you mean?"
"You were worried about Miss Ella."
"She hardly needs worrying about from me. She's clever, talented..."
"Didn't you pull her outside because you were afraid she'd have to kiss the actor playing the count?"
I shut my mouth.
Outwardly my face was full of easy smiles, but inside I was burning up.
Me?
Over something like that?
No. I'd had a genuine message to relay.
"Oh, I'm not implying you harbor any improper intentions toward someone young enough to be your daughter. It's simply that the way you looked... somehow you seemed like a father worrying over his child."
I sneered inwardly.
Spinning things however she pleased.
Ella was nothing more than a game piece I needed to clear the scenario. A tool to raise her Affection level, unlock abilities, and help me complete quests.
I hadn't been worried about her in that way at all.
The only thing I trusted was the "Affection level" value displayed in my Status Window.
"Heh heh. Ella is a capable Deputy Leader. Personal feelings don't enter into it."
"Ah, if that's how you see it, I apologize. I suppose my own circumstances colored my perception."
Choreographer Mare's smile turned faintly bitter.
What was that supposed to mean?
Puzzled for a moment, I recalled her backstory and let out an inward sigh.
Choreographer Mare.
She carried a hidden past.
She was the secret daughter of the Rose Windmill's artistic director, Yug Maroine.
She knew it, and Maroine himself knew it.
But this bullheaded father and daughter went to their graves never telling each other what each of them already knew.
The resentment of a child abandoned by her father, and the guilt of a father who had abandoned his child.
The recurring motif was that the two of them, even after transforming into monsters, kept trying to protect one another. That pattern let you bait them into shielding each other during the fight—a cheaply exploitable gimmick, in a way that always left a sour aftertaste.
That they clung to their bond as father and daughter even in hideous forms was what moved players, and the truth they'd never been able to confess in life was what made it so bitterly poignant.
None of that was my concern.
All of it took place during TT2 anyway—nothing to do with the present.
A parent who abandoned their child, and their poignant regret?
I found it exceedingly difficult to summon even the smallest shred of sympathy.
The only thing I cared about was whether I might leverage their relationship to smooth the way through the preliminaries.
That was the full extent of my interest.
I made my way up to the audience seats and watched the performance begin.
But by the time Act 1 drew to a close, I still hadn't settled.
The unease was only growing.
It didn't make sense.
At this point in the timeline, there was nothing I should have been able to foresee.
The stories I knew about the Six Theaters all took place during TT2.
There was absolutely no reason, here and now in Rouge, that I should have anything to worry about—
-A kiss?
-Ah, yes. Midway through Act 2. It happens in the scene where the maid begs the count not to leave.
-You harbor intentions toward someone young enough to be your daughter...
Nonsense.
I was certain of that. I knew how to look at myself objectively.
No such feelings existed in me.
So why this gnawing anxiety...
"Sob... Even though I kept telling him no, his hands kept creeping toward my backside..."
"Ugh, him again. That man, I swear. Whenever Director Maroine isn't around, he pulls that onstage every time."
Backstage.
A conversation between actors and staff.
I moved closer and saw that Shayla, the fourteen-year-old playing the princess, had gone into the dressing room with tears streaming down her face.
A young dancer left in the corridor watched her go with pained sympathy.
Paris hovered nearby, visibly agitated.
"And they call that piece of work a star actor. Filthy bastard. Keeps putting his hands on the young ones."
"If he tries that with Miss Ella in Act 2, I'll never be able to look her in the eye again—she's only here because I brought her. Where is Maroine, anyway? Whenever he's watching, the senior actor behaves himself."
"They say Miss Yvonne has regained consciousness. But apparently she keeps asking for Director Maroine."
"Why?"
"No one knows. She keeps babbling strange things. Something about a ghost trying to kill her."
A jolt ran through me.
I finally recognised the source of my unease.
The Ghost.
He was here.
***
The overarching theme of TT2 was art and madness.
Artists entranced by Wonderstein's gem—a jewel said to grant inspiration, but actually haunted by his malevolent spirit.
The madness they descended into formed the core of TT2.
Yet even amid that, there were a handful who managed to retain a semblance of their sanity.
Across the six cities and their six great theaters, they functioned as the player's helpers.
The Rose Windmill Cabaret.
Its helper was a man known as the Ghost.
His face hideously disfigured in an accident during childhood, he kept it hidden behind a white mask wherever he went.
He possessed exceptional talent in both art and architecture, but after his heart had been scarred over his appearance, he lived hidden away within the walls of the Rose Windmill building.
Then one day, he discovered a young talent: Shayla.
Night after night, he visited her room to teach her—song, dance, acting.
As her "guardian angel."
He arranged an "accident" that forced the senior actress blocking her path into early retirement. He murdered the lecherous senior actor who kept groping her.
At first, Shayla had believed him to be nothing more than an angel. Little by little, she came to understand the truth and began to fear him, keeping her distance.
It was into that dynamic that the events of TT2 had erupted.
The characters who appeared as helpers in TT2 were, every last one of them, warped in some way.
When asked why they, unlike the other artists, hadn't gone mad, the series director had answered:
-Because they already were.
The grim irony was that having already been steeped in madness to begin with, they'd possessed a degree of resistance to Wonderstein's madness.
-That woman—I gave her face a beautiful little gift. Kek. The way it melted was something to behold.
-The man who laid hands on my little bird? I flattened him. Made sure he could never pull that again.
Between the highest frames above Hall No.1 of the Rose Windmill Cabaret,
a masked man stood there.
Before him loomed the enormous lamp that lit the stage.
Of the three chains supporting it, he had already severed two.
The lamp wobbled precariously but had not yet been noticed. He'd made a point of choosing the one that was currently unlit.
And directly beneath it, in the perfect spot, was where his target would stand alone.
In his hand was a pair of bolt cutters—the kind that, with enough force, could shear clean through even a heavy chain.
He'd already cut two chains that way.
If he timed it right and cut the last one—
"I suggest you stop."
The voice came from behind him.
The masked man—the Ghost—turned.
Standing there was a handsome blond man in a black suit and a long cloak.
His lips were drawn up in a full, easy smile.
"Derek."
The name fell from the smiling man's mouth.
Why?
No one should have known that name.
Could it be—
Had my little bird—?
"The show must go on."
Wonderstein's cloak billowed.
There, the Ghost found himself questioning the choice he had made.
Hiding away to conceal a hideous visage?
He understood now: something far more terrible than himself was walking freely upon the earth.