Chapter 33 of 78 · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Chapter 33 — Crawling Through the Ages

Book: The Butcher's Masquerade · Part: The Unhinged Child · Previous: Chapter 32 — The Ultimate Training Room · Next: Chapter 34 — How to kill a mantis · Floor: Floor 6 — The Hunting Grounds · Series: the series

Opening

<Note added by Crawler Rosetta.

Summary

Rosetta's note: 'Never trust mercenaries.' The panel: Uptown Hal, an orange stick of gum with softball eyes, an ex-guide from before guides were former crawlers, host of Uptown Hal Talks Tactics; Sydnee Iglacia, a small saccathian crawl historian in a dirty toga; and Drick, a scarred albino moon elf who crawled four hundred seasons ago, tapped out on the eleventh with a plasma saw, was stabbed after a bar fight at a waystation and now wears a Valtay worm under contract — 'Keeping the best of you alive', Moxo sings. They talk as if Carl cannot hear: Lucia has cast spells and set up camp, and summoning the hunters was the best available ploy, since Carl has no chance against her one on one but a chance in chaos if the nebs and the mantids do not know the exact time and place. Circe Took arrives late through a mouth of a door and a corridor packed with Carl and Donut fans: the size of a mantaur, dreadlock antennae, metre-long blade arms, three pairs of spiked legs, and she can see him. 'Your luck is a dishonor on the hive.' 'The hive can lick my sack.' Her blade cleaves the table where his body would be; 'I wonder how many times your daughter practiced that move.' She lectures the room for ten minutes on the primal engines, the overpopulated galaxy, the Hive's reverse-engineering of primal technology and the Indigenous Species Protection Act, until Carl bangs his head on the table: 'You've succeeded in boring me to death.' He endorses Sydnee's book — A Petite Chronicle of the Crawl… — and asks the crowd to help him crowdsource the killing of Vrah. Circe orders him cut off; a cloaked woman at the back, older than she looks, whom the audience shrinks from, says 'Don't', and identifies herself as one of his sponsors and a sponsor of the con — the collective's spokeswoman, Uptown Hal says after, and Carl takes the collective to be the Apothecary. Carl realises the guards are gone, the vape smoke is a drug, his inhibitions are off: 'I didn’t goddamn care […] this is my chance' To the room: 'It's like you're all members of this giant death cult […] Let's go all in.' The crowd answers: eight mantises left, one a male in Zockau, seven warriors, all Circe's daughters, all Dark Hive; the Nebulars are camped there too and claim the right to hunt him. 'If anything happens to my other daughters, I will personally hunt down and kill the person responsible.' 'That'll be me.' Uptown Hal: 'You know you're fucked, right? […] make sure you kill them all.' Hands, tentacles and wings go up. He remembers to praise the Desperado Club's design. Frito: 'The matter with the drug was business. The matter with the commander is personal.' In the empty studio: an Automaton Table, level 5, and Dr. Ratchet's autographed Guide to Building Automatons for Fun and Profit. Donut's message: the saferoom is a trap, Lucia is inside and can hurt him even there, Donut killed her dog, the bug ladies and 'BAD STAR TREK ALIENS WITH BIG HATS' are in the town. The ring goes on.

Characters

• Carl — Drugged and uninhibited, turns a panel into a war council against Vrah.
• Circe Took — Cleaves a table through Carl; 'I am not the Maestro'; storms out.
• Uptown Hal — Reads the tactical situation aloud; 'You know you're fucked, right?'
• Drick — A worm-worn ex-crawler who looks straight at Carl.
• Sydnee Iglacia — A historian who gets her cover blurb.
• The Apothecary's spokeswoman — A cloaked woman the room fears; 'I have directed them to allow you to speak.'
• Frito and Moxo — Leave a drugged vape behind on business; 'The matter with the commander is personal.'
• Dr. Ratchet — His autographed book, on an Automaton Table left in the empty studio.
• Princess Donut — Killed Lucia's dog; warns him off the saferoom.
• Lucia Mar — Waiting in the saferoom, able to hurt him inside it.
• Vrah — Seven warriors counting her, all Circe's daughters, all Dark Hive, in Alucarda.

Locations

• CrawlCon — A stadium that came to see a mother and her child's killer.
• Alucarda — Mantises and Nebulars in the town, Lucia in the saferoom.

Motifs

• The hunters — Circe's daughters and the Nebular claim; the crowd's tactics.
• The Krakaren — The Apothecary's spokeswoman overrules the moderator.
• The Valtay Corporation — Drick's contract; a business transaction with a drug.
• Entertainment as machinery — A 'giant death cult'; a con that celebrates killing.
• Seeds — 'Just little seeds here and there, and soon enough you have a forest.'
• The Desperado Club — Praised, as promised.