Chapter 47 of 78 · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Chapter 47 — My beautiful boy

Book: The Butcher's Masquerade · Part: The Unhinged Child · Previous: Chapter 46 — Sierra · Next: Chapter 48 — The Creeping Apocalypse · Floor: Floor 6 — The Hunting Grounds · Series: the series

Opening

<Note added by Crawler Volteeg.

Summary

Volteeg's only entry, 7th edition: 'I miss her. I miss her so goddamn much. Is it worth it?' Drakea's note under it: 'Fuck everything about this place.' Through hordes of turkey-sized bambiraptors, most of them vampires who do not attack their own, to a clearing an hour before dawn: Prepotente frozen like a statue, left arm around Miriam's waist, right hand closed on something gone, a timer with an asterisk; Miriam grey and ghoulish; a ring of corpses out to the trees; lady Mongos circling in the dark. Miriam drops a spellbook — Get Out of Jail, forty points, which Donut has a zombie raccoon drag over and reads before Carl can stop her — and asks them to wait for dawn. She kills three bambiraptors behind her without turning her head. Her story: a career and a fiancée given up to nurse her parents outside Parma, twenty years, then a farm she had learned to love and her children, the goats; Pony 'My little stubborn shadow', hysterical when separated — which is how she went looking for him and became a vampire. Viscount Fog, star of a program called Blood Hunter, hunted her from the moment she landed; the show's climax was to be Fog killing her to cure the forest, because she is the prime — kill the progenitor and every infection under a month old ends, including a dozen crawlers she knows of. Surviving a floor infected gave her a title, Princess of Hell, that made her curse permanent. Pony's benefactor scroll, Community Pool, would have moved the infection from her to Fog; Fog's counter bounced it, Pony's Opposite Day ring bounced it back, and it ping-ponged until both were stunned to Fragile — one hit point — and Fog, left with a debuff called Cursed Light Walker, an opposite vampire, died at sunset. Something worse happened in the burst: the other ring on Pony's hand, a second Ring of Divine Suffering he had just found and been told not to wear, misfired, and the only eligible target was Miriam. Left to Fester. 'You didn't ask me here to protect you. You asked me here to kill you.' 'Yes.' Donut: 'IF WE KILL MIRIAM, PREPOTENTE WILL KILL US.' Carl: 'The smart thing to do would be to kill them both […] It's not impossible. It's just hard.' He will not kill her; he will stand watch. Her tears are blood. At dawn, hands behind his back, he marks her himself — 300,000 gold he will not collect, Pony's 1.2 million he will not touch — and takes Left to Fester himself until she is gone. 'Would you do the same thing to save me?' 'Without hesitation.' Her health drains in the first sunlight. 'My beautiful boy,' she whispers, and turns to dust.

Characters

• Miriam Dom — Tells her life; the prime of the outbreak; asks to be killed; dies in the sun on her son's shoulder.
• Prepotente — Frozen and Fragile, a second Ring of Divine Suffering on his hand, marked on his own mother, watching everything.
• Carl — Refuses the bounty, stands watch, and secretly marks her himself.
• Princess Donut — Reads the spellbook too soon; 'Would you do the same thing to save me?'
• Viscount Fog — An elite vampire hunter, star of Blood Hunter, dead of an inverted curse at sunset.
• Bianca — In Pony's inventory with the other surviving goats.

Locations

• The Selva — A clearing ringed with corpses; sunrise after the storm.

Motifs

• The vampire outbreak — A prime whose death cures a month of infections; Princess of Hell.
• The Ring of Divine Suffering — A second ring; a mark by accident; a mark by choice.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Drakea, under Volteeg's only entry: 'Fuck everything about this place.'
• Staying human — 'That's not who I was. She knew that.'
• 'You're not going to break me' — 'Goddamn you. You will not break me.'
• Elites — A program's climax that its elite lost.