Chapter 52 of 78 · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Chapter 52 — Gehenna Bramble

Book: The Butcher's Masquerade · Part: The Unhinged Child · Previous: Chapter 51 — The howdah · Next: Chapter 53 — Iota · Floor: Floor 6 — The Hunting Grounds · Series: the series

Opening

<Note added by Crawler Ikicha.

Summary

Ikicha's last entry: seeing someone he loved twisted and changed, 'They're not the same. Even if cured […] Hope is crucial, but it can also be poison if it is blind.' Drakea: 'Gone is gone. Dead is dead […] We are on a fabricated stage surrounded by puppets built by the enemy'; a dream of a fire that spreads across the sky like the Winter Nebula. 'For you, Ikicha.' Five days, twenty-one hours. Carl tells the chat he is taking Donut down the stairs. Katia: the Sledge is assigned to Donut and would go with her, so no Zerzura for Juice Box's changelings, who have risked someone at the Desperado Club every day waiting for him. Imani: 'You're abandoning us.' Elle: give Donut a day off instead; the hunters are hiding, Eva has vanished again. Katia, privately: 'Please don't go down. Not yet. I need to talk to you about something' — not Eva, bigger, advice. Carl wonders what it will be when they bring out real loved ones — his father — and thinks Odette's taking of Bea was a mercy: what they wanted, he knows, was Queen Imogen turning out to be Bea with Gravy Boat on her shoulder. Donut, told by Imani and Louis separately: 'Ferdinand may have been my first love, but I am a mother now, and I have more important responsibilities.' The quest tally: Prepotente ten (ten levels, eighty stat points), Louis three, the elves and 'goddamned Gravy Boat' one, Lucia Mar one, one-armed Quan Ch one; the two in the hunters' plains remain. A Gold Benefactor Box from the pacifists. Kiwi's pack returns with Tina: fifteen feet of unfeathered allosaurus, a pink tiara grown into her skull, a nearly bald boa, a bloody tutu that is part of her, a sparkle wand out of charges — Big Tina, Level 80 City Boss, Immortalized. Her card tells the recital again from Kiwi's side: a mother who saw herself in a timid child until dance showed her 'an unwritten story […] where neither of the parents were the main character'; Tina barely remembers she was a girl, or that her escort are the village mothers, but remembers her father beating her mother and 'that spark of helpless, impotent rage […] ain't so impotent anymore.' She roars at Mongo; Carl suggests killing her, and Donut: 'This is Footloose, not one of your Rambo movies.' The world freezes for a 'Please wait. Loading…' and a new bar appears under mana. Quest Failed: 'Holy shit. You idiots.' Saferooms now run on tenth-floor rules — a blood bar filled by kills, ten hours of rest when full, a random teleport out when it empties, no entry at zero, retroactive — and, from the two Creepers in the north, Gehenna Bramble: ten-metre thorn walls spreading at four and a half kilometres an hour, uncounterable, blood-boiling, sparing only stairwells and saferooms. 'You brought this onto yourselves.' A hunter is teleported out of a saferoom into the raptors beside them, and Tina throws a tantrum, hopping, because her mother will not let her eat them.

Characters

• Carl — Wants to take Donut down; thinks of his father; overruled by the cat.
• Princess Donut — 'It's not even a discussion'; a song out of heartache.
• Katia Grim — Something to talk about that is not Eva; 'You will regret it.'
• Imani — 'You're abandoning us.'
• Elle McGibbons — 'We already have Florin for that.'
• Big Tina — Level 80, Immortalized, in a tiara and tutu; a tantrum at her mother's order.
• Kiwi — Saw an unwritten story; sends her daughter's raptors off a hunter.
• Prepotente — Ten Creepers; ten levels.
• Ferdinand — Gravy Boat: a familiar who killed a Creeper.
• Quan Ch — One Creeper, unseen all floor.
• Lucia Mar — One Creeper, her first appearance since the fight.
• Juice Box — Someone at the Desperado every day for a plan that needs the Sledge.

Locations

• The Selva — Dark woods before a stairwell town; a wall of thorns coming from the north.

Motifs

• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Ikicha and Drakea on the returned dead; the Winter Nebula fire.
• The blood bar — Tenth-floor saferoom rules on the sixth; retroactive.
• Gehenna Bramble — Ten-metre thorns at four and a half kilometres an hour.
• Quests — The Creeping Apocalypse failed; Tina's story 'not yet done.'
• The mongoliensis — The mothers of the village around a monstrous child.