Chapter 56 of 78 · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Chapter 56 — Zerzura

Book: The Butcher's Masquerade · Part: The Butchering · Previous: Chapter 55 — Save the toraline · Next: Chapter 57 — I Take it All Back · Floor: Floor 6 — The Hunting Grounds · Series: the series

Opening

<Note added by Crawler Herot.

Summary

Part Four opens with Herot's Worn Path: 'Show them the lie. Show them the seams […] Find the pebble and place it on the path, and their own momentum will do the work for you.' Fifteen days earlier, Quasar explained Zerzura: a spell that moves a whole town — buildings and NPCs, no mobs or stairwells — one floor down; on the Scolopendra levels it skips floors, so from the sixth it lands on the ninth, where Remex the Grand's town was slaughtered by revenants and the faction armies and he became 'a one-bird army' to save his kid; castable only at the end of the floor, five minutes, one try; unsteerable, landing 'in the worst possible area', and everything it crushes rises as Children of Inpewt, revenants that hunt the marked villagers and the caster and turn whom they kill. 'Everybody likes carnage when it's not them.' Carl thinks of Bonnie, Skarn and Ruby; Quasar's negotiating plan — ask six, settle on four mercenaries, one with a teleport, one with Zerzura — and 'a crazy idea' from Carl involving the Dreadnoughts. Seventy hours to the masquerade: the announcement praises the crawlers' low casualty rate, reports the hunters' up from two to over 25 per cent, and promises the hunters 'help'; the seventh floor is now the Great Race, finished with Valtay capital; the top fifty get plus-one tokens and a countdown; transfer to the ballroom thirty hours before collapse, exit by the south door with no way back; hunters in a mirrored ballroom, untouchable; no magic, weapons, inventory; a pet beauty contest and a talent show; a prize booth for hands and scalps; safe passage guaranteed by Queen Imogen; 'You may kill each other afterward.' No patch tonight for 'technical difficulties'. Donut's applications are accepted — she will sing, with Tina and the raptors as backup dancers, since the talent show rejected an act starring an NPC. Edgar's castle map: a 150-metre white sugar cube with four towers and an empty moat against a cliff at the map's corner; ballroom A on the fourth floor, the hunters' B on the second, the throne room on the seventh, a dungeon and a secret entrance below; Samantha: goodwill ballrooms, 'a light touch', where she met her king, and a proposition for Louis and his fiancée. Six hundred hunters outside one door and a hundred crawlers: 'I want that number under 250 before we get there.' Elle cannot reach the changelings at the Desperado. Prepotente is on his way with an angry present.

Characters

• Quasar — Explains Zerzura and Remex's fall; 'You're a taxpaying stockholder now.'
• Carl — A crazy idea about the Dreadnoughts; a castle map; six hundred to cut to 250.
• Princess Donut — Accepted for the talent show with a dinosaur chorus line.
• Samantha — Goodwill ballrooms; a swapping king; tossed off the table.
• Louis and Firas — Louis level 42, half a blood bar, propositioned by a doll.
• Imani — Mistress Tiatha says the hunters can be touched.
• Elle McGibbons — At the Desperado, unable to reach the changelings.
• Prepotente — Coming with a present he sounds angry about.
• Edgar — Drew the castle.

Locations

• The high elf castle — A Bauhaus sugar cube: two goodwill ballrooms, a throne room, staging areas, a dungeon.

Motifs

• Zerzura — A town one floor down, or three; Children of Inpewt.
• The Butcher's Masquerade — The rules of the ball; a countdown; plus-one tokens.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Herot's pebble on the worn path.
• The Great Race — The seventh floor renamed, built with Valtay money.
• The hunters — Twenty-five per cent dead; 'help is on the way.'