Character · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Katia Grim

Crawler #9,077,265, a former art teacher and one of Brynhild's Daughters, sent to Carl and Donut by Hekla to level up: a doppelganger who must sculpt her own face and gets it wrong, in a Monster Truck Driver class whose constitution climbs with speed. Level 9 when she arrives at the One-Eyed Narwhal; 21 when she leaves the floor with them.

Segment appearances

Arc

Leaving

Katia is questioned first and popped away (ch. 1), and her leaving is the floor's first fact: she will go south to the other crawlers before the hunters are released and stay in the party only until the guild system is understood (ch. 3, ch. 4). She maps the floor from gate coordinates (ch. 9), organises the guild's logistics (ch. 11), wants a manager's headquarters (ch. 20) and leaves the party the day Eva is cornered by the hot springs (ch. 21). Donut names it before anyone else — 'Everybody always leaves me' (ch. 12) — and Imani turns it on Carl when he means to go down early (ch. 52).

The equipment locker

She is level 52 with Steely Skin at the start (ch. 3) and 60 at the end; a she-hulk, all business (ch. 50); a decoy Donut from a stuffed mouser (ch. 34); careful stitches on a patch jacket (ch. 36); the bramble arithmetic that tells them where the floor ends (ch. 54). At the party her arm is a locker of potions (ch. 67), she reads the queen's stat sheet from a Size-Up (ch. 73), and she gives her Apothecary beanie to Carl so he can reach a god (ch. 76).

Eva

The thread that runs under everything is Eva: ninth on the leaderboard and Katia's cold promise (ch. 8); glamoured towns and a hot-springs chase (ch. 21); a lunge across a ballroom while Eva talks about Fannar and motherhood (ch. 67). After the pit she finds Eva under the gore with Li Na, cuts off the ring hand and the rapier stub, hears 'Katia, I'm sorry' — 'I just wanted to hear you afraid for once' — and puts a sword through the breastplate (epilogue). A second golden skull; 'It's done' (ch. 77). The epilogue gives the rest: the blitz sticks that show her Annie in the crib, the cocoon she squeezed too tight, and Eva's last act — the Crown of the Sepsis Whore from her own shoulder armour onto Katia's bare head. Only one of Donut and Katia may take the stairs from the ninth floor to the tenth (epilogue).