Essay · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

The arc of the story

The Butcher's Masquerade is the sixth floor — the Hunting Grounds, the third floor's map under centuries of jungle — and the first floor on which people from outside the dungeon can die: a thousand hunters from off-world, bumped to level 50, released to hunt the crawlers for trophies, while the crawlers are promised a party at the end in a castle nobody has seen. They arrive as the rich at play — a mantis who wears the heads of the dead, a drunk with a Dirty Shirley — and the book spends its length showing who they are: an accountant who begs 'I can pay you', a refugee, a man hunting to keep his habitat's oxygen paid for, until Carl says it to the cameras: 'A lot of these guys were people just like you, struggling to survive.' Book 4 was four locked rooms; book 5 is a countdown with three clocks — the hunt, the trophy count and the collapse — and a fourth that runs under the whole book and is explained only near its end, the river in Carl's head. It is also the first book with a lawyer.

The book-level entities: Carl, Princess Donut, Katia Grim, Tsarina Signet, Vrah, Queen Imogen, Big Tina, Kiwi, The Butcher's Masquerade, The high elf castle.

Act I — The Hunt (Chapters 1–9)

Carl comes into being in a liaison's office with the Gate on the desk and says the magic words (ch. 1); ten minutes in a booth make him an Agent Provocateur and Donut a diva who cannot sing (ch. 1, ch. 4). Invisible weasels paralyse him before he has walked a mile (ch. 2). A Null attorney trades the Gate away, for now, against four rock monsters and two spells (ch. 3), and Carl goes to the hunters' city before the hunt begins: a drunk marked as bait, Vrah's sister killed in the air, a block blown to fire and fog, and thirty-four Hunter-Killer Boxes opened in a row beside a river he has only just started to hear (ch. 5, ch. 6, ch. 8). Katia is leaving. He asks the crawlers to knock down every bridge but one, and builds the biggest bomb he has ever made on purpose, for Bomo to roll into Zockau (ch. 9).

Act II — Point Mongo (Chapters 10–15)

A town of pious bears with eighteen rules and a mayor who goes into the river (ch. 10); Donut owns it, names it, arms it and will not leave Mongo, who has found his own kind (ch. 11). In a pub the water runs and Carl makes a promise (ch. 12). Signet is back with what is left of a transfigured people — six schoolboy beavers and a caterpillar who taught them — and a quest double-billed onto Carl's contract (ch. 13, ch. 14). A hunter's children's menu shows the floor divided and the crawlers claimed by colour (ch. 15).

Act III — Bea, and the Dream (Chapters 16–24)

A third sponsor, the Apothecary, whom Carl takes for the Krakaren (ch. 16); Earth from orbit, and Odette with news: Beatrice is alive (ch. 17). Donut decides the interview happens (ch. 18), and does it, and says goodbye (ch. 19). A regency change gives the Valtay 51% of Borant, drops them as Carl's sponsor, and Lexis whispers that the party is a trap (ch. 19, ch. 20). Katia leaves the party for the guild (ch. 21). Space elves shell Point Mongo from a catapult; a doll's head with two missiles brings back an accountant (ch. 22); the ring pays two points a kill — 'Congratulations, Murderer' (ch. 23); a stolen siege engine, and Carl's theory of how the show wants Signet to end (ch. 24).

Act IV — Fort Freedom (Chapters 25–29)

Three orcs at the all-tree and a frightened one killed for two stat points (ch. 25); the naiad palace from the top down with paper monsters, Samantha in the vents with a Wonderwall alarm trap (ch. 25, ch. 26); a squatter boss teleported to Carl, launched into the sky and eaten from inside by Mongo (ch. 27); a kingdom that fell on its own, a teacher's death, a dinosaur in a pink boa named by an ogre (ch. 28); a new tattoo and a kiss, and a transfer from a mayor's doorstep (ch. 29).

Act V — CrawlCon, and Alucarda (Chapters 30–38)

A Valtay ship on the sea floor, a gnoll's favour and a child's ladder into a zero zone (ch. 30, ch. 32); a children's art contest fixed for a grandpup (ch. 31); a panel moderated by the mother of the hunter Carl killed, turned — drugged and uninhibited — into a war council against Vrah (ch. 33, ch. 34). Back in Alucarda with no protections he makes chaos to hide in: Langley's head bites, an arrow of gonorrhoea goes into Vrah's neck, and a bomb goes out a saferoom door (ch. 35). Family in the personal space; an apostate's tattoo; strength 100 (ch. 36). Lucia Mar rips a mayor in half and loses her dog (ch. 37); a mantis accountant explains the Great Consensus and chooses death (ch. 38).

Act VI — The Unhinged Child (Chapters 39–55)

Two more towns, a stump signed at an autograph table, a reporter stabbed with a Sharpie, a charge of assault (ch. 39–ch. 42); matching boxes from two sponsors against vampirism, and a recipe that needs a litre of Mongo (ch. 43). In a hockey bar a barmaid tells the story of the recital: an eight-year-old dancer and her mother, transformed (ch. 44). The floor's dead walk; a vampire hunter's mount, a burning forest, a mayor fireballed (ch. 45, ch. 46); Miriam Dom tells her life and dies in the sun on her son's shoulder (ch. 47). The Creeping Apocalypse (ch. 48); Kiwi charmed with one potion and two rules (ch. 49); Creepers as city bosses (ch. 50); a procession of white beasts, a bolt aimed at Mongo, and the familiar in the howdah is Ferdinand (ch. 51). Then the brambles and the blood bar (ch. 52), a man killed with a foot (ch. 53), Tina tamed by way of her mother (ch. 54), and a warning: the trees are calling Diwata, and Circe Took has bought her (ch. 55).

Act VII — The Butchering (Chapters 56–63)

Herot's pebble on the worn path; Quasar's plan to move a town three floors with a spell, and a corporation (ch. 56); a potion kept from Signet (ch. 57); a secret stair, a merchant dead in a bathroom, blood set to boil (ch. 58); a liaison who warns without warning and a weeping chapter president (ch. 59). Raids on stranded, family-sponsored hunters — Shunned by his own god for a worshipper used as a shield (ch. 60) — until a god marks him for death and the church erupts (ch. 61); the god is a squirrel with antlers who runs to cure her daughter (ch. 62). Signet on a log, tired, agreeing to a lie; five sponsor gifts routed to Donut with a hidden seven (ch. 63).

Act VIII — The Butcher's Masquerade (Chapters 64–75)

The plan is written into the Cookbook as a record (ch. 64). The queen fades into the wagon with Ifechi's twin's face and tells the story of the first masquerade (ch. 64, ch. 65); the Sugar Cube, its ballrooms and its prize counter (ch. 66); a butterfly kills the warning light and Apito invites Signet (ch. 67, ch. 68); an Atoll explains why he hunts (ch. 69); Mongo moonwalks while mantis nymphs swarm the Sledge's team (ch. 70); a ten-year-old inside Lucia (ch. 71); a charmed cat leaves the wrong ballroom, the mantises take the Twister and the queen seals the room (ch. 72). Gideon's team dies; the Sledge crashes the airship; Samantha bites the soul crystals; Carl decides to go into the Nothing, and Signet offers something better (ch. 73). All Eyes on Me, the Recital, a knife handed over handle first: 'You tell them I did this out of my own free will' (ch. 74). Sic ’em: raptors, gore, a mother turned back into a bear, 'Mommy?', and 'Five seconds. Good-bye' (ch. 75).

Act IX — The pit, and after (Chapters 76–78)

Cage Fight Extreme: four corners, AC/DC, a pit domed with thorns; the Popovs killed by a burning stag; Laundry Day strips a god from the woman driving it and her children eat her; the last hunter halved by his own trap; the queen pelted to a beat and finished by a goat (ch. 76). Firas, Gwen, Horton dead; two yearlings under the gore, Ineligible, free; the Princess Posse in Faction Wars; a speech to the universe until the mute; and Donut's question — why doesn't it hurt as much as it should — and Carl's answer about the mask (ch. 77). The epilogue: the seventh floor cracked open with a stick and a hammer in ten minutes, Florida chosen by mistake, and Katia killing Eva and receiving, from a dying hand, the crown that means only one of two may leave the ninth floor (epilogue).

The shape underneath

The book's title is a spell, and the spell's name has one butcher in it. Carl's plans are overwritten one by one by rules he did not know — a peace seal, a sealed host, a guest list drawn by a goddess — and what survives of them is the stage: Donut's song, a charmed cat ('Don’t forget Ferdinand'), a Hole cast on every stage at once, Laundry Day aimed at a god's driver. What no plan could supply, the book gives to two things nobody ordered: a doll's head that bit down on the wrong crystals, and an elite who chose — 'You tell them I did this out of my own free will.' Under the hunt is a book about mothers — Tina's, Vrah's, Signet's, who never reached the island they meant to go to, Prepotente's, who leans her head on his frozen shoulder, Donut's, whose song was her mother's, Katia, told she could never be one, and Carl's — and about the noise in Carl's head, which his own memory, in the castle, sets beside the water in the pipes, the basement and the note. The hunters turn out to be accountants and refugees with families who sponsor them; The gods acquire a theology and a loophole; The System AI starts saying 'I'; Waking the NPCs moves from theory to a woman with a knife. Katia leaves and comes back with a crown on her head; Donut ends the book number one, co-warlord of a fan club's army, and wearing a mask Carl tells her not to take off yet. 'We have two floors to get through, and then we're coming for you.'