Character · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

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

• Chapter 1 — The Ghosts of Earth
• Chapter 2 — Hills Cyclops
• Chapter 3 — The Scavenger's Daughter
• Chapter 4 — Old Havana
• Chapter 5 — Sister Ines
• Chapter 7 — Duendes
• Chapter 8 — The Bedlam Bride
• Chapter 10 — Pueblo de los Olvidados
• Chapter 11 — Asojano
• Chapter 13 — Milk and potatoes
• Chapter 14 — The gauntlet run
• Chapter 15 — The Thorn Room
• Chapter 16 — Ogun
• Chapter 17 — Two goddesses
• Chapter 18 — Club Vanquisher
• Chapter 19 — What's in the box
• Chapter 20 — Ruby
• Chapter 21 — The warlords' table
• Chapter 22 — Uzi Jesus
• Chapter 23 — The Molly Maguires
• Chapter 24 — Raul
• Chapter 26 — MaeMae
• Chapter 27 — Phase two rules
• Chapter 28 — Rude-Dolph
• Chapter 29 — Der Schachmeister
• Chapter 30 — Four drugs
• Chapter 31 — The corridor behind the shops
• Chapter 32 — Minge
• Chapter 33 — Vorpals
• Chapter 34 — Family business
• Chapter 35 — Emergency action items
• Chapter 36 — Nekhebit
• Chapter 37 — The eye of the Bedlam Bride
• Chapter 38 — Monroe County
• Chapter 40 — The Book of Voodoo
• Chapter 41 — Jola the Yule Cat
• Chapter 44 — A different time instance
• Chapter 45 — Asher
• Chapter 46 — The Reminiscence Hydra
• Chapter 47 — Operation Slut Stomp
• Chapter 48 — Mass Layoffs
• Chapter 50 — Homestead
• Chapter 52 — Two of five
• Chapter 53 — Flee rules
• Chapter 55 — Survival Royale
• Chapter 57 — Samantha's secret
• Chapter 61 — Three out of four
• Chapter 62 — Where the Sidewalk Ends
• Chapter 63 — The doggie door
• Chapter 64 — Spunky Jefferson
• Chapter 65 — Graupel
• Chapter 67 — The Big O
• Chapter 68 — Raul's moment
• Chapter 69 — A deity has fallen
• Chapter 70 — Golden Combo
• Chapter 71 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
• Chapter 72 — Falling Up

Arc

The crown

The book's first fact about Katia is a private message: she wears the Crown of the Sepsis Whore, and Yemaya's blue shrine must be repaired to save her and Donut (ch. 15). She has carried a celestial lock box since the sixth floor with an orchid in it — three boons from Eileithyia, one of them a child and the surface — and has said nothing (ch. 19). She worships the goddess on a sponsor's scroll, is recruited by Huanxin Jinx to make Carl fix a shrine, and finds the Guild of Suffering through a stripper's tattoo and takes a job to kill Astrid (ch. 19).

The drug den

She finds the Desperado's frozen-yogurt drug den because Carl told her where it was, and is Bliss Surfing for ten hours before the assassination (ch. 28); four addictions, one going on for a while, her constitution and charisma scrambled, her intelligence still above where it was (ch. 30). She vomits a rainbow into Louis's bucket and says 'I'm sorry'; Bautista tells her to kill herself if she must; she goes anyway, propped up by Imani's spells (ch. 30). In the kitchen she takes Astrid with a shapeshifted spike a millimetre from the head and is frozen there, with a face Carl files beside Hekla's death and Donut's sobs (ch. 32). She has the orchid; she will not eat it before the ninth (ch. 33).

Iceland, and the bolt

Phase two drops her squad in Da Nang, Tran's city (ch. 38); her hydra is made of everyone's family but hers, as if the dungeon had written her off (ch. 48). Her flag is Hekla and Eva with their eyes crossed out (ch. 32). She gives Donut Jola (ch. 34), comes to Cuba through a doggie door with twenty friends (ch. 63), hands Paz the Bolt of Ophiotaurus and takes back a reusable bolt when he kills a goddess with it (ch. 69, ch. 72). Carl's Self-Immolation burns her arm off; she grows it back and calls it nothing (ch. 71, ch. 72). 'Have I ever told you […] let's just get past this' (ch. 64).