Character · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

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 — Porthus; Welcome to Faction Wars
• Chapter 3 — The Tiara of a Thousand Lights
• Chapter 4 — Gloom Wraith Phase
• Chapter 5 — Dante; Sir Rendlegore
• Chapter 6 — Party Planner
• Chapter 7 — Donut Holes; the Semeru dwarf
• Chapter 10 — Hamed's club; the small wedding
• Chapter 11 — Tipid; fifty thousand
• Chapter 12 — The base camp; Tina
• Chapter 14 — The flag room and the Ramp-Up
• Chapter 15 — The Rolling Battle Formation Ball
• Chapter 16 — Everly; Glory Bound
• Chapter 17 — Eleven hours
• Chapter 18 — The minor quorum; code red
• Chapter 19 — The ruling; the ceasefire ends
• Chapter 20 — Christmas Morning; the Ramp-Up
• Chapter 21 — The southern trenches; rot stickers
• Chapter 22 — Colonel Boomer
• Chapter 23 — Killing in the Name
• Chapter 26 — Milk; the Empress marked
• Chapter 30 — Comrades
• Chapter 31 — Drop troopers; Tripper
• Chapter 32 — King Rust arrives
• Chapter 33 — Parlay
• Chapter 34 — The king's message; Rosetta's whip
• Chapter 35 — Volteeg; the dwarves' tunnel
• Chapter 36 — Orren's zero zone
• Chapter 39 — Alliances break; Operation Snake Pit
• Chapter 40 — Little Günter; a dragon chain
• Chapter 43 — Odette hosts; 'It's coming'
• Chapter 45 — Prepotente's rant
• Chapter 46 — Operation Snake Pit: the line of succession
• Chapter 47 — Tattoos, and a flower offered
• Chapter 48 — Colonel Prepotente
• Chapter 49 — Bijou, Theia and Khepri
• Chapter 50 — The Temple of the Dagda
• Chapter 51 — Dark Purpose
• Chapter 52 — The Temple of Khepri
• Chapter 53 — Super Heavyweight Temple Battle Grudge Match Extravaganza
• Chapter 54 — The Waffle Maker; Hellik's message
• Chapter 55 — Head Banger; Milk
• Chapter 56 — Justice Light; the Nest
• Chapter 57 — Thirty-two boxes; the last prisoner
• Chapter 58 — Sultan Rishi the Usurper
• Chapter 62 — A non-team entity
• Chapter 63 — Into the Madness
• Chapter 64 — The crystal shows itself
• Chapter 65 — Bear Witness
• Chapter 66 — Rolling Battle Formation
• Chapter 69 — Interlude — Several days earlier; Interlude — Rosetta; Zarogoths
• Chapter 70 — City of Broken Dreams
• Chapter 71 — Donkey Kong
• Chapter 74 — Bijanbi
• Chapter 75 — Stayfast Ink
• Chapter 76 — The Oak Fell
• Chapter 77 — Not yet
• Chapter 78 — The Scavenger's daughter is with us now
• Chapter 79 — Tart
• Chapter 80 — Inside the dragon
• Chapter 81 — Executive Order 11905
• Chapter 82 — Ursensus
• Chapter 84 — And then there were two
• Chapter 86 — We just need to kill you
• Chapter 87 — The Nothing has been broken
• Epilogue — Epilogue: Don't Come in Last

Arc

Rehab

Katia arrives carrying Tran and thinking about vehicles (ch. 4, ch. 5); Mordecai's green gel — Glory Bound compounded with Tough Love — is her rehab, taken in a field hospital with a tortoise warning that waking her early could kill her (ch. 16). Carl is bound into the dream by accident: an Icelandic children's hospital, an ex named Fannar 'telling them the truth', an adoption refused over an addiction ten years past, a silent scream in a bathroom stall, and baby Annie in the only occupied crib — her favourite and her worst memory, because she knows it is the last time (ch. 17, ch. 69). 'I love you and Donut more,' she tells him (ch. 69). The treatment works (ch. 17).

Engineer

She builds Jamal's thought-reading spider legs (ch. 15, ch. 65), turns Tran into a wall-climbing crab with a plate exoskeleton (ch. 21), rotates Donut's tiara through the charge pillows (ch. 40), tattoos a dragon-chain of Li Na's blood onto Carl's arm (ch. 40) and a barbed-wire Tripper onto Imani's ankle in his blood (ch. 47), sets the wire for the clock tower, and charges a temple as a mantaur drenched in cherry cobbler shouting that demons attack behind her (ch. 51). Her Spiked Knee Pads of the Goddess Kina, plainly meant for Carl, she keeps (ch. 56). In private chat with Bautista she promises to give Carl the flower for Donut if the raid fails (ch. 47).

The orchid

She and Donut have a plan Carl would 'Carl up' (ch. 75). With sixty-six minutes left she eats the Orchid of Eileithyia without transferring her inventory or saying goodbye: 'I love all of you' (ch. 84). She wakes to a sponsored goddess, a frozen choice, and Donut killing the woman inside the goddess with Katia's own crossbow (ch. 86). She chooses pregnancy, to reach the children in the kinder facility above, asks Louis to be the father, and is made human again: small, black-haired, missing her right arm, both legs in part, and an ear — 'We've all become experts at hiding what we've really lost.' Bautista fits the cybernetics she built for this. Eileithyia: 'It will be a boy.' Art Professor. Crawler. Hero. Human. Friend. Mother (ch. 86). She leaves Annie's card and a bra with Carl's face on it (ch. 87). Boomer, in orbit, sets aside four Cronus suits for 'a pregnant veteran on the surface' (epilogue).