Character · Book 8, A Parade of Horribles

Carl

The narrator. Twenty-seven, ex–Coast Guard, a marine technician in Seattle, six foot three; on the night the world's buildings vanish he is outside in boxer shorts, a leather jacket and his ex-girlfriend's pink Crocs, coaxing her cat out of a tree, which is why he enters the dungeon without pants and soon without shoes. Crawler #4,122. He fights bare-fisted and barefoot, discovers a gift for improvised explosives, and gets angrier at the people running the show than at anything in it.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — Chandra; the garage
• Chapter 2 — The wheel; a food truck
• Chapter 3 — Heat one; Prepotente's warning
• Chapter 4 — Miss Talulah; Team Free Love
• Chapter 5 — Team Sparkles; the tow
• Chapter 6 — Spider legs
• Chapter 7 — The Moon Reaper
• Chapter 8 — Hats; the Danforth; the godslayer box
• Chapter 9 — Radiant claws; the crupper's rant
• Chapter 10 — Carl's boxes; Rishi's junk
• Chapter 11 — The second cleaner bot
• Chapter 12 — The Team Roundabout; the Wild Hunt
• Chapter 13 — Lady Dominators; Corcunda; a quest
• Chapter 14 — Hungry Eyes; the Hairpin and the Lollipop
• Chapter 15 — The Lollipop: the crawlers' table
• Chapter 16 — The Paramour
• Chapter 17 — Bucket Boy at the wheel; Dr. Metcalf
• Chapter 18 — Heat two: the hail, and Team Sparkles' cannon
• Chapter 19 — One Fine Pig; Penelope
• Chapter 20 — Prison Pocket and Party Foul
• Chapter 21 — The joey skin; into the pouch
• Chapter 22 — Last place; the princess throne
• Chapter 23 — Plenty of Plenty; Zev reads the script; a note from C&W&U
• Chapter 24 — Akuma's note; half a prayer, half a song; the sock
• Chapter 25 — Fursona; Mario Kart; the hotlist
• Chapter 26 — Rend's sixth death; two ghouls
• Chapter 27 — Plenty of Plenty: Lexis in the greenroom
• Chapter 28 — The interlocution; the question Orren wanted asked
• Chapter 29 — The stampede; Harbinger
• Chapter 30 — Heat three: Gluteus Maxx and the Sugar Hermits
• Chapter 31 — Luca Di's entry; the ghoul cages; a mile of fire
• Chapter 32 — The skull of Tem; three vehicles over the line
• Chapter 33 — First place; the jungle ahead
• Chapter 34 — Team Helix
• Chapter 35 — Eris and the five-sided coin
• Chapter 36 — Jacobus, the reverse tooth fairy
• Chapter 37 — Chicken and Waffles and Upgrades; Elle and the war mage
• Chapter 38 — Akuma's account: Herot, Menerva and the Pineapple Cabaret
• Chapter 39 — The Lollipop: a needle over the singer
• Chapter 40 — Heat four: survival containment; Team Flamengo
• Chapter 41 — Forty paths; Osvaldo's crystals
• Chapter 42 — Into the jungle; Quemada breaks; the Wienermobile
• Chapter 43 — The cannibals; Great Rusty; Pasty Inferno
• Chapter 44 — Upano: the pit stop; Jamal on the ceiling; three deaths in the street
• Chapter 45 — The garage of One Fine Pig
• Chapter 46 — Glitzy Pizzazz; two traps
• Chapter 47 — Secretions; the twist; One Fine Pig eliminated
• Chapter 48 — Satan's Water Park; a corpse at the wheel
• Chapter 49 — Mehmet's page; the tubes; the trapdoor
• Chapter 50 — The River of Sloth; ginger genocide; Lucienne on the hood
• Chapter 51 — The Scavenger's Daughter blinks; Azra; heat four results
• Chapter 52 — Interlude: Minus; the key, the upgrades, and Chachi
• Chapter 53 — The key to One Fine Pig's garage
• Chapter 54 — Grigori the Placid; Zhang's only way
• Chapter 55 — The cleaner bot plan
• Chapter 56 — Take on Me
• Chapter 57 — The brawl; Sing for your supper
• Chapter 58 — Jurgen at the door; Porky's zipper
• Chapter 59 — Negative ROI; the GTO leaves early
• Chapter 60 — Real Gs; the scarf
• Chapter 61 — Suckira; the cactus; Li Na leaves the game
• Chapter 62 — Mees Koning's page; to battle
• Chapter 63 — Receiving; the jump; Toddler Cocaine
• Chapter 64 — The hole; the dolls; Corky aboard
• Chapter 65 — Upside down: Corcunda
• Chapter 66 — Grull; Dong tilts a giant
• Chapter 67 — Half a prayer, half a song; one flower
• Chapter 68 — Sam Town; Cascadia's announcement
• Chapter 69 — The stables: who may leave; the Scavenger myth
• Chapter 70 — The memorial crystal; the Midnight Epicure
• Chapter 71 — Hungry Eyes: the goodbye; Bautista's tea
• Chapter 72 — Have You Ever Seen the Rain; Minus unmasked
• Chapter 73 — The Garden of Deliverance; the ducts
• Chapter 74 — Human shells; Ad Infinitum
• Chapter 75 — Archie's boy; Imani's family; the Feast Hive
• Chapter 76 — Apartment 231; the peach beer
• Chapter 77 — Miriam at the piano; Pony
• Chapter 78 — Damien's announcement; under a thousand
• Chapter 79 — 715 deals; Britney in Carl's mind; the Nothing in quotes
• Chapter 80 — The final heat: the lobby
• Chapter 81 — Scolopendra's first attack: the Beast of Burden Sin
• Chapter 82 — Karl the dachshund; Team Sparkles ends
• Chapter 83 — The poleaxes; Britney kills Osvaldo; the Cadillac
• Chapter 84 — The dachshund walks to the Hairpin
• Chapter 85 — The Wheel of Fortune; 'Nothing' in quotes
• Chapter 86 — Mimics; the Big Six
• Chapter 87 — Louis goes; Safehome Yolanda; the giant Imani
• Chapter 88 — Interlude: Quasar; the eleventh floor — twenty-three crawlers; Chaco's parade
• Chapter 89 — Every screen; the Tome of Gatekeeper; the Lucky Shot patch
• Chapter 90 — The Vengeance float; Carl leaves the party
• Chapter 91 — The horribles
• Chapter 92 — Chaco on Lamashtu; the AI's history in four parts; Vengeance
• Chapter 93 — The arena: 'I choose Scolopendra'
• Chapter 94 — Dungeon Boss; the pig in the harness
• Chapter 95 — Inside Scolopendra; Club Scolopendra; 'I killed him'
• Chapter 96 — Emberus explodes
• Chapter 97 — Eris; the wrong biscuit; the gods leave
• Chapter 98 — W-W-W-Winner; Mark of the Damned; the wrong biscuit
• Epilogue — Epilogue: Sydnee Iglacia, Prime Minister Victory, Louis Santiago 2

Arc

On rails

Book 8 opens with Carl married: Princess Chandra invoked Widow's Rights in Naga court and rerouted everything he and Donut earn (ch. 1). He lands in a garage still wearing Faction Wars, rank 3, with 5,501 crawlers left and a heat in five minutes, and finds an absurd calm in a danger that is only his and Donut's — and knows it is false: 'Slam, slam, slam' (ch. 3). The tenth floor is Don't Come in Last, and for a while he is grateful to have no choices (ch. 60). He drives heat one and tows a team of awakened bugbears home — Donut asks, 'We’re going to have to kill those bugbear guys eventually, right?' and he answers, 'Probably' (ch. 4, ch. 5); in heat two he wears a dead joey's caustic skin, hops into a province boss's pouch and blows it from inside (ch. 21), then cannot take the skin off (ch. 22); in heat three he lies across the hood with the wheel behind his head and explodes the skull of Tem with his feet (ch. 32). Last place, then first.

What he is told

On Plenty of Plenty he asks a Plenty goat live whether the public knows the gods have escaped the dungeon and that they need to run — and the AI lets it out (ch. 28); Harbinger is turned inside out behind him (ch. 29). Eris sits on a meat cart and offers protection for true devotion, and spits a five-sided coin whose fifth side tattoos his palm (ch. 35). Akuma, one testicle down under Imani's shield, tells him about the Pineapple Cabaret, Herot, the framework and the seventeenth floor, and lies about two teams; Carl breaks his nose (ch. 37, ch. 38). The AI tells him a gnoll quartermaster's children will not call Donut a hero (ch. 9), that it is 'l-l-l-losing control' (ch. 67), and that every apartment in the L'Engle Building is 'a snapshot of my mind when I’m thinking of you' (ch. 74).

What he does

He lays two silent traps under cover of Donut's relationship advice and dissolves the Tigrans who ran down his mercenaries (ch. 45, ch. 46, ch. 47); he puts a bomb in his friends' Peach beer with his first Oozy Form and detonates it when he cannot know his place (ch. 76); he is called up to sing 'Take on Me' (ch. 56), sings it through a brawl and a fire and is granted a guild (ch. 57); he apologises to Dong and brings him along (ch. 60). He sends Li Na out of the game in a cleaner bot (ch. 61) and 227 more after her (ch. 73); he tells the unmasked spy at the goodbye party that the wreckage has only to settle (ch. 72). Turned into a dachshund by Scolopendra's first attack, he still blows a shaft to the roof and sends twenty friends into a stasis chamber (ch. 82, ch. 83, ch. 85, ch. 87).

Plan Carl

He leaves the party so a Lucky Shot patch can carry a fatal blow to a party member who is not Donut (ch. 89, ch. 90), makes a pig sapient and straps her to his chest with his father's gun at her head (ch. 94), phases into the dungeon boss to meet Emberus at human size, tells him Khepri and then he himself killed Geyrun, and leaves the faith — 'your dad is a little bitch' (ch. 95). The blow lands on the pig; Taranis kills his brother (ch. 96); Carl throws a pet biscuit into Scolopendra's mouth (ch. 97). He ends the floor godless with the Mark of the Damned on his hands, a tracking dart from the Kyryap in his leg, every remaining crawler in one party, and hope — 'We can fucking win' — and a level-1 centipede who boops his nose (ch. 98). Slipping the whole time: 'I was no longer standing on the edge. I had already stepped off' (ch. 60).