The Butcher's Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #5)

by Matt Dinniman

I stroked her head softly as I talked. “The name of that spell and party has been bothering me for a while now. The way it’s written, it means there’s only one butcher. I don’t think it was possible for Imogen to ‘win’ that boon. When I was talking to her earlier, she told me the story of the Butcher’s Masquerade. She said at the party, we wore masks so we could pretend for a little bit that we weren’t monsters. But she was wrong about that. She had it backwards. You’re wearing a mask right now, Donut, and you don’t know how to remove it. That’s okay. You don’t need to. Not yet. That mask is protecting you.” “I don’t like it,” she said. “I know. What we went through just now was only a taste of what’s coming, especially on the ninth floor. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’re going to lose more friends. We’re going to have to do some pretty horrible things just to survive. So I need you to keep that mask on. But one day... One day you’ll find yourself someplace safe and without worries and without everyone watching, and it’ll just fall right off. And it will hurt. You will cry for Firas and Gwen and Yolanda and Brandon and everybody else we’ve lost along the way, and you’ll be glad you had it on the whole time.” She didn’t say anything for several moments. “Carl?” she finally asked. “Yeah?” “You were right. That was way more like Rambo than Footloose.” And then, she finally did start to cry. They were little, soft murmurs right into my neck, and I’d ne...