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April 28 - May 30, 2025
The velociraptor moonwalked back across the platform. He goddamn moonwalked.
As he passed Donut, she popped her sunglasses onto her face. Both bopped their heads to the music. Next to me, Elle mouthed, “Holy shit.” Even some of the hunters ended up clapping.
Carl: I distinctly remember saying “low-key.” Donut: THAT WAS LOW KEY, CARL. THEY TOLD ME I COULDN’T DO MY MAGIC MISSILE ENTRANCE WE HAD PLANNED. THIS WAS NOTHING COMPARED TO MY KE$HA ACT MISS BEATRICE AND I PERFORMED IN CLEVELAND. Carl: You sat in a cage and let judges look at your butthole at your cat shows. Donut: NOT AT THE BAR AFTERWARD. HONESTLY, CARL. IT’S LIKE YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT MY LIFE. WAIT, I’M COMING OUT.
“I called it!” Donut said. “And all those babies are both Vrah’s kids and siblings! That’s like really gross!” She looked across the room and pointed at Vrah. “Disgusting! You should be ashamed!” she shouted.
<Note added by Crawler Carl, 25th edition> From page ten of our planning notes:
Such a fun device
My cousin Scrapple was gonna help me get into the school, but they tested for weed. At a school. Isn’t that dumb? Anyway,
She talks a big game, but she can’t actually do anything. ~ Carl. I’LL DO IT! AND I CAN FIGHT JUST FINE. I WILL KILL YOU ALL. AND ALL THE ELVES. AND THEIR MOTHERS. ~ Psamathe What the hell? Samantha, how’d you find this? NOBODY GOES TO THE BATHROOM THIS MUCH, CARL. I’M NOT AN IDIOT. ALSO YOU’RE USING THE WRONG TYPE OF INK FOR THIS. REMIND ME, AND I WILL SHOW YOU SOMETHING REALLY AWESOME ~ Psamathe.
“This is my royal hat! Do not mock my royal hat! It makes me the most handsome boy in the castle!”
“No, not a goose. It’s like one of those weird mushroom penises,” Elle said, laughing. “It’s like they made a hat designed to look like Horton the mushroom guy over there.” She turned. “Hey, Horton! Come here! You have merch!” From across the room, the mushroom guy lifted a middle finger at Elle. Elle continued to laugh. “I love that guy. Seriously,
Elle: Donut, your ex-boyfriend has anger issues. Donut: I’VE ALWAYS BEEN ATTRACTED TO THE BAD BOYS. Elle: You and me both, sister.
“Also,” Ferdinand continued, “I heard your filthy dinosaur was still alive, and I had to see it for myself. I guess I accidentally hit you with my lightning bolt instead. I don’t know what to say, babe. If you wanna take a ride on my lightning, you gotta prepare yourself for the tingle.” He stood on two paws, putting his forward paws on my head and made two thrusting motions with his cat hips while he air-humped the side of my head while making grunting noises. I watched Donut physically compose herself.
Changelings are fighting mantises and turning into mantises... Confusing...
Sledge: I have controller... I can crash Twister into other turrets... Bombs still dangle... Like helicopter in game GTA.... I think I can get both.
NOBODY IS STABBING ME, CARL. I DON’T HAVE A LITER OF BLOOD IN ME. I AM VERY PETITE.
“Ferdinand,” Queen Imogen growled at her cat. “Pray tell me, where are you?” “What? I’m hanging with my bird.”
Those weren’t your friends hiding in the trees just outside?” Carl: Gideon. Run. Warning: This crawler is deceased. They have been removed from your address book. No, I thought, looking back at the blood running down her dress. No, no, no. “The sink is running,” I said. “We’re not supposed to let it run.” “What?” Imogen barked.
First of all - fuck that Death reveal hits every time... Second -- im feeling like the "running water" thing is a reference to his moms suicide and just now were his thoughts as a child before he found her.
Sledge: Guard turrets get good. Twister house blow up. Got both. Louis: Nooooooo! Sledge: Surviving is winning, Louis. Everything else is bullshit.
“You okay?” I asked. I was still reeling over the loss of Gideon and his team. That had been almost thirty crawlers. They’d stayed back to help sow chaos. I’d asked them to help. They’d died because I’d asked them. The river screamed.
It was actually the first time I’d seen Imani laugh in a very long time. She didn’t yet know about Gideon and his team.
One of the draconians had a spell suddenly appear in his hand. It was a fulminating, gray ball of something. I had no idea what it was, but he looked like he was about to roll the spell like a bowling ball right at the feet of Lucia and the others. Carl: Samantha! Put the gems back! Fast! Samantha: PUT YOUR BOXERS BACK ON. I JUST DID. The spell whiffed out. The draconian looked at his hand stupidly. Vrah turned her head in my direction, and I gave her a middle finger.
Do everything you can to keep her away from the control panel. If you can stop her from giving birth, she’ll go away. I believe in you. Samantha: YOU DO? Carl: You can do it. Samantha: OKAY I GOT THIS.
Sledge: Prudence dead. Died protecting two babies. They’re crying. Hugging Bonnie. Too many mantises. Still fighting.
We were done. I suddenly felt very, very tired. Our only, meager chance of survival was if someone broke the seal at the correct moment. I looked down at my hands, and then I looked over at Eva. The others would have a chance. Donut would have a chance. I opened the chat window. I closed my eyes for a second, just a second, and I pretended like everything was all right. The world had never ended. My mother and I had never left Texas. I was outside right now, sitting in the shade of a tree I’d planted years before. Everyone here, all my friends, never met each other under these horrific
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Elle: Goddamnit, Carl. Donut is never going to forgive you. Carl: As long as she’s still alive, I don’t care.
Samantha: THAT’S RIGHT, DAUGHTERFUCKER! SHE CAN’T GET IN. THE HALLWAY IS SMALL. HER BABY BUGS ARE GETTING SQUISHED. OOZE IS COMING UNDER THE DOOR. SHE IS A REALLY BAD MOTHER.
Sledge: Mantises everywhere. In front of and behind. We are surrounded. I will protect little ones best I can, but it won’t be long. I am sorry. Samantha: CARL THE DOOR BROKE OPEN. I DON’T THINK I CAN DO IT. Carl: Both of you, if you gotta lose. Lose big. Samantha, you have to keep her from turning the magic protection back on. If you don’t, Donut and the others will be in big trouble in a few minutes. Do whatever you can.
Everyone who lives on the hunting grounds and who knows Tina’s story knows what she wants. It’s not to dance in a recital, Carl. Young Tina wants the same thing I do. She wants what I suspect you do, too. She wants her mother back.” I felt as if I’d been slapped. How the hell did she know that?
“This is ‘Wonderwall,’” Horton said, and he started to play the song. Donut: OMG. I laughed. I laughed at the absurdity of it all. Here I was, about to get sucked into a literal hell, sitting down at a party, talking to a tattooed, topless fish woman while listening to a mushroom dude named Horton play a poorly-tuned guitar, singing my cat’s favorite song. All while the entire universe watched. Ka-Blam!
“Carl, that tentacle-faced buffoon of a woman said something else to me,” Signet said. “She told me she was sad that you weren’t going to survive this evening, because she’d been looking forward to meeting you on the battlefield outside of Larracos. I want a favor from you, Carl. I want you to show her exactly how real my family is. I want them all to see.”
In order to cast her Ink Marauder spell, Signet needed three people. Herself to cast the spell, a sacrifice to be the source of the blood, and a third party to kill the sacrifice. But the spell didn’t have to go that way. There was a method to cast her spell with only a single person. One who was all three.
Donut: I TOOK THE CHARM POTION. IT WORKED! “Come on, baby! You can do it!” Ferdinand called from the table. He looked over at Empress D’Nadia and said, “That’s my bird up there.”
“When you see my family,” Signet said, gritting her teeth through the spell. “You tell them I did this out of my own free will.”
“Thank you,” Signet said. She raised a glowing hand and put it on my cheek. “Protect your family, and watch over mine.”
“Psamathe,” a faint voice shrieked from the dark, sounding distant and hollow. “Psamathe, we are coming.”
“Surprise, motherfuckers!” Samantha yelled as she fell from the corner of the ceiling.
“I’ll protect you, my bride!” Ferdinand shouted up at Donut.
Sledge: Five seconds. Good-bye. I met Donut’s eyes. All around us was blood and carnage and death.
But, hey. They’re here and they have a chance. Well, not really. But they’re here!
This part took a little longer. With each name, it listed off their home planet. Almost half of them were listed as homeless or living in some sort of refugee camp.
It’s not only a deity, it’s also the winner of the dungeon’s worst mother and father of the year award!
“I miss my cat,” Dmitri said just before he closed his eyes.
The form of Circe Took, stripped of her protection, sopping wet and covered with bubbles, stood to her full height. The giant mantis woman chittered in rage. “I don’t need the protection of the god to...” She never finished. Before I could strike, a dozen of her own children fell upon her. The wave of bugs rushed her, slicing and cutting and ripping. They screamed as one, piling onto her, as if enraged. Circe Took died shrieking my name.
... Winner! ... Quest Complete. The Vengeance of the Daughter.
When she did the butterfly thing with her coat, it attracted the lightning, and that’s why she’s burned, and that’s why Firas died, but it saved everybody.
Shes gonna blame carl
She stayed on top of me, breathing heavily. I wanted to just close my eyes and go back to sleep. The weight of her on my chest was comforting. Familiar.
System Message: A champion has fallen. A bounty has been claimed. A moment later, Katia marched by, her face dark. She looked down at me and nodded. She now sported a second, golden player killer skull. She looked nothing like the scared woman I’d met on the third floor.
She cut me off, desperation in her voice. “Why? Firas was going to be Louis’s best man at his wedding to Juice Box, and he asked Katia to secretly make them tuxedoes. It was going to be a big surprise, and now it’s never going to happen. Why am I not as upset as I should be? It doesn’t feel right. I think I’m doing something wrong. I think something inside of me has broken.”
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
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This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Zev: Carl... They’re going to turn the feed off. Carl: Is that any way to address a sponsor? Aren’t we allowed to trash talk the competition?
“The rest of these teams are all cowards. I’m not surprised. It’s supposed to be a friendly game, after all. Nobody wants to fight to the death just for fun. Right?”
