Everly

Story so far

Everly is a sward mantis crawler who left her colony days before the demons came, an outcast who could not abide mantis culture's rules and lack of individualism. Inside the dungeon she found thousands of her fellow mantises, all confused and afraid; they wanted to work with her and she wanted to work with them, but she struck out alone anyway, hiring two or three dozen Everly's Mercenaries across the floors — firing some in a rage, losing others to desertion, burying the rest. Her only true companions were NPCs and the invisible words etched on Everly's Prayer Mat. She is a rare emotional flatline, feeling little beyond annoyance, and she is the author of the fifth edition of the Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook.

On The Eighth Floor she received Gordon's Compass of Vertical Labyrinth Management from her sponsor, Dictum Waystation Controls, Limited, and used it to climb all fifty flights of The Tower Maze with ten mercenaries. At the top there was no Fan Box — only a note revealing the entire tower was an advertisement built by her own sponsor to smear a competitor, Gordon Waystation Outfitters. Humiliated, then enraged, she scrawled an angry entry via Scratch Pad as the ceiling began descending. Ten flights down and three survivors later, she sat in the sand and accepted The Inevitable Ruin, realizing her ruin actually began the moment she abandoned the other mantises. She touched her ogre mercenary as he awakened and offered her one last consolation, and died crushed at level 62.

Appearance

A sward mantis: an insectile crawler who skitters and gestures with her legs rather than hands, her voice a hiss. In her final moments she sits half-buried in meter-deep sand under a descending rock ceiling.

Role

Doomed mantis crawler whose lonely, self-reliant path ends in a sponsor-built advertisement trap on the eighth floor.

Relationships

Earlier in this series

Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:

• The Butcher's MasqueradeBook 5