Page 122 of Mud

If the animals were going to just leave the moment we went to the next challenge, what was the point of making usbondto them? To finish the game, yes, but the bonding? The linking between us? Because even though I hadn’t bonded with the vulcera with magic, I still felt like a piece of me was being torn apart as I watched her move back toward the shadows—and she felt the same way. She was whining, trying to break free from whatever was holding her, pulling her back, but she couldn’t. The game was too strong.

And I felt so fucking empty so suddenly it shocked me all over again.

Her moss green eyes disappeared between the shadows. My body was so, so weak. The only reason I didn’t fall was because I was already kneeling, but other players weren’t. They fell to the ground as their familiars disappeared in the darkness, crying and screaming, while other just stared into the shadows without blinking, like me.

Gone.

She was gone, just like that. Just when I was getting used to her being there. Just like when she became part of me through however the bonding worked—and I hadn’t even shared my magic with her. Ours had been a physical bonding, which I didn’t even know if it existed outside of this game.

But if Taland knew about it…

Taland.

A brand-new energy fried my nerve ends and pulled meup to my feet. Taland had known how to survive the vulcera, how to get her to bond with me without magic, and he was in this game for real. He was here with me, with all of us—or at least he had been in the Tree of Abundance.

But all players entered the game in their coven’s challenge first, so that meant he’d come to the Tree from here, from Night City. He’d already completed the Blackfire challenge, andthatmeant that I wasn’t going see him as long as the challenge lasted.

A part of me was disappointed. The part of me that had adeath-by-Talandwish was downright depressed at the thought of not seeing him again, but I was also glad. Because without him, I had one less person who wanted my head to worry about—regardless that he’d claimed he wanted tohelpme—and I could focus on the game.

The game that was impossible to finish without magic.

Tears in my eyes—raw, angry tears that I refused to let spill. Yes, I’d finished two challenges, but one of them had been of my own coven, and I imagined it was easier for each player to understand their own. And the Greenfire challenge had been a combination of pure luck, my combat training—and Taland’s help.

But I doubted I was going to get lucky again, and my training wasn’t going to help me with necromancy. I did learn about it and I knew spells, butI hadno magic.

Taland wasn’t here, either, and even if he was, I couldn’t let him share his magic with me. Not just because it was illegal, but we had no clue what happened to an Iridian who tried. Nobody shared their magic with the Mud, ever—nobody. We had no idea what the consequence of it were.

My stomach squeezed and twisted awfully.Dead, dead, dead,my own thoughts mocked me. I spun around and looked at my surroundings, the music back in full swing,the elves and orcs back to their business, the players—those who hadn’t been to the Tree of Abundance yet and hadn’t bonded—already moving toward the narrow street on the other side of the fountain to find…a dead body.

While others who’d been with me and whose familiars had left were still recovering, just like I was.

I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, told myself that it wasn’t real. Bonding was Greenfire magic, not Redfire. OrMud,for that matter. It was all an illusion, not real. What I had with the vulcera, this strange connection we’d forged while we’d walked on that tree, it was just for show. For the game. I hadn’t really bonded with the creature—nobody had. None of the players, not even the Greenfires.

Probably.

“Just a game,”I whispered to myself, yet the memory of those wide green eyes stabbed at my heart, and it was one of the strangest things I’d ever felt in my life. So fucking raw.

Yes, the vulcera had been just part of the game, but this pain felt very, very real.

The thing was, I was used to pain. I was used to putting it on my shoulders and becoming one with it and moving forward together with it. Not only when my parents died, but when I betrayed Taland, too. And every day my grandmother reminded me how unimportant to her I was, by talking to me or not talking to me, by looking at me or ignoring my presence.

So, it did take me a few minutes, but I forced myself to think the words,not real,until I felt them all the way to my bones.

Then I took in a deep breath, and I made a plan.

The first thing I needed was food.

The second thing I needed was water—lots of water toclean the dried blood off my body, and I was willing to do anything to get it. Since this was a city, and people seemed to be living here, I thought I might find something soon. So, I started ahead slowly, searching with my eyes all the shops and the restaurants, trying to determine the best place to ask for food. Some other players were doing the same, but most were already on their way to the bigger buildings that we could barely make out in the dark of the night.

I walked all around the fountain, not really paying it any attention, and I figured if I couldn’t find water, I could just usethisto clean up when everyone was gone. But I had to ask first, and to do that, I chose one of the smaller shops close to the edge of the narrow street where everyone else was walking.

It had a single table out front where two elves were playing a board game that didn’t quite look like chess. The lights inside were a warm, inviting orange, and the music was slow and soothing, like someone sat in front of a piano and was playing their heart away, describing the way I felt exactly.

“Hello,” I said to the elves, expecting ahi,or a smile, or a nod at the very least.

I got nothing—they barely glanced at me with their brows narrowed, then returned to their board.

Rude,I thought, but I was trying to make friends here, not enemies, so I held my tongue. Instead, I decided to try my luck inside.

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