Page 128 of Mud

A few, though, tried to pick a fight with some orcs near a bar, who’d been drinking beers and dancing in a circle, bothering no one. They could hardly stand on their feet and keep their balance, yet they kept on moving, spinning around one another, laughing. The music reminded me of a Greek movie I saw once.

The group of three players, who’d teamed up because they probably saw no other option, tried to enter the bar in front of which the orcs danced, tried to grab the beer bottles from their hands, tried to fight them.

In an instant, more people, sober ones, approached and surrounded the group of three.

“Night City isourcity. We are its residents—you don’t belong here,” they sang in unison. “Move, stranger, or we will move you.”

They said it over and over again like fucking robots, and there was no way those players could do anything against twenty of them, not to mention others who were standing by, just waiting for a move.

The players were smart enough to back away. Nobody tried to force the residents into giving them food or drinks again that I saw.

But I still tried to get someone to tell me where the hell I was going.

“Excuse me, can I ask you something?” I asked an orc as she swept the asphalt with an old broom in front of her shop—Diris’s Dris, thedrisbeing pouches full of unicorn horn dust, meant to bring good fortune to the wearer. As far as we’d learned in school, unicorns never really existed. They were just a figment of people’s imagination, and the dris dust was just an old wives’ tale to trick humans into spending their money to keep their homes protected from bad magics.

The woman looked at me—or maybeglancedat me for a second would be a better description—then continued to sweep away like I wasn’t standing just two feet in front of her.

“Please, I just need to ask you about an inn,” I tried again, and she turned her back to me swiftly—a clear indicator that she didn’t want to be bothered.

I tried again with an elf who was smoking a cigarette at the corner of a closed shop. The windows were painted black, and you couldn’t see anything through them. He was alone, leaning against the wooden corner of the five-story building, one hand under his armpit, the other in front of his face, the cigarette burning dangerously close to his fingers.

“Sir, can I please ask you something?”

The man who’d been murmuring under his breath and staring at the ground in front of his feet turned his grey-colored eyes to me.

“No—you can’t come in. No—you can’t take my food.No—you can’t find out where we keep our dead bodies even if you kill me. And if you do, it’s game over for ya—satisfied?!”

I jumped back, a scream building in my throat, and before I knew it, I had my daggers in my hands. He looked down at them, arched a brow, then dragged more smoke from his cigarette that should have been burning his fingers by now.

“An inn,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just need to find an inn.”

It was like I hadn’t spoken at all. The elf just kept murmuring under his breath, staring at the ground.

He didn’t look at me again.

So I continued ahead and I asked whoever I could—excuse me, where can I find an inn?—and everybody ignored me just like they did everyone else.

The streets came together again at a roundabout, all three of them that I’d seen in the beginning.

I wondered if I should have chosen the left. Or maybe the right? I wondered if the people were friendlier in those other streets. I wondered what more lay in the neighborhood beyond the roundabout. It looked pretty much the same as where I’d come from to me.

Darkness, lights, buildings.

Fuck, I was getting more desperate by the second.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I tried not to think about the fact that I might have to start searching for a cemetery around here soon. Groups of other players were everywhere by the roundabout that saw no traffic whatsoever. Some were coming and some going, some standing there and looking around, completely lost—just like me.

Dragons flew over our heads, soundless, barely shadows against the dark of the sky, and birds, too. Ravens,crows, pigeons—they flew, and the dragons didn’t spit their fire at them. They were free to go anywhere they wanted, unlike me.

My feet were glued to the asphalt. The people ahead were whispering, and some of the words I even understood.

“They say they keep the bodies of their deceased in their basements.”

“I heard they freeze them and keep them in their kitchens!”

“That’s not right—I heard they chop them and eat their flesh and save their bones as decorations!”

The memory of the skull with ruby eyes in Erfes’s bar came in front of my mind’s eye, and I almost threw up all those crackers she’d so kindly given me.

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