Page 144 of Mud

At first, everything was the same closer to the edge of Night City, where the buildings were just a couple stories high, and the residents were the same people who drank and danced in the streets and ignored the players completely.

But about ten minutes in, I began to hear the screams.

Players were picking fights with elves and orcsat almost every corner, dragging them to alleys. And the residents saw, but they didn’t do anything. They didn’t even try to stop them now, didn’t say a single thing like they did in the beginning.

They didn’t go inside their shops and homes, either—which blew me away at first, but then I realized…

“They’re not allowed.” Because Taland was right—there was a reason they were here.

That reason wasto be killedby the players. To be the dead bodies we needed to complete the challenge.

It pissed me off so much I saw red.

Glass broke somewhere over my head, at the top of a five-story building, and something fell.Someonefell—an elf woman wearing a yellow dress and heeled yellow shoes.

She screamed as she fell, then stopped abruptly when she hit the asphalt on her back.

Even though I was ten feet away, I could have sworn I heard her skull cracking on impact.So much death.

I looked up, my hands on the handles of my knives instinctively, and the player who appeared in front of the broken window screamed,“She’s mine!”

He wore blue leathers and a long beard that touched his chest, and he looked really big from down here, too—but even that didn’t mean anything when other players ran from almost every single alley around us.

The Bluefire screamed as he slipped out the broken window and began to climb down the building because others were already on the body of the elf. Those who got there first were fighting each other about who would claim the body with their necromancy spell.

Goddess, I couldn’t believe my own eyes. To me it felt like ages, but it all happened so incredibly fast. Players were fighting and the guy who’d actually pushed the elfout the window was trying to climb down as fast as he could, screaming in frustration still. And then a petite woman, possibly as small as the dead elf, snuck between the legs of two men slamming their fists against each others’ faces while they held each other close by their jackets at the same time, and she began to whisper her spell.

The Bluefire who was still climbing down saw it. Tried to reach for his wand. Lost his grip on the black bricks of the building’s facade. Fell silently, then hit the ground with an even bigger thud very close to the dead elf.

Iris, help me…

Now the players were fighting forhisbody, too, while the petite Redfire woman was already done chanting her necromancy spell, and the elf’s body turned to ashes, revealing for her, her key.

She took it, stood up, and before she started running, we made eye contact for just a second.

Her eyes were wide and blue-ish. She was scared shitless, shaking. Her skin was a sickening yellow, and she looked dehydrated, starving—but she got her key, and then she ran.

“Have you seen enough?”

This time I didn’t jump, wasn’t surprised to find Taland right beside me. I heard him approaching.

Without a word, I walked around the crowd still fighting over the body of the Bluefire player.

Taland followed.

“Leave me alone,” I managed to spit out when I witnessed another murder—this one an orc for whom a Blackfire guy had prepared a nice little scene with a lot of glass shards on the ground, and a nice little trap for him to trip over once he shoved him just a bit. It worked—the orclanded on the glass. One of the shards went right through the back of his neck and came out of his mouth.

What a sight to see.

“No,” was Taland’s response.

“Please, just—” I started again, but he didn’t let me.

“Don’t waste your breath, Rosabel. Don’t be so fucking stubborn and just accept my deal.”

“No.”

He came in front of me.

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