Page 177 of Mud

They said nothing, only watched us moving up the stairs as fast as we could.

“I’m so sorry about the door!” I called like an idiot, as if they cared about their stupid door, but I was hardly thinking straight.

We were up a floor, and then another, and Taland found the ladder hanging by a thick rope on the ceiling right next to the barely visible door.

The door that would lead us to the rooftop.

Time could have been moving in fast-forward mode because Taland couldn’t have possibly pulled down the ladder so fast. He couldn’t have climbed up, pushed that door open, and told me to keep moving.

No way—but I still moved. I climbed up as hail came in through the opening on the ceiling, and when I was closeenough, Taland grabbed my hands and pulled me up with ease.

We were outside on the rooftop deck covered in small grey pebbles.

And the dead crow was in the far left corner.

I ran without having to be told this time. All my fears and all the panic, all the certainty that I was going to be burned to a crisp by a dragon disappeared, and all I saw was the dead crow with a broken beak on those pebbles.

Dead. Undeniably dead by hail—as natural as it could be.

“You know the spell?” Taland said, and I nodded as I reached out my shaking hands to touch the bird’s bloody chest.

“I’m ready.”

We didn’t look up. We didn’t let ourselves be distracted by the sound of the dragon’s roar that was close—way, way too close to us. I just began to chant the most basic necromancy spell that I knew, while Taland reached for the raven feather in his pocket and offered it to me in the palm of his hand. I closed mine over it and felt the surge of magic as he let it out to merge with mine, but only slightly. I was too afraid, too excited, too much in a hurry to make anything out about it, just that it was flowing.

Just that there was magic rushing through my veins, up my hand that was connected with Taland’s, across my chest and down my other arm. I felt it and I’d missed it so much it was like being sliced wide open.

All those awful questions—what happens to him now? I’m Mud—what happens to him for sharing his magic with me? This is illegal for a reason. What if I’m hurting him? What if Ikillhim?

All those awful questions in the back of my mind disappeared.

Blackfire flames exploded from my fingers, the ones I touched to the dead crow’s chest. A scream tore out of me as the magic came out, violently, creating a chaos unlike any I’d ever felt before in my body.

For a second, reality let go of me and I was falling, in the dark with no senses, no eyes to see or ears to hear.

I was falling, but I didn’t fall for long because Taland caught me.

When he did, he whispered, “Look.”

That one word was so hopeful. Even though my eyes were still too weak to make out his face, that one word and the way he whispered it was enough to shock my system all over again. So, I looked, and I saw—the body of that crow, half its head bashed in and its beak broken where the hail had hit it, slowly turning to ashes on the pebbles, revealing something shiny underneath.

The key.

It was the key of the Blackfire challenge.Mykey.

My hand shook so badly as I reached for it. Taland no longer had to hold me up. My body was fully functional and my fingers ice-cold as they wrapped around the cylinder dotted with stones as black as the sky in Night City, glimmering white light here and there.

The key was in my hand, the third challenge completed.

Then there was light.

“Move!” Taland shouted, falling back and rolling on the rooftop deck, trying to pull me along with him.

I moved on instinct to the other side because that light wasn’t just light—it was fire. Dragon fire, and it came together with a deafening roar. A dragon the size of a fucking house beat those incredible wings to get closer tous. To incinerate us. Turn us to dust just when I had the key.

I wanted to scream in frustration, but instead I held onto the edge of the rooftop to get farther and farther away from the bright fire, just as the dragon roared again, and spit more upon us.

“Taland!” I shouted before I saw him on the other end, near the door, trying to make his way toward me. “Go back!”

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