Page 203 of Mud

My voice trailed off. Goose bumps rose on my forearms.

“The Drainage,” said Taland, and the name echoed in my head a couple of times.

“The Drainage.” As in the process of draining an Iridian of his or her colors. The process of turning an Iridian, deliberately, into Mud.

“I suppose it would do exactly what the name suggests, so…that is not an option then,” said Taland, sitting down on the ice, a hand already over the body of his eagle.

“No, it is not.” Not only becauseI’dbeen subjected to the same process and was now Mud, but I’d also seen what the IDD agents called a furnaceback at the Headquarters, though only once. The room was made entirely of bones that served to ruin the magic color of an Iridian. The walls were white, the ceiling and the floor—even the inside of the door was made of pieces of broken bones of…people? Animals? I had no idea. Nobody really knew, but it was enough to make me certain that Idid not wantto see what The Drainage in this game looked like. At all.

“What now? How are we going to get medicine for our familiars?” I went close to the vulcera again, grabbed her head and put it over my lap. She opened her eyes just a tiny bit more than usual, and her tongue came out and she licked my hand a little. As if to say she felt me. She knew I was here.

It was like getting stabbed and shot at the same time, in the same place.

“I don’t think we can,” Taland whispered. “I don’t think they even made it possible to heal them here. They… theydon’t want usto healthem.”

He said it all through gritted teeth, frustrated as he raised the eagle’s head on his palm and began to stroke his beak.

“They want us to just kill them?” There was no other option but to kill the animals they forced us to bond to, the beings that swore their lives to us, that we were supposed toprotect?

“Yes, sweetness. We’re meant to kill them, and the sooner you do it, the sooner you will be out of here.”

I blinked and blinked and blinked.

You,he said.

“What about…what about you?” He was smarter than me. More powerful. More…more.

“What about me?”

“You’re going to make it out of here, too. Complete the game.”

“I have no intention of completing the game, but I will be there with you, if that’s what you want to know.”

I shook my head. “But you got the keys, too. You?—”

“I only have three.” He looked up at me. “I never completed the Redfire challenge.”

“Then you should. You should go there next—I’ll wait for you.”

“No. I’m not going to complete the challenge. That’s not why I’m here—butyouwill.”

“Taland, listen to me,” I started because if he somehow completed the game, ifhegot the colors of the Rainbow instead of me, he could be saved. Pardoned. Allowed to beout of prison, or at least he wouldn’t be too severely punished for his escape. The Iris Roe might have been a game, but it had a massive impact on the people worldwide. The IDD would not be able to ignore it.

“No, sweetness, no. You’re not thinking straight. I don’t need to complete the game because they will catch me if I do. I can run if I don’t,” he said, and my mouth clamped shut. “Youwill get to those colors. You will get your magic back.”

“And then?” I wondered in a shaky whisper. “And then what?”

For the longest second, Taland only looked at me. Said nothing. Didn’t blink or even breathe.

“We need to kill them, Rose. The sooner we do it, the sooner we will get out,” was all he said.

I shut down after that.

I cried in silence, holding onto the vulcera. I avoided Taland’s eyes, and I avoided thinking about what he said, only because I knew he was absolutely right.

I tried to pick apart the stupid map, to find a way out of this frozen hell, but no matter what I did, the edges of this place would only lead me to The Drainage. To certain death since I no longer had magic to drain out of me. Not to mention I’d have to make the trip twice, assuming I found something even close to medicine on whatever lay on its other side.

Taland went for a walk a little while later, when we heard another one of those heart-wrenching screams. He said he was curious to see from closer up; I wasn’t.

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