Page 209 of Mud

Big green eyes bored into mine. I was smiling like an idiot, lying on my back, a complete mess as the vulcera sniffed my neck and looked at me like she wasn’t sure if I’d lost it or not.

But I had. I fucking had—and I didn’t mind at all.

It worked—but let me say it another couple hundred times because I still didn’t quite believe it.

The lake was really the lake of the Valley from the stories. I’d brought the water to the vulcera, had poured it into her mouth while Taland’s eagle flew over our heads, and then I’d collapsed, but she’d stood up. She was standing right now, looking at me like she didn’t understand what was happening.

Goddess, I wanted nothing more than to just lie here and have her be moving around me. Sniffing and licking and biting—I didn’t care. I just wanted to lie here andunderstandthat it had worked. By some miracle, I no longer was forced to kill the creature that was bonded to my soul. She was healed. She was okay.

But now we had to go.

“Sweetness, I hate to interrupt,” said Taland from my side, chuckling, his face completely transformed. “But we have to get you to the Rainbow.”

The Rainbow. The colors. My magic coming back to me.

The thing I thought I could not live without, that I’d be paralyzed without. The thing I’d completed this whole game without.

Almost funny, that fact, but I sat up. The vulcera growled and it was playful. She was weak, I thought, and her antennas didn’t glow as brightly as before, but she was coming to herself slowly.

And Taland’s familiar was already soaring higher. “Wow. That is one hell of an eagle.” Big and so rich in color against the white, beating those powerful wings so steadily.

The pride I saw in Taland’s eyes in those moments was something I’d never forget. “That, he is.” He reached outand grabbed my chin between his thumb and index finger. “And he doesn’t have to die because of you.”

The vulcera growled again, nudging me with her head.

My cheeks flushed. “Let’s just get this over with, can we?”

By the time we started running, other players were slowly approaching the lake where we broke the ice. Half of me wanted to scream to them to just go, grab some water, heal their familiars—they didn’t have to die. Nobody had to fucking die, at least not in this challenge.

But I lacked the energy. The best I could do was run alongside Taland, as the vulcera led the way by land, and his eagle led the way by air.

It was one of the most fulfilling moments of my life.

At first, I thought thewhitewas never going to be over, that this frozen hell was never-ending, but then I began to see color.

Dark brown soil began where the ice that had started to melt left way for the ground—which then raised into a steep hill very much like the one I’d fallen on when I first arrived in Night City. The vulcera and the eagle growled and cried out at the sky, and they didn’t stop. They went straight for it.

I looked at Taland as we ran, his grin spread across his face, his hair flying behind his head, the spark in his eyesmad.

And I thought,goddess, I love this man.

Together, we climbed the hill.

That’s when everything changed again.

“Greetings, players!” said the voice of the man made oflight, except this time he wasn’t there. Only his voice echoed in the dark.

We stopped, all of us, and the eagle landed on Taland’s shoulder, while the vulcera came to stand beside me.

“Congratulations! You made it to the Rainbow mountain. I’m sure you have your keys with you, and if you don’t, do go back and get them is my advice!” said the voice, and we looked up at the dark sky.

Dark—like it had been in Night City, and a clean line separated it from the white sky we left behind that hill in the Valley of the Roc. The sky that we could still see.

“But if you do have your keys, we urge you to proceed, to find your prize and claim it. Make yourself the luckiest person in the whole entire world…”

The voice faded away. I looked at Taland, and he nodded once—let’s keep moving.

We did. Slowly, we walked closer and closer to the mountain inside which was the Rainbow, a mountain we’d somehow all seen when we entered this game, yet now it was maybe half in size of the statue of the Roc. I wasn’t nearly as scared of it as I had been of the ice bird.

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