Page 212 of Mud

I shook my head—I should have never come here. I should have never fucking bothered, and now I was trapped in the middle of this mountain with bloodthirsty players behind me.

I looked around, hoping to find a way out of here—justoneway, that’s all I needed. One way out.

Unfortunately for me, there was complete darkness all around the mountain that I could see—except the way inwhich we’d come. The white sky. The Whitefire challenge. It was the only way back, away from the mountain, and I wouldn’t even be in the Valley of the Roc at all now, if that map was correct. I would be walking straight into The Drainage.

Nowhere to go.

She doesn’t deserve to be here!

She doesn’t deserve to win.

Fuck that—she doesn’t get the colors.

It’s cheating—how did she even get up there?!

On and on went the players, as I tried to chant the spell in the air one last time, but all I got was the pain. The game demanding magic of me that wasn’t there. Even the ground didn’t shake anymore—it just wouldn’t work.

Then the fight began.

I no longer had any knives on me, and my gun wasn’t on my person—who knew where it had ended up? I had my mind made up to grab two of the keys to use as weapons, but the moment I turned to see what the hell was happening, I found Taland running toward me, while the vulcera and the eagle were keeping the other players back.

“Taland, what are you?—”

“Chant the spell,now!”

He was halfway up the stairs when he said this, and the look in his darkened eyes said he wasn’t messing around.

So, I did.

I began to whisper once more—the first words of the spell I’d already learned by memory—and when he was close enough, I read the last of the letters made out of colorful smoke.

“Take my hand!” shouted Taland, and I did.

I turned. I reached for him just as that wave of heat hit me from the inside.

Our hands connected, and the pain began.

Taland’s magic shot throughout me, faster, stronger than before. It went up my arm, to my chest, and exploded everywhere around me, throwing me against the rock panel, and Taland down the stairs.

His name was at the tip of my tongue. Nobody was fighting anymore—the players had stopped, and the vulcera was looking at me, too.

But before I could spit out a single word, and before Taland rolled all the way down the stairs, it began.

I was robbed of sight and smell and sound.

I was robbed and instead all I saw and smelled and heard was colors. All colors, bright and muted, dark and light. Some hard and wild, some soft and gentle. I was surrounded by them and they picked me up and spun me around in the air, promising me greatness. Promising me happiness.

For a moment there, I was wrapped up in them, and I was in complete, pure bliss.

Until they began to slip inside me, the colors.

Until they found the center of my being, my very soul hidden away inside my ribcage, and they infused it with their magic, with their brightness.

That’s when I knew that something was wrong.

I knew close to nothing about the winners of the Iris Roe, but none had ever mentioned pain. None that I remembered had ever mentioned how the colors felt foreign, dirty, an enemy coming to invade me from the inside, rather than magic that came to stay, to settle with mine, to infuse itself in my bones.

I should have never entered the City of Games…

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