Page 93 of Mud

Or else I was going to drive a knife into my own fucking eye and be done with it.

Which was very…unlike me,Ithought.

And that was the first time it occurred to me that something might not be right here.

But the fight continued so there was no time to ponder. Plenty of time to pound my fists onto people’s faces, though.Blood sprayed everywhere. Iridians hit me from all sides at the same time, and eventually I had to bring two of my smaller daggers into it. They were small and they were practical, and most importantly they cut through skin and flesh with ease. I was saving the bigger ones and my bullets for later because these people weren’t trained fighters. Sure, some of them hit hard, and I fell on my back and on my face at least a dozen times, but the wounds they caused with their hands and the weapons they’d smuggled through the gates were superficial.

Meanwhile, mine weren’t. The blades of my daggers cut deep, and I knew exactly how to use them.

Body parts on the cobblestones, though I hadn’t cut anyone apart like that myself.Yet.The fight didn’t seem to be close to ending at all. Instead, we moved in perfect tempo with the music that the instruments were still playing, and the microphone was singing by itself. The faster and louder they played, the fasterwespilled blood all around that stage, and I could have sworn the sound of people laughing—a lotof people—reached my ears in an echo every once in a little while.

Even so, Ineverwanted to stop—and that was my second sign that something was most definitely not right here.

The more blood I spilled, the thirstier for it I got. The more violently I stabbed a guy on the side of his neck, the angrier I became because I was an orphan and I was a traitor and my only family couldn’t care less about me and my grandmother had brought me here to die.

All the bad and the ugly that was my life was there, sitting in the front row of my mind, making my blood rush, my limbs move, and keeping my heartbeat racing.

It went on for quite some time.

Only when I slammed the butt of my dagger to a man’s temple did I begin to urge myself to try to slow down. He was on his knees, barely dragging himself forward from all the wounds on his body inflicted by other people, and he’d grabbed me by the leg and was trying to biteme.

That’s how crazy things had gotten—he was trying tobiteme.

The players weren’t turning to their magic at all, just like I wasn’t reaching for my guns because I wanted tofeelthis, all of it. We wanted to get dirty, fight with our own bodies in pure rage.

Like mindless fucking zombies.

When the man hit the ground and his chubby fingers slipped down my leg, I moved. Players were still trying to reach for me, grab me, stab me, but it was easy enough to navigate away from their hands until I reached the stage and hid behind the corner, just until I caught my breath. I sat on the ground, brought my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, and I tried to become as small as I could so that nobody noticed me there.

Not that hard to do when the players who were still standing were perfectly involved in fighting one another, trying to spill as much blood as possible.

Wrong, wrong, wrong,a voice whispered in my head, but I couldn’t keep my eyes closed for long because then I’d focus on everything that was fucked up about my life again, and then the anger would surely take over.

I looked at the players instead, tried to see what wasso wrongwith this place that my instincts were so fired up.

Goddess, they were somad.So angry their eyes were red and their skins were flushed and most of them were covered in blood.

Except a woman.

Shelooked to be older than me by at least decade, and out of every other player fighting in front of that stage, she had a straight face and she waswalkingon the other side, moving away from the fight without so much as a glance at the others.

But what blew me away was thattheydidn’t glance at her, either.

It made me angry, at first, but not at her. I was angry at the other players. Ididn’t wantto attack her at all—I wanted to attack the stupid people who’d let her get away.

She’s getting away!

Just like that, in the middle of a bloodthirsty crowd. She was simply walking away.

An alarm rang in my ears, forcing my mind to clear. So much anger—like a red cloud hanging over my head, pouring acidic rain on my thoughts only to ignite them further.

My heart was beating like crazy, too. These feelings were so powerful, so intense. So raw and all-consuming.

Typical Redfire magic.

Realization was a hard and cold slap across my face, so much more painful than any hit I’d received in this fight.

Nobody was coming to give us instructions. The game had already begun, and we were in the Redfire challenge.

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