Page 98 of Mud

I blinked and blinked, sure that I was seeing things, but the figure didn’t disappear. And when the guy spoke again, his voice seemed to be coming from all sides at once.

“Welcome to the Tree of Abundance—the Greenfire coven challenge. We’re pleased to have you among us,” the hologram said.

Wait a minute…

Holy shit, it wasthe ghost!That man in the Redfire challenge said that theghosthad told him to search for the keys in the blood. He’d meantthisguy, not an actual ghost.

“You’ve asked for your clue for this challenge, and I am happy to deliver it to you,” the hologram continued, and I couldn’t even be relieved yet. Definitely not the strangest thing I’d seen in my life—puddles of blood beat this any day—but it was still weird as hell to look into eyes made of white light as they looked ahead into nothing. “The way to complete this challenge and find your key is to master one of the most important aspects of the Green school of magic—bonding.Find your way to connect with the nature around you, and it will guide you to your key.”

“Wait, what?Bonding? What kind of?—”

“We wish you the best of luck, player. Iris is with you,” he cut me off, making my heart jump.

“No, wait?—”

The hologram blinked out of existence before I could finish speaking.

Rage like the induced one in the Redfire challenge took my breath away. I fisted my hands and gritted my teeth, eyesclosed as I recalled what he said to make sure I wouldn’t forget it, even though it wasn’t much of a clue.

Eventually I calmed down enough to start thinking about what his words actually meant.

Bondingwas what Greenfires called the process of linking their souls, so to speak, to their familiars. Their magic connected with other beings on a deeper level than the rest, and in the old days they figured out how to forge these magical connections with animals, to use them as amplifiers of magic, or simply as helpers and servants—especially those who lived away from towns and cities, in woods or mountains. In the past hundred years, though, every Greenfire mage bonded to a familiar as soon as they received their anchor, to have a companion and a magic source and a servant for life. A very sweet deal, if you asked me.

We’d learned about the process of soul-linking in school. It required mutual trust, a long ritual, and the animal’s magic needed to match that of the mage for it to work.

That’s exactly where this large wave of panic that crashed onto me was coming from.

That long ritual required a lot of magic to be completed. I knew the spells, could think of the runes if I focused hard enough, and the issue wasn’t that Redfire magic wouldn’t work because this was the City of Games. The rules were bent here. Like Billy said,anything goes in the Iris Roe. It was a game, no matter how deadly. Still a game.

No, my issue was that Ididn’t havemagic to complete the ritual with. Not Redfire, not Greenfire, not any kind of fire—I was Mud.

Useless, just like Madeline said.

Fuck, I am so screwed…

While the thought haunted me, my instincts took over and I was searching for magic underneath my skin automatically. I was searching for that spark that was always there, waiting for it to come to life, mentally guiding it to my hand, to the ring thatwasn’ton my finger.

Magicwasthere indeed. It was there and it was filthy—heavy and slow and not at all like magic was supposed to be. All my colors were mixed together, all taking away from each other, rendering me…Mud.

I hated it.

I hated it so much it made me sick to my stomach. It made me want to pull all my hair out. It made me want to set this entire tree on fire.

Breathe, breathe, breathe,I begged myself, pulling my knees to my chest, hugging them until it hurt. So hard to breathe so suddenly that I could think of nothing but how heavy the air was. How it refused to fill my lungs.

Just like I still refused to believe thatthiswas actually happening to me.

Just like I’d refused to even think about it while I’d been locked away in my room at the mansion, had refused to acknowledge the fact, knowing full well that it was going to come back with a vengeance.

“The Rainbow,” I whispered against my knees.

The Rainbow was here in this very game. All those beautiful colors that could cleanse me, could make merightagain. All those beautiful colors that were going to turn me back to the Redfire mage I was always meant to be.

And when they did, I swore to protect my magic with my everything, but right now I needed to focus on completing this game, onnot dying,on making it to that Rainbow whichever way possible.

To do that, I needed to figure out how tobond with naturewithout any magic. Easy enough, wasn’t it?

Finally, that thought got me moving.

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