Page 86 of Mud

Yes, the City of Games was a big deal to a lot of people, and it got regular visits from Iridians and humans from all over the world. I’d only been here twice for two events with Madeline when I was a girl, but the place had always givenme a bad vibe, so I’d never come back. Poppy had—plenty of times. She’d begged me to join her—just three months ago last time—promising me the best buttered popcorn I’d ever had and chocolate chip muffins to die for.

I’d said no because I’d had to work—for real, so I’d been relieved to not have to lie.

Now, I was being forced into the City at my weakest.

The bigger games had special playgrounds within the City, and the biggest one of all was that of the Iris Roe, a game that gathered thousands and thousands of visitors. You couldn’t stream the game anywhere, and nobody really saw all of it, not even the audience, just like Billy Dayne said. They could only see the game through the screens mounted on the seating area—and maybe that’s why it was the most popular game the Iridians had ever created. The mystery of it had a special appeal that tugged at people’s hearts. Only the players—those who survived, anyway—really knew what it was like in there, nobody else.

Or maybe it was because the players were free to do whatever they wanted and needed to do to get to the end, even hurt and kill others. They had free rein to use their magic, any old or forbidden spell they could get their hands on, and never have to answer for it in their lives. Those who went in there were all in. The chances that they’d die in the game were higher than the chances that they’d come out alive—so maybethat’swhy the game was so popular?

You tell me.

It took all four years to prepare the playground for the Iris Roe. Dozens of teams worked on it—and the first were the scouts who spent all those years chasing rainbows all around the world and harnessing their colors, to find the best, most durable ones, to createTheRainbow. It was the strangest group of colors you’ve ever seen—and half theprize of the Iris Roe. Half the reason why people were willing to lose their lives for it.

The rainbow had five colors—the colors of each school of magic, but they weren’t justonecolor. Each held together everyothercolor that fell under the umbrella of the main one—there were mints and limes under Greenfire, aquamarines and cobalt blues under Bluefire, pinks and oranges, too many shades of gray to count—except Whitefire, forever pure, nottaintedby any hue.

People still argue that black and white are not, in fact, real colors. White contains allcolors, while black is simply the absence of light, and therefore, the absence of color.

Except they are—at least in magic. They have power to alter reality nonetheless, to do just as much as red and blue and green and every color of the rainbow. That is why Iridians have considered them colors in their own right since the beginning of time.

A mountain marked the heart of the Iris Roe playground, like a volcano that spit rainbow colors instead of lava. That rainbow was to beabsorbed,basically, by the player who got there first. Once that happened, that power was filtered and uploaded into the winner, so that he may carry all of it in his blood, then pass it on to his children.

To take magic from anything—Iridians or magical objects—was exhausting, and draining a carefully cultivated rainbow like this one took extra energy. Most importantly, it tookmagic,but it could be done. Ithadbeen done by the winners of this game in the past, and I still had trouble believing it. Toharnessthe color of rainbows, to learn how to put it together in one place, to pick the strongest colors and discard the rest, to allow Iridians to actually absorba manmade rainbow like that?

I don’t know—it felt unnatural. Not the way things should be.Wrong.

But what the hell did I really know about the world? I was stuck in survival mode for so long that I still hadn’t stopped to breathe and try toacceptthat I wasn’t even an Iridian anymore. That my whole life had changed, yet again—this time to something I could never recover from.

So many people.

The City of Games was secluded from the rest of the cities and towns near it. River Ibri separated it from the east, while a large forest created a clear border west and north. To the south was the highway on the other side of a big, empty field. There was only one entrance for visitors—the main one, where the doors itself were magical and they would not let anyone through without a ticket. There was no way to trick that magical system—it was created with magic of every color because the one thing Iridians wouldn’t stand for was to be robbed of their money.

The other three entrances were separated—both for players of the bigger games, and for the City’s permanent and temporary employees. I had no idea which gates we were driving through but it didn’t really matter. I was already inside, and the streets were packed, and I knew deep in my bones that I wasnotgoing to make it out of here again.

We only stopped by the entrance for thirty seconds while the driver gave a piece of paper to a City guard armed to his teeth with a machine gun, knives, and a wand strapped to his chest. I was half tempted to scream and ask for help, but then I remembered whose car I was in.

I rememberedwhatI was.

I clamped my mouth shut and didn’t make a sound.

Inside, before ten minutes were over, the SUV sloweddown, then stopped completely, and found me still trying to get my shit together, to not panic, tobreathe.

The guards pulled me out by the arm, handcuffs still secured around my wrists. But when the magic of the City filled my nostrils and ears and eyes, I forgot all about them.

The couple of times I’d been here, it had been daytime. Even though I’d never really felt at ease within these walls, I’d still been impressed by the tents and wooden stands and hotels and the larger buildings around me. But at night, apparently, it had a completely different feel. Magic, colorful and vibrant, hung around every structure, around each performer. Even the cotton candy stand let out a soft Bluefire hue as it spun the sugar around and wrapped itself into a dog figure on a stick. The children laughed and clapped their hands as the man smiled brightly—such a small trick with such a big impact on these little kids. It would forever create the idea of whatmagicshould be in their minds. They’d never realize how false it was even when they grew up. Because the City of Games was just that—gamesaimed to entertain.

Magic was only power, and power always wanted more power.More, more, more.An Iridian could never be powerful enough. They were always in search of ways to becomemorepowerful. Wealthier. More influential in the world.

“Move,” the guard to my right told me, shoving me to the other side, toward the back of a wooden house from the rooftop of which rose big bubbles glowing in all colors, before they popped in the air a few seconds later like miniature fireworks.

The actual fireworks, though, had begun right where we were headed.

“Holy shit,” I whispered when the guard continued to drag me behind the building, and I began to notice thecolors in the distance. The fucking rainbow glowing brightly in the night like miniature colorful suns had come together in one place.

By Iris, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my whole life, and the fireworks that were going off over it paled in comparison.

“Keep moving,” the guard said, as if he couldn’t see that I couldn’t stop him from dragging me whichever way he wanted with my handcuffs on and my throbbing head. At least the pain in my leg had faded away almost completely. Someone had definitely spelled me again while I was unconscious.

Two of the other guards were ahead of us, while the last was behind, just to make sure that I had no way of escaping them if I tried.

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