Page 97 of Mud

Never had a moment felt so long, not even when they first put handcuffs around Taland’s wrists that awful night.

Never had a moment felt so surreal—and it occurred to me, I’d never seen a wolf outside of a screen before. I’d seen plenty of wild and magical animals in school and at the zoo, but never a wolf, and he was more majestic than I could have ever imagined.

What must have been an eternity later, he turned around and jumped on another branch, farther away from me. A thicker branch that could easily fit him sideways, too—but that’s not where the surprise ended. He continued to jump to another, and then hewalked below it.He justwalked on the side of the thick branch, and continued below it, like the bark was glue and it was securing his paws against it so that the wolf didn’t fall.

No, no—like a gravitational force existed within the wood, not below this tree wherever the ground was, because the wolf’s fur didn’t rise up as it should have, and his step didn’t falter at all. He was walking upside down in a perfectly calm manner, like it was the most natural thing to do.

Impossible,my mind insisted as I watched him becoming smaller and smaller, until I couldn’t see him anymore.If there is no gravity here, how did I fall?

No idea. No explanation, but the wolf had walked under that branch barely twenty feet away from me, and no amount of me doubting my own sanity was going to change that.

“Doesn’t matter,” I whispered to myself, closing my eyes again, trying to get my heartbeat to slow down. I pushed myself closer to where the branch twisted up so I could rest my back against it for a moment. When I did, the big lightbulb flower that was growing between leaves over my head moved lower, came closer to me, scaring me shitless in the process but also giving me a lot more light.

It stopped when it was still a few inches away from me, and I waited a good minute to make sure it didn’t move again, that it didn’t attack me or try to bite me, before I allowed myself to look away. To look at my hands coated with so much dried blood that bile rose up my throat all over again.

Putting the metal key I’d found in that puddle down, I reached for the nearest leaf to try to clean my hands. It didn’t work nearly as well as I’d hoped. I was going to need a lot of water to get all this blood off my skin and clothes.

And the key.

I had to wipe it with a leaf, too, to see what it was. Not a traditional key, but a cylinder, shorter than the one my smugglers had branded my wrist with, about five inches long and as thick as two of my fingers together. It had a row of small stones painted red on one side, and an engraving of Iridian runes on the other—Anra Bera Kucha,which roughly translated toIn Honor of Red.

The Redfire challenge was indeed complete. One key secured; only four more to go.

I put it in the inside pocket of my jacket with a zipper on it, and then I took another look around me. Wood, leaves, ropes, lightbulb flowers.

“Dragons,” I said to myself—the word slipping from my lips at the mere thought of climbing higher to see where I was. Billy Dayne said that dragons would be flying over us and higher grounds were a big no.

But if I could get just a little higher up this strange, never-ending tree, maybe I could figure out how I was supposed to find the ground or the sky, figure out how to get to the key and how to move in the right direction—toward the mountain where the Rainbow was.

Damn it, I had no clue how the Iris Roe worked, or what this challenge could possibly be. Served me right for never caring to even listen to the news or the gossip. All the players in here had probably spent months and years studying the former players and games so they were prepared.

Not me, though. I’d never even wondered.

Letting go of a long sigh filled with regret, I started to climb up despite Billy’s warning. No point in wishing for time to go back now.

It was as easy as walking on the ground, and I wouldn’teven call itclimbing.I just walked with a bit more care on the large trunks or branches—whatever they were. It required little to no effort. Plenty of leaves and ropes to hold onto when I need to get from one branch to the other, and the lightbulb flowers moved closer to me whenever I needed light.

I must have walked for about five minutes before I thought to look up, sure I’d see the sky, see the spectators in the distance, or at least the tip of the wall that surrounded the playground.

I saw nothing but darkness.

Darkness—and fire.

The roar that filled my ears wasn’t close, but it made every hair on my body stand at attention. The fire was easy to see in the darkness, and though I couldn’t make outwhereit was coming from, I could imagine that an actual dragon had spit it out of its jaws.

Billy Dayne hadn’t been kidding around.

Cursing under my breath, I sat down at the end of the branch where it connected with a trunk as thick as a damn bus to catch my breath, to assess my surroundings again.

Everything looked the same up here, too—exactlythe same as when I first fell.

“So how am I supposed to find a clue?” I wondered out loud, hoping the sound of my voice would distract me from those roars in the distance that I now heard with clarity because half my attention was on them.

Never in a million years did I think that I was actually going to get an answer, but something suddenlyappearedto my right out of thin air and said, “Greetings, player.”

A scream slipped from my lips, and the only reason I didn’t fall was because the branch I was sitting on was thick enough to fit another three people.

Thethingthat spoke was a head and half the torso of a man—or rather the outline of him created by this bright, glowing light. A hologram that didn’t seem to be projected from anywhere that I could see.

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