Chapter 21
Rosabel La Rouge
Present day
Blood.
Puddles of blood were everywhere in front of me. The more the darkness let off, chased away by some red light coming from far away, the clearer I saw them spread out onto the muddy ground.
So many of them, possibly close to a hundred blood puddles.
The metallic scent was in the air, as intense as the magic had been around that stage. I was used to blood. In the beginning when I started my training, it had almost killed me to see it. I was constantly wanting to pass out that first week, but I’d grown used to it eventually. I didn’t mind being covered in it by the end of my training, but something about puddles on the ground, some bigger than others, some darker, some lighter…
And they all had a tiny stream as thin as my finger that connected them farther away, and poured somewhere below, off the edge of the ground where I couldn’t see.
Iris, I was thankful that I couldn’t see where all the blood was dripping off to.
Movement caught my eye on the other side of the edge, and I turned to find that woman on her knees, the one who’d walked among the enraged players and had helped me figure out how to get out of there, too. She wasn’t alone. A bit farther away on her other side were two men, and all three of them were on their knees in front of the puddles, and they had their hands inside the blood.
Bile rose up my throat. I grabbed my daggers again because I felt safer like that. If somebody wanted to jump me, I’d be prepared to fight back, at least.
Except these people didn’t look like they planned to attack me. They looked perfectly calm instead—just like I was.
“Excuse me,” I whispered as I went closer. None looked up at me—they just continued to stick their hands in the puddles like they were looking for something down there. “Excuse me, what are you doing?”
“Searching the blood we spilled,” said the woman, her voice low, passive—like she was half asleep.
This was the blood we spilled? “For what?”
The man—or better to say boy, as he didn’t look older than eighteen—at the very end turned to look at me, eyes wide and judging when he said, “The key.”
Duh, Rora. The fucking key.
The next moment, I sheathed my daggers again, lowered to my knees in front of a puddle, and convinced myself that this had to be done in order to finish the game. I had to get the key—the worst was already over. It was done. I hadn’t died, and now all I had to do was stick my hands in this blood and find a damn key.
Bile burned my throat while I pulled the sleeves of my jacket as high up my arms as I could.
Then I put my hands in the puddle in front of me.
It was thick and warm and bright red, the blood, like it had just spilled right out of an artery. The smell was so intense, so bad that I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all, and every time I opened my mouth to draw in air, I almost threw up all of my insides.
Fuck, how was this worse than fighting for my life?!
And that wasn’t even the worst of it. I soon realized that the key wasn’t in the puddle I was currently searching, and the others were searching every puddle in front of us for theirs.
“Each of us will find our key when we find the blood we spilled,” the woman told me, her voice just as dead still, though she was a bit breathless. She was trying to keep her calm, just like the others and I were, but it was easy to see she was having a hard time of it.
“Who told you that?” I asked when I was done with my second puddle and moved on to the one she’d been searching until now.
Because there had to be another way. There had to be a faster way to figure out which puddle of blood belonged to me, which one held my key. This couldn’t be the only way, damn it. It was disgusting!
But the man in the middle raised his head, the one who hadn’t spoken to me at all until now. He had a silver beard and cropped hair and eyes that looked almost violet from the reflection of the blood and the dim red light coming at us from Iris knew where .
“The ghost,” he told me, as if that was supposed to answer my question and make perfect sense to me.
The ghost.
I shook my head, gritted my teeth, and continued to search the puddles.
Nine more players came to the puddle area, for lack of a better term, by the time I found my key in the seventh puddle I searched. My stomach didn’t get any stronger and I didn’t get used to the feeling at all. Everything was so red and thick and warm, and the puddles kept on growing bigger with the more blood spilled by that stage, so when my fingers grazed metal at the bottom of the seventh puddle, I wrapped my fingers around it, turned to the side, and threw up.
Impossible to hold it back, but at least it was over quickly, and I wasn’t the only one spilling my guts in disgust. Dragging myself back on all fours, I just wanted to get away from the puddles before I suffocated on that scent. I just wanted to be somewhere where it smelled nice, and where there was no muddy soil beneath me.
Then I could stop and breathe and get myself together. Then I could look at what I’d found in the puddle and see where to go from there.
I figured wrong.
One second I was dragging myself back with my hands, and the next, the ground beneath me disappeared.
I flipped over and fell into darkness, and I didn’t even have time to scream.
I fell for a few seconds, and then I saw green.
So much green, all around me, up and down and to the sides. I slammed against wood so hard, I’d count it as a miracle if my shoulder didn’t detach from my body completely.
Except I didn’t stop anytime soon.
Whatever branch of whatever tree I’d hit with my shoulder, the ground was much, much farther below it than it should have been— if there was any ground here at all. Because I continued to fall and to scream and to grunt every time I hit a new branch with whatever side of me.
I must have gone down at least fifty trees, which didn’t make much sense.
But eventually I stopped—on a tree, but that’s just the thing.
There was no ground and there was no sky and there was nothing but this tree .
“By the goddess,” I whispered to myself when I managed to grab a small branch near my head and sit up on the smooth bark I’d landed on.
A few blinks later, I finally saw where I was.
It was beautiful . Absolutely breathtaking. It was one tree that divided into probably a thousand trunks and branches that went all around, twisting and turning and intertwining together like trees do not do. The scent was so pleasant—of leaves after rain, not puddles of blood. The green light came from these flowers that grew on some branches, big, as big as my palm, with what looked like lightbulbs in between their green petals. Sturdy-looking ropes hung from everywhere, and some leaves were as big as my entire body. The branches must have gone up at least a hundred feet, judging by how long I’d fallen, and when I leaned out to look down, all I saw was that they were endless.
More branches as thick as trunks—or maybe they were trunks. More leaves. More lightbulb flowers. More green light.
No ground in sight whatsoever.
Then I looked up and saw the wolf staring at me.
It was the closest thing to an out-of-body experience I’d ever had. I was sitting there holding onto my shoulder that felt like it might fall off me if I let go, not sure if my bad leg hurt, if the other was wounded or not, not sure if I could stand, let alone walk. Not sure if this was real or if I was dreaming.
And there he was, three branches away, standing proud with his silver and dark grey fur moving slightly with the slow breeze, his eyes amber, like honey, wide and beautiful, his ears perked up, sharp, easily picking up the sound of my galloping heart.
A wolf was standing with me on the tree, and if he jumped at me, there was no way in hell that I could protect myself from him. I wouldn’t be fast enough to draw a gun or a knife. He’d reach me before I touched a handle.
That’s why I was completely frozen. I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. I barely breathed.
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 he walked below it. He just walked 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 to In 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’t even call it climbing. 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 out where it 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— exactly the 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 suddenly appeared to 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 .
The thing that 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.
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 was the ghost! That man in the Redfire challenge said that the ghost had told him to search for the keys in the blood. He’d meant this guy, 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, eyes closed 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.
Bonding was 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 I didn’t have magic 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 that wasn’t on my finger.
Magic was there 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 that this was 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 me right again. 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, on not dying, on making it to that Rainbow whichever way possible .
To do that, I needed to figure out how to bond with nature without any magic. Easy enough, wasn’t it?
Finally, that thought got me moving.
No time to waste crying now, so I wiped my tears, got to my feet, and I made my way down the branches again, searching my surroundings for people, players—or even wolves like the silver one I’d seen earlier.
At first, all I saw were leaves and ropes and those gorgeous green lights, but the lower down the branches I went, the more I began to make out footsteps. Movement, and…
Screams.
“By the goddess,” I whispered, holding onto a thinner branch close by.
The screams of a man were coming from about two levels below me. When I squatted down for a better view, I wished I hadn’t because a massive dog-like creature was literally biting the neck of the guy mercilessly—and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
I moved without thinking.
My guns were in my hands as I ran and jumped from one branch to the other, as the screams of that man, long faded from the real world, continued to echo in my head.
I landed on the same branch as the beast and I immediately recognized what it was—a lunin, a magical canine animal that was a cross between a dog and a bear, with very dark, long fur, big bear eyes and a short tail that was waggling now that the man wasn’t moving.
The man was dead , his blood dripping down the tree as the lunin sniffed his face as if to make sure he wasn’t breathing anymore. As if there was any doubt left considering his head was barely attached to his neck.
Which blew my mind because the lunin were very kind animals. They loved honey and naps. They were harmless in nature—more harmless than dogs. A lunin attack had never been recorded that I’d ever heard of. They were not aggressive animals.
So, what the hell was this one doing, killing a player like that?
Sweat dripped from my brows. I realized that I was now alone with a wolf-sized lunin, who was licking the blood off his jaws as he slowly moved away from the dead body. My guns were pointed, fingers on the triggers. I was ready to empty both these magazines in his face, and I thought I should. I thought I was supposed to— now, before he turned to me and ate my neck, too.
And the lunin did look at me— passively , barely even acknowledging my existence or my guns. Then he turned around and started moving to the other side of the branch, walking upside-down just like the wolf had done, tail waggling, pink tongue hanging out as he went.
I had no fucking idea what the hell had just happened, but my guns were still raised and my skin was slick with sweat and my heart was hammering in my chest.
Then I heard another scream.
Cursing under my breath, I turned around, guns pointed, ready to shoot anything that was within my line of vision because fuck this shit. I was not prepared for a game like this, damn it. I had never even considered being in a place that could drive you insane with the absurdity of it, and now I was supposed to just accept it and keep going?
Yes, apparently. That was exactly it.
Because when I forced myself to hold my breath and focus on my ears to figure out where the scream was coming from, I realized that it wasn’t a scream at all. It was laughter .
I moved without putting my guns away, farther and farther to my left, down another level of branches, until I saw the woman who was laughing her heart out. She was standing upside down below the branch I was standing on—or maybe I was the one standing below them ? The darkness looked the same both up and down, so I couldn’t be too sure. But what I was sure about was the fact that she had an orange cat in front of her, and she was laughing at how the cat jumped up and down to try to catch the leaf in her hands.
I blinked and blinked, sure I was missing something.
No blood. No screams. The woman looked genuinely happy as she pretended to run away, and the cat, lightning fast, ran all around the tree and popped in front of her other side, meowing as it stood on its hind legs, paws reaching for that leaf.
The sound of the woman’s laughter was hypnotizing. I would have thought it was just another trick of the game, but she looked very real—long, dark hair that seemed wet, dark blue leathers on her body, which meant she was Bluefire. She’d already completed the Bluefire challenge and had ended up on this tree with me.
“Excuse me!” I called, and slowly made my way closer to the woman and the orange cat.
They both stopped and turned to me, and never for a second did I consider walking around the branch to be, erm…on the same side of the world as them. Which was too weird to even think about, so I didn’t.
“Excuse me, hi—did you bond with that cat just now?” I asked, and the woman raised a dark brow. “Did you…is the cat your familiar?” Was that what the hologram guy had meant with his short, incredibly vague clue?
“Yes,” the woman said, her voice soft but high, and the cat meowed at the same time, as if it, too, wanted to confirm the answer.
Then, the cat turned around and started walking away, tail perked up.
“How did you do it? There-there was a lunin over there, and it…” By the time I pointed to where I came from and faced the woman again, she’d turned her back on me and was following her cat.
“Hey, wait!” I called and tried to move faster, but it was useless. The cat led the way and the woman followed, and they were getting very far away from me in a very short amount of time somehow, so I couldn’t catch them even if I’d been walking on asphalt.
“Just hold on a second!” I called again anyway because I had to know how she’d done it.
But the woman and her cat disappeared under the branches completely.
Even so, I didn’t have time to worry or wonder or fear. Seconds later, there was a flash of white light coming from a couple levels above me, and when I raised my head, I realized exactly how that woman had made that orange cat into her familiar.
The man was standing on the same side of the world as me. He seemed to be Greenfire judging by the green leathers on him. I used the ropes hanging from the branches to climb up and see better—and I did. His hands were reaching out in front of him, and at first, I didn’t see what for. When I got closer, I realized a snake was moving in place barely five feet away from him. A snake that hissed, with a forked tongue, grey-white scales, and big green eyes that were focused on the player.
Then it moved, the snake. A miracle I didn’t scream when it jumped in the air—because snakes don’t fucking jump like that, not while spiraling in the air like they were holding onto invisible strings. They didn’t spin around without anything holding them up.
It wasn’t big, maybe three feet long, but its body was thicker than my forearm, and to watch it spinning in the air while it hissed, as if it was showing off for the player…
It was.
I saw the magic—Greenfire, like tiny fireflies—coming off the snake’s body as it spun in a perfect spiral a foot over the surface of the branch. It was letting off magic as it went, like it wanted to show the player exactly what it could do.
When it was over, the snake slowly lowered onto the branch again, wrapped its tail around itself, and held up its head as it continued to lick the air every few seconds.
“That was good,” I thought the player said, nodding his head. “That was very good. Good job.” He brought his hand to his forehead and wiped it—probably sweat. When he did, I realized how badly he was shaking. “Now it’s my turn, is that it? My turn to show you?” His voice was dry, too. Hoarse. The guy was fucking terrified.
The snake hissed as if to confirm it. It hissed and remained there with its head up and its tongue flicking out, waiting for the man to begin to showcase his magic.
He did. Blinding green light gathered into a ball between his hands as he gave energy to it with every whispered word of his spell. He was showing the snake what he could do, and I had no clue how he was doing it, if it was a random spell he chose, if it even mattered what kind of chanting he did, but the snake was steady.
The bigger the source of light between the man’s hands, the closer he slithered, stretching out as if to lick the magic with that tongue. To taste it. To understand it.
I stood perfectly still, waiting, watching, trying to think about what I was going to do in his position, until the light between his hands faded.
He smiled, the player.
He shouldn’t have.
The snake hissed—so much differently from how it had done it before, but even so, I didn’t expect it to move as fast as it did.
Neither did the player.
That’s why, when the snake jumped him, he had no chance of moving away in time. The snake wrapped its thick tail around the player’s neck and squeezed.
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking—or if I was thinking at all. I just ran again and jumped on the branches, tried to climb as fast as my body allowed because I still couldn’t even imagine walking upside down.
B ut by the time I was close enough to shoot the damn snake, it had already done its job.
The player had his eyes wide open, two lifeless windows to show nobody was home, and his once pale skin was now blue, and his big lips parted, but he wasn’t trying to draw in air anymore. He was dead, strangled by the snake that was slowly unwrapping its tail from around his neck like it hadn’t just ended a man’s life. It was slowly slithering over the player’s dead body and coming toward me, and I was paralyzed for long enough that I didn’t move away. I just aimed both my guns at the snake and pulled both triggers at the same time.
Useless.
The snake moved so incredibly fast it turned to a blur in front of my eyes. He moved away and my bullets hit only wood instead. The snake simply continued to slither right between my fucking legs and to the other side, as if I wasn’t even there. As if it wasn’t fazed in the least that I’d tried to shoot it.
No, it just continued on its merry way, hissing as it went, leaving me to stare at the lifeless body of a Greenfire player who had been fine and breathing just a moment ago.
Closing my eyes, I turned my back to him and brought my hand to my mouth, just in case I couldn’t control myself and I actually threw up.
A game, a game, it’s just a game.
A game that cost people their lives, which I knew. I’d heard the stories. I knew the statistics. I got what sixty percent of players died last time meant—but it was different to talk about it, to hear about it, than to actually witness it. It was different to see numbers on a screen—so much different than to see how the light had gone off in this man’s eyes or to see another being torn apart by an animal.
And that wasn’t the end of it, either.
The more I walked the branches of that giant tree, the more I understood how the whole thing worked. A man showcased his magic for what looked like a chameleon a couple levels below me, and this time I knew not to try to intervene if things went south. I just watched from a distance as his Blackfire magic grew and exuded energy until the chameleon was happy with what he was feeling. He then climbed the man’s body lightning fast and settled on his shoulder. Licked his beard. Snuggled closer to his neck.
The man laughed.
Together, they continued down the branches without bothering to even look at their surroundings until they disappeared from my sight completely.
The animals, whether magical or not, seemed to find the players all on their own, jumping off branches and running to get to them. The next I saw was a rabbit—but it must’ve gone through some kind of mutation because it had horns in front of its long ears, and they looked very unusual on his light brown, almost honey-colored fur.
The rabbit hopped and passed two other players I saw in the distance, and just like me, they stopped and looked at it and waited, wondering if it was meant for them, but it wasn’t. The rabbit chased another player—a Whitefire who’d been coming through behind me since that snake killed that man, though he kept a good distance and never said a word.
His hair was cropped short, his face clean shaven. He wasn’t bulky but he was tall, possibly over six five, with light blue eyes and white leathers on his person. Every time I looked back at him, we made eye contact and my instincts insisted that he was…okay. Not harmless, but he wasn’t going to attack me even if he knew I was Mud.
Now, the rabbit ran under the branch we were walking on, then came up between us, right in front of him. They were barely fifteen feet away from me, so I saw it all in detail.
The animal stopped and stared at the Whitefire for a good second before it began the process of rising in the air and shimmering and letting out those small green lights—which were meant to show the level and intensity of magic it possessed.
In the real world, that’s where the process ended. The animal showed what it could do for the mage, and if the mage found it sufficient and compatible with his own energy, he would then choose to do the bonding ritual.
Here, though, it was different. The player had to show the familiar that they could match its magic, that they were compatible with it, and the familiar then chose to bond with them. It most probably wouldn’t last outside of this game— it’s all a game still —but for now, those animals, whenever they bonded, seemed to lead the players to wherever they needed to go to find the key.
And this Whitefire had enough magic for the horned rabbit’s liking. The creature was absolutely smitten by the man, hopped around him and jumped on his body, sniffing and licking, tickling him in the process. The man laughed, just like the others who bonded. He laughed, and when he turned to look at me for a moment, his whole face had brightened up. He looked like a different person—more youthful, more handsome, just plain… happy. And I could have sworn he told me with his eyes to just hang in there, that this was coming for me , too.
That’s just because he had no clue that I was Mud.
He nodded at me with a wide smile, and I nodded back. Good luck, I thought.
Then his rabbit led him to the other side of the branches, probably to his key.
I was sweating like a pig by the time I saw another two bondings—and a tiny squirrel, no bigger than my hands, kill a Bluefire woman by effortlessly slicing her throat with its sharp little claws when she couldn’t match him.
There was nothing that I nor any of the other players on various levels of the tree could do but watch. These animals pretended we didn’t even exist if we were not their player, and so all we could do was keep walking and waiting and hoping we could match whatever came for us.
Well—that’s what they were going to do, the other players.
As for me, I was pretty sure the time had come to accept the fact that I was going to die.
Impossible to run from the animals—they were too fast, both the bigger and the smaller ones. There were those who tried—they never made it. Impossible to trick them—they were very single-minded from what I could see. Match my magic, and we’ll be the bestest of friends. Fail to do so and die. There was no in-between.
Minutes or hours must have passed, and I held on tightly to my guns, hoping they would, at least, give me a fighting chance. I saw a lot more mages bond with animals big and small, and a lot more still wandering about the trees, searching. Waiting.
I’m going to die at the claws or the teeth—or the tail—of an animal. There are worse ways to go.
At least it wouldn’t be at the hands of Madeline. Anything else I could handle.
My thoughts went chaotic again in no time. I was angry and desperate and so, so afraid I hated it. Fear made me feel weak. Physically I felt even worse, even though my leg barely throbbed. But I’d run and I’d fought in that ghost festival, and I’d thrown up that sandwich I’d eaten near the puddles of blood, so now I felt empty.
I really needed food.
And while we were at it, I needed a bath, too. I was covered in blood and sweat, and?—
A growl filled my ears and vibrated throughout me. I stopped dead in my tracks, and even my heart stopped beating.
With every fiber in me I prayed, please, Iris, no, even though I already knew that it was a yes.
That growl was coming from right behind me.