Chapter 25
Rosabel La Rouge
Present day
I heard the sound first.
It was like I’d gone downtown for drinks with the twins, or with Erid. Before she tried to kill me, that is. It was that same sound—of a lot of people, of silverware and glasses clanking, of music, of laughter and chatter. Just a night out in one of the busier streets downtown, lined with bars and pubs and restaurants for the people to enjoy their Friday nights. A city, just like it had looked from up there on that branch.
Then I thought to open my eyes, and I saw the fast-approaching ground.
I screamed a second before I made impact, but at least my instincts still worked, so I’d had the good sense to wrap my arms around my head. Like that, I rolled and rolled downward on the grass, and the world kept on spinning, and I couldn’t stop or slow down at all .
Until I hit something as hard as rock with my hip, and the pain nearly made me scream again.
Fuck me, I couldn’t even heal myself. I couldn’t ease my pain or close wounds like other players would be able to do. I couldn’t keep falling and hitting hard stuff with my body—I needed this body to get the end of this!
Grunting in pain, I pushed myself to sit up as fast as possible because I still had no idea where I was and what was around me, or if someone was coming to kill me.
As I made it to a sitting position, my wrist did that thing again, itched from the inside a second before the brown circle appeared over my head.
To show the whole entire world that I was unworthy.
That I was less than the rest of them. That I was stained, filthy, unfit.
Then I heard someone speaking on the other side of whatever I’d slammed against—yep, rock. An actual well made out of stone blocks bigger than my head.
“Is that… brown ?” a woman said.
“Why, yes,” said a man. “Yes, it is.”
“Mud?”
“Are you serious— Mud ?!”
A growl sounded from right next to my left ear. I wrapped my hands around my mouth before my scream let those people know that I was sitting right there behind that well.
The vulcera was with me, looking over the wall of stone blocks, head low and teeth revealed, because footsteps were approaching us. People were getting closer—probably the same players who’d seen my color and were coming to check.
Needless to say, I had to get the hell out of there asap.
“Move!” I whispered to the vulcera, and I made it to my feet without feeling any pain—must have been the adrenaline. I ran all around the other structure that was near the well, far away from the people approaching.
But I’d entered a new level of the game, and my color no longer showed over my head now. As long as they didn’t see me, I’d be just fine. They wouldn’t know it was me—unless they tried to use their magic on me and I didn’t fight back with mine, which I wasn’t going to allow to happen.
The vulcera followed without a sound. I kept my back against the wall of that building near the well, and slowly I made my way toward the dim lights on the other side.
“Holy shit.”
The words slipped from me when I reached the corner of the building and realized that I was indeed in a city. A city buzzing with life, with low buildings around a large square with a fountain in the middle, restaurants and bars with tables and chairs outside on the cobbled street, different music coming from everywhere, but nobody seemed to be bothered by it.
The narrow alley I was in was empty still, so I didn’t waste time waiting for the people who were coming to find the Mud in their midst. I just stepped out of the mouth of the alley, which had been in between a bakery—now closed—and a hat shop on the left.
My eyes wandered around, taking in as many details as I could.
Orcs and elves around us— a lot of them. At least a hundred that I could see. You could only really tell by the shape of their ears, but also most orcs were tall and bulky with big, roundish noses, while most elves were short and petite, with light-colored eyes and hair. They were moving from one side to the other, some sitting at bars and cafes, some tending to the open shops all around the street—a dress shop, a leather shop with bags and belts and gloves displayed in the window, The Musk Theatre, a bookshop, a Cloud Maker, a Star Collector, and more.
Ahead, the square narrowed down into a single street, and beyond, I could just make out the silhouette of more buildings, these bigger and taller. Fire burned atop torches mounted in metal holders every few feet. There were players here, too, coming through between the buildings just like we had, and they all had animals with them. Birds, rabbits, dogs, and magical animals—like the vulcera who was looking up at me with those bright green eyes like she meant to tell me something.
“What?” I wondered. “What is it?”
She looked back as if she heard someone calling for her, toward the raised ground that could have been a hill stretching all around the buildings. A hill atop which more players were falling, just materializing in the darkness out of thin air. They fell and rolled toward the back of the buildings—exactly like I had.
More colored circles filled the night as more players made it to their feet and officially entered the new level, none of them brown. But the people—orcs—who’d gone all around that house to search for me, for the Mud , hadn’t seen me. They were still looking around suspiciously at every player—including me—who was gathered in the square, still disoriented as hell.
And then…
“How about that clue then?” called a Greenfire woman whose braid of dark hair reached all the way to her hips, and she had a snake wrapped around her left leg like it was an accessory.
Suddenly, light came to life over her head, and everyone surrounding us, Iridians and orcs and elves, stopped to look at the head and torso of the man made of light. Even the music stopped playing everywhere at once, as if by the push of a button.
“Greetings, players!” the hologram said—same voice, same light, same face as before on the Tree of Abundance. “Congratulations! You made it to Night City. Blackfire coven welcomes you!”
Night City. I was in the Blackfire challenge already— good . I wanted get this one over with sooner rather than later.
“You’ve asked for your clue for this challenge, and I am happy to deliver it to you,” the hologram continued. “The way to complete this challenge and find your key is to master one of the most important aspects of the Black school of magic—necromancy . Find your way to resurrecting a body that has died of natural causes, and you will have found your key.”
Every hair on my body stood at attention. Bile rose up my throat, too. Necromancy? They wanted us to do fucking necromancy— forbidden magic for every other Iridian except Blackfires for their anchors? And one needed special permission for that, too.
Whispers and worried murmurs around the crowd—not only from players, but from the orcs and elves, too.
“We wish you the best of luck, players. Iris is with you,” the hologram said the next second, and the people started to complain.
Wait! We need more details!
Necromancy is forbidden!
Are we going to jail if we make zombies?
Where’s the cemetery around here—are you gonna point us in the right direction?
What if we can’t do it—there’s gotta be another way !
And I wanted to know the answer to that last one, too. Because I couldn’t do it, regardless of whether it was illegal or if we could get imprisoned for it—I had no magic to do necromancy with. One needed a very, very high amount of power to bring back the dead, and I had none.
More players were approaching from between the buildings, some with animals, some without. They all seemed confused as hell, especially when the hologram disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and all were left with unanswered questions.
“What consists of natural causes , exactly?” asked a Redfire.
“If I hit someone and they fall to their death, that’s natural, isn’t it?” Bluefire.
“Technically speaking, if slamming against the ground causes death, it’s natural …” Blackfire.
“If we wanna get down to technicalities, all deaths are natural—for a heart to stop beating is the most natural thing in the world, right?” A Whitefire—the guy I’d seen in the Tree of Abundance. The handsome one with a horned rabbit at his feet, watching curiously.
He saw me, too, and he smiled and nodded, but I couldn’t return it. Not because I didn’t want to—I did, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to smile right now.
On and on the others went, trying to find loopholes or simply figure out what the hell that hologram meant exactly. Actual necromancy? Really?
I started to look around, hoping the orcs and elves had more wisdom to share with us, and other players were already asking a few nearby, too.
“No, no, we don’t know nothing. They don’t tell us nothing. We’re just here to work,” they kept saying, shaking their heads, looking at us like they were sorry .
Then the vulcera whined. I looked down at her, and again, she looked back toward the houses, toward the alley where we’d come from.
I kneeled in front of her, half-freaked out by our proximity, waiting for her to open those jaws and bite my face off, while the other part of me was perfectly calm. Like it knew her. Like it had known her all my life.
Big green eyes locked on mine. Those scales shone orange under the light of the fires burning all around us. Her tail was pin straight and raised—she was definitely not comfortable here and I couldn’t blame her.
“What is it?” I asked her again, but she only growled and looked back, like she saw something there in the darkness.
Then the other animals were moving.
Hey, wait!
Where are you going?!
Don’t leave me—come back!
The players who’d been in the Greenfire challenge before here and had bonded to their animals were calling out to them, but they were retreating between the buildings, right where we’d come from.
“Hold on a minute,” I whispered, but the vulcera was already walking backward, growling low in her throat, like she didn’t want to be moving away but she couldn’t help it. She was being forced to walk away by some invisible magic.
“You’re leaving?!” I said, panicked already, just like every other player who’d bonded. Not all had, though, which meant not all were coming here from the Greenfire challenge. But some of those who were, were even screaming, and Iris, I wanted to join them. I couldn’t look away from the vulcera at all.
She whined and growled again, but she continued to move backward, like she had an invisible leash on her pulling her back.
“What the hell is the point?” I wondered, getting louder with each word. “What the hell is the fucking point of this then?”
If the animals were going to just leave the moment we went to the next challenge, what was the point of making us bond to them? To finish the game, yes, but the bonding? The linking between us? Because even though I hadn’t bonded with the vulcera with magic, I still felt like a piece of me was being torn apart as I watched her move back toward the shadows—and she felt the same way. She was whining, trying to break free from whatever was holding her, pulling her back, but she couldn’t. The game was too strong.
And I felt so fucking empty so suddenly it shocked me all over again.
Her moss green eyes disappeared between the shadows. My body was so, so weak. The only reason I didn’t fall was because I was already kneeling, but other players weren’t. They fell to the ground as their familiars disappeared in the darkness, crying and screaming, while other just stared into the shadows without blinking, like me.
Gone.
She was gone, just like that. Just when I was getting used to her being there. Just like when she became part of me through however the bonding worked—and I hadn’t even shared my magic with her. Ours had been a physical bonding, which I didn’t even know if it existed outside of this game.
But if Taland knew about it…
Taland.
A brand-new energy fried my nerve ends and pulled me up to my feet. Taland had known how to survive the vulcera, how to get her to bond with me without magic, and he was in this game for real. He was here with me, with all of us—or at least he had been in the Tree of Abundance.
But all players entered the game in their coven’s challenge first, so that meant he’d come to the Tree from here, from Night City. He’d already completed the Blackfire challenge, and that meant that I wasn’t going see him as long as the challenge lasted.
A part of me was disappointed. The part of me that had a death-by-Taland wish was downright depressed at the thought of not seeing him again, but I was also glad. Because without him, I had one less person who wanted my head to worry about—regardless that he’d claimed he wanted to help me—and I could focus on the game.
The game that was impossible to finish without magic.
Tears in my eyes—raw, angry tears that I refused to let spill. Yes, I’d finished two challenges, but one of them had been of my own coven, and I imagined it was easier for each player to understand their own. And the Greenfire challenge had been a combination of pure luck, my combat training—and Taland’s help.
But I doubted I was going to get lucky again, and my training wasn’t going to help me with necromancy. I did learn about it and I knew spells, but I had no magic.
Taland wasn’t here, either, and even if he was, I couldn’t let him share his magic with me. Not just because it was illegal, but we had no clue what happened to an Iridian who tried. Nobody shared their magic with the Mud, ever— nobody . We had no idea what the consequence of it were.
My stomach squeezed and twisted awfully. Dead, dead, dead, my own thoughts mocked me. I spun around and looked at my surroundings, the music back in full swing, the elves and orcs back to their business, the players—those who hadn’t been to the Tree of Abundance yet and hadn’t bonded—already moving toward the narrow street on the other side of the fountain to find…a dead body.
While others who’d been with me and whose familiars had left were still recovering, just like I was.
I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, told myself that it wasn’t real. Bonding was Greenfire magic, not Redfire. Or Mud, for that matter. It was all an illusion, not real. What I had with the vulcera, this strange connection we’d forged while we’d walked on that tree, it was just for show. For the game. I hadn’t really bonded with the creature—nobody had. None of the players, not even the Greenfires.
Probably.
“ Just a game,” I whispered to myself, yet the memory of those wide green eyes stabbed at my heart, and it was one of the strangest things I’d ever felt in my life. So fucking raw.
Yes, the vulcera had been just part of the game, but this pain felt very, very real.
The thing was, I was used to pain. I was used to putting it on my shoulders and becoming one with it and moving forward together with it. Not only when my parents died, but when I betrayed Taland, too. And every day my grandmother reminded me how unimportant to her I was, by talking to me or not talking to me, by looking at me or ignoring my presence.
So, it did take me a few minutes, but I forced myself to think the words, not real, until I felt them all the way to my bones.
Then I took in a deep breath, and I made a plan.
The first thing I needed was food.
The second thing I needed was water—lots of water to clean the dried blood off my body, and I was willing to do anything to get it. Since this was a city, and people seemed to be living here, I thought I might find something soon. So, I started ahead slowly, searching with my eyes all the shops and the restaurants, trying to determine the best place to ask for food. Some other players were doing the same, but most were already on their way to the bigger buildings that we could barely make out in the dark of the night.
I walked all around the fountain, not really paying it any attention, and I figured if I couldn’t find water, I could just use this to clean up when everyone was gone. But I had to ask first, and to do that, I chose one of the smaller shops close to the edge of the narrow street where everyone else was walking.
It had a single table out front where two elves were playing a board game that didn’t quite look like chess. The lights inside were a warm, inviting orange, and the music was slow and soothing, like someone sat in front of a piano and was playing their heart away, describing the way I felt exactly.
“Hello,” I said to the elves, expecting a hi, or a smile, or a nod at the very least.
I got nothing—they barely glanced at me with their brows narrowed, then returned to their board.
Rude, I thought, but I was trying to make friends here, not enemies, so I held my tongue. Instead, I decided to try my luck inside.
Taking in a deep breath, I stepped into the bar, happy to see that I was the only one there.
There was no piano here, but the music was coming from an old-looking radio standing atop a table shaped into a giant skull, with rubies in the middle of its sockets that looked too much like eyes—but that wasn’t the only thing that gave me the creeps.
Dead stuffed birds, small ones the size of my fist, hung on white threads from the ceiling. The left wall with a single round mirror on it was painted a red that I could have sworn was blood. The windows across from the entrance were all different shapes, put all over the wall without rhyme or reason. The bar, too, was made out of a skeleton—of a really gigantic snake, if I had to guess. The wooden countertop was balanced on the skeleton’s ribs, and the head was missing, but the tail was long and thin, going all the way to the other end of the wall.
Throw in the low lights of the lamps that didn’t look so warm and inviting anymore, and the melody that did not sound soothing now that I was here—more a haunting rather than a tune—and I felt like running away.
So… eerie, this whole place.
“That used to be my husband.”
I jumped, spun around toward the elf behind the bar, whom I could have sworn wasn’t there when I entered.
She was there now, cleaning something—these long wires that could have been anything, and she’d gathered a bunch of them over the shiny countertop. They were each about twenty inches long, less than the width of my finger, and they didn’t look like anything at all, yet she cleaned them thoroughly with a pink rag like it was the most important thing she’d ever do.
“Oh,” I breathed, looking back to where she was looking—the skull table atop which was the radio. “The…the pianist?”
The elf burst out laughing.
I’d seen elves before—plenty. Out of all other species, they were regarded with the most respect by Iridians. They could be considered royalty compared to the Mud.
But I still felt weird as hell to be looking at this elf woman now as she laughed for a good minute, dropping those wires and the rag, holding onto the countertop like she was afraid she might fall if she didn’t. Her hair, an ashy blonde a bit lighter than mine, fell on her face, covering her grey eyes. The tips of her ears peeked through the thin hair until she threw her head back again.
“Oh, my! I haven’t laughed like that since he died!”
“Well, then I’m glad you found it funny.” I had definitely not meant it as a joke.
“No—bless your heart, child. My Werry didn’t have an artistic bone in his body, I’m afraid. He didn’t have rhythm, not for anythin’,” she said, pronouncing the R’s hard enough to make me want to flinch.
I didn’t, of course. “Oh. Then what did you mean?—”
“That,” she cut me off, pointing a chubby finger at the table. At the skull with the ruby eyes. “That’s Mr. Werry for ya.”
My mouth opened and closed and opened and closed…
“He seems like a, uhm…like a big fella,” was the best I could come up with.
And again, the elf laughed.
Her hair barely reached her shoulders, and it was thin and light, and it moved with her in perfect sync. She then pushed herself off whatever she had been standing on—a stool, apparently, that I hadn’t noticed at all. She’d been about a head shorter than me then, but now she was less than five feet tall, and she moved all around the giant snake skeleton to come to the other side.
Her pink dress matched the rag she’d been cleaning with, and the sound of her laughter was contagious—I almost laughed, too.
“Quite the comedian we have here!” she said when she stopped in front of me. “Look at you—so tall! And pretty; you’re very pretty, child. Bless your heart for making this old woman laugh.”
Old? She barely looked forty. “You look very young to me.”
Her cheeks took on a pink blush instantly. “ Bless your heart, bless your heart !” She waved me off, then turned to the skull. “My Werry was not a big fella at all, a wee bit of a man, ‘bout yay high.” She touched her shoulder. “But it was his wish to be as big as he could be, and since he couldn’t grow in life, I commissioned an Iridian to enlarge his skull so that he may be big, at least, in death.”
Fuck me, I found that oddly romantic. “That’s actually very…nice of you.” Nice, for lack of a better word.
She brought her hands to her chest. “You’re different,” she told me. “So soft.” She smiled, showing me tiny, crooked teeth. “I’ve worked in the Roe for the past ten years, and players are always so mean. Always in a hurry. Always trying to win at all costs.”
Ah, fuck. That was exactly what I was supposed to be doing, too.
“Actually, I came in here to?—”
“Ask me how to find the key, yes,” she cut me off.
“No, no, I?—”
“Oh, you want to know a necromancy spell? I heard the floating head giving you the clue—necromancy, huh?” She wiggled her brows. “We’ve had that before, I think. Turned out great.” And she winked dramatically, as if she meant anything but what she said .
“Food,” I blurted before she could cut me off again. “I wanted to ask if I can get food anywhere around here and maybe a bathroom.”
“ Oh! ” she said. “Silly me—of course! I’ve got some crackers here somewhere. You just wait.” She hurried all around the snake’s skeleton again, and behind the counter, while my stomach growled. I tried not to seem too relieved or too happy at the thought of eating. Crackers sounded mighty fine at the moment. I wasn’t about to complain.
“Thank you so much. I have money to pay you.” Poppy had put some dollar bills in the front pocket of my leather pants.
“I’m afraid we don’t take that here, child,” said the elf when I put the bills on the countertop.
“Oh.” Well, fuck.
“We do trade goods, though.” She put a transparent box on the countertop full of crackers and pulled the lid off. “These are on the house—for those laughs. Good ones. Good ones, indeed,” she whispered to herself, shaking her head and grabbing her rag again, cheeks pink and a smile stretching her thin lips.
“Thank you,” I said, right now only concerned in getting as much strength as I could. Those crackers were the best I was going to get, so I ate like I hadn’t in years.
“Somebody’s hungry,” the elf said. No point denying it, so I just stuffed the last of the crackers in my mouth. “What’s your name, child?”
“Rora,” I said, and it came out like Wo-wa.
“I’m Erfes. Happy to make your acquaintance,” she said with a nod, then stepped onto her stool again, becoming almost eye level with me.
“Likewise,” I said, wiping the crumbs from the corners of my mouth. “I don’t really have anything to pay you with.” And why wouldn’t she take dollar bills? I wasn’t sure if I’d ever read anything about what type of currency worked in the Roe. Not even in my wildest nightmares could I have foreseen that I’d one day be standing where I was standing now.
“You sure about that?” said the elf, looking down at my torso with an arched brow.
“Yes, I?—”
“I smell a lot of metal on you, Wowa,” she said.
“It’s actually Rora, ” I corrected, looking down at my jacket. “I have weapons—that’s what you’re smelling.”
Elves and orcs and other species came from magic, let off magical signals, but they didn’t have active magic that they could use at will to alter reality, like Iridians. Even so, their bodies were much stronger than that of a human. They healed much faster, fought off diseases with ease, and their senses were much more enhanced, which was why Erfes could smell the metal on me. I’d hate to part with my weapons, but I could give her what she wanted in exchange for some real food and a shower.
“Oh— Rrrorrra ,” she said, tasting the name on her tongue with those heavy R’s. “Yes, yes, I see them. Fancy. Pretty. You must be well off out there.”
Her smile had changed to something…less pleasant when I opened up my jacket a bit to show her my leather holster and my sheaths, my knives and guns.
I pulled my jacket around me tightly again.
Suddenly I felt like I was standing on needles .
“How did you bring those in, is my question. I get a blade, but all that?” And she waved her hand toward my chest.
Fuck, I shouldn’t have showed her anything .
Clearing my throat, I tried again. “I need food and I need a shower. What would I?—”
“Better yet, how much magic do you have? Which challenge are you coming from? You know everyone goes to different parts of the Roe after the first one, right? Wherever your thoughts are, that’s where the game takes you,” she cut me off, leaning closer until her elbows rested on the countertop. Her eyes looked so wide and glossy now, so damn curious she looked about ready to cut me open and see into my insides.
But what she said did make sense.
After those puddles of blood, all I’d wanted, all I’d thought about was to be in a place that smelled nice , not like blood. The game had taken me to the Tree of Abundance.
And after the Tree, I’d thought about a city at night because that’s what the darkness and the twinkling lights in the distance had looked like to me from the branch. Now, here I was.
Not that it mattered, anyway.
“Really, I would just like to—” I tried to keep my voice down, my heartbeat steady. I tried, but the elf kept interrupting me, and I was starting to feel that red hot anger again, just like in the Redfire challenge.
“Did you hear that there was a Mud amongst the players? How curious, don’t you think? How very curious.”
Her voice trailed off and I could have sworn that she saw right through me. I could have sworn that she knew.
“No, I didn’t hear,” I whispered anyway.
“Too bad, right?” she said after a loaded moment. “Why do you think they took your animals away, though? You had such a beautiful vulcera with you…”
My heart fell all the way to my heels.
Who in the hell is this woman? !
“I thought you said you didn’t know where I was coming from.” She’d just asked me about it, but she knew that I’d had a vulcera?
“Busted!” And she laughed again, but this laughter was different. The sound of it was off. Wrong. “I’m only joking, child. I was by the door when you lot arrived, so I saw you.”
She lied. It was a lie, and I could smell it all over her.
“You know what, never mind,” I said, stepping away from the counter. “I’ll be on my way.”
“No, wait!” She genuinely looked shocked to see me moving for the door and raised both hands toward me fast. “Hold on a minute. I was only joking. Give an old woman a chance, will you?”
I didn’t want to. Iris, I wanted to be out of this place that kept getting creepier by the second. The music, the red eyes of the skull, the fucking dead birds over my head…
“I need food and I need a bathroom,” I said anyway because chances were everyone else in Night City was going to be the same, if not worse. They weren’t put here to help us—on the contrary.
“I’m afraid I can’t offer you either, but you are in my debt, so?—”
“I’m not in your debt,” I reminded her.
“This says that you are.” She showed me the empty container that had been full of crackers, now in my twisting stomach.
“ You paid me with those—for two laughs. Remember?” I said—her own words, not mine.
Erfes flinched. “Smart one, eh,” she said, throwing the empty container at the wall behind her. “Fine, fine, fine. I got no food to give ya.”
Damn it.
I turned for the door again .
“Wait, wait!” She ran all the way around the snake skeleton and toward me again. “I can’t give you those things, but I know an Inn that doesn’t let anyone in.” She stopped in front of me, looking up at me with wide eyes, not honest, but not as evil as they’d seemed earlier, either.
“And?” What the hell did I want with an inn that didn’t let anyone in?
“And the owner is a friend of mine. I could send word and I could give you coins to pay with.” The way that smile was slowly stretching her lips… “But I will need your knives and your guns. All of them.”
“No.” It was out of the question. I would rather starve.
So, I turned for the door the third time, and this time she let me get all the way to it.
I was terrified that she wouldn’t stop me, and even more so when she did with: “How do you think you’re going to survive out there without food? Nobody gives anything to anyone here. I am willing to be kind to you because you made me laugh. Nobody else will let you in—this is Night City.”
My stomach rolled and twisted and turned. I stopped by the threshold, looked at the elves playing chess right outside, not in the least interested in even looking up at me as they moved the strange-looking pieces over the white and black squares.
Outside, the night was just as dark as before, no moon in sight. Elves and orcs, and other players, too, coming from between those buildings still, because the game kept going. The game didn’t stop.
“Out of all challenges, the one in Night City always lasts the longest.”
Erfes’s voice came from so close behind me that I almost jumped. She’d approached me without my even hearing her footsteps.
I turned to the side, close enough to the door so I could run out of this place in an instant if I needed to.
“Why is that?” I asked a bit breathless, but my face, I hoped, remained expressionless.
“Because, because, because—I can’t say because of why,” she muttered, tapping a finger to her lips. “But most spend at least a tomorrow in Night City, Rrrorra, and you don’t want to sleep in the streets, I guarantee.”
I could hardly believe how she’d changed from one person to another, right before my eyes. I didn’t trust her, not in the least, but I also didn’t think she was lying about this particular thing. Just the thought of having to find a body of a being that had died of natural causes implied that I might need to search for a long time.
She could be right, as much as I hated to admit it. She could be right, and I really, really didn’t want to sleep in the streets, considering I couldn’t even put up a ward around me.
And if the other players saw that I was Mud, if that circle of color popped up over my head for any reason again…
“One gun and two knives,” I said through gritted teeth. “That’s all you can get from me.”
She laughed and it was short and ugly. “ All guns and kni— wait!”
I was out the door, determined to find another person to help me—or die trying. Negotiations had never really been my strong suit. I never had the patience for them. I never wanted to sit there and go back and forth with another person—too exhausting .
A hand on my arm, and Erfes pulled me to a stop. “Wait, I said, wait !”
She was no longer smiling.
“Either take a gun and two knives or let me go offer them to someone else.”
Now she hated me. Plain and simple, she hated my guts, and I saw it in her bloodshot eyes and the way she clenched her jaws for a moment, like she was willing herself to not jump me.
“ Fine ,” she finally spit, and I could hardly believe my eyes when she reached under the neckline of her dress and to her boobs, pushed one up with her other hand over the fabric, and pulled something out—three silver coins chipped to the sides like they were a thousand years old. “Here—three for three. Give me my weapons.”
I shook my head. “Is that going to pay for?—”
“Yes-yes-yes, stop speaking-yes!” She was definitely very angry now. “It will pay for all you need. Give one at a time, and not two or three.” She held her fist up and the other hand open, waiting for me to put my weapons in it. “Tell Vuvu that Erfes sent you.”
She forced herself to say all of this so hard that her voice came out robotic. I was terrified even with the size of her, and even with the fact that I had weapons and I could actually fight well enough to subdue a vulcera without magic. My hands shook as I reached for my gun and two throwing knives and put them in her tiny hand. She almost dropped them, then put the coins in my palm before she pulled up the skirts of her dress and hid the weapons underneath.
She didn’t say anything—not thank you , not good riddance , not I hope I never see you again . She just turned around and stormed into her bar, muttering curse words under her breath, then slammed the door shut .
I looked at the silver coins—those had been under her boob, yet I wasn’t disgusted because I was probably way filthier.
A bath. An actual bath awaited me, and it was in an inn that belonged to someone named Vuvu. That was enough to keep me moving toward the narrow street ahead and disappear in the darkness of Night City.