Chapter 33
Rosabel La Rouge
Present day
It had most definitely worked, and far better than I could have possibly hoped. The hailstorm, that is.
Only its placement was wrong, and it had done exactly what I’d feared it would do if it happened in the streets of Night City. Exactly why I’d wanted that cloud where there were no buildings close by and dead birds would fall to the ground.
Some fell on the asphalt now, too.
As we ran with Taland, we saw at least four birds hitting the ground right before players snatched them and ran into the dark alleys. If we ran after them, they’d be done with the spell before we caught them, so neither I nor Taland bothered.
We just kept going closer and closer to the heart of the cloud that couldn’t be wider than forty feet, hoping a crow or a pigeon or even an owl fell somewhere nearby .
It didn’t.
The few birds that had been caught under the cloud, that hadn’t managed to get away before the big, heavy hail hit them, were all in some player’s hands by the time we made it to the middle. Taland had put a shield over the both of us so the hail didn’t reach us, only bounced off the magic he’d locked us under, and they really were big, bigger than I’d hoped.
Except no bird was around us anymore, but more players were. Five that I could see, half hidden in the shadows, some protected by magic from the hail, some using their hands as shields as they waited and waited in the dark street. No resident was in sight—they’d all gone inside, closed their doors, and turned their lights off.
It was just us and the storm, and I was too late.
Fuck! I’d been too far, and now I was too late, and that effort had been for nothing and?—
“There!”
Taland pointed his finger ahead. Up ahead, and I looked just in time to see a small black shape falling fast.
On top of a three-story building, the smallest in the row, with two five-story ones at its side.
As if on cue, a dragon’s roar sounded from somewhere close by, too.
“We can’t make it,” I said, so angry I was seeing red, but…
“Trust me, sweetness—if anybody can, it’s us.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. I had no choice but to follow.
Everything around me was a blur. I couldn’t help but focus on the sound and size of the hail as it hit the magic over our heads. The other players were still waiting, still watching, screaming and cursing out loud—and the door to that building was in front of us way too soon.
“Arms up!” Taland called, and my body moved the same second. He released the shield he’d held around us and whispered his spell when we were still three feet away.
The door exploded right off its hinges two seconds later, and hail fell all over my body. It was heavier than I’d imagined, and it could kill me if it hit me in the head enough times.
Luckily, Taland grabbed my hand again and ran into the darkness inside the building the next second.
“Keep running,” he told me, and we followed the low lights dotting the old and cracked walls. We were in a narrow corridor that opened up a bit a few feet in, and there was a stairway to the right, and a door behind it to the left, from which two residents watched, half hidden by the frame.
They said nothing, only watched us moving up the stairs as fast as we could.
“I’m so sorry about the door!” I called like an idiot, as if they cared about their stupid door, but I was hardly thinking straight.
We were up a floor, and then another, and Taland found the ladder hanging by a thick rope on the ceiling right next to the barely visible door.
The door that would lead us to the rooftop.
Time could have been moving in fast-forward mode because Taland couldn’t have possibly pulled down the ladder so fast. He couldn’t have climbed up, pushed that door open, and told me to keep moving.
No way— but I still moved. I climbed up as hail came in through the opening on the ceiling, and when I was close enough, Taland grabbed my hands and pulled me up with ease.
We were outside on the rooftop deck covered in small grey pebbles.
And the dead crow was in the far left corner.
I ran without having to be told this time. All my fears and all the panic, all the certainty that I was going to be burned to a crisp by a dragon disappeared, and all I saw was the dead crow with a broken beak on those pebbles.
Dead . Undeniably dead by hail—as natural as it could be.
“You know the spell?” Taland said, and I nodded as I reached out my shaking hands to touch the bird’s bloody chest.
“I’m ready.”
We didn’t look up. We didn’t let ourselves be distracted by the sound of the dragon’s roar that was close— way, way too close to us . I just began to chant the most basic necromancy spell that I knew, while Taland reached for the raven feather in his pocket and offered it to me in the palm of his hand. I closed mine over it and felt the surge of magic as he let it out to merge with mine, but only slightly. I was too afraid, too excited, too much in a hurry to make anything out about it, just that it was flowing.
Just that there was magic rushing through my veins, up my hand that was connected with Taland’s, across my chest and down my other arm. I felt it and I’d missed it so much it was like being sliced wide open.
All those awful questions— what happens to him now? I’m Mud—what happens to him for sharing his magic with me? This is illegal for a reason. What if I’m hurting him? What if I kill him ?
All those awful questions in the back of my mind disappeared.
Blackfire flames exploded from my fingers, the ones I touched to the dead crow’s chest. A scream tore out of me as the magic came out, violently, creating a chaos unlike any I’d ever felt before in my body.
For a second, reality let go of me and I was falling, in the dark with no senses, no eyes to see or ears to hear.
I was falling, but I didn’t fall for long because Taland caught me.
When he did, he whispered, “ Look.”
That one word was so hopeful. Even though my eyes were still too weak to make out his face, that one word and the way he whispered it was enough to shock my system all over again. So, I looked, and I saw—the body of that crow, half its head bashed in and its beak broken where the hail had hit it, slowly turning to ashes on the pebbles, revealing something shiny underneath.
The key.
It was the key of the Blackfire challenge. My key.
My hand shook so badly as I reached for it. Taland no longer had to hold me up. My body was fully functional and my fingers ice-cold as they wrapped around the cylinder dotted with stones as black as the sky in Night City, glimmering white light here and there.
The key was in my hand, the third challenge completed.
Then there was light.
“ Move! ” Taland shouted, falling back and rolling on the rooftop deck, trying to pull me along with him.
I moved on instinct to the other side because that light wasn’t just light—it was fire. Dragon fire, and it came together with a deafening roar. A dragon the size of a fucking house beat those incredible wings to get closer to us. To incinerate us. Turn us to dust just when I had the key.
I wanted to scream in frustration, but instead I held onto the edge of the rooftop to get farther and farther away from the bright fire, just as the dragon roared again, and spit more upon us.
“Taland!” I shouted before I saw him on the other end, near the door, trying to make his way toward me. “Go back!”
The door was right there. If he jumped inside the building, the dragon couldn’t get to him.
But he was still coming. He wasn’t going for the door—he was still coming toward me.
What the hell are you doing?!
Then he shouted, “ Jump!”
He jumped onto the ledge of the rooftop, the one I was holding onto, trying to get to him. To the door. Trying to get inside—but I didn’t need to because I had the key now. It was in my hand.
All I had to do was fall.
I jumped, too, and the dragon roared right over my head, its underbelly made of pale green scales as it flew not thirty inches away taking my focus for a short second.
Then the dragon lowered its head, opened those monstrous jaws that would forever haunt my dreams, and I saw the fire as it ignited in its throat. I saw it as it shot for me while its tail was still over my head, its wings steady.
Taland’s voice was in my ears even if I didn’t understand what he was saying. The dragon’s fire was maybe three feet away from devouring me completely. I felt the heat of it against my skin like I’d suddenly gone too close to the sun.
I jumped.
I fell for what must have been mere seconds, but to me they felt an eternity long.
I fell, and the heat was gone, and I landed on something white—ropes covered in glitter, woven together very closely, and I bounced on them for a little bit.
But the ropes were also sticky, so they stopped me from bouncing too hard.
Darkness around me, and then there were these blue lights in the distance that I couldn’t quite focus on. I caught movement somewhere to my left, and I blinked my eyes a million times until I was able to see Taland’s face as he struggled against those ropes that were everywhere apparently . He struggled to turn over on his back, as he’d fallen on them on his stomach.
Ropes.
But…they didn’t look like real ropes, did they?
And the blue lights that were coming from far away—they were on these disgusting looking trees that oozed some kind of a dark liquid. These ropes were attached to the naked branches, too, and they were everywhere I looked— everywhere .
North and south and east and…west.
Where something else moved, something… as big as a house.
For a second there, I thought the dragon from Night City had followed us here—to the Bluefire challenge, if those blue lights were anything to go by.
But the large creature that was moving slightly to the west, luckily far enough that it hadn’t seen us— yet— was no dragon .
“Rose,” Taland said while he tried to look around, too, disoriented still.
“ Don’t. Move,” I whispered as low as I could, but he was just four or five feet away from me, so he heard.
He stopped. He looked to where I was looking, at the large creature who was turning toward us slowly…
No, it was most definitely not a dragon from Night City.
It was a spider the same size, with eight legs and eight sapphire-blue eyes—and the ropes we were stuck to were her webs.