Mud (Chromatic Mages #1)

Chapter 37

Rosabel La Rouge

Present day

Save them from their suffering, the hologram said.

Magic won’t work for their disease, but you must save them from their suffering; you must do the right thing.

In other words, he meant if you can’t heal them, kill them . Kill the animals you were forced to bond to in the beginning, animals you forged a connection with deeper than you are able to understand, animals that will tear your soul to pieces when they die, that are almost as much you as you are—but kill them anyway. Rid them of their suffering.

Goddamn it, such a typical Whitefire way of thinking about life. In absolutes. Fucking perfectionists— pain is a stain, they taught us. We must do whatever we can to cleanse the world from it.

So, of course, they were going to come up with this kind of bullshit for their challenge—what the hell did I expect? Evil, just like Taland said. This was pure evil .

Tears streamed from my eyes as I held the vulcera’s head on my lap. My ass was numb, completely frozen over, but my tears were very warm still. The vulcera kept on breathing like that, like she couldn’t quite fill her lungs with air, and her beautiful green eyes were only half open. I’d put my jacket over her, but I wasn’t sure if it was making any difference. Her scales had lost their shine, and that tail of hers didn’t move an inch. Her antennas didn’t burn green like they used to—and not because I’d ruined them when I sat on her back.

“Have you even eaten?” I wondered, my voice a shaky mess, but my stomach was growling, demanding food, and I realized the vulcera probably hadn’t eaten, either. “What…what did they do to you?”

Fuck, the words killed me a little on the way out because these fucking monsters made her sick, and I couldn’t heal her, couldn’t even try. Now she was going to die because of me. Her only mistake was that she didn’t kill me, that she chose to accept me even without magic in my veins. Her only mistake was that she chose me , and now I could do nothing for her.

She was dying, and it was my fault.

The fucking guilt was going to crush me under any second now. Anyone who came near me suffered. Anyone who came near me ended up in a very, very bad place. Madeline was right—I was a fucking curse on legs.

If I’d only been on that plane with Mom and Dad…

The screams that reached me from both sides no longer surprised me. Around me, a couple of players were making the choice they had to make to complete this challenge. Whether they were here a long time, or whether this was their first or third or whatever challenge, I had no idea. It was my last, and by the looks of it, here was where I died .

But the sharp cry of a man that came from somewhere to my left made me raise my head, and that’s how I noticed the silhouette in the distance, black against the white background, walking slowly toward me.

My heart skipped a beat. It was Taland, and he was holding something against his chest. Something bundled up in black leather—his jacket. He, too, had taken it off for his familiar.

I kept my eyes on his as I petted the vulcera’s face just a little—my hands weren’t working very well from the cold. My blood could be halfway frozen.

At last, Taland was close enough for me to make out his face properly.

He looked worse than I’d ever seen him before, eyes dark, hair all over the place, his lips pressed together. He was dragging his feet behind him, and when our eyes locked, I could swear I heard the echo of his pain, mirroring mine.

He felt it, too. The stabs in the gut and chest. The weight of the guilt that these animals were like this because of us . I wasn’t alone in my misery for once—they all felt it, too.

I wanted to run to him and jump in his arms and not let go until I’d absorbed every ounce of pain into my body. Until he was completely free of it. I couldn’t—not only because my vulcera was on my lap, but because his familiar was in his arms as well.

When he was close enough to us, he sat down on the ice in front of me. I’d never seen Taland crying, but I was willing to bet everything that he’d never been this close to tears before. It made mine rush out even faster.

Slowly, without word, he lowered his arms and showed me the bundled-up creature he’d been holding against his chest—a gorgeous eagle with a yellow beak and white and brown feathers, breathing just as heavily as my vulcera. Eyes just as lifeless, barely open. Halfway gone.

He was big, the eagle, barely fitting on Taland’s lap.

“Ritis Mayol,” Taland said after a moment, his voice as cold as the ice we sat on. “They infected them with the Ritis Mayol.”

I struggled to make sense of those two words—familiar, yet I couldn’t really remember what the hell they meant.

Taland must have realized it because he added, “It’s a fungi, magically altered. The only cure is magic, and magic isn’t working.”

“H-H-Have you tried?” I asked, my chin quivering so badly, and I knew the answer was yes, but I had to ask.

“Yes,” Taland whispered with a nod. “I tried a fourth degree—didn’t work.”

That settled it. If a fourth-degree spell didn’t work, nothing would. Even the more powerful magical diseases were third. Taland could pull them off flawlessly, so I didn’t doubt that he’d gotten the fourth degree one right. He was powerful, very powerful. If he couldn’t complete this challenge without blood on his hands, nobody could.

“Are they…are they in pain?” I dared to ask as he settled against the edge of the raised ice at the vulcera’s back.

“I don’t think they’re aware of what’s happening to them. I could be mistaken—the studies we learned about were done on people, not animals. But even if they are in pain, it isn’t much,” Taland said.

I was tempted to smile—him and that memory of his. He remembered all the lessons while I couldn’t even think of a single spell I’d have used to save the vulcera if I’d had magic. I’d have tried everything until I exhausted myself completely—and I couldn’t even do that. Comical, really .

We didn’t say anything else for a while, Taland and I. We just sat there and petted our fake familiars that felt so incredibly real. My own body was mimicking that of my vulcera—my breaths were fast and shallow, my eyes half open, and I was dying to lie down, but I didn’t want to fall asleep when she could need me.

Taland was the same. He never once moved his hand from the eagle’s back under his jacket, his other finger slowly moving up and down the curve of his beak.

More screams—two more. They came from far away, so I didn’t even bother to try to look, to see with my eyes, too, the pain of those players who had chosen to rid their familiars of their suffering and themselves of this fucking challenge.

“What would you have named her?”

Taland’s voice was low, cold. Merely the ghost of an actual voice.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “It feels like…she already has a name.” And any I’d try to give her would be just wrong. “You?”

“I think Aquila would do just fine,” Taland muttered.

I nodded. “Fits.” Aquila was Latin for eagle. Simple, straightforward. Just like the creature barely breathing on his lap.

And the way Taland was touching him, the way he was suffering together with him, just like I was suffering with my vulcera…

My eyes were stuck on his face for a long time. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t get my brain to shut up for a second, even though it wasn’t any of my business.

It wasn’t any of my business what Taland had done, especially while he was in a prison I sent him to, but my mouth couldn’t remain shut. The words refused to stay inside me. It felt like they’d break my teeth if I didn’t let them out willingly.

“I know I asked you before…” My voice trailed off for a moment. “But why did you do it?”

Taland looked up at me. “Do what?”

“That kid,” I said, and my voice broke. “That boy in prison. You…you almost killed him.”

Because I could, he said that first time I asked him, but it was different then. We weren’t so… close then, even if this was just an illusion.

But seeing him like this now with that eagle, it made the images Cassie had showed me on that screen flash before my eyes.

Of him, scaring the tattoo artist.

Of him in front of the kid’s cell.

Of all that magic coming out of him, wrapping up around his skinny body…

The thoughts now were the same as they had been then— he’s a monster!

No, this is all my fault.

What have I done?!

This isn’t Taland—what the hell have I done?

I don’t know who Taland really is.

He lied. I lied.

We both lied and lied and lied…

“I did.”

The tears were bigger, heavier than before, but when they fell on my lap, sometimes on the vulcera’s scales, they didn’t lessen the weight on my shoulders.

Why, why, why would you?!

Only that first, weak ‘ why ?’ left my lips.

He shrugged. “Because I could. ”

Goddess, I wanted to scream until the world broke. The same answer as before—the exact same answer.

Except this time, Taland continued.

“He drew the tallarose on my chest.”

The tallarose. Us. The ink on his skin.

“It’s actually a worse disease than this, what I put on him,” he said. “A curse, one entirely made out of magic—not a virus or a bacteria or a fungi—just magic. It last over a year, and it gets under your skin. It flows with your blood. It steals your energy and causes incredible pain once in a while, and one wrong letter could kill the subject.”

“Stop,” I said, and though I meant to sound harsh, I couldn’t. I simply didn’t have the energy.

So, why did you do it?!

Again, the words popped in my head, demanding to be said, but I refused to let them. Now that I was barely moving, it was easy.

The silence stretched, unbroken by screams for a while. I’d gotten so used to the constant noise of chatter and music and footfalls against asphalt in Night City without even realizing it. It felt like part of me was there still because the Bluefire challenge had been so terrifying that I refused to acknowledge I’d even been there.

Even so, Madame Weaver was less terrifying than this.

Then Taland said, “It’s also contagious.”

The world, the game, the colors of the Iris Roe hidden inside a mountain could have lost their colors completely for the longest second. All I saw was white inside my head, just as white as everything surrounding me right now.

A terrible disease that caused crippling pain. That merged with your body. That was contagious.

I looked up at Taland, the tears pausing for a moment. My hand froze on the vulcera’s jaw .

A heartbeat, then two.

Contagious, he said, and he continued to touch the beak of his familiar, half dead on his lap.

No, a man like him would never do what that man in the footage did— look at him!

He was Taland, my Taland. Despite his mouth, he would never ever, ever-ever-ever.

He hadn’t.

“You saved him.”

The words were crystal clear coming out of my mouth. And finally— finally —some of that weight was lifted from my shoulders.

Gone, disappeared into the ice I sat on.

Taland flinched. “I didn’t save him. I merely gave him time to figure out how to survive,” he said, and he sounded angry.

Neither of us were shaking from the cold just now.

More than that, I found myself wanting to smile. I found myself wanting to get up and dance because Taland would never do what he did, and he hadn’t done what he did at all.

He had put an unbreakable curse on a seventeen-year-old kid, a curse that lasted over a year, that could have killed him but hadn’t. A curse that would tire him, would cause him a lot of pain as it came and went, but like he said—it was a contagious disease.

“You saved that boy,” I insisted. Because nobody in that prison was going to go close to him now. None of the mass murderers, rapists, the worst of the worst of society, were going to go anywhere near that boy.

“They would have broken him the first day. They’d have done unspeakable things,” said Taland. “He had nobody on the inside. ”

This time, I did smile, though not voluntarily.

I did smile. “He had you.”

Taland looked up at me then, eyes wide, dark. So easy to see the man he was in that video. So easy to forget that I knew what hid underneath, even if I liked to tell myself that I didn’t. That we’d both been lying to one another. That what we had hadn’t been real.

But it had. Because I’d lied, but I’d also felt every single thing with him in the deepest part of my soul. Every laugh, every touch, every kiss, every word I’d ever whispered to him in the short time we were together, it had all been real for me.

And for him.

“Don’t go thinking I’m a good guy, sweetness,” said Taland, shaking his head at my smile. “I’m not. I’ve killed. I will continue to kill. There’s nothing good about me.”

“Except a teenage boy in a prison full of monsters who gets to sleep at night and be at peace—at least when he’s not in excruciating pain. That might be a good thing about you.” And I loved how hard he was trying to deny it—to himself, not me. I loved the struggle because I knew he’d lose.

He smiled bitterly when he did. “What does it say about your precious IDD to put a seventeen-year-old in a prison with the world’s most dangerous men?”

The smile vanished from my face.

“You were a teenager, too.” My voice was barely there. The shame, the guilt—my goddess, how was I still alive?

Taland had been eighteen when they put him in, too. When I served him to Hill and the IDD.

Fuck, my chest was so tight…

“I was perfectly prepared for the Tomb. I was in no danger,” he said, but was he actually telling the truth ?

No idea, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything else because he knew as well as I did that they were all monsters, too. The people in charge, including my grandmother. Monsters .

And I was completely at their mercy.

He inspired me, Taland. Always had. Only he could think up ways to look bad while doing something as good as saving a kid’s life, and that little story got to my head fast. I realized just how much it had been eating at me to think that Taland really was that monster who would torture a poor kid just for kicks.

Taland was not the man to sit by and watch while his brothers tortured me, either, and I was sure there was more to that story, a lot more. But right now there simply was no time to get to the bottom of it.

I should have known about the kid, though. I should have seen beyond, but right now I was glad that I hadn’t. Right now, I’d needed to hear that story, to make sense of it, to see it for what it was. I needed that boost of energy it gave me to look deeper into this thing, too. This challenge.

After all, I’d gotten through most of these games without magic simply because I’d been forced to search for other options that didn’t involve it. Everyone here, every Iridian who played this game thought in terms of magic because they had it, and they were used to relying on it their whole lives—as was I. Magic was the first and last answer to everything for me as well, until I turned Mud and was thrust into this game.

Without it, I’d learned to look deeper, to find other ways to complete these challenges .

Without it, I could save the vulcera, too, as well as Taland’s eagle if I really tried.

And I would.

Not five minutes after our conversation was over, we noticed a few players running toward the roc statue that was a replica of what the Valley of the Roc used to be. They were all rushing toward it, some with their animals in their arms, some without.

“What’s that?” I wondered because something must have been happening at the statue.

Taland was already on his feet. “I don’t know. I’m going to check it out.”

Slowly, I raised the vulcera’s head and put it on the sleeve of my jacket that was still over her body. “I’ll be right back,” I promised her in a whisper, and I made to stand.

Every inch of me was indeed frozen because it took me a good minute and a lot of pain. Taland waited for me, curious eyes sparkling now as he looked at the growing crowd near the statue.

“Let’s go,” I said, needing to move, to breathe easier, to feel some heat in my ice-cold veins.

There were eleven players from all covens near the statue now, staring at the back of the roc. They all looked like shit, worse than in any other challenge that I’d seen, some who had smaller familiars, like Taland, holding them to their chest—a rabbit, a squirrel, a nantak, which was basically a cat with a bat face and leathery wings on its back that didn’t actually fly. The closer we got the more we realized that they were looking at something not on the roc’s back, but on the ice cube that the bird stood on.

From so close up, I got claustrophobic. It was huge, so big I couldn’t see the head of it at all. The cube alone was at least three stories tall, and the roc’s left talons that came out the edge of it were gigantic. The smallest of the four was as big as my entire body, if not more.

I slowed down without even realizing it, looking at the bird of ice in awe, reminding myself that it was just ice.

According to the stories, once upon a time, the roc had been the opposite of a phoenix, forever warring with the firebird, sworn enemies for eternity. Like the phoenix’s feathers were fire, his had been ice. The phoenix burned and rose from its ashes once every decade, while the roc froze himself until the ice cracked to reveal a brand-new version of his same old self.

Now, as Taland grabbed my hand and led me to the crowd at the back of the statue, I remembered everything I’d read about rocs since I was a little girl. The stories, the books, the cartoons I’d watched.

But when I saw what the people were so focused on, what was engraved on the surface of the cube, everything else became irrelevant.

A perfect circle was barely visible on the ice, and it had a lot more lines inside that became more visible to me the harder I focused. It was separated into five triangles, with a circle in the very middle, with shapes and names engraved in them, too small to make out from the distance.

The lake that supposedly surrounded the statue of the roc was frozen over completely. What could have been a fence—or maybe a concrete ledge before it froze over—surrounded it, but the only difference on this side of the ground was that the ice was slightly grayer, whereas around the statue, it had a blue tint to it.

“I can’t see,” I told Taland, and I needed to. The ice looked thick enough to hold me perfectly fine. So, I crossed the fence that divided us and kept on going with his hand still in mine, ignoring the paranoia that wanted me to believe the statue was going to fall on my head any second. Ignoring the paranoia that said the ice might break and I might drown in an icy lake. Ignoring everything and keeping my eyes on that engraving, until I was right in front of it.

At last, I saw it in detail.

It was a map of the playground, just as I suspected. Separated into five areas that surrounded the mountain where the colors of the Rainbow were locked away. Each area was then divided into two, and I recognized the names I knew just fine— Night City, Ghost Festival, Valley of the Roc. It was an actual map to the Iris Roe—and it was moving as we watched.

Different triangles meshed together and changed, moving from one side of the circle to the other.

I wanted to look at every little detail, but I couldn’t because all the other players, even more than before, had come on this side of the statue, too, and they kept pushing and cursing and threatening one another to move out of the way. They were frustrated, afraid, in pain, and if a fight broke out here, there was no telling how it would end.

So, I stepped to the side together with Taland, and we moved away from the crowd in silence, went all the way back to where the vulcera was lying on her own, same as before.

My heart wept for her, and my thoughts were a mess I needed so desperately to put into words. I couldn’t do that yet, but what I could do was grab one of my knives and draw a circle on the ground as big as my arm reached.

Then I made the smaller circle in the middle, and divided the triangles like slices of pizza, while Taland put his eagle on the ground near the vulcera, still wrapped up in his leather jacket. We were both freezing but also focused, and when he reached for a knife in my holster, I hardly even saw it, just continued to draw what I remembered. With my knife he kneeled on the other side of the circle and filled in the details I’d missed.

“This is the Rainbow,” Taland said, pointing the tip of the knife to the small circle in the middle. “We’re here—the Valley of the Roc. It moves, the playground, and it has a different way out than it did in.”

I nodded. “I came through Ghost Festival, but the way out of the Rainbow mountain through Redfire territory would be through the River of Blood. Which, considering the challenge, is all the blood that was spilled on this playground.” Shivers washed down my back as I imagined those puddles I’d had to search for my key in, coming together, filling up so much that they formed an actual river.

“Correct,” Taland said. “I came through Night City, but if I were to walk out of the game from the Blackfire territory, I’d have to go through the Land of the Dead, where I imagine all the reincarnated bodies that were used for our keys would be.” In the map, the Land of the Dead had had nothing but straight lines sort of shaped like people. “Greenfire here was a jungle with oversized animals. I had to make myself green when I came back to Night City from it.”

I did a double take.

“Are you serious?” I did remember him saying that we could go back to the challenges we completed, but I had no idea it would be through other challenges.

“It was easy. The eagle kept most animals away,” Taland said, waving his hand, unconcerned.

My goddess, he was absurd. I wanted to both kiss him for it and scream my guts out at him for being so damn careless .

In the end, I chose to just focus on the challenge at hand. If we ever walked out of here alive, we could talk about the rest.

“Now we’re in Whitefire territory.” I went back to the Valley of the Roc. “And if we wanted to get out of this challenge and go back to another to, say, find medicine for our familiars to heal them, we’d have to go through…”

My voice trailed off. Goose bumps rose on my forearms.

“The Drainage,” said Taland, and the name echoed in my head a couple of times.

“The Drainage.” As in the process of draining an Iridian of his or her colors. The process of turning an Iridian, deliberately, into Mud.

“I suppose it would do exactly what the name suggests, so…that is not an option then,” said Taland, sitting down on the ice, a hand already over the body of his eagle.

“No, it is not.” Not only because I’d been subjected to the same process and was now Mud, but I’d also seen what the IDD agents called a furnace back at the Headquarters, though only once. The room was made entirely of bones that served to ruin the magic color of an Iridian. The walls were white, the ceiling and the floor—even the inside of the door was made of pieces of broken bones of…people? Animals? I had no idea. Nobody really knew, but it was enough to make me certain that I did not want to see what The Drainage in this game looked like. At all.

“What now? How are we going to get medicine for our familiars?” I went close to the vulcera again, grabbed her head and put it over my lap. She opened her eyes just a tiny bit more than usual, and her tongue came out and she licked my hand a little. As if to say she felt me. She knew I was here .

It was like getting stabbed and shot at the same time, in the same place.

“I don’t think we can,” Taland whispered. “I don’t think they even made it possible to heal them here. They… they don’t want us to heal them.”

He said it all through gritted teeth, frustrated as he raised the eagle’s head on his palm and began to stroke his beak.

“They want us to just kill them?” There was no other option but to kill the animals they forced us to bond to, the beings that swore their lives to us, that we were supposed to protect ?

“Yes, sweetness. We’re meant to kill them, and the sooner you do it, the sooner you will be out of here.”

I blinked and blinked and blinked.

You, he said.

“What about…what about you?” He was smarter than me. More powerful. More… more.

“What about me?”

“You’re going to make it out of here, too. Complete the game.”

“I have no intention of completing the game, but I will be there with you, if that’s what you want to know.”

I shook my head. “But you got the keys, too. You?—”

“I only have three.” He looked up at me. “I never completed the Redfire challenge.”

“Then you should. You should go there next—I’ll wait for you.”

“No. I’m not going to complete the challenge. That’s not why I’m here—but you will.”

“Taland, listen to me,” I started because if he somehow completed the game, if he got the colors of the Rainbow instead of me, he could be saved. Pardoned. Allowed to be out of prison, or at least he wouldn’t be too severely punished for his escape. The Iris Roe might have been a game, but it had a massive impact on the people worldwide. The IDD would not be able to ignore it.

“No, sweetness, no. You’re not thinking straight. I don’t need to complete the game because they will catch me if I do. I can run if I don’t,” he said, and my mouth clamped shut. “ You will get to those colors. You will get your magic back.”

“And then?” I wondered in a shaky whisper. “And then what?”

For the longest second, Taland only looked at me. Said nothing. Didn’t blink or even breathe.

“We need to kill them, Rose. The sooner we do it, the sooner we will get out,” was all he said.

I shut down after that.

I cried in silence, holding onto the vulcera. I avoided Taland’s eyes, and I avoided thinking about what he said, only because I knew he was absolutely right.

I tried to pick apart the stupid map, to find a way out of this frozen hell, but no matter what I did, the edges of this place would only lead me to The Drainage. To certain death since I no longer had magic to drain out of me. Not to mention I’d have to make the trip twice, assuming I found something even close to medicine on whatever lay on its other side.

Taland went for a walk a little while later, when we heard another one of those heart-wrenching screams. He said he was curious to see from closer up; I wasn’t.

He came back soon and said he’d spoken to a couple of players, who’d told him what we could have guessed ourselves.

Apparently, only those who’d completed the Greenfire challenge could access the Whitefire one. Even Whitefire players had started the game in other covens’ challenges, unlike the rest of us—of course, they had. Of course, they made us bond first— that’s why they made us bond! So they could torture us here, in this challenge. So they could tear us apart completely by making us kill these innocent animals.

According to Taland, the players who were here the longest, who’d ended up in the Valley right off their first challenge, were the ones who were killing their bonded because they’d had enough. They needed to get away from this frozen hell, so they were getting it over with.

Meanwhile, most were still trying, hoping for a miracle. Waiting, just like us.

We were stuck.

I remembered the stories I used to read as a girl. I used to love those that spoke of things that were, not the things we could see. Things that remained a mystery to the world—like the rocs.

History said that there was a people, a small town running from one of their own who had turned so evil his magic devoured anything it touched. They never said what kind of a mage he was, just that he’d become dark, soulless, and one day had decided that he wanted his small town of Iridians to be no more.

They tried to fight him, but none succeeded, so in the end they packed their bags and went in search of a new home, somewhere where the evil mage wouldn’t follow, where he couldn’t hurt them anymore.

They traveled for years until they found the rocs in their Valley, sought shelter and told them all about the evil mage, and the rocs agreed to let them live in their home on two conditions. One—they had to give up their magic so that they may never hurt another living being again; and two—they had to swear peace to the rocs and ensure peace for them from all other Iridians who sometimes came and tried to hunt them down for no reason.

The people of the town had no choice but to accept. They settled in the Valley, forever thankful to the rocs for saving them, for the evil mage couldn’t wander even near without them knowing, without their watchful eyes seeing. He could never again hurt any of the people he used to share a home with, and so he left, never to be seen or heard of again.

The people prospered. Built their new town. Built the rocs a statue so big the world had never seen anything like it, to honor them and their peace. They quickly learned how to live without magic, how to serve their saviors without spells.

And in turn, the rocs watched after them until they perished, ensured they were safe from all threats, and always full with the best of foods nature had to offer, and always… healthy .

Healthy because they bathed in the lake of the Valley, which had magic of its own—regenerative powers that made the old young again, the weak strong. It was said that the mages of this Valley lived longer than any other human being ever had until the rocs went extinct.

So many people had gone off to search for the lake of the valley for its powers. So many explorers had wasted decades of their lives in an impossible quest, always to come back empty-handed because the lake and the Valley were a myth. Stories, just stories—not real.

But this game wasn’t supposed to be real, either, yet it was. It was very real in how it felt, what it made us do. It had turned all of us into killers— all of us. But to sacrifice these animals, too?

What if the story of the Valley was real here, too? Just for this game, nothing more.

What if there was an actual lake underneath that ice surrounding the statue, and its water could heal the vulcera, all the other familiars?

What if?

Slowly, I put the vulcera’s head down on the ice again. “I’m sorry, pretty girl. I’ll be back,” I whispered when she let out a whine. She seemed to be breathing just slightly slower when I was close to her, but I needed to move.

Not just because I was starving, and I was completely numb from spending so much time sitting there on the ice. Had it been hours, or maybe even a day? I had no idea, but I stood up, and when my legs were too weak to hold me, I tried harder.

“Sweetness, what are you doing? Have you made up your mind yet?”

I looked down at Taland, holding his eagle against his chest like a concerned parent would a baby. I never once thought I’d see him like this, but here we were.

He was waiting for me to make up my mind to kill my vulcera.

He refused to kill his eagle, though, and I suspected he was secretly hoping that I took all the time in the world because then he didn’t have to do anything but sit here on the ice with me .

“I’m not going to kill her, Taland,” I whispered, shaking my head, fighting back the tears at the mere thought.

“We talked about this,” he said, eyes dull, skin pale, so pale.

And we did talk about it another two times since we came back from that map. “I know, but I can’t. I won’t.”

I turned to the statue again, so big it suffocated me all the way here, over a hundred feet away.

“So, what—you’ll just give up?” said Taland, standing up with me, his eagle small enough that he was able to carry it with him still.

“No, of course not.” I pointed at the statue. “The stories say that the lake of the Valley had regenerative powers. They made this place based on descriptions from history and story books. The lake should be underneath the ice surrounding the statue.”

Taland thought about it for a second. “Except the Valley isn’t real.”

“Yes, I know that. But this game is.” I shrugged. “I’m going to try to break that ice and bring back some water for her. Won’t hurt to try. It’s the best idea I’ve got.”

“You’re weak. It’s wasted time,” said Taland, but he lowered the eagle to the ground again, near the vulcera.

“Then stay. I’ll be back when I can,” I said, and I started walking before I froze to death.

I wouldn’t, though, not really. If I could have died from it, if I could have gotten frostbite, I’d have been done for by now. We’d been here a while, and I’d been sitting on ice most of the time, yet I was still moving. Cold as fuck, but not dying of hypothermia the way I should have been. Nobody was.

No, we weren’t here to die this time. Only our familiars.

Fuck that .

Reality looked a bit like a dream once more as I made my way back to the statue, this time not even afraid it would fall on my head. This time wishing that it would instead. Taland was behind me, just like I knew he would be. He was behind me and we made it all the way to the statue, to the lake surrounding it, and the frozen fence. It was only as tall as my knees, so I stepped over it easily. With two knives in hand, I began to stab the ice.

No thoughts. No expectations. No audience right now, except for Taland. I just squatted down and I stabbed the ice.

Could have been funny to someone watching, I guess. I tried so, so hard, except my hard was downright pathetic. I had no energy left, not really, and when I saw that I was merely scratching the surface of the ice with my knives, I put them away and shot three bullets at it instead. I had two more magazines in my holster—why not?

However, the bullets only managed to get an inch deep into the ice, no more.

I wanted to scream.

“Move away, Rose.”

Taland had raised his hands toward the ice, while a couple players from farther away watched. I stepped aside all the way to the edge and sat on the frozen fence to catch my breath, while Blackfire magic, so much brighter than I’d ever seen before, spilled onto the ice viciously, slipping inside it as Taland continued to whisper his spell.

It didn’t work. The ice hardly felt it, and when he was done, he was exhausted. He sat down near the fence with me, on the other side, breathing heavily. Just as disappointed as before.

“It won’t break,” he said.

“Maybe if you try again in the same spot?— ”

“I can’t try again, sweetness. My anchor is almost gone. I’ll be surprised if I have enough of it left for a few more spells.”

I flinched, tears rolling down my cheeks.

“Thanks for trying, anyway.”

Eventually, Taland went back to the familiars, and even though I wanted to join him, I couldn’t. I was ashamed. I wanted to do anything other than look the vulcera in the eye and know that she knew I’d failed.

So, I let him go back to them on his own and I stayed there for a long time after, stabbing the ice when I had energy, resting when I felt like I might collapse—until I did.

Right there on the ice of the lake, I collapsed. My boot slipped just a little, and I fell on my back, the statue of the roc right in front of me, larger than life.

I didn’t try to move at all, just stayed there sprawled on the ice on my back—what would be the point? Players came and went, maybe the same ones as before, and maybe new ones. Maybe ones who had but this challenge left—or maybe a victor had already been announced. Maybe someone had already opened the mountain and drained the Rainbow of its colors. Maybe the game would be over soon, and I could leave. Go back. Let Madeline kill me—I didn’t mind. Not anymore.

Just don’t make me kill her, please.

If I did, I’d never be the same, and I was so tired of doing things I didn’t want to do because I had to or because it was for the greater good.

It wasn’t for my greater good, damn it. None of it was for me !

I prayed and prayed and wished that roc I now couldn’t look away from broke out of its ice shell, came alive. I wished those claws, those large talons sticking out of the cube would slice my throat open until I was no more.

Those large talons that probably weighed half a ton each, if not more.

Those large talons that would undoubtedly break the earth if they were to fall off the roc statue.

They would undoubtedly break any kind of ice if they were to fall off the roc statue.

My heart skipped a long beat, and for a long second, I was perfectly calm. Perfectly still. Thin and light as air. It all aligned so perfectly in my head that I almost laughed at why I hadn’t seen it before.

I couldn’t break this ice with my knives, and Taland couldn’t break it with his magic—but those talons could.

I was as sure of it as I was sure that I was lying on this ice right now.

Going back to tell Taland was out of the question—my blood was boiling when I jumped to my feet, and my knives were in my hands again, and I was slamming them onto the edges of the ice cube the roc stood on.

I was climbing.

Don’t ask me how; I can’t tell you. And if you wonder how many times I almost fell, that number is possibly somewhere in the three digits.

But I didn’t fall. And I didn’t look down, not once. I just stabbed the ice with my knives and pushed myself up as far as I could. I even heard Taland’s voice from the ground calling my name sometime later, but I didn’t stop climbing until that talon, the smallest of the four, was right there within my reach.

I stabbed it on either side with my knives, then pulled myself up .

My muscles screamed. My body buzzed. My blood rushed, and sweat lined my forehead, made my shirt stick to my back.

But I sat on the talon of the roc and I looked down, finally.

I was so high up Taland and the few other players who’d gathered to watch looked tiny .

Laughter burst out of me, perhaps because I was delusional to think this would work, or perhaps because I knew I was probably going to slip and fall to my death soon.

Either way, I took a moment to breathe, to calm my racing heart, to rest my muscles. Then I waved at Taland, and I could tell he was shaking his head at me. I could tell he had his eagle against his chest still. I could just tell he was thinking I was batshit crazy.

Hey, it was better than traitor.

Then I sat up on the smallest talon of the roc, found the thinnest ice that connected it to the gigantic foot, and I began to stab.

A hammer would have been nice. Too bad I had none on me. And the ice that made the roc wasn’t as white or as thick as the one that covered the ground. It was almost see-through, crystal clear, blue instead of white.

Most importantly, after the hundredth stab of my knives, a crack formed on the surface of the talon.

That’s when I stood up. I had little energy and strength, so my hits weren’t strong, but I was consistent. One knife, then the other, on the same place. One arm up, the other down, and so on. My hands were numb, but I was still moving so you wouldn’t find me complaining.

And what could have been years later, the ice of the talon groaned as the crack from my knife spread all the way to the other side .

It moved, the ice. It made me stop stabbing it for a second, get up and move back, up on the roc’s foot. The feeling that took over me as I watched that crack become bigger and bigger, spread wider, ahead and below and to the side, was one I couldn’t quite describe. But when the piece of ice broke all the way and began to fall down to the ground, I believed I had all the power in the world.

The fall felt like an earthquake when the talon smashed against the ice on the ground. A damn earthquake, and the statue shook, too. I had to lean down and grab the next talon, the second smallest one, to hold on in case it didn’t stop.

A white cloud of ice below me, on the ground. Taland and all the other players who’d been closer just now had run farther away.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on…” I chanted to myself as I held onto the ice, looking at the cloud as it settled, at the pieces of ice.

Let there be water, please, please, please…

There wasn’t.

That huge piece of ice hadn’t managed to break the surface at all.

I screamed.

The sound came from deep inside me, from my very soul. I screamed, and the crowd disappeared, and Taland was the only one who remained by the edge of the lake, watching.

Come down, he said, though I only heard his voice in my head. Come down, sweetness; it’s over.

And I believed him. It really was over—for good. I died here in this frozen hell. I died because I wasn’t going to kill the vulcera. I would lose, yes, but I wasn’t going to let them win. At least not Madeline .

Except when the dust settled completely and the pieces of the broken talon were all over the ground, I looked again. I looked at the frozen surface of the lake, a lake that might not even be there at all, but…it was.

I saw the crack, thick and big and stretching at least twenty feet.

With shaking hands, I pushed myself to sit up, to blink, to focus harder, make sure I wasn’t just seeing things.

A thick crack had appeared on the surface of the lake, and the water was there. I saw the crystal blue of it underneath, and it called my fucking name like it wanted to be set free from this goddess-damned frozen hell, too!

Impossible, impossible— yet it was right in front of my eyes. Tears sprung from them, big and warm, and a smile—a silly, silly smile—tugged hard at my lips.

I got up, sat on the second talon, and I began to stab again.

It took me longer than the first to see that crack. It took me minutes and hours and days and years because my movements were too slow, and my energy minimal.

Even so, I was stubborn. Just as stubborn as this damn ice, so I didn’t quit. And when Taland left his eagle on the ground and began to cross over onto the lake to climb up to me, I called at the top of my voice for him to stand back.

I had this. I fucking had this, and I was going to break this talon, too, no matter how long it took.

Then…

“Step aside!”

I could have sworn that’s what Taland said.

He was screaming from the ground, both hands on the sides of his mouth, and he was telling me, step aside.

I wanted to keep going, just sit there and continue to stab the hell out of this ice, but maybe he could help without having to climb at all. Maybe his magic would reach all the way up here.

After all, if not him, who could do this better?

So, I moved.

Standing on shaking legs, I moved back onto the leg of the roc statue again, stabbed a knife to the surface of it to hold onto, and I waited.

The magic came.

Blackfire spread from the ground, coming closer and closer so fast I almost thought I was making it up. It slammed against the talon I’d managed to crack only a little bit.

The statue groaned. My heart jumped.

When the Blackfire disappeared, I dared to move a bit closer, to see where the ice was cracking still, where it would break if only that magic had been a little stronger.

No matter.

I grabbed my gun, loaded it with a brand-new magazine, and I shot every bullet in it at the crack as fast as my finger allowed.

The talon fell.