Page 101 of The Teras Trials

God. What is that?

The first thought that crystallises is: chimera. There is no lion, no goat-head protruding. Not a chimera in the classical term then. But a hybrid all the same.

I see:

A snorting bullhead, like that of a minotaur, but the body bulges out, like a great deer. I watch it, and I remember Pliny the Elder mentioned the archils—an elk-like creature, back legs with no joints. This creature stomps rigidly towards us with heavy footfalls; taller than the manticore, somehow, like prehistoric beasts.

Great antlers emerge from the bull’s head, but they are—wrong.

Fleshy.

Each prong sprouts into reaching human fingers, an amalgamated hand, and they are twitching.

Its tail is the same as the chimera’s—a snake—and a mound that looks like a half-formed head does indeed sprout from its back. The hybrid looks rushed, half-finished; fleshy clay that didn’t fire properly.

The manticore spins weakly. More blood and gore spurts from the gaping wound in its belly. And then it screams.

The hybrid opens its mouth and howls back, spewing fire and smoke like Cacus from myth, and the manticore ignites with a curdling scream, rolling desperately in the snow as its fur singes and melts against its flesh. Burning fills the air. The hybrid stalks forward slowly and tilts its head so the fingers on its antlers can brush against the dying manticore. They reach out with tender care to stroke the crying human face, and then with speed they wrap around the manticore’s neck and squeeze.

And all of us watch. It takes minutes. We are frozen as the hybrid chokes the life out of the manticore, as the human face squeaks uselessly, throat crushed. Its eyes roll back, milky whites turning glazed.

The manticore is dead.

But the hybrid turns to us.

Its fingers retract from the limp neck of the manticore slowly. The great shuddering body collapses before the hybrid’s feet, and the new beast steps over the corpse with ease, long, jointless legs creaking like the birch trees.

Now I scramble back and manage to stand.

“Get up,” I yell to Leo, Victoria. I run to Fred. Her leg is—attached, but mangled. It is holding on by tendons. The tibia and fibula are exposed, cracked in multiple places. And the meat has been bludgeoned into a near paste. Bloody minced meat half buried in the snow.

I vomit. It’s so immediate I feel the burning bile in my nose. But then I have to turn back to Fred and decide what to do.

“Cut it off,” Victoria wheezes from beside me. She has Leo leaning against her. Half her face is bruised from the impact on the tree and she bends in a way I think some of her ribs must be cracked.

“I’ll do it,” she says, and shoves me away. She grabs the axe from beside Fred’s open hand and raises it above her head, wincing at the stretch.

I turn before she brings it down.

The hybrid is practically on top of us. Victoria is hacking off the remains of Fred’s leg. Leo is still gushing blood. There’s no way, no way, we’ll get out of here in time.

I sit in the snow craning up at this great twisted beast.

“Siste,” I say.

Halt.

The hybrid comes to a creaking halt. It twists its head at me, inspecting.

“Quid dicis?”

What did you say?

The noise that emerges feels ancient and new all at once: a dozen, overlapping voices, all ages and genders, a coalescence.

I am shaking. The fear that ignites in my body is innate, almost evolutionary. As if an ancestor long ago learnt to fear this thing. I scrabble back and breathe deeply.

I ask: “Quid vis?”

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