Page 43 of The Teras Trials

As soon as I’m in the next stretch, relief pricks at my head and a great weight removes itself from my shoulders. I breathe deep, realising only now that my lungs can stretch that there was a great heaviness on them. Spots burst in my eyes. Briefly, I’m forced to stay myself with a hand splayed on the wall.

For many minutes, there is nothing but stone. I walk. I decide which way to turn. But I’m operating purely on instinct. Anytime I feel the pressure of another uncertain, suffocating place, I circumvent it, or turn away. If my gut doesn’t like it, I change direction.

The only indication that I’m not walking in circles is when I move towards the wind, and find myself, inexplicably, where I’m meant to be. It is a quadrangle, with a covered walkway around the grassy centre, which is dominated by a tree that is surely ancient. Its long limber arms of the willows scraping the ground. Unlike the front of the University, which is lush and bright, this area seems almost uncared for. Dry, patchy grass covers the square where I assume students have sat for years. The rain plummets hard, turning much of the balding areas to mud. The willow bends with the wind, and I shiver. All of this is revealed to me through muted and distant torch light. Two torches burn by the doors of a room on the far right of the quadrangle building. How they’re surviving in this wind, I don’t know, but I am glad for them. I am about to step out when a jolt of lightning burns overhead. For a split second, the courtyard lights up—sun struck, incandescent—and I see a figure moving slowly from a door straight across the grassy square. Near to my right—too bloody near—a door closes.

“Well?” The voice nearest to me speaks. It’s deep and ragged. I watch a figure in a black Mackintosh coat and Hunter tricorn cross the square to the willow, not caring about the rain.

Eager to hear, I drop low and move into the quadrangle’s walkway, body pressed against a pillar closer to the willow. I am grateful for the night and the shadows; I’m not seen.

The figure across the way shouts back. “Runner. Got out by the western gate.”

From close to me there’s a scoff. “God. Every time. They don’t listen.”

The man’s accent is thick and northern. Glancing out from behind my pillar, I watch as beneath the boughs of the willow a tiny speck of fire burns as a cigarette is lit. Footfalls slap over, muddy and wet, as the other figure—same silhouette, if leaner, with same tricorn hat—moves to join the other.

“Give me a puff,” she says, and there’s a beat of silence as she presumably does just that. The smell of tobacco wafts towards me, and I breathe it deep, in hopes the second-hand smoke will settle me like a cigarette of my own would. I miss laudanum. I wish I had that hazy release now.

“What’s the compass say?” The woman says after a while.

There’s a shuffling of wax-covered coats as someone rifles in their pockets, then a sharp snap as metal is opened. I glimpse only the shine.

“Due west,” says the man. “She’s a xenos, right? Probably heading to Ludgate. Newgate, maybe, but Ludgate’s closer.”

“Guard might stop her,” the woman mutters. She doesn’t sound at all convinced.

“Come on, Payne, don’t be fucking daft.” A boot crunches, wet and hard, and the burning end of the cigarette disappears from view. “Let’s go. Don’t have all night.”

I press myself to the wall, fearful they’ll swing by me, but luck is on my side and they leave through another exit. I hold myself there for a moment and then I say a quick prayer for that runner. Two Blood Hunters are after her. She has no chance.

That’s two of my cohort to die outside a trial, as far as I’m aware.

Confident that the way forward is clear, I skirt around the covered walkway to the other side, where the woman Blood Hunter emerged from. Every few metres, a set of double wooden doors sit. I can see no lock on them, but they won’t open for me. They’re practically seamless. I move to the next door, for the sake of it. Try it. Fail. Again. A creeping sense of impending failure hangs over my head. I have seen too much today. My nerves are fried. My sense of control and calm is frayed beyond belief.

Even if I enter the library, who's to say it’ll be empty? And if not a professor, or a Hunter, the University’s students surely will tell on an un-initiated upstart trekking inside—let alone come to learn the University’s precious information.

I swallow and look to my right. At the far north of the quad sits another double door, only these are massive arches with wrought iron decoration that shoots out of the hinges in florals and arrows. It is obviously my destination. I move towards it, and then stand there in silence for five achingly long seconds, hand hovering over the door.

Do it. Hurry up.

With both hands, I swing open the doors.

They yield. At first, there is nothing. I was bracing myself for darkness, or the spitting to life of torches in sconces, but it’s already lit.

I blanch, bracing myself, expecting company. I see no one. No teras launches itself out of the doors.

I force myself to relax, but my breath is still coming in sharp.

The library is an expanse of books. I’m assaulted by the sight of them: four levels of book-lined walls and rows of bookshelves. On the ground floor, a circular station is set up for a librarian (who seems, thankfully, absent). Flush against two giant windows is a marble statue of a woman with Herculean iconography: she wears the skin of the Nemean lion. She holds in her hand a real spear, made of iron or some metal. I don’t know if the statue depicts Omphale, or some University Huntress emulating her, but the effect is the same. I am amongst culture. I am here for the future.

Two staircases flank the statue and curl up to the left and right to the next level.

I crane my neck and look up. A bowled roof with rafters like the underside of a boat is painted bright. There are clouds, angels, cherubs: an onslaught of Christian iconography that still seems out of place in an institution meant to fight creatures from pagan myth.

I give an airy, breathless laugh. My heart beats fast, but it is happy, this time: a thrill of another sort. It is like the latent academic in my heart is stretching, waking up, and it’s not the honey-pot trap from earlier this evening, but a lifetime worth of study. For the first time since the horror of today, I can see myself here. I imagine finding a nook, hunkering down to study. Perhaps with Leo. Perhaps even with the others. I fancy that I can see myself as part of this world.

Then, my heart stops.

“Ah,” says a deep, echoing voice. “I was wondering if someone might come and visit.”

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