Page 1 of The Teras Trials

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LESSON ONE: NOLI DORMIRE DUM IN SPECULIS

The snow has been falling for weeks; a heavy bone-white swathe that blankets the little market town of Watford.

I scan the place, breathing short with my body low against the snow. It’s impossible to tell which of the fallen stone structures have crumbled due to disrepair and which have fallen from the force of beasts.

Maybe if I’d come just a few days earlier, I would have seen it happen.

But now, in the flickering gaslight of a streetlamp, all I see is carnage.

“Stinks,” I mutter, yanking a cigarette out of my pocket. I lean forward to shield the flame from the wind and breathe a little gratefully once it’s lit.

“God, really?” my brother Thaddeus mutters. He’s angry about it and tries to swipe it from my fingers. I swat back at him. This is a small pleasure, and I will take it. Thaddeus glares at me and gestures around. “Now?”

“I figure there are worse vices,” I hiss back. “Certainly not like drinking on the job.” Thaddeus stares at me. He’s deeply unimpressed, but then, what’s new?

I take another drag and let the smoke settle in my lungs. “Besides, it calms my soul, Thad. And in a place like this, you can hardly blame me.”

We’re both crouched in snow and blood. I know the technicality of what I’m seeing. I know it’s limbs, blood, gore—but the reality of it is snagging in my periphery, caught on the thorn of my willpower. I know I’m squatting in people, but if I just refuse to think about it hard enough, maybe I can pretend it’s all ok.

Thad snorts once at me and turns back to stare at the streetlamp. I watch him for a moment, watch his breath swirling hot in the air, this even-paced drum that makes me forget where we are and what we’re doing.

“There,” Thaddeus whispers after a while. He nods seriously into the roiling dark of night, seeing some shape only a graduated Hunter could pick out.

I’m not about to dispute. All I have are very boring, very human eyes, so if my brother sees something, I decide I better get ready to kill it. I shrug nonchalantly, but anxiety is clawing at the edges of my mind. “If you say so.”

I get to my feet and ignore the way my body shakes. I dust the snow off my pants. I walk. It’s all very mundane and proper like my body isn’t aware of what it’s about to do—though my heart seems to know.

Trying in vain to keep my heart at a reasonable pace, I step out into the street.

The streetlamps must have been lit days ago. I can tell because their gaslight is a muffled, muted blur. It makes the street seem fuzzy. A crumpled, disembowelled body is slumped against one of them—perhaps the lamplighter himself. I make a point of not looking at it. No one survived this. No one remained alive to relight these lamps. I have to make do with the light available.

I walk, feeling eyes on me. I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but the darkness feels loaded and heavy like a thousand bodies are crammed close and tracking me. After a moment where nothing happens, I feel my knees buckle. Instinct tells me to lower myself to the ground; something about standing tall sends my guts spinning. I am too exposed here, and the darkness is a curtained vignette around me. It hides all manner of things that crave the warm flesh on my bones.

Calm, I tell myself. I peer into the shadows, hoping to spot the same shapes my brother did. Nothing solidifies. The night remains a swirling mystery, and that only makes me more tense. I force a breath to settle myself when a gust of wind nearly throws me to the ground. Hands up, I shield my face against the sharp whipping wind, squeezing my eyes against the onslaught. Too late I realise the mistake.

I snap my eyes open.

Squinting through the snow, I see movement. Out of the smudge of night, something speeds along the cobblestones. It weaves through all the open, broken bodies and throws its head back; the dead town echoes with a wide-throated howl.

Then I see a red mist gurgling from its mouth. Blood and gore and saliva spray out with its scream. Its head resolves into a sinewy, hard skull, dog-like and terrifying.

For a moment, I am frozen. In my periphery, I see my brother. He starts gesturing silently, then more urgently, and then it’s my own insistent voice in my head telling me to take the gun out—for God’s sake, man, get out the damn gun—my heart throwing itself into that unnatural, anxious flutter.

I realise I’m not going to move. I realise this is it. I am going to stand here and let the beast rip open my belly. In half a moment or less, Cassius Jones will be little more than an indecent smell and a red mark upon the snow.

“Move!” Thaddeus yells.

His rage makes me blink. I get over myself. Some shift in me, some will to live overrides my fear. Everything in me clicks and I turn, squaring myself against the incoming assault.

I shove both hands into my coat.

Howling, high-pitched clicking rises in the air; maybe it had been a gryphon once, or a wolf — long-necked, long-faced, bounding forward on unnatural haunches. Black talons beat against the cobblestones, this scattering percussion of scratches. Black pits for eyes. It takes everything in me not to shift.

I wrench my hands free of the coat. In my left, under my tight grip, I raise my flintlock pistol and pull the hammer back. In my right, I have the sparker. Long as my finger, fat as two thumbs, it could pass as a lighter to an untrained eye. I shoot my hand forward with it.

“Hold,” I whisper to myself, to my nerves. “Hold, hold.”

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