Page 33 of The Teras Trials

The python bites me. Its teeth are fine and sharp; two little stabs that puncture my leg. But then I scream. The torch clatters to the ground. Intense pain burns through my flesh. I kick the air, wild and panicked. My foot slips. The table falls out from underneath me; a brief respite as it clatters onto the python. All the weapons fall with it, pipe rolling across the floor and out of reach.

“God. God.”

I stagger away and manage to scramble up just as the python bursts through the table. My torch is on the ground, fire snuffed out, so I rush backwards to another corner and pull another free. The python launches at me, but when I shove the flame in its face, it squeals. Hissing and spitting, it tries in vain to attack through the flames.

I try to control my breathing. Think, Jones, think. My leg hurts to stand on. I don’t know if it's poisonous. I don’t know if its breath or its blood holds venom.

That is the danger with teras and myth — there are a dozen variations in the world, and if you want to stay alive, you need to believe all of them at once.

But I don’t need to kill it. I just have to make it to the door.

So I stab forward with fire, forcing it to retreat further back along the floor. Every step towards it is met with a vicious whip-like bite.

My hands shake. I can’t quite feel it under the adrenaline, but I am panicking. More than that, more than my consciousness: my body is in fear. My body knows what happens to people when a teras wants to eat it. They simply get eaten. They get killed. I feel like I’m just a boy with a bit of fire against a monster torn from myth. And if I die here, will my mother ever know?

Suddenly, it lunges. I roll forward out of its way and lose the torch in the process. So screw this.

I spin on my heel and dart for the door. I am fast, but the teras still fills my periphery: a fat, dark worm shooting overhead to block my retreat. It drops with a thud from the ceiling so I drop too, rolling towards the pipe on the ground. Scale scrapes on stone as it comes for me, and I wave the pipe wildly, scrabbling up half blind.

One spitting hiss later and I realise I’m no closer to the door. I’m facing it, but the python remains between me and freedom.

The python slithers forward, assessing me. Up close, I can see its thick body is covered in burn marks and stab wounds. Nothing on that table has been enough to pierce the thick snakeskin. Not even the gun, if my brother is to be believed.

Shit, if I knew my mythology better, maybe I could—

The thought ends early as the python shoots forward with startling quickness. I skid back once, then again. The python’s fangs close over air, but the frustration only seems to aid it: it strikes faster with every failed attack. Just like that, I’m backed up against the door I’d first entered. There isn’t time to think. I lunge forward with the pipe and whack it across the head. A dull thud sounds. The creature screeches and rears up, flailing in the air.

I don’t fucking wait for the thing to recover. I bolt. It tries to get me as I dart by it and narrowly misses my shoulder, and I’m so stupidly surprised I let myself whoop excitedly—until the python’s massive tail picks me up and slams me against the stone wall. The pipe clatters out of my hands, rolling away out of reach.

New fear sparks in me. I’m on the ground. I’m weaponless.

The python hisses at me. With two torches blown out, half its face is thrown into shadow. It only looks more terrifying. Some great, bloated dragon from myth: my whole body seizes in growing shock. My life seems closer to the edge sitting there, entirely at its mercy.

I feel for the sparker in my pocket. The fear in me wants me to use it. But the fear that I’ll fuck myself by wasting my greatest asset in the first trial is larger.

You can do this, you bastard. Get up.

The python makes me move. It hisses and strikes down beside me again. I roll three times towards my metal pipe before I stand and dive, stabbing forward with it into the teras’ tail. The python makes a startled noise and lunges towards me again. I roll, grazing my face on the rough ground and diluted blood of my fellow would-be students. I push myself to my feet and jam the weapon into the python’s flank a handful of times, thudding into it. It snaps and writhes in fury.

Then I make the decision. I launch the pipe at it and run.

I hear it hit. The python gives an outraged cry, and over the top of its scream, I hear my weapon clatter impotently to the ground. But the door is there. The door to my freedom. I lunge.

As soon as my fingers graze the metal of the doorknob, a grate flies up and slams against the ceiling. I spin in time to see the python ram itself against the metal grate, gnashing and hissing uselessly through the close-packed bars.

I stare at it. This isn’t the same as hunting with Thaddeus. This feels a little too close to sport.

The monstrous python slowly stops its attack, but it stares at me with the knowing eyes of a predator. It takes me a moment to realise I am not only shaking, but blood is pouring from a cut above my eye. I want to touch it, but something about breaking eye contact with the creature unnerves me. I have never been this close to a living teras before, not without either me or it launching an attack. But I stare at it, and in staring, I am shaken. Unnerved. A certainty fills me, greater than anything I have ever felt.

I know this creature is more intelligent than I’d ever thought a teras could be. More intelligent than I want it to be.

Perhaps that is why I am compelled to speak to it.

In the pulsing death throes of my adrenaline, I recall it. I can identify this teras: D Tier teras, Delphyne class.

“I remember you,” I tell it with a nod. “Your myth, I mean. Apollo slays you. Python. Delphyne.”

The delphyne python draws away from the bars with a quiet, angry hiss. I don’t want to think it understands me, but what other conclusion can I draw?

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