Page 40 of The Teras Trials

It’s my turn. I am frozen.

“What’s his name?” I say again, but I am relieved when once more the dean expresses his sincerest apologies for forgetting it. Good. Thank God. It would only make this harder.

This is a game of chess. It is my turn to move. I put my finger on the trigger. I pull.

Checkmate.

The shot rings out, echoing tenfold in the grounds as it rebounds off the buildings. Somewhere beyond London’s bounds, I hear a screeching cackle—some teras call I don’t recognise, except it is monstrous. Feels fitting when I look down and see the obliterated brainpan of my fellow student.

“Good lad,” the dean says. He stands with a creak and a sigh and mutters something at the grass stains on his legs. When I’m not immediately on my feet, he comes around to help me up. I don’t want him to touch me, but I can’t stop him; my traitorous body leans on him for support. “Rough business that, for your first night. But you did right by him. Nasty fall he had.”

“I suspect he jumped,” I say, and then realise how stupid I am being. My shock from the first trial compounds with this, suddenly, and I close my mouth.

The dean doesn’t correct me, but nor does he admit his mistake. He slips an arm around my shoulders—too familiar, too fucking familiar—and I am led onwards towards the chapel.

“Did right by your brother too,” the dean carries on, like nothing has happened. “Thaddeus would be very proud of you.”

Once I might have debated that. But I don’t know anymore. I don’t know the truth of Thaddeus Jones, and I never will, because my brother is dead. And maybe he was a monster, in the end—maybe that’s the truth of how the University trains us—but he wasn’t always one. He was a good man. Sometimes.

And I can stay a good man.

Sometimes.

13

LESSON THIRTEEN

The University’s chapel is the worst place to pray to God.

If you look past the main flaw, it is a very beautiful room. Limestone walls and a domed ceiling, with twelve little arched windows sitting up in the drum. Ribs climb from between the windows and converge in a beautiful circular fresco of a dead scylla—which then ruins the whole beauty of it, because it reminds me again of this chapel’s flaw.

Which is this: a massive centuries old scylla carcass is embedded in the room. It is a long dead creature, but it upsets me to look at, because it is forever locked in an open mouthed scream.

“Act of God,” the priest tells me at the expression on my face. Father Veer is forty, fifty maybe, by the salt-and-pepper hair and well lined face. He seems good natured, but I can’t relax. Not with this thing bearing down on me. The priest says, “Died out at sea. Some good men found it after the waves dumped its body out near Kent. But it is a good reminder for all students. Satan’s teras can be killed, no matter their size.”

The sight of the scylla makes me think of nothing more than the nearness of death. Not the grace of God.

Eerily humanoid, its massive upper half rears high above me. The scylla’s ribcage slumps around a supporting beam, confirming to me that this church was renovated around this monstrosity. Its skull-less spine crashes off to one corner, so the whole church is awkwardly spaced around the teras’ death. There is no forgetting this beast. This so-called Act of God.

The scylla’s lower half is a preserved, dried-out husk of octopus limbs. Blanched legs arc and twist in the air, touching the ceiling at odd angles. Candles and melted wax seep over it. Each one of the legs is capped with an open-mouthed fish head sneering over rows of sharp teeth, forever petrified in the moment of its death. But death is a funny thing, and petrification has a kind of life to it. Looking at it, even from this angle, scares the piss out of me.

I sit down in a pew and ask the priest to leave me to quiet contemplation, and I stare up at the creature. The only thing I’m grateful for is that its head is missing—stolen, I am told, before the body arrived. At least it means I don’t have to meet its eyes. But I still have to pray before it. The altar to God is sequestered beneath its mass. I hate how much sitting before it looks like worship. How much it feels like it. But this is a church—there are crosses. There is a priest. No devil can lurk here, can it? I squeeze my eyes shut and beg for God. Then I open my eyes and I’m at prayer before this beast of Satan.

There is nothing peaceful here. God is no where to be found.

I’m up and out of the chair before I can stop myself. Nausea broils in me—if I vomit over the carcass, will I have desecrated the church, or shown brass to Satan?—and I have to steady myself on the wall.

The peace I was hoping for here never comes, and I decide it was never the place for it. I was just being foolish, assuming I could find God here.

Before I manage to stumble out of this damned place, the priest’s hand finds my shoulder.

“Stay,” Father Veer says.

“I. . .” I swallow. I don’t have the right words. Denying him feels blasphemous, especially after tonight. Would he still be touching me if he knew I was a murderer? Would he still be touching me if he knew I lust for men?

Irrational, extreme thoughts swirl in my head as he guides me to sit in a pew. He squeezes in beside me. His action, I assume, is meant to feel securing and friendly, but I am trapped between him and the wall. I finally take stock of him. Blond, strong jaw. He doesn’t look like a priest. In this candlelit murk, he could pass for an older Leo. And just like that, I think about kissing him, how Judas kissed the Lord, but this is a true blasphemy, not just an approximation of one. I resolutely turn away and wring my hands.

“You are the first of your cohort to come, you know,” the priest whispers. “That surprised me. Truly surprised me. Usually. . . well, some true believers find me before the trials even begin. But after the first one, there’s always a sizable flock here. Tomorrow, I expect there will be many of you. Not tonight.”

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