Page 81 of The Teras Trials

“No, no, no,” Victoria is saying. “What about the hemlock? The Artificer said—we need to—” And it’s shock making her babble, and fear, and Bellamy has to put a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.

There are a few sharp murmurs and hushed whispers. No screams yet. No sound of people being torn apart. I squint and brace myself for an attack. But the thing hasn’t even crossed the threshold yet, like it wants an audience, like it’s assessing how it can get to all of us in one bound.

All this is a guessing game. I can’t see it. And I need to. I edge around the table and scrabble along the floor to the one beside ours—Leo makes a sharp noise that’s echoed by the applicants at the next table as I shove into their crew.

“Stay down,” I tell them, like I know what I’m doing. I think about asking if any of them has hemlock, but what’s the point? There’s nowhere to hide and no way to administer it. We will all be ripped apart before the hemlock does its job. “Just stay down.”

I edge around until I’m at the table’s head, and the angle is enough that I can see into the shadows of the open door.

Glowing eyes glint through the dark of the doorway and canvass the room. Sound is muted on the stone, but I still hear the teras’ approach. The thud of a fat, hefty paw, the low clicking grumble in its chest. Pad, pad, pad, reverberating, echoed in all of our hearts. The great beast crosses the threshold and glows golden. Its fur, impenetrable, refracts the candlelight so that it shines; so that it could be an agent of God if I couldn’t see its face, and how misshapen its jaw is. It’s not a normal lion. This one is bulky, with visible muscle, and its maw is twisted and swollen, with most of its face distended around giant teeth. And when it opens its mouth and roars, stringy yellow spittle sprays out of its mouth, red swollen tongue lolling out over its teeth.

It is a standoff that doesn’t last. Someone thinks they can outrun it: a young man shoots up and dashes to the back of the hall. It’s stupid, there’s nowhere to go, but fear is in his legs. The teras bolts forward, roaring; it leaps in the air, a near vertical ascent, and mid-air above the tables it twists its massive body. When it comes crashing down on the stone, it cuts off the boy’s path, already facing him.

He’s dead before he knows it. I hear one terrified choking nose, some frightened instinct that realises he’s about to die, and then the lion strikes. A sizable claw cuts across his neck. I have a perfect view of it, I see all the horrific details. Skin, tendon, muscle; all of it sliced open in a way that looks like it’s unstitching, a seam falling apart. Blood pushes out of the wound in a spritz, then a stream, and his face grows unnaturally pale rapidly at the same time the glint in his eyes peters out. His head does not come off. Not fully. The flesh at the back of the neck holds on, and he’s not dead yet. Raspy breathing sounds as the body tries to breathe through the severed windpipe. His hands spasm, half reaching to the throat, playing out the last moments of his dying brain.

The body crumples to the floor in a pool of its own blood. I can’t tear my eyes from it. I think back to Watford, I think about sitting in all the gore and those bodies, and Thaddeus’ guts in his hands, and the boy whose brains I blew out with my gun, and God, am I still a good man?

Adrenaline kicks in before I can succumb to that spiral and it ousts the panic with a numbing focus. The rapid beating of my heart ebbs away to an orchestra of screams. I blink back into awareness and I feel rough hands on my shoulders.

“Cassius! Cassius, for God’s sake, please!” Leo shouts at me. Fred and Bellamy kick the table over and drag it to hide us from view. I don’t know where its original occupants went. I don’t know why the teras didn’t lunge for me when I was sitting there. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know—

Slap.

Sudden stinging pain dances across my cheek. Victoria is breathing heavily in my face, tears in her eyes. “Stop panicking,” she pants, clearly on the edge of panicking herself. “Stop it. Just stay here. Talk. We need to—figure out what to—” She pauses to hyperventilate, five or six rapid inhales, before she gets a grip. She lets Bellamy wrap an arm around her and huddles back against the table.

Roars and wet crunches, screams cut off abruptly, rasping breathes that become gurgles as lungs drown in blood. It’s picking us off one-by-one.

“We can’t stay here,” I hiss. “We can’t.” I risk a peek over the table barrier. Little pockets of students have done the same as us. I can see them huddling behind overturned tables, waiting for the inevitable. But the Nemean Lion has grown momentarily bored. It moves from corpse to torn apart corpse, scavenging, tearing flesh from the bones and grunting. Someone spasms weakly, still alive, and it whips around to them, jaw unhinging and gore-stained teeth biting down into the neck.

I flinch and sink back down. Blood is in my nose. The stench is acrid and everywhere. The animal instinct in me is terrified, shaking; how can I be a Hunter when I am so clearly prey?

“We have to get out of here,” I say. Leo flinches closer towards me. He grabs my hand. In one fluid motion, he’s brought my fingers to his lips to kiss them. And over my hand Leo just nods, like he’ll follow me anywhere. My body relaxes, the adrenaline flooding my heart eases off, and the result is a dizzying wave of nausea.

God, I don’t want him to die.

“Do we have to kill it? Or—?” Fred starts. She cuts herself off when a nearby snort sounds awfully close. We all brace ourselves like the flimsy wood can be a legitimate saviour. But nothing attacks. After a beat she continues, more softly. “Or will we forfeit if we leave?”

How am I to know? And forfeit what? There are no consistent rules to this place. We haven’t been told if the trial is to survive or kill it. I don’t answer, because I don’t want to sound angry about how little I know. Still, all of them look to me as if I know more than them. I think about saying: we’re the only hope for everyone alive in this hall. But I don’t want to bear the inevitable burden when half of them are torn to shreds.

So I clear my throat.

“Plan is the same as it was before,” I say. “We get out. Get the Artificer’s salve. Plenty of food here. Plenty of bodies. We slather the salve on something, and we entice the teras, make it eat it, and then it’s done. We’ve killed the Nemean Lion.”

And yes, it’s so much easier said than done, but saying it aloud is all I can do. No one comments, but neither does anyone argue. Before I can say anything else, though, Fred, who has been scanning over the table as I speak, suddenly slips out from relative safety. Silas’ hands go after her and hover in the air. I feel him ready himself to move, but she’s back within seconds, pulling back with her a silver platter of beef.

“In case we can distract it.” Fred takes a fistful of medium-rare, marinated beef in her fists. “Don’t look at me like that,” she says glaring at me. “You’re going to make us run for it, and the instant that thing gives chase, we’re dead.”

I make a noise. “Well, if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

She holds up the fistful of beef. “I clearly don’t.”

“Okay,” Silas says, exhaling. “What about everyone else in this hall?”

In truth, I hadn’t been thinking of anyone else. I am barely thinking of us—I just want to get out of here. I don’t know how much more of this shit my body can take. But Silas looks concerned, and I think: God, this man actually has a conscience. He might be the only one of us that truly cares for the sake of caring. I am always, inevitably, worried about God’s judgement—but am I compassionate? Would I care if it wasn’t for my immortal soul?

“Please,” Silas says, looking at me, and what can I say?

“Silas,” I whisper—God, he is a good man. “We’ll come back. I swear it. And you can hold me to it.”

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