Page 82 of The Teras Trials

He reaches out and grabs my forearm, squeezing it. I meet his eye. He is too good for this place.

I peer over the table. The Nemean Lion tears at a body, pulling free a chunk of flesh from the flank of a girl. It paws around the shredded uniform for the meat. I have to carefully and quickly shut off the part of my brain that registers the body as human. A kind of spotty, distant nausea flares behind my eyes; fear and recognition sparking, saying, that could be you. Don’t let that be you.

I tear my eyes from the scene. Directly opposite us, huddled against a table of his own, is Peter Drike and his crew. We lock eyes. He’s so scared he’s showing it, face aghast, breathing hard. I nod my head towards the open hall gates and his eyes go very wide. Slowly, Drike shakes his head.

I nod with more force. Yes, we’re doing this. Yes, it’s the only way. He shifts his body in response. I see his leg, uniform torn apart, near black with the amount of blood that’s pooling in the wound. Too much blood. Something vital has been split open. He’s dying and doesn’t seem to know it yet, and I don’t know what can be done. No Healer will come here until we beat the trial, if the harpy is anything to go by. Something tells me I should feel sorry for him, and when I feel nothing, I tell myself it’s the adrenaline, numbing the proper moral pull I should be feeling in my heart. Bully or not, it’s a terrible way to go.

In any case, Drike’s friend has it worse. Behind him, I see someone propped up, and multiple hands pressing down on a shoulder wound that might have destroyed the nerves in her arm. She is not conscious. Hell, I don’t know if she’s alive.

But staying here will be its own death for the rest of us. And I want to live. More than I thought.

Near the back of the hall, I see someone poke their head out and make a run for it to Drike’s table. There’s a growl; the Nemean Lion rears up, huffing, interested by the movement. But the girl is quick and she’s out of sight before the teras spots her. I see her choosing the same plan we have. She crawls to the edge of the table and peeks around, readying herself to dart to the next bit of cover.

“Come on,” I murmur, shuffling myself in the same way. “Let’s follow suit.”

Victoria is breathing hard. I worry panic will make her clumsy, and Bellamy, too. But I can’t worry about them, I can’t, not if I want to live.

“Fuck this,” Fred says. She puts the fistful of meat down and picks up the silver plate it was resting on. Too late, I realise what she’s doing.

“Fred,” I whisper, a warning. “Don’t. Don’t.”

I am ignored. Fred half stands and flicks the plate towards the back table. At first it slices through the air with a whistle, and then gravity takes a hold of it. Within moments it’s skidding across the floor, silver on stone screeching as it moves.

The teras reacts instantly. It perks up from the body holding its interest, gory fur dripping blood onto the stone. And it bares its teeth. The silver plate clatters against the table, and whoever’s behind it gasps. Out of fear or stupidity or both, they stand and peer over the table.

They lock eyes with the teras. The Nemean Lion moves. It launches from standing and propels itself across the hall, landing with a crash in front of the table. A chorus of screams go up. Someone stands and makes a run for it; they are felled instantly by one swipe of the paw, great claws gashing through the sternum. They stagger with a gurgled shock, and they’re dead on their feet a beat later. The teras ignores them. It craves the hunt again. I see it pacing the table, back and forth. Then it roars and bats it away. The flimsy wood flies across the room and shatters on the far wall.

Hunkered together are three or four applicants. The teras screams again.

Then the begging starts.

Whispered prayers to God, to the beast itself, to anyone watching. Oh, God, please, please.

“Oh, my God,” Silas breathes. “Fred, what did you do?”

His sister ignores him. She just grabs his wrist and runs. The rest of us look at each other and launch up within a beat of our hearts. I don’t look back. The doors to the great hall are swung wide, inviting, and we just have to get to them; something about crossing the threshold feels safe, even if that’s bullshit, false faith. I tell myself to get to the threshold, and everything will be okay.

The background to all this is death. I see none of it, but those cries are brutal.

The sounds of people who know they are about to die. Who have no power to stop it. Who must live on for timeless seconds in agony as they are cut from groin to neck, eviscerated, bleeding out, stop it, stop thinking about this, Cassius, you will fall apart if you keep thinking about this.

“Get the door,” Leo hisses to me, and any good man would have stopped and stared at him aghast. Because closing this door means trapping this beast in with the rest of them, and what is that if not damning them all to hell? But he’s right. The Nemean Lion seems to love a chase, and if it follows us, if we don’t retrieve the hemlock salve, then what?

Leo is already hauling one of the doors closed. The wood grinds against the stone, a great warning, and the teras throws itself around bodily, howling at us from the other side of the hall. I stare at it. It stares back. And then it bounds towards us.

It’s in that moment that Bellamy falls.

Maybe it was the wine, or a sole with no grip. I watch him tumble and it all seems inevitable. Victoria stumbles but doesn’t go down with him. She staggers to a stop to haul him up. And the lion is bounding towards them, distracted momentarily by their fall.

Leo says, “No!” before I’ve even launched myself off, like I’m sacrificing myself for them, like I mean to die. But I know in my heart—

—I’m not going for both of them.

All the air is knocked out of Victoria’s lungs as I grab her around the middle and haul her back. She starts screaming, pleading with me, but she’s barely fighting me, too caught up in a sudden wave of panicked tears. She knows what’s coming, and she knows I’m right, I tell myself. But Bellamy looks up, and sees me, and starts to beg like the others. Says, “No. Jones, please. Cassius. Cassius? Don’t leave me here.”

Voice like gravel, split and broken, a man who knows he’s about to die, who is looking his harbinger in the face and pleading with him. The lion bounds forward. I shove Victoria out of the hall, swinging back to grab the other door to pull it shut.

Bellamy manages to stand. He’s still looking at me. Why is he looking at me? Why is he begging me to spare him when the teras is at his back?

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