Page 98 of The Teras Trials

(Here I pause because I feel all their eyes on me, this quadrangle stare where they all might be absolved if I take the blame. And for that I skim the rest in my head, without speaking it, which gives me half a minute of shock before I have to defend my hide.)

The rest of the letter reads:

Your final trial will be as much about fulfilling a promise to me as it is testing your group work. Before you worry, Mr Jones, you all survived it the first time. You should have a better idea what to do now.

The last sighting of the teras in question was north-east of your current position (compass enclosed).

P.S. If you need a hint, Mr Jones, it gutted your brother.

— Best of luck, Dean Drearton

God.

God, no.

Something fundamental in my brain gives out momentarily. I think part of me goes missing, or ejects itself from the conscious part of my brain—I just shut down. I keep myself staring at the paper, avoiding those fetid stares from the rest of them, and I already feel like I’m being circled by a pack of wolves.

“Well?” Fred prompts. “Go on.”

But I already know what they’re going to say. I have doomed them. I bargained their lives away from a set of rooms, for a chance to read a letter from my brother, a letter that has helped us barely at all.

And now we are to fight a manticore.

I open my mouth. I close it. So she stalks over and rips it from my hands.

My body tenses and I half lunge after it, until sense stops me. They will find out sooner or later.

Fred reads it and grows pale, which prompts Silas to read over her shoulder. I panic about what to say. Oh, I never thought we would have to follow through. I thought it would be years from now, when we had training. Yes, I’m sorry I doomed the lot of you, I’m sorry I made a decision on your behalf, but you see, my brother’s dying words. . .

No matter how I frame it, it’s selfish. I am at least self-aware enough for that.

Fred looks at me with tears in her eyes. I go to say the first “I’m sorry” of many, but she shouts over me.

“You—you bastard! You, who have lived in safety for years, while people like my brother and I have slaved for your comfort! You think you can make decisions on our behalf because of what? Some perceived betterment?”

“No,” I say, defensive, and panicking, and God, what have I done?

“You’ve fucking killed us all!” she howls.

“Fred,” Silas hisses, clamping a hand over her mouth. She sobs into his palm, but he grips her there, perked and waiting for the answering howl. “Fred, it’s too late. It’s too late. It’s done.”

He looks at me, hurt in his eyes. But he doesn’t condemn me. Not even now.

I told you, Silas Lin is too good for this place.

“What’s going on?” Victoria whispers. She rips the paper from Fred’s hands, who in turn shakes her brother off her back. Fred stalks towards me, jabs me in the chest.

“Time and again in these trials you have made selfish decisions. You have ordered us about like you have all the knowledge—but you don’t know anything! You don’t know anything about this world. “

I can feel myself getting pale. Weakly, I supply, “I grew up—”

“It doesn’t matter! You are nestled up in London’s bosom and have been for long enough to know it thrives off this arrangement. Did you ever stop to think that maybe the reason the University has teras on campus is because it benefits from it?”

Silas takes her in an embrace, and I am forgotten. But Fred’s words stick with me. Even when I was outside the wards, my father was a fisherman. We lived in a free town—and he was abusive, but it was different to having London’s agents watching your every move, the way they would for farmers like the Lins. I back up and risk a glance at Victoria, who has already severed herself from me. Even if she’s been here longer than me, it doesn’t matter. She hasn’t gotten anyone killed the way I have. She didn’t set us all up to be mauled by a manticore. And I’m scared to look at Leo, but I do it anyway, and I see that he’s refusing to glance my way.

We are falling apart before the manticore has even emerged

“It was to get the west tower,” I say. “My brother died telling me to get there. For the note. He thought. . .”

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