Page 22 of House of the Beast

“Aster,” I hissed. “What is this?”

His expression was still one of easy triumph, eyes glinting and brows relaxed. “A trial worthy of my chosen vessel.”

I had no time for a retort.

The Meister clapped her palms together, and the Thing lurched toward me, as quick as an arrow despite its bulk.

I managed to throw myself to the side in time to avoid being plastered against the temple floor. It was faster than when it’d fought my father and cousin—much faster. Louder too. When it realized that I had dodged its attack, it let out a hateful scream and charged again.

The crowd was no longer my concern. The Thing slashed and clawed at me like a wild animal.

Gone was the controlled grace of its earlier attacks.

I parried and dodged, trying to recall my training, but its full strength had taken me by surprise.

My head was horrifically empty, every thought driven away by its relentless assault, and soon it was only pure instinct that kept me moving.

This was not how my trial was supposed to go.

Its arm swung toward me and I barely was able to avoid being crushed with a mistimed block.

The full force of its swing jarred every bone in my body, turned my tendons into jelly.

I nearly lost my grip on my sword. The muscles in my arm were already screaming for a reprieve.

All my anger, all my determination, was gone, replaced by the animal urge to keep myself alive.

Desperate, I sidestepped the Thing’s next attack and wrenched myself away from it, only dimly registering the jeers of the crowd as I retreated.

Aster. Where was Aster? My eyes swept urgently around for him.

I found him still standing off to the side on the temple floor, hands on his hips, looking unimpressed.

“Is that all, Alma?” he called. “Come on, you can do better than that.”

The little bastard.

The Thing caught up to me quickly. Furious at the utter lack of help I’d received, I heaved my sword upward to meet its next blow in a clash of metal and sent the Thing veering off to the side.

It was but a brief reprieve. This close, I could see all the clockwork in its skull that had been hidden under the talismans, clicking and churning wildly.

Something pulsed faintly underneath it, cold and weak—the sad remainder of a soul, bound to eternal servitude.

No wonder it was screaming.

With a whir of clockwork, its arms spun back toward me in a smooth arc, metal flashing.

I lurched back in time but still its claws caught on the skirt of my dress, ripping it.

I continued my retreat, keeping my footwork steady, hoping for some space to just think —one step, another, until someone held me by the shoulders, stopping me from going back any farther.

“What’s the matter?” Aster tutted. “You’re fighting like your father: neat bladework, playing by the rules. Where is that supposed to get you?”

I almost screamed at him for getting in my way.

Instead, I wrenched myself from his grasp, throwing myself to the side just in time to avoid being served up like meat for the Antecedent’s brunch platter.

I managed to catch my balance in time, turning my momentum into another quick retreat—but it was no use.

Thunderous footsteps, swift and fluid despite the Thing’s size, pursued me to the edge of the temple.

It did not seem to care that there were confines for this trial to be held in.

Attendants and guards were cautiously backing away.

“Get back!” I snapped at them. “Get out of the way!”

At least they listened. They scrambled away, and just in time. I took the extra space they had provided me to evade a wild swing. The Thing’s claws sank into one of the thick wooden pillars holding up the upper level. There was a loud crack. Above us, the crowd cried out as the balcony buckled.

“That structure is five hundred years old!” the Antecedent hollered behind me.

Unfortunately for him, the history of Avera architecture was the least of my concerns. As I stumbled backward, trying to regain my footing, I bumped into Aster again, who had reappeared behind me and held me at the elbow this time.

“Breathe,” he said calmly into my ear.

“How am I supposed to—”

“Trust me, and remember what I taught you.”

A memory of his most important lesson flashed into my mind. A bird with a broken wing, feathers dripping blood.

Against all my screaming instincts, I slowed down and breathed.

Aster had said this was the easy part. It should have been the easy part. The rest of it—the pretending, the parading around in front of others—that was what drove my palms to sweat. But I knew how to connect to my elder god, and I knew how to kill.

This was not one of my father’s sparring lessons. This was a trial to test my bond to the Dread Beast Himself. They called me Lord Zander’s mad daughter, and it was time to live up to the title.

The Thing dashed toward me, and this time, with Aster standing in solid support behind me, I saw what I had been missing. That pulsing thread of life, faint underneath all that clockwork and twisted by its Meister’s magic, but still there. Clear as a late-summer day.

I caught its wild swing in a swift riposte and pushed it away with enough force to leave it reeling.

The noise of the temple faded away. All was quiet—just like those peaceful afternoons when Aster would hunt a small animal down and ask me to follow the trail of its death to find him.

I had seen the way to my prize. My feet propelled me forward as my blade whipped through the air.

My blood sang. There was no more thought, only the mad pursuit.

“Can you see the life inside it?” said Aster, his voice still clear over the wild beating of my heart. I could almost feel it within me, so sweet and familiar it was the easiest thing to give myself over to it.

A dull glow caged inside a dead, clockwork body. It pulsed weakly, calling to me. Almost as if it wanted me to end it.

“I see it,” I breathed.

The Thing was backing away, shying from my sword. In those few seconds, I had driven it back to the center of the temple. A perfect stage for the finishing blow.

I thought of all those small creatures whose lives I had held beneath my fingers. Fur and blood, soft under my skin. Death would find its way to me again, and I would look up and see my monster’s smile.

My sword was in my left hand, metal wrapped around metal.

I drove it into the Thing’s gut, right through the center of that dull glow.

A twist of my hands, and then I launched myself onto the Thing’s bent knee, using the momentum of my climb to heave upward.

Muscle, bone, metal did not matter. Only the shining trajectory of my blade, bright and vicious, slicing right through the deep magic binding the Thing together.

My blade exploded out of its skull, sending brass cogs slimy with gray matter flying into the air. I landed back on the ground and staggered slightly to catch my footing.

For a moment, the Thing remained standing. Then the two halves of its body, neatly butchered through the middle, began to split apart—slowly at first, before it gave over to its own weight and collapsed with a heavy, lifeless thud.

The pulsing thread of life was gone, and my metal hand thrummed with the memory of cutting it.

The first thing I heard was my own breathing, harsh and short, hot with elation.

The Thing lay unmoving. Its flesh did not stitch itself back together. The clockwork of its body, which had remained ticking all throughout being dismembered by my father and impaled by my cousin, had gone still.

There was a wail behind me. I swayed on shaky feet as the Meister pushed past me and fell to the ground, her fingers pulling the butchered mass of her Thing toward her chest as if she could press the pieces of it together.

The rest of the temple was silent.

After a moment, the Cardinal announced in a tone of halting disbelief, “Alma Avera passes the trial.”

Aster, standing across the Thing’s corpse, smiled at me—slow, dark, and easy.

“See?” he said. “You’re a natural.”