Into the Infested Side

by Shane Hegarty

  Behind the Orthrus, the Legend rose. As it spread its wings and focused on Finn, he suddenly saw compassion and peacefulness glow in its eyes.

  Hiss appeared to enter a trance. “Many of us are tired of endless war with the humans,” he explained, the tenor of his voice different, as if the words were not his. “We only want our own world now. A peaceful world. A change is coming. You must return. You must tell them.”

  Hiss snapped out of the trance, flickered his tongue rapidly while shaking his arrow-shaped head. “I hate it when she does that,” he said. “We have a link. Telepathic. Just me and her. Not the mutt at the front. It gives me a frightful headache. Another burden placed on me in this life.”

  The serpent settled again, leaving Finn somewhat gobsmacked, unsure how to respond.

  “Ah, does the dragon speak?” said Estravon, who had been watching the exchange from the front of the cave, where he was rubbing hands that looked red and raw. He answered his own question. “Of course it speaks. The trees probably have a few words if you push the right branch. Now did Finn tell you his plan? No? Well, all I’ll say is that you Legends, or whatever you call yourselves, had better not go dying in the next few decades or it’s not going to be a great plan.”

  Estravon went back into the cave, but popped his head out again to complete a thought. “Oh, and you might want to think twice about relying on that boy there. He is a walking, talking, clanking disaster. Everything he touches results in catastrophe.”

  He disappeared again, resuming his loud struggle with whatever it was he was loudly struggling with.

  Finn ignored him. He had been through enough now that he was just going to go with the plan he’d concocted. Even if all the other ones had failed.

  “How long do you live for?” he asked Cornelius and Hiss.

  Cornelius growled.

  “That is a delicate matter,” said Hiss.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask a personal question.”

  “It is not that,” explained Hiss. “If he dies, then I am stuck where he drops. If I die, he must drag around my poor lifeless body for the rest of his pitiful life. And, trust me, getting a mate when you have a corpse stuck to your backside is not as easy as it might sound.”

  Cornelius whined.

  “It is tough enough as it is in our condition frankly,” added Hiss. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because we don’t come from here,” explained Finn.

  “That is hardly news,” said Hiss.

  “What I mean is that we don’t come from this time. The gateway that opens from my world into this one also opens from my present to the past. Or your present to the future. What I mean is that I come from your future. My grandfather comes from the past.” Finn blew out his cheeks. “It gives me a headache even trying to explain it.”

  “You should try having two headaches simultaneously,” said Hiss. Cornelius groaned in agreement.

  “The point is,” said Finn, “I need you to find my father. But it won’t be for a long, long time. Thirty-two years from now.”

  “Minus just over two weeks,” Estravon interjected from the cave.

  “Minus just over two weeks,” confirmed Finn. “But, when he comes through in the future, you need to be ready to save him and tell him.”

  Hiss appeared to zone out for a moment, then snap back into focus. He glanced at the Quetzalcóatl. “She says you will need to be more specific than that.”

  “I can’t,” said Finn. “No, wait, I can. It’s just after the invasion, when Manticores cross over from here to my world.”

  “We are often invading your world,” said Hiss.

  “No, not in my time. There’s only one invasion then because the gateways have closed. Darkmouth is the only Blighted Village left in my world. My father will come through after this one invasion, years after the gateways stop opening everywhere else.”

  The serpent blew a great hot breath from its snout, stretched its wings.

  “All I ask is that, if you find him, you rescue him and help him come here. To this cave. Just over two weeks after the invasion. It might be the only chance he has. Please.”

  Cornelius shook his head forlornly.

  “That is your plan?” asked Hiss.

  “Yep,” said Finn cheerily.

  “I am sure you could concoct a worse plan, but I am struggling to think how.”

  “Actually, I think it’s a very good one,” said Finn.

  “What makes you so confident?” said Hiss.

  “Because it’s already worked.” He waited while that sank in with either end of the Orthrus. But it didn’t seem to, so he explained. “All that time I thought Dad was on my radio telling us to go to the tower, he was warning us to stay away from it. Because he knew who was there. He knew what could happen. And he knew all of that because you told him. You will tell him.”

  “But...” said Hiss. “If...”

  Cornelius moaned.

  They each looked at the serpent. After a few seconds of contemplation, it bowed its head.

  “It would seem you have an agreement,” said Hiss.

  From the cave came a triumphant cry. Estravon emerged, a crumbling stalagmite in one hand and a crystal held aloft in the other. “Got it!”

  Finn carefully worked the crystal into the bag, turning it slowly, checking to see if the coating of red dust stuck.

  Estravon was examining the calculations and ratios written in Niall Blacktongue’s notebook. Finn had explained what these calculations meant – or rather his best guesses based on everything his grandfather had said in the tower. Estravon fancied his chances of putting his Advanced Gateway Chemistry studies to good use. Both knew it was a gamble as to whether they’d get the right amount of dust on to the crystal to open a time-travelling gateway back to Darkmouth.

  “Little more,” Estravon suggested. “Don’t miss any spots.”

  “There are strange things in with this dust,” said Finn, looking closely at small brown particles mixed with the sparkling white and red of the pulverised crystals. “Maybe it’s a unique chemical compound created by the joining of two worlds.”

  Estravon peered into the bag. “No,” he said, “that’s my sandwich. Well, the crumbs left over from it. It was the only bag I had.” He caught Finn’s eye. “Don’t give me that look. I’d spent the night in my car. It wasn’t like I could put a roast chicken in the oven.”

  Finn returned to coating the crystal. “It better not have any effect on the gateway.”

  “Oh, you mean worse than blowing open the very fabric of time and space itself based on some dodgy calculations in your grandfather’s notebook?” said Estravon. “Anyway, if a gateway opens naturally when the sun hits the cave in Darkmouth, then why don’t we just wait for that to happen?”

  “The Legends will be coming to find us here. Do you want to wait a minute longer on the Infested Side?”

  “That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes any sense,” said Estravon. “Let’s get a move on.” He peered into the bag as Finn continued to dip and turn the crystal. “But I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been an extraordinary experience here. Apart from the sickness, the attacks, the violence, the inadvertent time travel, your father not being here at all, your rogue grandfather turning up instead, death stalking our every step and, most worryingly, the repeated rule-breaking, it’s been... invigorating, to say the least.”

  Finn pulled the crystal from the bag and together they examined it.

  The serpent circled in the sky, watching for signs of approaching Legends. It was joined by a second Quetzalcóatl, before each banked away to keep watch from separate pieces of sky. Cornelius and Hiss patrolled the edge of the clearing, their presence obvious only from the bickering that broke out on the occasions when Cornelius wanted to cock a leg and mark his territory.

  Estravon flicked through the notebook, still examining Niall’s calculations. “That’s almost enough dust now, I’d say.” He thumbed through a couple of other pages. “Your gr
andfather was such a wasted talent. This is incredible work on the crystals. There’ll be great interest in his findings. It should be possible, subject to agreement by the Twelve, to use his research to adapt a Darkmouth crystal, punch through to the Infested Side and grab your father if he’s still waiting there.”

  Finn said nothing, returning the crystal to the bag to add a little more dust. But his silence wasn’t just down to concentration. Estravon seemed to sense that. “You’re up to something,” he said.

  “I’m not,” said Finn, focusing on the crystal.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Estravon said. “I just gave you good news about how we might look for your father and you didn’t bat an eyelid. You just keep on covering that crystal, which at this stage is dustier than a Half-Hunter’s fighting suit. Let’s confirm this. The plan is to use this dusted crystal to get home and then, after the appropriate criteria have been satisfied, we will clean a Darkmouth crystal of all dust and use it to get to your father. So, repeat after me. That. Is. The. Plan.”

  Finn did not repeat after him.

  “You’ve got some other dumb notion in your head, I can sense it,” said Estravon.

  Finn took the crystal from the bag, and stared at it. “We’re going to need another crystal,” he said.

  “No, we’re not. Not unless this one doesn’t work or you want to use a second one to do something incredibly stupid.”

  “When I was at the tower with my grandfather—”

  “Ah, so you’ve selected the stupid option.”

  “—he told me what happens when you open two gateways together.”

  “He wrote about it too. Look, it’s clear as day.” Estravon held up the notebook and its drawing of intersecting circles and a skull and crossbones. “See that? That’s maths language for ‘it’ll be a disaster so don’t be an idiot’.”

  “We can use this dust to open one gateway to our time...” Finn began to explain.

  “You never mess with maths,” said Estravon through a pinched mouth.

  “...and we can then use a normal crystal from this cave to open a second gateway straight from Darkmouth to my dad’s time on the Infested Side.” Finn was trying to get the idea right in his mind, to see it clearly, simply. But he knew he must sound desperate. Which he was. “The way my grandfather explained it, it’s kind of possible to have, like, two gateways at once which hopefully will be linked. Like a loop.”

  “Kind of?” said Estravon, incredulous. “Hopefully?”

  “It should be easy,” Finn concluded, trying to convince himself as much as Estravon.

  “Oh yes,” said Estravon, losing his composure, “we could do that when we get home, after a while, subject to full approval from the Twelve. But we cannot do it on the whim of some crazed, famously incompetent twelve-year-old.”

  Away from them, Cornelius barked and disappeared into the trees. Finn noticed that the serpents weren’t anywhere to be seen either.

  “I’ve told them to bring my dad to this cave, in the future,” said Finn, holding the red-dusted crystal and moving towards a stalagmite at the cave’s entrance, which he proceeded to kick at. “I promised him I’d be there. The longer he stays there, the more chance something awful will...” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

  “You’ve promised him nothing yet,” Estravon said forcefully. “You’re still thirty-two years away, more or less, from even getting that message delivered.”

  Finn kept kicking at the stalagmite, hardly scratching it.

  Outside the cave, they heard Cornelius barking urgently. Estravon used that distraction as a chance to rush at Finn and twist his arm expertly behind his back so that he was forced to open his hand and release his hold on the crystal he had covered in dust.

  They could hear Hiss shouting something.

  “Give it back!” demanded Finn. “Give me that crystal.”

  “I’m just about OK with trying this dust trick to get us home to our place,” said Estravon, releasing Finn’s arm and taking a couple of steps further into the cave, “but I am not keen on live experiments with the very fabric of space-time.”

  “Why can’t you just forget the rules for five minutes?” Finn pleaded.

  “I have, as it happens, but only because there are no rules to deal with the craziness of this idea.”

  The Orthrus burst from the treeline, skidding to a halt at the cave. Hiss lifted himself up from behind. “We have visitors. They are not happy.”

  At the same time, the two serpents appeared high above them. A third joined them and together they banked and dived towards something unseen in the forest. Finn snatched at Estravon, trying to grab the crystal back, but the Assessor retreated further into the cave.

  “You have no idea of the consequences of all of this,” he told Finn. “You can’t just mix a crystal from one world with dust from another and then throw a whole other crystal on top of that. After you’ve just exploded. Especially after you’ve just exploded.”

  Outside, in the forest, bare trees suddenly darkened with life and there was a wave of noise. Of screaming. Of crashing. Of trees being smashed to smithereens. The serpents swooped low ahead of the wave of Legends, blowing a fierce blast of heat in their path.

  Finn looked at the edge of the snarling forest, then back to Estravon. But he had gone deeper into the cave. Finn followed, the fear filling his head less to do with the attacking hordes and more to do with the thought of losing that crystal. Panting, he dodged between stalagmites, avoided the dripping goo, stumbled over a rock and finally caught up with Estravon in the chamber where they had first arrived on the Infested Side.

  “I can’t let you do this,” said Estravon, holding his small torch in one hand, the crystal in the other. “There still need to be rules. Everything collapses without rules.”

  “We can’t leave my father behind. He would never leave me behind. Never. I’ll do everything I can to find him.”

  “And I will help you.” Estravon dropped the crystal to the ground, placed his foot over it. “But I have to stop you from destroying the world first.”

  “No,” Finn begged, panic in his throat, his breath quickening. He knew that if they waited for the Twelve to approve a rescue mission from Darkmouth it could take weeks, and every second his father was on the Infested Side was a risk.

  “Please don’t come any closer,” said Estravon, tipping the crystal with his heel.

  But Finn did, pushed forward by an instinct to protect the crystal and its dust. He heard the crack before he realised Estravon had stood on it, then saw him press hard, the full weight of his leg on the crystal. When he pulled away, the dust and crystal were smears on the floor of the cave.

  There was noise pouring into Finn’s head. The head-rush of his own shock. The mayhem of the Legends reaching the cave.

  “You’ve just killed my dad,” said Finn, awake to the sound of violence filling the cave. “You’ve killed all of us!”

  A creature crashed into the chamber, a blur of teeth, hair and claws under Estravon’s torchlight, a gnashing fury scrambling to get them.

  It reached Finn first, and he somehow dodged its charge so that it smashed against a stalagmite behind him. As the Legend stood again, Finn recognised it as a Grendel, standing over him with wolf snout, thick fur hanging over burning eyes. It looked very, very annoyed.

  Then a pen arrowed across the torchlight, embedding itself in what might have been an ear. Or another eye. Finn couldn’t be sure. Either way, the Legend howled.

  “Let’s go!” shouted Estravon.

  But there was nowhere to go. Only rock behind them. The sound of oncoming Legends ahead of them.

  “We could have got out of here if you hadn’t squashed the crystal,” said Finn.

  Estravon’s torch swung again, its beam reflecting off the claws of the recovered Legend. Finn raised his arms to protect himself. Then he heard biting. But it wasn’t coming from the Grendel.

  When Estravon’s light finally caught up with t
he frenzy, it illuminated Hiss’s fangs, rounded and sharp and biting down hard on the waist of the attacking Legend. There was a whimper from the Grendel, a spasm, and then it collapsed amid the debris of smashed stalagmites.

  “Oh, the relief of finally getting to bite something,” said Hiss, stretching out. “I really needed to let that venom out.”

  Without explanation, Finn grabbed the torch from Estravon’s hand and turned it off so they were in near total darkness.

  “Not again. What are you—?” started Estravon.

  “Wait,” interrupted Finn.

  In the silence was a noise. A wrenching. A groaning. It was as if the air around them was being cleaved open, torn roughly. It was low at first, but grew quickly.

  And in the darkness was something even deeper, a small well of crimson, getting bigger, boring through the wall between worlds.

  Finn and Estravon looked at each other and both said the only thing they needed to.

  “Get down!”

  They hit the ground just as the red gateway burst into the cave, a terrifying, vibrant scar looming above them, gorging on the air, bloated coils of energy writhing at its edges.

  Emmie’s head popped through from the other side.

  “Hi, Finn!” she said. “Nice kitty T-shirt.”

  From the ground, Finn raised a hand and waved at Emmie.

  She disappeared again suddenly, as if dragged back into her world by something malevolent.

  “Emmie!” called Finn.

  Steve appeared in her place, head first, helmet on, Desiccator in hand, stepping through the gateway while still looking back into the world he was leaving behind. “You’ve been on the Infested Side once already,” he told the unseen Emmie. “That’s enough for one day.”

  Steve turned to Finn. His dark visor could not mask his deep irritation. “Right. You two. Let’s go. Now.”

  Estravon jumped up, his ragged trouser ends flapping in the glimmering light. “Protocol suggests...” Another Legend arrived in the chamber and the Orthrus jumped straight for it, the two disappearing with a terrific crash behind some large stalagmites. “Actually, I’ve no idea what protocol suggests other than I get the hell out of here right now.”