He looked back at Emmie reaching in to Finn, listened to the screams and cries, and pushed at the loose tooth in his jaw as he heard the voice of his tormenter Cryf declaring a sentence of death on the human boy.
In the tunnel itself, for all the noise echoing through it – Legends, Desiccator fluid, the general onrush of disaster – Finn didn’t hear very much. His hearing sort of shut down. Most of his senses really. As if his mind was protecting him, pulling down shutters and saying to him that he didn’t need to hear all of this, see any of that.
Except for one part that he couldn’t escape. The pain where his hip met his leg, due to a Fomorian pulling on the latter with the full intention of separating the two for ever.
Which in turn made him aware of the great pain at his arm as he tried to hang on to the rung of the ladder. So that, he realised, it felt like he was only pain, and a Desiccation might come as something of a relief.
Cryf roared at him, an eruption of anger.
Finn felt his reserves of strength shredding. One more yank on his leg would do it.
Cryf pulled.
Something crawled swiftly down Finn’s body. Someone. He recognised the smell first. It was Broonie. The Hogboon jabbed something at the Fomorian and immediately scrambled away again.
Cryf screamed. A high-pitched and piercing scream, quite out of keeping with his fearsome appearance. He clawed at his eye with one hand, where a fat tooth was embedded deep in his pupil.
Finn felt the Fomorian’s grip loosen.
The leg-armour of his fighting suit tore away in the giant’s hands, and the boot with it. Cryf fell back into the chamber of clamouring Fomorians.
Simultaneously, a flood of blue Desiccator fluid rushed suddenly through the tunnels. An outpouring of destruction washing through the corridors and desiccating everything in its path. Legends. Posters. Doors. Cryf. Broonie’s tooth. Whatever happened to be in its way.
Finn just managed to swing his leg out of the hatch as liquid splashed towards the ladder. He fell to his hands and knees beside Emmie and Broonie and gasped for breath. They watched the icy-blue fluid rush below them, listening to the sound of mass Desiccations, balls of Legends surfing the wave as it rushed past the manhole they’d popped up through.
“What did you do to him?” Finn asked Broonie.
Broonie curled a corner of his mouth, a tooth popping out and resting on his lip. “I had a loose tooth. I pulled it out and stuck it in his eye.”
Finn gaped. “Impressive. Thanks.”
“I didn’t do it just for you,” said Broonie, and Finn realised the Hogboon was as close to smiling as he’d seen before. “That deflated wartbag’s name was Cryf, and he deserved it. He and I have history.”
“And now he’s history,” said Finn. It was the kind of line his dad would have used, the quip of a real Legend Hunter. He felt pleased with himself.
“Good line,” said Emmie.
“He’ll have a hard life,” Finn said, immediately regretting not quitting while he was ahead. “Hard. You know, because he’s desiccated.”
“I’ll let you get away with that,” she grinned as the Desiccations continued below. “It sounds like popcorn in the microwave.”
“It’s like one of those kiddy ball pits,” said Finn.
“I don’t know what kind of play centre you went to,” said Emmie. “The ball pits at ours weren’t usually made up of frozen Legends.”
Finn didn’t say anything. He just shifted his eyes.
“Your dad actually did make ball pits out of desiccated Legends, didn’t he?” said Emmie, amazed.
“Well …”
In the welcoming cool of the air above ground, they began to laugh with relief and a touch of craziness, and the fact that Finn had no boots at all now, and was missing a leg of his fighting suit too, and instead would have to move on in a pair of socks with left and right written on them. But which were on the wrong feet.
“Only problem is I was keeping that tooth for a special occasion,” said Broonie.
They laughed even harder.
They would have kept laughing too if a razor-sharp shard from Gantrua’s bow hadn’t sliced into the ground between them.
“You!” Gantrua shouted as he steadily bore down on them.
Finn and Emmie were up and running away.
“Your time is over,” Gantrua growled.
Broonie disappeared over a wall into someone’s back garden. They heard him grumble as he climbed and yelp as his hands touched whatever nails and broken metal were supposed to keep Legends out.
Gantrua did not bother going after him. He had eyes only for the two young humans.
Finn and Emmie sprinted down a short alleyway off the street. Finn’s feet hurt, protected only by socks from the punishing hardness of the concrete. He trod on pebbles, struggled at kerbs. But he ran as fast as he could regardless, fear urging him on.
They couldn’t see Gantrua, but they could hear him, the thud of his steps, the sparking scrape of his sword on the concrete.
“Where are we running to?” Emmie asked.
“I don’t know,” answered Finn.
“The church?” she said. “Back to the others?”
“No,” said Finn. “We can’t lead him to the hiding place.”
“Where then?”
“Just away. Away is always good.”
Gantrua followed, relentless, his shoulders simply demolishing the walls either side of the narrow alley. He appeared from it, his long stride worth four of Finn and Emmie’s.
“This is my world now,” Gantrua said, remorselessly keeping pace with them, without even needing to run.
They turned on to the promenade, ran along the seafront.
Finn felt the tiredness in his limbs, the fatigue in his brain as he realised they weren’t going to be able to outrun Gantrua.
“You stole this world from us,” the giant Fomorian bellowed at them. “You put up a wall. You left us to rot.”
He tore a bin from the ground, pulling it up with a single hand, and flung it towards Finn. It tumbled through the air, striking the ground only a few centimetres from Finn’s feet. He didn’t stop running. His fear wouldn’t let him.
“We need to get to the stage,” Finn called to Emmie, turning to jump down on to the sand of the beach, its softness a relief to his burning feet. Emmie followed just behind. “We can hide there. Maybe.”
They were so close now, prompting Gantrua to stop toying with them and make a move. He broke into a longer stride that shook the ground, rattled the scaffolding on which the stage was built.
“We own this world,” he said, drawing his sword from his belt. “We are only taking back what is ours.”
Finn and Emmie reached the long curtain draped at the bottom of the stage, as Gantrua came at them with his sword raised. He brought it down with massive force, the blow shaking the structure’s foundations.
Finn and Emmie had just managed to duck into the shadowy space under the stage in time, the quivering metal ringing through Finn’s ears. Finn scampered round thick metal pipes, further into the darkness beneath. Ahead of them, Gantrua pulled hard on the curtain, tearing a section of it free and allowing his bulky silhouette to fill the space.
Finn and Emmie retreated, but with the edges curtained off behind them there was no sense of how far in they were, how far they had to go, or which way was out.
They couldn’t see Gantrua any more. All they could hear was his sword being run along the scaffolding. It carried through the entire structure, louder and louder in its reverberation, sounding like it came from one place, then another, then everywhere at once.
“What are we going to do?” asked Emmie.
“We need to get out,” Finn said, but it was all he could suggest. He had to calm his breathing. There was no help for them here. No devastating move he’d learned for this exact scenario. Finn could just about make out the gleam of Emmie’s eyes, and it told him she was almost as afraid as he was.
Gan
trua stopped rattling the scaffolding. It turned out the silence was just as frightening.
“Where is he?” Emmie whispered.
Still unseen, Gantrua started to strike the floor of the stage instead. Clang, clang, clang.
“If the stage comes down, it’ll crush us,” said Finn.
“And him,” said Emmie. “But us more.”
They backed further in, the stage’s support structure growing more intricate and dense the deeper in they went. Beneath Finn’s socked feet was damp grass and weeds. The darkness was almost total now. Finn felt like he was at the bottom of the ocean, the surface far above him, a crushing weight between them and safety.
Gantrua’s voice reverberated through the metal. “Niall Blacktongue talked about you. Year after year. He convinced us you were dangerous. He warned us of a prophecy. He told us you would be there at the end of the world.”
The ominous clash of sword on metal hurt their ears.
“He was right,” snarled Gantrua, his voice echoing about them. “This is the end of your world.”
Finn’s back touched the curtain, the underside of the stage. He grabbed Emmie’s arm, pulled her towards him and, without a word to identify where they were, pushed up the heavy fabric and squirmed out from under the stage.
Gantrua was there to meet them.
He loomed over them, almost as wide as he was tall. The terrible gathering of teeth at his helmet, his eyes burning with frustration, resentment and hate.
“All this trouble,” Gantrua said. “For someone not much bigger than a death larva.”
“You don’t scare m—” started Emmie.
But Gantrua whipped out a hand, grabbed her by the waist with fingers that could crush cars, lifted her and flung her directly backwards.
Finn watched her fly, hands and legs outstretched uselessly. She hit the grassy sand with a thump a good ten metres away, rolling violently a couple of times until she stopped face down.
Finn jolted towards her, but was stopped by Gantrua slamming his sword in his path.
“You are a disappointment,” said the Fomorian. “So flimsy. Mostly bone. No muscle.” He sniffed the air. “So much fear.”
Finn felt heat flood his face. Surge through his body.
“You hear that sound?” Gantrua asked, taking a step towards him, half his face lit by the street lights from the promenade, the other in the shadow of the stage. “That is the sound of my soldiers at the church. We found the humans. They are wiping them out. Clearing out the infestation.”
Finn could see Emmie groaning, hurt, unable to get up. He wanted to go to her, wanted to see if she was OK, wanted to get help. But Gantrua was in his way.
“That is the sound of your war being lost.” Gantrua pulled the sword from the earth, rubbed his hand along it and looked at the sand in his hands. The sword was upright, ready to be wielded. Properly. One final slash.
Emmie was hurt.
No one hurts Emmie, thought Finn.
Gantrua snarled, the broken teeth of his own mouth visible beneath the serpent’s tooth. “You. Are. Finished.”
Finn did the only thing he could at that moment. The only thing instinct would let him do.
He stepped forward. Towards Gantrua.
And he roared.
As Finn let his anger loose – a thunderous, throat-scraping roar that surprised even the mighty Gantrua, ruler of the Infested Side – he heard a rattling sound. He wasn’t sure at first if it was his fighting suit. Or his knees knocking together. Or something else. Something bigger. Either way, he did not stop his howl until the very last hint of breath had been expelled from his lungs.
Gantrua let the sword drop just a little, a curious expression on his half-lit, half-hidden face. Finn maybe even detected just a hint of respect.
There was a rattle. Finn knew what that was.
He thought of car alarms going off.
He thought of televisions changing channels.
He thought of soaked hamsters.
He concentrated on the tingling in his body, the one that had preceded his explosions on the Infested Side, the one he had worked so hard to keep a lid on. This time he let it grow, envelop him, flood him; stopped holding it back, stopped trying to control it.
Then he pushed it out of him in a wave, out of him and towards the stage.
He heard a very slight creak.
Gantrua frowned. “Is that all you have? A loud squeak?”
Finn didn’t answer. Took a step back.
Gantrua waited for a moment. “Well, no matter,” he said. “Legend Hunter tricks and distractions will not save you now.” He stepped forward, raised his sword with an air of finality.
The rattle became an avalanche.
The stage collapsed forward. Completely. As one single, falling mass.
The Fomorian leader saw it at the very last moment, turned his head, shocked, just before it hit him. He hardly had time to even raise a hand in defence as the combination of steel, glass and wiring crushed him, bending and twisting as it hit him and the ground instantaneously.
Finn jumped back as it collapsed, pieces of it flying all around him. He threw his hands over his head to protect himself, but looked through his elbows enough to see the stage envelop Gantrua. It was followed by towering lights and speakers, crashing down on top of the twisted pile of debris under which the mighty Fomorian already lay.
Finn propped himself up where he had dived on a patch of spiky grass, kicked lumps of metal from where they had rolled on to his legs and looked at the scene. Nothing moved but loose pipes and sparking wires.
“Emmie …” Finn ran to her.
She was sitting, coughing, trying to say something, but winded enough that she couldn’t get the words out.
“Take your time,” Finn said. “Are you hurt? Is anything broken?”
“Th-th-th …”
“Get your breath back.”
She coughed. “That.” She coughed again. “Was. Awesome.”
Finn sat back on the grass beside her, watching the edge of the stage lurch further, adding new tonnes of weight to those under which Gantrua was squashed.
“You made it collapse,” Emmie said. “I saw you. You … rippled.”
“I think so,” said Finn.
“Do you reckon he’s dead?” Emmie asked.
“I hope so. I don’t think I could do that again.”
“That was some scream,” she smiled.
“You’re the one who said wheeee when taking out a Hydra,” Finn said. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”
They sat a little longer, both getting their breath back. Then Finn remembered something, jumped to his feet.
“It’s almost time,” he said.
“For what?” asked Emmie, looking up.
He put his hand down to help her to her feet.
“To rescue your dad,” Finn said. “I’ve figured it out.”
She looked like she couldn’t decide how serious he was being. “How?”
“Broonie told us how we can get the Trapped back,” he said, helping her up. “We have dust in the lockets, right? We have rockets too. The fireworks for the ceremony. All we need to do is get Mr Glad here.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Emmie asked.
“They said he’ll be able to come back at midnight,” said Finn. “That’s close, but I have a plan. When the time comes, I’m going to give him what he wants. I’m going to give him me.”
News of the strange events in Darkmouth was passed swiftly through to the Liechtenstein HQ, dispatched through the communications tubes, so that it scooted around the building, before popping out on to Lucien’s desk.
Fwhop.
He opened the canister. Read its contents. Knew what he needed to do.
He marched through the corridors, with the piece of paper held aloft in his right hand. Assistants stood aside, while others stuck their heads out from their offices to see what was going on.
“Follow me,” Lucien demanded.<
br />
He led them to the canteen, which was busy with those getting in just before the teatime rush. Axel was already there, his hand in a bag of crisps. Lucien strode right to where he sat, placed the report beside him, grabbed a chair and used it as a step to clamber up on to the table.
“Give it to me,” Lucien told Axel.
Axel handed him the bag of crisps.
“Not that,” Lucien said, just about restraining himself from screaming at his friend. “The report.”
“Sorry,” said Axel, replacing the crisps with the curled paper.
Lucien stood before a canteen that was now entirely still with anticipation, but for the slow chewing of assistants trying not to make any noise for fear of breaking the silence. Assistants wearing suits in every shade of beige kept arriving through the door. Every single person in the building was gathering there, drawn by Lucien’s intensity and the knowledge that a crisis was unfolding in Darkmouth.
He lifted the paper in his hand. His glasses slid down his nose. “Events in Darkmouth have become critical,” he said. “The situation is grave. Catastrophe looms. But here we are, carrying dinner trays instead of weapons, hunting snacks rather than Legends—”
“The Council of Twelve would struggle without its mid-morning jam tarts,” grumbled Axel, a little hurt.
“—and repeating failed experiment after failed experiment on those pulverised crystals, which a mere twelve-year-old boy was able to use to cross between worlds. To cross between years.”
A murmur of acknowledgement carried across the room.
Lucien looked out of the window – which, because of the confused nature of the building, faced out on to another window.
“Both my parents were highly decorated Legend Hunters,” he said. “My grandmother was awarded the Order of Certain Death for her heroic defence of our village.”
He looked out at the crowd, at faces familiar to him. “You, Matilda,” he said, pointing to one pasty-faced woman. “Your grandfather defeated a terrifying Cherufe using only a toothpick and a bookshelf.”
Chaos Descends Page 18
