Into the Infested Side

by Shane Hegarty

  His vision blanked out for a moment, a brief darkness. But his legs ignored that and kept him moving, crashing across the ground, pinballing off the trees, stumbling over the solid tendrils and roots in his path.

  On his back, his schoolbag bounced. Below his waist, the legs of his fighting suit clattered.

  The Legends were gaining on him. Whatever caution or fear had held them back before seemed to have gone. Maybe they were attracted by the blood. Maybe they were angry at having lost Emmie. But they wanted him now and they would have him.

  To his right, Finn saw the mountains, sloping sharply up from the edge of the forest, the cloud rising with them as if they were tucked snug beneath a blanket. At the peak of the tallest, the snow was darkening with the fading light.

  Finn swerved awkwardly in that direction and the forest floor dropped away sharply below him.

  He lost his footing immediately and fell, sliding on his back for a few metres before clipping a branch and being thrown into a tumble that sent him across hard roots and sharp scrub. He rolled to a halt and lay there askew, looking at the Infested Side from the wrong angle, one leg caught in a briar wrapped round his calf.

  He had tumbled into another clearing, just short of a tree stump with bark of slick glass, its edges singed from some ancient catastrophe. Yet again, he noticed colours in it. Like oil in water. A hint of some beauty that must have existed once upon a time, even here.

  Through his whole body, another shock of electricity. It felt now like he might convulse, and he had the urge to tear the remainder of the fighting suit from his body for relief from the burning sensation running through him.

  The feeling subsided, and he pushed his back up against the trunk and tried to free himself from the briar gripping his leg.

  Coming down the slope towards him, through the towering trees, were the hoots and howls of the chasing Legends.

  Finn pulled unsuccessfully at the briar, which had dug into the leather between the scratched and dented steel of his armour.

  Legends poured into the clearing. Huge, small, wide, thin, hairy, scaly, teeth, fangs, hooves, claws. So many types he could hardly register them. Only that they were falling over themselves as they piled in towards their quarry.

  And Finn felt a strange calm, deep within him, that came from realising the chase was over. But it was not the calm of knowing he couldn’t escape them now. There was something else. Though he didn’t know how or why, he felt a growing sense that in this world, at this moment, the power lay with him.

  For the first time in his life, he wanted the Legends to attack.

  Except they didn’t. Instead, they stopped. Completely. Suddenly. A silence settling across their ranks as they paused at the treeline.

  They were watching something. It wasn’t Finn.

  Between him and the Legends, it was as if the soil writhed. Dry, hard earth bubbled where Finn’s blood stained the ground. The soil squirmed at each drop, running along a trail from bloodstain to bloodstain until it reached him.

  Finn kicked out, tried again to free himself and to get up. As he did so, the earth beneath him gave way a little. He wriggled to untangle himself, but every time he pulled away, the briar seemed to tighten further, digging into his leg, wrapping round the ankle armour.

  The Legends crept a little closer, careful in their step, but watchful as much as ravenous.

  Finn sank a few centimetres into the soil. The dry earth crumbled at his foot, drawing his boot into the dirt. He grabbed at the tree trunk, his palm sliding along the smooth bark as the soil pulled him down.

  His legs were now fully submerged in the devouring earth. Boiling soil squirmed up his waist, towards his chest.

  It was then that Finn realised what was happening.

  The ground itself was eating him. He was being dragged into its belly.

  The soil sucked him in further until it was at his neck, then spilled into his mouth so he had to spit it out, straining to keep his face above ground.

  He fought, spat, scraped at the soil.

  But it was no use. The hungry earth had him.

  Finn’s last vision was of the howling mouths of the Legends. Crowding over him. Watching. Waiting to pick at the bones.

  And then there was nothing.

  No light. No air.

  Only darkness.

  Finn’s life did not flash before his eyes.

  No prophecy burned in his mind.

  He did not think of his mother. Or his father. Or Emmie. Or anyone.

  He did not think of Darkmouth, of the house, of the safe cocoon of his bedroom.

  Instead, he thought of only one thing. That his finger was a bit tingly.

  Then he thought his veins felt somewhat zingy. His arms tremulous. That something was cascading through his body.

  It started in the hand that had held the crystal and Finn knew it would end in something utterly terrible.

  He felt the anger and grief over losing Emmie. His guilt over losing his father. The despair at being lost on the Infested Side. The fear of losing his life here, in the stomach of this alien world.

  It should have weakened him. Instead, it mixed with whatever energy that crystal had given him and the result was the unmistakable welling of that feeling he had never truly known before.

  Power.

  Finn knew in that moment that he would use it.

  He ordered the energy to convulse through his body, to ripple in a wave up his arm, into his torso. The atoms in his body became sticks of dynamite. His veins a fizzing fuse along which fires ran until—

  Finn’s mind was taken apart a million different ways and put back together in not entirely the right order.

  He did not know where he began or ended. He was everything. Everywhere. At once. His thoughts floating embers, gently settling on a burning dream.

  That was kind of how it felt anyway. Finn had never exploded before, so he really didn’t have much to compare it with.

  The energy rushed out from him, in a great wave, blasting in every direction.

  At the centre of it all, where the ground had swallowed him, Finn’s body was intact. More or less. When the explosion of energy ended, he lay where he was a moment longer while his neurons reassembled themselves. It felt like he was still snagged on a dream. Half awake. Half alive. Around him fell a fine rain of dirt and pebbles.

  He had blown a crater in the earth, open to the bleak but welcome approach of the Infested Side night.

  His breaths coming shallow and fast, he opened his mouth to say something, but couldn’t quite recall how to speak. He told his left arm to push himself up, but his right leg moved instead. Finn stayed where he was. The soil was still now. The forest quiet.

  Eventually, carefully, he ordered his right big toe to waggle. His left ear responded.

  So, he waited some more and, when he was sure he could wriggle his fingers without his nose twitching instead, he found the co-ordination to stand.

  The crater was as high as his waist. The world around him had been flattened. In a wide radius outwards from where he had been buried, scrub and trees were either shattered or pushed aside, trunks leaning at an angle so that their roots peeked out from under them.

  But the soil was still. Dead again.

  I did this, he thought. Did I really do this?

  A surviving Legend, a small thing like a ferret crossed with a tiny unicorn, picked itself up, saw him, squealed and bolted away.

  A high-pitched crackle rang in Finn’s ears, obscuring the hard splattering of falling soil and the low moans of injured Legends trying to crawl away.

  He patted his waist. The cut was no longer sore.

  The world felt white-hot. Finn felt white-hot.

  His armour was white-hot.

  He tore at his legs, shook it free, not even needing to pull it down over his boots because it came away in his hand. Smoking squares of metal and melted leather dropped in bits into the crater. Looking down, he was relieved to find that his trousers were mor
e or less holding together. The further down his body he looked, the less damage there was. The epicentre of whatever happened seemed to have been his right arm and chest, where his jumper and shirt had been fried and he was suddenly regretful that he’d worn a cat T-shirt as a vest. The poor animal in the picture looked quite distressed, with a burnt and still smoking hole where each eye used to be.

  Yet his skin was surprisingly cool. There were no burns. Instead, the cut at his waist had stopped bleeding, closed over almost completely. And, when his probing fingers found a ridge on his skin, he pulled the T-shirt aside to see a single jagged scar running from his right shoulder to the dead centre of his chest. Despite being fresh, it appeared faded and long healed over.

  In the crater behind him lay the watch Estravon had given him, its straps torn, its mechanical insides blasted out. Beside it was his schoolbag. Its straps had evaporated, but the rest of it was whole and discarded as if he’d just walked in from school and thrown it down there.

  The force had come mostly from his front, outwards.

  He had exploded. He had become a weapon, a strange force in this very strange world. He didn’t understand it and, if he ever did meet his father, Emmie, Estravon, anyone ever again, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to explain either.

  What have I just done? he wondered. How did I do it?

  It was clear to him that whatever had been building inside him since he’d been frazzled by the red crystal back in Darkmouth had finally reached boiling point – as if the crystal had started a fire inside him that had kept growing until it burst out of his skin.

  And, when it had, he had become powerful in a way he had never felt before.

  An intermittent crackle sounded in his ears – like an after-echo.

  Around him was a ring of fallen Legends, those few who were able to still scrambling away in various states of distress. They made for the forest, where the trees had been decimated. Finn watched them until they were all gone.

  Which was when he saw what he’d been looking for.

  In the gap in the trees ahead, a hole punched open by the force of the explosion. And, through it, a rising of the land, the beginnings of a climb towards the mountains that ate up the sky. And, on that slope, a glimpse of stone. High. White. Rounded.

  A tower.

  The crackling sound was insistent in his head.

  Sqwuak. Chhikk.

  He put a hand on the edge of the crater, levered himself out of it. Squinted at the tower again and, above it, at the almost completely blackened snow of the mountains. The light would soon be gone. He needed to move quickly.

  Sqwuak in Finn’s ears. Sqwekk.

  The noise was coming from inside the crater. He jumped back in.

  Squerk. Chesssk.

  It was inside his bag. Finn picked it up and pulled out the radio. Its plastic casing warm, its antenna bent a little, but otherwise undamaged, protected beneath him when he had exploded upwards.

  Squelck. Clikk.

  Squelck. Clikk.

  “—Finnnnnnnnn—” said his father’s voice.

  “I’m so close, Dad!” Finn shouted into the radio, “I can see the tower. I can see it. I’m going to be there really soon. Wait for me, please. Wait.”

  His father’s reply was a little clearer this time, but distortion still wracked the signal, his father’s words broken, very few of them coming through clearly.

  “—Cave—”

  And even those were being flung across the airwaves, stretched out, looped.

  “—Towwwwwwer—”

  “I can see it. I can see the tower. I’m on my way now.”

  Finn held the radio tight, volume up. It was a lifeline he didn’t want to let go of. Excitement, relief, joy coursed through him. The tower was a gleaming beacon on the mountain slope. Ivory white, Finn saw it as a piercing promise of hope.

  “…time…”

  The sounds stopped, the signal silenced again. Why were his father’s messages always too short, Finn wondered? He wanted to talk to him, not just hear him.

  The straps of the bag being burnt through, he made a decision to leave it behind, which he felt bad about because his mam had only bought it for him a short while ago, and his schoolbooks were in there too. His mam had spent an afternoon wrapping them in clear plastic for him, sticking his name on each one. It was so unfair on her, he thought. Plus, he’d get into so much trouble at school.

  But he had to leave them all behind. They’d only be a burden. So, he took the radio from his bag and clipped it to the waistband of his trousers. He then tested the last drops of water in the bottle before deciding it was safe to swig them.

  Just before he put the bag down for good, he spotted the old red notebook buried near the bottom. The edges of its pages were a little crisp and had yellowed another couple of shades, but it was otherwise undamaged. He shoved it into his back pocket.

  Finn took one last glance at the remnants of his fighting suit in the crater, steam rising as they cooled.

  That armour had taken him ages to make. Hours of stitching metal on metal, carefully matching the padding to the right seams, adjusting where it pinched, trying it on to see if it fitted, and then being told by his parents to add an extra panel or two so that he could grow into it.

  And it still hadn’t been particularly good.

  His heart sank at the thought of going through all that again. At least, for the first time, he felt genuine confidence there would be a next time.

  He thought of his mam, and what she might be doing now, how annoyed she’d be, how worried, furious, desperate.

  He thought of Emmie. He shivered with the horrible guilt that he couldn’t save her. He had brought her to the Infested Side and now she was gone, taken by a ghastly serpent and flown off to a fate he couldn’t bear to imagine. He had to fight the urge to let the possibilities cripple him. He couldn’t allow himself to think the worst. He’d done enough of that.

  No. He refused to let that thought in. He had to hope she was still out there somewhere.

  He thought too of the missing Estravon, the bloody pen a sign that something awful had put an end to his note-taking. Cornelius and Hiss were gone too, maybe off to save Estravon, but more likely deciding the risk was no longer worth the sausages.

  And he thought of his father and how close he was to finding him. That was all that was left to do now.

  Finn had come to the Infested Side and he had survived. He had destroyed. He had found his way to where he needed to be. He had shed his armour and his bag. He had, in one extraordinary moment, shed his weakness. And even in this state – dishevelled, torn, scarred, filthy, lost – he felt new. He felt strong.

  The light was fading, a shadow crossing the mountains, the snow gone black on the great peaks above him. Finn was running out of time. He needed to get to the tower. Alone, but knowing that wouldn’t be for much longer.

  His father was near.

  He would know the way home.

  It was time for this journey to end.

  ‘The Purge’

  From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse,

  as told by the inhabitants of the Infested Side

  TWELVE YEARS AGO

  For an eternity, Legend had fought Legend, brother had fought quarter-sister, heads had fought tails.

  Until what would become known as the Purge, there were seven rulers of the ancient lands, Gantrua among them. They had long been so focused on destroying each other that the war with the humans was lost before it was even fought.

  Gantrua realised this madness must end.

  He summoned six Wolpertingers before him as messengers, addressing them in the crackling heat of the great hall of fires within his castle. “Each of you will go to a ruler with a letter appealing to their sense of honour and pride.”

  He then leaned closer to where the Legends waited patiently while heat singed their feathers. “But, because appealing to their honour and pride will not work, the letter also offers a bribe of a hundred c
rystals each.”

  Of the six Wolpertingers dispatched by Gantrua, only one returned. Or, rather, its bones came back with a note skewered to a rib.

  The invitation was accepted.

  So, a summit took place on an island where the seven arsenic rivers met, a place too open to allow ambushes. Each of Gantrua’s six rivals arrived as the first half-glimpses of grey light broke through the darkness.

  The Rulers of the Ancient Lands were, in no particular order:

  Jotnar the Most Savage Spiller of Blood, a northern giant.

  Tblahfeewfmklwejh the Unspeakable whose form remains too horrible to describe even now.

  The Grand Griffin Destroyer of the West.

  The Grander Griffin Destroyer of the East.

  A creature of the southern wilderness, Yowie.

  The Last Gorgon.

  As a show of trust, each was asked to leave their army behind. Each of them brought one anyway.

  However, when the six leaders arrived at the centre of the island, they did not find Gantrua there. They did not find his army. Instead, they were greeted by a puny, hooded figure seated at a long table.

  The six great leaders of the Infested Side approached the table together, enraged, demanding to know why Gantrua had sent an assistant, an ambassador, an underling.

  The figure ignored their rantings, instead murmuring some kind of incantation, a stream of words spilling from him.

  Eventually, Jotnar the Most Savage Spiller of Blood lost his patience and snapped the figure’s hood back.

  It revealed the human, Niall Blacktongue, his eyes closed and his lips moving. Six armies raised their weapons at once, pointed them at one target.

  The human ceased his chanting and, when he opened his eyes, the rulers saw they were flooded with raging whirlpools of red.

  Niall Blacktongue ignited.

  The explosion tore across the island, blasted the arsenic rivers, pulverised every scrap of land for leagues in every direction.

  When the dust and glass finally settled, the seven lands had been united under one all-conquering ruler.