Estravon made for the gateway, where Steve grabbed him and pulled him through.
Finn remained, hesitant even as behind him a fight raged, illuminated by the streaming gateway.
“Don’t make me drag you in here,” Steve growled.
Finn felt paralysed. If he stepped back into Darkmouth, he would see his mother again, but he’d lose his father.
“This is the second time I’ve stood at a gateway telling you to hurry up,” said Steve. “And it’s the last time. So hurry up.”
If Finn stayed, there was nothing left for him here but probable death. Or, at best, an unhinged grandfather.
He turned towards the cave just as Cornelius and Hiss managed to subdue another invading Grendel. “Do not be a dumb animal!” Hiss shouted at him.
Finn stepped towards the gateway, but stopped mid-stride.
“What are you waiting for?” demanded Steve, hand held out.
On the ground under the felled Grendel, amid the ruins of a stalagmite, the deep red light of the gateway danced off a clear crystal.
Finn dropped to the cave floor, beside the filthy bulk of the Legend’s body, and tried to grab the crystal – but it was wedged underneath the stricken Grendel’s ribcage, which rose and fell, with each hot, stinking breath.
“Whatever you’re thinking—” Steve started to say. His words were drowned out by a shrill call of defiance from the flying serpents, who were at the entrance to the cave now, facing the howls and onslaughts of attacking Legends.
Finn waited for a breath from the comatose Grendel to lift its ribcage and free the crystal. After what seemed an eternity, it breathed deep and Finn pulled hard. The crystal came away so easily he dropped on to his backside and had to force himself back up again.
“I’m ready!” he shouted at Steve and strode towards the gateway. Then he hesitated in front of it, the portal a grinding whirlpool of bloodshot energy, tendrils crawling and diving at the edges.
“Ready for what?” asked Steve.
Finn had made up his mind. Every one of his decisions so far had been disastrous, to some extent or other, but he was finally giving in to that, going with it. Because it was still better than making no decision.
He couldn’t bring a crystal through without attaching it to his flesh. But he didn’t need to bring it through. A gateway home was open. He had a clear crystal.
In the notebook was that drawing of two gateways. Of the skull and crossbones. It was an obvious warning.
But he needed to get his father back. His father had told him he would.
Finn held the crystal up.
“Whatever you’re going to do,” said Steve, “don’t do it.”
Finn did it.
He held the crystal to the very edge of the red gateway. It stuck without effort.
“That was a really stupid thing to do,” blurted Steve, “and now you’re on your own.” He disappeared back into Darkmouth.
But Finn could not follow. The crystal had stuck to the red gateway and Finn was stuck to it in turn. Just as when he had activated the blood crystal the first time.
He had no time to panic. He knew what was about to happen, so he tensed for the dark power of the crystal, got ready to allow the energy in, to accept the pain and let it infuse him.
More Legends had broken their way into the chamber, arriving with the snap of stalagmites, the crash of rock. The cave was being overrun.
Just in time, the crystal decided it was the right moment to release Finn. With a painful jolt of electricity, he was flung away from the crystal and into the red gateway.
Time occupied every corner of Finn’s mind. Or his mind occupied every corner of time. Maybe both. Or neither.
He heard a distant sound of thunder.
Then Finn was through, stumbling backwards on to the floor of the Darkmouth cave, with its gravel and pebbles and general lack of goo. All of it shimmering in the grinding red light of the gateway.
And he felt OK. Physically anyway.
Mentally was another story. Because here he was in Darkmouth, which meant the double portal hadn’t worked. He hadn’t looped through to his father’s time on the Infested Side.
A familiar feeling of failure threatened to crush him, like the rock roof of the cave collapsing.
Emmie was facing him, Steve too, with his visor now open. Estravon was beside him, still frayed about the edges. Each of them stared.
“I couldn’t find my dad,” choked Finn. “He wasn’t there. He was—”
But they weren’t looking at him.
They were looking at something behind him.
“Just when you think things are getting a little better...” said Estravon.
Slowly, Finn turned round. And saw a hole in the world. Not a gateway, with its pulsating edges, but a large clean wound in the fabric between Darkmouth and the Infested Side. As if each was of the same world, separated only by an open window.
But the cave no longer led to another cave. Instead, the view of the Infested Side was of rock, soil, craters torn from the ground and filled with the crushed stems of stalagmites. It was where the cave used to be, but had since been torn apart, destroyed. It was of wide-open space imposed on the land, the glass trees of the forest crushed into sand. It was a view of flat sky above.
And it was a view of war.
The sky was filled with Quetzalcóatl fighting Quetzalcóatl. Some had wings marked with blood-red stripes, and they dived at enemy serpents. In squadrons. As individuals. Biting. Wrestling. The scene was one of pandemonium and noise and a smell so vile it poured thickly through the window Finn had opened.
A felled serpent spiralled down from on high. They watched it fall, wings tattered, slender neck pushed back by the wind, until it hit the ground with a sickening thud.
And, diving out of its way, they saw a single Orthrus, its coat grey with age but the green of its snake-tail as vivid as it had been when Finn had seen it only minutes before.
Yet Finn knew instantly that this was the Infested Side of now. And the Orthrus was thirty-two years older than when he had last seen him.
Cornelius and Hiss slowed, their movements stiff, as if to confirm what Finn was thinking. Then they sat down and noticed the hole, saw the humans watching them, but almost immediately looked away. Up. Towards the battle in the sky.
Finn followed their gaze, trying to find some order in the chaos, to find what it was they were looking at.
A glint caught his eye.
“There!” he said, pointing at a lone serpent darting through the tumultuous sky. On its back, they could see the flash of a blade. A glimmer of armour. A human clinging on against the force of the dive.
Even at that distance, it was clear that his fighting suit was riven with scars and gashes; his skin filthy; a beard grimy and wild.
But only one thing mattered to Finn. He had found his father.
‘Hugo’s Rescue’
From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse,
as told by the inhabitants of the Infested Side
SIX WEEKS AND TWO DAYS AGO
Humans live such short lives it’s a wonder we haven’t been able to just wait until they all died off before taking over an empty Promised World. Then again, there always seem to be new ones to replace the old ones. They’re like a nasty rash that no amount of scratching will clear.
Niall Blacktongue had a son, who in turn had a son of his own. And, when word came that both of these humans had appeared through a gateway near the Forest of Woe, Blacktongue rode alongside Gantrua and a great army to intercept them.
Some of that army found the Hogboon first. His name was Broonie and he had been sent by Gantrua to the Promised World to deliver a crystal. He was not expected to return.
One of the Fomorian soldiers picked him up to interrogate him.
“How did you get back? Did you collaborate with the humans?”
“Ercckhkkkk,” replied Broonie. “Krcchaccchh.”
The Fomorian soldier realised he sho
uld stop holding him by the throat.
“I escaped,” Broonie eventually spluttered when he could talk again. “I swear, by the gnarled mole on my father’s ear, I killed many humans to get here.”
Seeing that the Fomorian soldiers crowding round him still had their suspicions, the Hogboon decided to take a bolder approach. Broonie raised himself up as tall as he could. It was not very tall, but it would have to do. He spoke with his deepest, most authoritative voice – which was not at all deep, or authoritative, but would also have to do.
“I am an agent of Gantrua, the ruler of these worlds,” he announced, “and should any harm come to me you will find yourself in the Coronium mines for all of eternity. Or, at the very least, forever.”
The Fomorians were a little taken aback by this and glanced at each other, unsure how seriously to take the threat.
Broonie felt confident. “You had better heed my words, underling.”
The Fomorian soldier’s fist landed squarely on the top of Broonie’s head. They did not believe his threat.
The soldier picked him up and carried him in one hand, bringing him towards the open gateway and the humans he had just abandoned.
There they merged again with the great army bearing down on the human Legend Hunter, Hugo the Great.
At the head of that army rode two figures. The huge and terrifying Gantrua and the frail but determined Niall Blacktongue.
Blacktongue is said to have stared at the son he had not seen for many darkenings and prepared to ignite, to release his one final blast of power.
Except there was a maelstrom in the clouds. A Quetzalcóatl dived from the sky. Two more followed behind it. Then more – so many they were impossible to count, until the sky above was dark with serpents.
Dive-bombing. Biting. Scattering the battalions.
And, when they left, the human called Hugo was gone too.
Gantrua cursed the skies, a great rage that thundered through the ground.
As he did that, another serpent returned, grabbed Broonie from his Fomorian captor and flew him away too.
Gantrua raged even louder.
From the Darkmouth cave, Finn watched his father come swooping towards them on the back of the flying serpent, bent low, clinging to its neck as it pierced through the battle. Finn’s breath was shallow, the aftershock of the crystal’s energy subsumed by the urgency gripping him.
“Come on, Dad!”
Finn stood at the great open wound in the world, the crunching red light of the gateway strobing beside it. Darkmouth on one side. The Infested Side on the other. The view to the chaos of that world hung there, as if it were a TV screen. He had caused this, but the consequences of what he had done would have to wait. He just needed his dad back now.
He stepped forward. “Dad!”
Steve put a hand on Finn’s shoulder to hold him back.
“Your dad’s going to make it,” said Emmie.
Then another Quetzalcóatl hit the serpent Hugo rode, careening into its underbelly and sending it into a spin. Colliding with the flank of another creature, it briefly righted itself, but not in time to arrest its dive.
Hugo’s serpent crashed to the ground, chin and neck first, skidding along its belly and gouging through the dirt until it halted suddenly, sending Hugo tumbling forward through the air.
“Dad!”
Hugo absorbed the fall, rolling expertly before pouncing to his feet and breaking into a run.
He had about fifty metres to go.
“Wow,” said Emmie.
“I need to learn that,” admitted Steve.
“This is incredible,” said an astonished Estravon. “And so, so bad.”
At an angle to Hugo, Cornelius was gaining too, aiming straight for the open wound. Finn’s father kept running. There was a sudden and great smash of bodies between him and the portal as two wrestling Quetzalcóatls hit the ground. Their collision threw up a plume of dirt and glass about them, tearing a scar in the ground before they rose again, still grappling and biting at each other.
Hugo burst through the dust without breaking his pace.
“Nearly there, Dad!” Finn yelled again, though he had no idea if his father could hear him above the noise. “Nearly there!”
His father stopped dead.
He was so close Finn reckoned he could have stretched out his hands, his fingers parting the frigid air of the Infested Side, and touched him.
Steve pointed his Desiccator at Hugo. “Get in now or I’ll turn you into a tennis ball and bring you home myself.”
Hugo ignored him and waited instead for the Orthrus to arrive. Cornelius loped up, panting. His eyelids hung heavy and his mouth drooped to one side. Finn had seen the Orthrus only hours before and yet so many years had evidently passed.
“Cornelius!” shouted Finn.
“Hiss!” said Emmie.
Hiss lifted his head to their height, nodded in the direction of the battle being fought above them. “All this because of you,” he said. “Yet you are still a child after so many years.”
Hugo took hold of Cornelius’s jowls like he would an old family dog. “Thank you,” he said. “Both of you.”
“What is it with you lot?” Steve asked, deeply impatient. “Maybe your whole family should just move over there and start a petting zoo.”
Then Hiss said something Finn couldn’t hear and his father frowned. “I can’t take him,” he said.
“You must, Hugo,” Hiss answered.
“He has no place in Darkmouth,” Hugo insisted.
“He will be killed if he stays here,” said Hiss, and Cornelius turned and galloped off before Hugo had another chance to complain about the matter. Whatever it was.
“Who are you talking about?” asked Estravon. He was taking notes again.
“Can we just get moving here?” asked Steve. “We’ve got two doors wide open to the Infested Side, which means one of two things is going to happen. Either something comes out. Or we get sucked in. Or both things happen and then we’re all toast.”
A large rock thudded to the ground beside Hugo, shocking him into action again. He darted the last few metres against the background of battle and catastrophe, of Quetzalcóatls blackening the sky.
At the window between the Infested Side and Darkmouth, he took one last look behind him, at the battle still being fought, as if he should not be abandoning it.
“What are you waiting for?” Steve asked.
Hugo looked at Finn, the grinding light of the red gateway mirrored in his eyes. It seemed to be all it took to make his mind up.
Finn’s father stepped into Darkmouth.
He looked as if he had been through hell. Twice. But beneath the dirt and the damage and the bird’s nest of a beard, Finn could see the strength of his father as bright as any gateway. Hugo placed two hands on Finn’s shoulders, gripped him hard.
“Did you blow this hole open?” his father asked him.
“Only to help you, Dad.”
His father shook his head slowly, stared at him. “You collaborated with the Legends too? Got involved in a war that could have terrible consequences?”
Finn nodded, eyes dropping now as he considered what he’d done. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“And came up with some ridiculous, thirty-two-year-long plan to carry a message to me to meet here.”
“I wasn’t sure what else to—”
His father broke into a grin, squeezed Finn’s shoulders so tightly it hurt. “See, didn’t I always say we’d make a great Legend Hunter out of you some day?”
A tsunami of relief burst through Finn. His dad was home. He was here. And, almost as good, he wasn’t telling him off about blowing open a huge hole between the worlds.
“Now say thanks to the nice Orthrus, Finn,” his father said.
Finn looked through the great hole into the Infested Side to see that Cornelius and Hiss had returned. Finn noticed now that round Cornelius’s neck was a chain. A dog tag hung from it, tarnished and scuffed, but w
ith its words still just about visible. My name is Yappy. If you find me, you can keep me.
“Thank you,” Finn said.
But Cornelius and Hiss were distracted by something on their side, just out of view, as if hiding in the folds of an open curtain.
“I’m not going,” Finn heard a voice say. Reedy, nasal, indignant. “I swear by the callused gums of my uncle Emphra.”
“You are not staying here,” insisted Hiss. And, with that, Cornelius snarled, darted out of sight and returned, dragging a cranky Hogboon by its ragged collar. He had familiar gnarled green skin, wide ears and wider nostrils.
“Broonie!” Finn said.
“Unfortunately,” said Broonie.
Emmie turned to Estravon. “I told you we knew a Legend.”
“I wouldn’t boast about that,” said Estravon, making a note.
“We are not taking him,” insisted Steve.
Cornelius snapped at Broonie, who jumped in through the open wound and into the cave, back into Darkmouth.
“No choice,” said Hiss.
“That goes against every rule written,” declared Estravon. “And every rule not yet written.”
“It looks like he’ll have to stay,” said Hugo. Then, seeing the look on Estravon’s face, said, “And you must be the one the Legends came to know as the Great Screecher.”
“I am Estravon Oakbound, Assessor to the Subcommittee—”
Hugo cut him off. “So, why is this other gateway open?”
Emmie stepped forward. “We opened it to rescue Finn. With a crystal that grew in this cave. I showed my dad how to do it. Told him to wear gloves too so he wouldn’t get frazzled like Finn did. I’ve been to the Infested Side. And back again. It was brilliant.”
“Well, she has not changed,” said Hiss.
Cornelius was becoming jumpy. Serpents were still fighting, the shrieks of aggression and pain cutting through the air so loudly they were echoing in the cave of another world. Hiss looked skyward, then towards the forest. “Others are coming. We must go and fight. We will defend this place for as long as possible, but you must find a way to close that window.”
Into the Infested Side Page 20