“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Axel asked Tiberius.
“Famous,” he answered.
Lucien shook his head.
“Famous for what?” Axel asked him.
“Just famous,” said Tiberius as if Axel’s was the stupidest question ever asked.
“When I grow up, I’m going to work in an office like this,” Elektra said, sugar caking the rims of her nostrils. “It looks dead easy.”
Lucien tightened his jaw. He then saw that Axel had come in to deliver something other than sherbet.
“Why don’t you two go and play with the vending machines in the corridor,” he urged the children. “If you put your hand up the slot, it sometimes gives you free sweets.”
“I feel like I’m going to puke again,” said Elektra.
“Excellent,” said Lucien, ushering her out after her brother.
“Such great kids,” said Axel.
“Do you want them?” Lucien asked him. “They were supposed to be the latest in a long line of Legend Hunters, stretching back generations on my side and their mother’s. Then again, we were supposed to be the same. Instead, I’m here stapling reports and my wife makes cheese.”
“She makes the one that tastes like feet wrapped in a plastic bag.”
“It’s won awards for its tastiness.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“It’s going to happen again,” said Lucien.
“What is?”
“Darkmouth,” said Lucien. “I can sense it. With Hugo and the boy Finn at the heart of it, I’m sure. They’re always at the heart of it, have you noticed? It’s always Darkmouth. Never anywhere else. Never our kids. Always them.”
He watched Elektra and Tiberius take turns to put an arm up the vending machine. “Why are they so blessed over there? Why does the trouble come to them? Surely you’ve asked yourself that question too.”
“We all have,” admitted Axel. “The Twelve are going there, though. For the boy’s Completion Ceremony.”
“While we’ve been ordered to stay behind. As we’ve always done. Just sitting here, waiting for trouble to arrive. We’ve waited so many years. It hasn’t come, but still we wait. And wait.”
“What else can we do?” asked Axel.
“Well, I’ve been examining the trail of events at Darkmouth, and I have an idea. A plan. But you must keep it to yourself for now. Promise?”
“Promise,” said Axel. “Although you should do one thing first.”
“What?”
Axel pointed at the girl in the corridor. “Free Elektra’s hand from that vending machine.”
On the other side of the curtain separating the world of the humans from the Legends, the Half-Hunters waited on the slopes of Darkmouth’s Black Hills, where the energy readings were highest, where whatever was going to happen … was going to happen.
A clamour for a fight rippled through the ranks, their previously unused armour shuddering and creaking. A handful of the assembled Half-Hunters had Desiccators. Others had a variety of odd weapons. They crouched behind advertising hoardings grabbed from the local football pitch to use as emergency protection. Everything shuddered, because everyone was nervous.
Lightning rippled through the sky. Again, no thunder followed. Finn wished it would. Without the sound, it felt like the tension would never break.
“The energy levels are off the scale,” said Hugo, his eyes on the small screen in his hand.
Gerald coughed, and it sounded like a chainsaw failing to start.
Finn was going to ask him if he was OK, but thought better of it. He, Hugo, Gerald and Emmie were waiting behind a hoarding for the local sports shop, Batty for Balls.
Gerald was taking in the sight of the Half-Hunters around them. Some were in fighting suits, some in colourful formal jackets they’d brought for the Completion Ceremony, while others wore boiler suits, having been fetched from where they’d been working on the stage.
“The one on the left is wearing tracksuit trousers.” Finn looked again and realised it was true. “What a world I’ve woken up in. Why didn’t he just wear his pyjamas if he wanted to be comfortable? At least you’ve dressed properly, Hugo. And the boy here. The red-streaked helmet. The Minotaur illustration. The epaulettes.” He eyed Finn up and down. “Nice touch that.”
Finn looked around him. Behind the crouched Half-Hunters were the Council of Twelve, their robes incongruous splashes of colour against the green of the grass and the brown of the mud. Aurora and Cedric stood again to the fore, refusing the offer of a seat. Stumm was seated, but even he was awake, his eyes hardly blinking in fact.
They’d all arrived, with the assistants ranged behind them, in cars and vans that had churned up the ground, and which formed a convoy ready to leave hastily should things get too risky.
Finn could see that the assistants looked far more nervous than their superiors. He reminded himself that the Twelve, now so old to him, had once been spry Legend Hunters in a world where Blighted Villages still posed a grave threat. They had fought. They had won. They had the medallions to prove it.
Between them all were two Half-Hunters manning the Desiccannon where it had been rolled on to the grass. Estravon stood with them, ready to take the order from Hugo, and to give it to the two Half-Hunters hovering over the muzzle, a bomb in their hands, ready to drop it in. One was visibly shaking, even from this distance.
A minor flare of light in the sky regained Finn’s attention.
Gerald flinched, but it was not what was up there that was causing the problem. Finn could tell it was something inside him.
“Is Gerald OK?” he asked his dad in a low tone.
“Of course I’m OK,” Gerald said, his hearing obviously better than Finn had realised. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“We should tell Finn,” said Hugo, clearly not happy that this discussion was happening now.
“Tell me what?” asked Finn.
The light flickered in the clouds again, purple skittering across the sky. Still no thunder. Still no relief. The needle on the graph pushing so hard now it was in danger of breaking through.
“You can only bring the Preserved back once,” Hugo told Finn.
“The Preserved. It makes us sound like some sort of jam,” snorted Gerald. He looked at Finn. “I hate jam.”
“Why?” asked Finn. “I mean, not why do you hate jam. Why can you only come back once? We’ve reanimated Legends loads of times.”
“Because I can’t be bothered saving you every time there’s a minor crisis,” sniffed Gerald.
“That’s his attempt at a joke,” said Hugo. “In reality, human and Legend biology differs,” he explained, eyes still on the sky, Desiccator resting against the chipped metal of the hoarding. “You can bring a Legend back many times. But the moment you reanimate a human, their cells begin decaying. Gerald is dying.”
“I have a few hours left at most,” said Gerald.
“You did this knowing it meant certain death?” Finn asked him.
“A life without battle is death already,” said Gerald.
Emmie sat forward from where she had been waiting, watching intently for her father. “Hold on,” she said, a fact dawning on her. “You mean, if you desiccate my dad with that cannon, he’ll only survive a few hours once he’s reanimated?”
“Up there!” a voice shouted. A Half-Hunter in a feathered fighting suit was pointing skywards, where cloud was flooding slowly across the sky, pinching off the bloody sunset.
Finn touched his chest, where his locket of dust was kept. He saw several Half-Hunters do something similar, patting pockets, grabbing wrists, reassuring themselves that the protective dust was where they’d put it.
He looked behind him again, where the Council was arranged, on their trucks, assistants at the wheels, not ready to give instructions, but certainly poised to flee.
“They’re going to kill him,” said Emmie. She stood, desperation showing clear on a face lit by the dying glow of the day.
“You’re going to kill him, not save him!”
Hugo pulled her by the arm to get her down again. Finn looked at her, saw her horror, felt it too. Felt that he had let her down, betrayed her without even realising it.
There was a flash in the sky above. A crackle of light, then a flickering smudge in the cloud. Yellow, pink. No sound. Just silent light, coalescing in the sky, fixing into one bright star. It separated, three lights pulling away from the central one.
Then they drifted slowly towards the ground.
On the Infested Side, an army of Fomorians waited on a road of black glass, cut across a darkscape of dead plants, broken bones, crushed life. Their weapons were arrows and blades hacked from the glassy trees of the Petrified Forest. As one, they pounded their shields, a menacing rhythm that shuddered through the shards at their feet, that drummed out their anticipation of the fight ahead.
And in time with it were the words of a Troll as it mixed dust, the last crystals of a world that was once replete with them. Then the Troll smeared sparkling paste on the air, throwing its hands back as it mumbled its constant incantation.
“Hear those words?” Gantrua shouted up to Broonie.
Broonie could not answer, because of the muzzle. Being strapped to the back of a bucking Hydra didn’t help either.
“Those words are still useless,” said Gantrua, the long sweep of the serpent fang swaying at his jaw. “But I know what they mean. We tear open a path between the worlds.”
The cloud above them was almost within reach. It felt to Broonie like he was in a wide coffin, built for an entire army. The Legends were packed in here, swaying in anticipation of the invasion ahead.
Within the cloud, around it, the flashes of lightning. Building. Becoming more frequent. But no thunder. And the light was unnatural – even in a place where light meant only that it wasn’t entirely dark. It was as if a torch had been lit behind a curtain. It leaped and flickered.
Still, the Troll called out. Wailed. Rubbed the dust and crystal, attempting to smear it on the invisible dark.
“This world was beautiful once,” Gantrua said to the stricken Broonie. “It had vivid colour. It had fresh life. Its rivers did not peel the flesh from those who swam in them. You probably think I just want to take the human world because of greed, because of some basic evil that burns within me?”
Broonie couldn’t answer.
“You have spent too long with those puny bags of flesh and bone,” Gantrua told him. “They have poisoned your mind like they poisoned this world. I want that world because it is ours. I am not stealing it. I am taking it back.”
The lightning flickered, crawled across the sky above them.
“Ssssggggsssss,” was all Broonie could manage by way of a reply.
The sky groaned, as if awaking from the deepest slumber.
“Before this night is out,” said Gantrua, “I will walk their streets.”
On the Black Hills on the Darkmouth side of the world, the Half-Hunters watched the three lights drift towards the ground and instinctively took a step back, a ripple of armour carrying all the way to the anxious souls manning the cannon, and the elders of the Council of Twelve, each of whom leaned forward in anticipation.
“Wait for my order,” Hugo called to Estravon at the Desiccannon.
“Don’t get this wrong, Hugo,” said Gerald. “Not now.”
“When?” Estravon responded.
“Not yet,” said Hugo, a closed fist in the air.
Finn counted the lights. One, two, three …
“Dad,” he said, standing up for a better view.
Gerald coughed again, hacking loudly. “Get your head down, boy,” he said, his voice caught on phlegm. “Unless you want to go home without it.”
“Don’t fire yet,” commanded Hugo, his voice just about audible over the rattle and clatter of the surrounding Half-Hunters.
“Dad,” said Finn, trying to get his attention, “there’s something wrong.”
“Don’t screw up this timing,” Gerald was telling Hugo. “Let me take over if you’re going to do that.”
“I’ve got it,” said Hugo, hand still raised, eyes narrowed. He was counting the lights drifting into place.
“There are only three lights,” said Finn.
As if being tipped from a jar, liquid light poured from each hovering glow, building a body from the ground up. Streaming beings of flesh and nothingness, bodies forming from pure agony. A collective howl came from them. And one by one they took shape. A sort of shape anyway. Writhing masses, their flesh fighting for coherence.
Douglas first.
Then Kenzo.
And, finally, they saw Steve. A version of him. Torn apart. Being torn apart, reassembled, over and over.
“Dad!” called Emmie, and Hugo had to grab her by the arms and hold her back as she attempted to climb the barrier and run towards her father.
Finn stood with her. He knew this thing was only part Steve, only part human. He was a body between worlds. A mind torn asunder and put back in a rough order, a slave to Mr Glad. Like the other two, Steve was distorted, smeared across a patch of air. But there was something else. He was trying to cling to the sky. Douglas and Kenzo were doing the same.
“Where’s Mr Glad?” asked Finn. But then he realised that the three Trapped weren’t trying to grab hold of the sky, they were pulling at it as they dropped. Tearing it, leaving trails of light. Above them a star remained, unmoving.
“What are they doing?” Finn asked.
Hugo didn’t answer, but the electricity in the air matched the crackle of noisy tension emanating from the massed ranks of Half-Hunters on the hill. Finn glanced back at the Desiccannon, where its two operators were ready, waiting for Estravon to give them the order to fire.
But Estravon was waiting for Hugo to give the order first. And he wasn’t.
“You’re losing control,” Gerald insisted as the din from the Half-Hunters grew louder. “Give the order now.”
“Not yet!” he shouted.
“Don’t do it, please,” pleaded Emmie.
The three trails of light where the Trapped had torn at the air were lengthening, widening.
“Wait,” said Finn, understanding finally. “They’re gateways. They’re opening gateways.”
Then a fourth light dropped, glowing brighter, flattening out and spreading like a spill across the air.
Clearer than the others. More human. Dropping to the ground, long coat and hair unmoving in the breeze. For all that he looked human, the grin growing on his face like a scar was utterly monstrous.
It formed Mr Glad.
He floated downwards, but he did not land fully.
His voice carried like a rumble of thunder across the hill. “Tick. Tock. Time’s up.”
Mr Glad raised a hand and pulled downwards as if yanking a curtain free.
“They’re opening the sky!” shouted Finn.
“Fire, Hugo!” demanded Gerald.
“No!” shouted Emmie. “You’ll kill my dad!”
“Fire!” ordered Hugo.
“Fire!” yelled Estravon.
The Desiccannon fired.
For a moment, the grey sky was splashed with a wondrous blue, as if the world was being dashed with paint.
The liquid bomb arced from the cannon at the rear, over the heads of the Half-Hunters, whose eyes followed its trajectory towards the Trapped. Finn stood, ignoring his father’s orders to get down again, and could feel the suck as it tore through the air.
The bomb exploded in the sky over where the Trapped had stood, spraying a bright blue drizzle that slowly fell in a curtain. But it became very apparent, very quickly, that something had happened. Or, rather, not happened.
“The Trapped are gone,” said Finn.
“Where are they?” asked Emmie, standing upright.
“You missed!” Gerald called back to the Half-Hunters manning the cannons.
“We didn’t miss,” said Hugo.
“Where’s Dad?�
� screamed Emmie.
Gerald stood tall, furious. “How could you miss?”
“We didn’t miss,” repeated Hugo, finally earning Gerald’s attention. “The Trapped were already gone. They disappeared before the liquid even reached them.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Emmie.
“I don’t think it’s anything to be thankful for,” said Gerald ominously.
The curtain of liquid was drifting on the hill at the foot of the gateways. Where it landed, it ate into the grass, soil, whatever poor crawling creatures had the misfortune to be near the surface. The sound of the land being scrunched up like tinfoil should have been utterly alarming, and would have been if anyone had been paying attention to it, but there was something much, much more worrying to distract them.
“They’ve left something behind,” said Finn, stating the obvious.
Through the gloom, four streaks of light remained, high off the ground. Dashes down the sky. Each was golden, fizzing.
Emmie stood beside him, staring at the holes in the sky, hoping to see her father.
Hugo was rubbing his chin with his knuckles. “Why make four small gateways. In the same place?”
Finn watched the gap between two of the golden marks, could see it was narrowing.
“Because they’re not making four small gateways,” said Gerald.
The Half-Hunters sensed it too, began to rustle with nerves, to tap at shields, to fidget with weapons.
Hugo nodded slowly. “It’s one very big gateway,” he said.
The gateways began to join, to seep into each other. End to end. A gouge the height of two houses carved in the night sky, its glow brightening, the golden edges becoming a foreboding light show.
The Half-Hunters flinched, a synchronised scrunch coming from their fighting suits as they moved back. At their rear, the growl of truck engines drilled through the night sky, assistants ready to evacuate the Twelve.
“This was never about any army of the Trapped,” Gerald said. “This was about something else, something bigger.”
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