Hero Rising

She had also walked a good part of the town, head up, watching out for him, ignoring the usual glares of the fearful townspeople and the curiosity of the assistants infesting Darkmouth.

She had not found Finn, nor any sign of him. Nothing about this felt right. She broke into a run, rounded a badly bent signpost, ducked around a postbox with a dent punched in it, jumped across a puddle of rainwater and almost knocked Lucien over as they collided at a turn in the street.

“Take it easy there, young lady,” he said, stepping back and searching for something on the ground. He found his pen, picked it up, began to weave it through his fingers in a practised fashion. “I got this pen the day I graduated as an assistant. Writes with squid ink. Don’t want to lose it.”

She went to pass him.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked, causing her to stop.

Emmie loathed Lucien but there was the fact of his superior rank and she had to recognise that or it might make things far worse for her and her dad. And things were bad enough as they were.

Lucien sensed something amiss about her. “Is everything all right?” he said, pen tumbling through those long fingers. Across. Back again. “You seem in a great hurry.”

“I just want to get home,” she said, not wanting to look at him but hardly able to avoid seeing the swish of the pen. “In case it rains again.”

“Yes, the rain,” said Lucien, looking up, sniffing the air almost theatrically. “It wasn’t in the forecast. Strange.”

Even with her back to an open street, Emmie felt backed into a corner.

“So, no Finn? What’s he up to?”

“Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you,” she said, finally looking him in the eyes. She immediately regretted it – feeling like she’d given him a small victory.

“I wouldn’t expect you to tell me,” said Lucien, smiling. Or, at least, using a smile to cover over whatever was really going on in his mind. “It’s all part of the job to keep secrets, Emmie. Important to remain silent under questioning. To trust no one.”

“What job?” she replied, trying to be as rude as possible without giving away the nervous anger she really felt. “You took all this from us when you came in here and accused everyone of being a traitor.”

“I accused no one of anything,” said Lucien.

Emmie paah-ed at that idea.

“You might dismiss that, and you’d be wrong, but I don’t blame you. Maybe you’re a little young to appreciate the nuances of an investigation. I simply looked at the evidence and came to objective conclusions. Anyone else would have done the same. Once I saw the highly unusual events happening here, precautions were needed. After all, here we were in Darkmouth, with a boy and his family who had a habit of going to the Infested Side, fraternising with Legends, and bringing back trouble.”

“Finn was a hero,” insisted Emmie. “I saw it. I went to the Infested Side too.”

“So did Estravon, and like him you surely have to admit you don’t know what was really going on with Finn at all times.” He let that idea sink in before continuing. “I worry you’re getting dragged into whatever he’s up to.”

“Nobody’s dragging me into anything,” she said.

Lucien was still doing that thing with the pen. Through the fingers, across and back again. It was really beginning to bother Emmie. He noticed it. Stopped. Slipped it into his suit’s breast pocket.

“You’ve proven yourself an exceptional apprentice Legend Hunter,” he said to her. “Honestly, really exceptional. Steve, your father, must be very proud.”

Emmie shuffled, uncomfortable, and feeling alone now she was reminded that her dad was stuck so far away in Liechtenstein.

“You should have been next in line for Completion after Finn,” said Lucien. “You should be first in line now.”

“I need to go home,” she said, and tried again to move past Lucien.

He stayed where he was, simply loitering on the spot, looking skyward once again, examining the town around them as if he just hadn’t noticed her desire to get going.

“You could be the next Legend Hunter, the first in many years,” Lucien said, his eyes still on the surroundings. “I’m pretty sure that once the investigation is complete, you and your father will be free to get on with your lives, to claim your place among the Legend Hunters.”

Emmie squeezed past him, forced him to step aside to let her past, then turned to him, feeling her nails digging into her clenched palms. “I know you’re trying to turn me against Finn,” she told him, voice trembling with anger. “It won’t work.”

Lucien remained eerily unflappable. Somehow, he had another pen in his hand, was turning it too through his fingers. “You only have to ask yourself one simple question, Emmie,” he said. “Do you really know what Finn is up to?”

He thrust the pen into his breast pocket, turned and walked away.

Cornelius was scratching. Hiss was complaining. It was exactly how Finn remembered the Orthrus, this strange hybrid of dog-body and snake-tail.

He had met them over thirty years ago. Or only a year ago. It depended on your perspective. Time travel had been involved. Headaches had resulted.

“After all our years together, I still pray you will satisfy that itch one of these days,” Hiss said to Cornelius as the canine adjusted himself and started a new round of intense scratching.

Finn had taken the hand of the one-eyed Legend and allowed himself to be hauled up to safety. He’d then been led back down the slope to the beach, huddling against the scraped rock wall at the base of the mountain. It looked like it had been hacked away, piece by piece, and its debris left to scatter the beach. Even the slope he had climbed he now saw to be a path made by hand, or claw.

And the tools littering the ground had a variety of handles and grips, to accommodate, he guessed, the variety of hands and paws and claws that had done the clearing.

The Cyclops chewed slowly on a cigar-shaped rock, rolling it across his mouth from one side to the other while he watched Finn, who couldn’t quite shake off his wariness bordering on fear. He’d studied Legends, read the guidebooks. The Cyclops was not supposed to exist. It was a myth even among Legends.

On the Cyclops’s shoulder perched a tiny Legend, no taller than Finn’s leg, with a squashed pink nose, wide eyes and rounded grey face, so that he looked not unlike a squirrel, but not entirely like a squirrel either. He was smiling with unfathomable excitement. Finn guessed he was a Sprite.

A fourth Legend lurked further along in the tall grooves of the rock face. Finn could not see much of this creature but for the eyes, black slits on yellow. Finn had seen eyes like that before, but couldn’t recall where. They flooded him with dread.

“What is this place?” Finn asked over the sound of the sea sucking at the stones like it was trying to steal them.

“You’ll have a lot of questions, kid,” said the Cyclops, “and we’ve very little time so pay attention. First, you’re on an island.”

“Tornclaw. In the middle of the Great Ocean of the Dead,” said the Sprite in a helium-high voice, smiling brightly as if delighted to see Finn. It scrambled down the Cyclops’s arm and around behind Finn to get a closer look at him.

“Those tools you see? They’re here because this whole island used to be a crystal quarry,” continued the Cyclops. “It once stretched all the way out into the sea there, but has been hacked away until only the mountain is left. There are no crystals any more, just the bones of those once forced to work here.”

“…” Finn started to say.

“How did you get here? We found you because the little guy …” he pointed at the Sprite lurking at Finn’s legs, “… traced you through an energy imprint you’re leaking since you exploded in this place all those years ago. He can see you through the invisible walls separating our worlds.”

“I can’t see you clearly, though.” The Sprite grinned. “You look more like an orange blob.”

Cornelius was still scratching an itch while Hiss got out of the way.

The other, quiet Legend stayed half out of sight, except for those burning eyes.

“But most of all,” the Cyclops said to Finn, “you’re wondering, how are you talking to a Cyclops when they don’t exist in the first place?”

“That’s not what I was wondering,” Finn said, even though it was what he was wondering. Or at least, one of the things he was wondering.

The Cyclops leaned back, grinning. “Well, you’d be right to wonder.”

“If that’s what you were wondering,” clarified the Sprite, looking up at Finn while picking at the fabric of his jeans.

Finn swatted him away, and he backed off without complaint.

“We don’t exist,” said the non-existent Cyclops. “True, I have one eye. But it wasn’t always that way.” He paused and gave Finn a closer look at the scar circling an eye that appeared to have been pulled over across his face; around it was a patch of crooked, raised skin that looked like it had been carved with a stone and stitched back with that same stone. “I’m Fomorian, like Gantrua. But we had a little disagreement. This was the result. And now I work for your old pals here.”

Cornelius had finally stopped scratching, and Hiss was able to lift himself, curled and steady, to meet Finn’s gaze. “His name is Sulawan. Our tiny friend there is Beag. And I am sorry we had to grab you like that. It was the easiest way.”

“The easiest way?” exclaimed Finn. “You put me in the mouth of a sea creature.”

“A Leviathan, to be precise,” Sulawan the sort-of-Cyclops said.

“Which means that you, pal, got the luxury trip.”

“It didn’t smell like luxury,” said Finn.

“The rest of us had to rely on being flown here by Quetzalcóatl,” growled Sulawan. “They don’t like carrying me, and I sure as hell don’t like being carried.”

As if on cue, a shadow crossed the beach, a wing slicing through the cloud cover. Finn looked up and saw one of the Quetzalcóatls – a kind of enormous flying serpent that looked too broken to fly yet did so majestically. Some of them had led the resistance against Gantrua when Finn first came here, had controlled the Orthrus through some psychic trickery. But they had also been at war with serpents loyal to Gantrua. He had seen them fight in a great sky battle when rescuing his father from the Infested Side.

“Uncomfortable as it was, we are always in danger of attack in the skies so the Leviathan was about the best way to hide you and get you here to some sort of sanctuary. There is a lot we need to keep you safe from,” explained Hiss. “There is the danger of other Quetzalcóatls trying to grab you. And the Leviathan is big and tough enough to keep you hidden from some … other very dangerous threats.”

“Why?” asked Finn over the sound of the tide grinding on stone. “Gantrua is gone. I stopped him. Me and Emmie did.”

Sulawan took the rock from his mouth, worn almost to a stub. He decided there was a little more chewing in it. “Yeah, well, when you grabbed Gantrua you let loose something far worse.”

Cornelius whimpered, shook his heads; his ears whipped around.

Finn looked to Hiss. “I don’t understand. I thought with him gone, things would be better here.”

“They were,” said Hiss. “For a time.”

“But when you rip the head off a Hydra,” said Sulawan, “you shouldn’t be surprised when two more grow back.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m new to this,” argued Finn. “I’ve stared down the throats of a Hydra.”

“It’s a metaphor, kid,” said Sulawan, amused by his spirit. “And you might want to turn down the attitude a little. My friend over there doesn’t react too well to attitude.”

The hidden Legend remained in the shadows of the rock, eyes yellow, silent. It bothered Finn, although he was distracted by Beag the Sprite at his leg, staring up, delight glued on to his face.

“So, why bring me here?” Finn asked.

“To answer a question,” Hiss said. “Is Gantrua still alive?”

Finn considered this. They’d gone to all this trouble, and that was the question?

“Yes,” he answered. “Sort of. He was desiccated.”

A shudder ran through everyone. Finn sensed it even from the Legend in the shadows. Even the sea seemed to smack at the broken ground extra loudly.

“Where is he kept, kid?” asked Sulawan.

“In my house, I suppose. My old house. An assistant called Lucien took it from us.”

“So if you had to, you could get Gantrua back?” asked Hiss. Cornelius moaned a touch, shook the muscles beneath his sleek but weathered coat.

Finn was stunned by the idea of returning the Fomorian, had to replay the sentence in his head to make sure he’d heard it correctly. Once again a shadow passed overhead, darkness crossing Finn’s face and jolting him back into reality.

“Who would want to bring Gantrua back?” he asked.

No one answered.

“You want to bring Gantrua back?”

“Not really, kid,” said Sulawan, stubby rock crunching between his chipped teeth.

“But we have no choice,” said Hiss. “When he left this world, he left us a gift in case he ended up trapped in the Promised World. A sort of … insurance policy. To wreak devastation in the Infested Side.”

“What did he leave?” Finn asked.

A Quetzalcóatl swung from the clouds, circled and shot out across the sea. They followed its path.

“It looks like we will be able to show you,” said Hiss.

With a whine, Cornelius stood and followed a narrow curve around the edge of the mountain, with Hiss swinging gently behind. Sulawan pushed up behind Finn, glaring at him with his one eye to encourage him to follow. Beag was scampering across too. Finn couldn’t quite see where the other, silent Legend had got to.

He almost tripped on the broken tools that scattered the entire beach.

“This island was once rich with crystals, and the mines were here for many years,” said Hiss sadly. “So many spent their lives here and gave their lives here. They hacked and hammered at this island in search of opportunities to open a way to the Promised World. Piece by piece, strike by strike, over so many years, so many lives, until most of the island itself was lost beneath the ocean.”

Finn walked carefully after the Orthrus. A new serpent appeared above them, where the mountain met cloud, and dived straight towards a point about one hundred metres out to sea. Finn could see that out there the ocean was bubbling, foaming.

“Out there in the depths are many bones, long covered over by the encroaching water,” continued Hiss. “But it turns out that Gantrua found a way to rouse the dead, wherever they lie in this world.”

“You call us Legends, kid,” said Sulawan, “but we have Legends in our world. And when they become real, they’re far scarier than anything you humans can imagine.”

Cornelius moaned, pitiful. They stopped and peered out at the frothing sea. Finn wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking at.

“Wherever there are dead, this creature finds life,” said Hiss. “And in this place, there are dead everywhere.”

“He left a creature to ravage this world, and there is only one way to stop it,” said Sulawan.

“A charm,” said Beag, flat nose twitching.

“He took it with him,” explained Hiss. “To Darkmouth. You see, he was wearing it. When he crossed over. When you desiccated him. We need that charm. Which means we need Gantrua too.”

One of the Quetzalcóatls stopped circling, shot back towards where they stood on the beach. Hiss straightened, gripped in a psychic link with the creature, just as Finn had seen before.

“It is happening,” said Hiss, in a droning voice that sounded as if it came from someone else.

“What’s happening?” asked Finn.

Hiss stared ahead. “The dead are rising.”

The waves came at the shore in spiteful bursts, lifting themselves only to smash down hard. But even the waves seemed to avoid the circle of boiling water out in the depths.

“That thing forming in the deep is what they call Gashadokuro, or just the Bone Creature,” Hiss continued. “Millions of the tiniest of organisms come together, binding the bones so that the Gashadokuro rises and rampages anywhere in this world where there are bones to build from. The only way to stop it for good is with the emerald charm Gantrua carried with him to your world. He knew we would have to rescue him if we ever wanted to defeat the terrible creature he left behind.”

Finn watched the spitting sea, which was becoming more active by the second.

“Shouldn’t we … um … move?” he said.

“Don’t worry,” said Sulawan. “The sea is deep and the Bone Creature not so tall. Yet. We have time. But it is growing ever stronger. If you don’t find us Gantrua and his charm, then it will not be stopped until we are all dead and our bones joined with it.”

The circle of water was widening, darkening. Beag the Sprite hid behind Sulawan’s thick legs. For the first time Finn noticed the mysterious fourth Legend was still with them, but again pressed into the shadows of the rock wall. He couldn’t seem to see its shape, only its yellow eyes.

“Maybe we should g-get out of here,” stammered Beag. “You know, just in case.”

Finn looked at the Orthrus to see if Cornelius and Hiss were as fearful. Hiss appeared to be whispering something calming in Cornelius’s ear.

From the depths, the sound grew. It also appeared to be coming closer.

“The Gashadokuro has grown bigger with every visit, but has never reached this island,” said Sulawan. “We should be safe here.”

With an explosion of spray, something massive punched upwards, forcing a shock wave across the water. It frightened Finn enough that he stumbled back, lost his footing on the uneven ground and fell towards the cutting debris.

Sulawan grabbed him by the arm, held him as he dangled awkwardly, his view of the creature obscured by falling water and black seaweed. But he could make out a yellowed concoction of bones among the dark surf, a ghastly frame forming a makeshift skull with cavernous eye sockets hit by waves.

Sulawan jolted Finn back away from the sea. “That thing’s bigger than before,” he said to Hiss.

The Bone Creature started to push forward, forcing itself through the high waves.

“It shouldn’t be able to get to us,” said Hiss.

“Yet it is getting to us,” said Beag, jittery now and backing away behind the retreating Sulawan.

Where the sea grew shallower, the Bone Creature was slowly emerging now, its skull clearing the water, followed by shoulders made up of many layers of bones. It was accompanied by the sound of scraping through the earth, its feet crunching across the seabed. The shale and broken tools at Finn’s feet shifted.

“It is much bigger than before,” Hiss said to the other Legends. “We should—”

A great bone hand reached out from the sea.

“Run!” said Beag, leaping on to Sulawan’s shoulder.

Before Finn could take two steps, Sulawan swept him up under one armpit and began to stride hard along the uncertain ground.

Behind them a hand smashed down on the shore, a thump of splintering bones that fell like shrapnel around those fleeing.

The serpents dived from above, attacked the Bone Creature, but Finn couldn’t see if they were having any effect on it.

“Finn, we need to say goodbye now,” Hiss said. “Sulawan will explain your mission.”

Before Finn could ask anything else, the Legends broke off in different directions, Sulawan running with Finn under his arm.

The bone fist cracked the beach between them. Being shaken around half upside down, Finn made out only the blur of bone hitting rock, and the way the scattered splinters immediately swept back together and returned to the Bone Creature’s hand as it lifted it free, ready for another attack.

Sulawan pounded across the shore, Finn held solidly and helplessly in the crater of his armpit – his nose millimetres from being worn away to a nub on the rock wall.

Beag was clinging on to Sulawan’s shoulder with apparent ease despite the sharp turns and juddering speed.

They reached the part of the beach where Finn had first arrived on the island, the pathway running up to the cliff he’d almost fallen off. Sulawan slowed, and peering around his forearm Finn could see only glimpses of the Bone Creature swinging wildly at circling, dive-bombing serpents.

“Let go,” Finn just about managed to say.

Sulawan let go, dropping Finn on to stony ground.

“I didn’t mean let go like that,” said Finn, winded.

Sulawan grunted.

Above them, more serpents were appearing through the clouds to pour towards the creature.

“Call him,” Cyclops said to Beag.

The tiny Legend stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled so loudly that shrill, piercing sound still rang in Finn’s ears after he had stopped.

Above them, a serpent reappeared with the Orthrus in its jaws, taking Cornelius and Hiss to safety.

The mountain shook with the sound of battle.

“OK, kid, this is where you go home,” said Sulawan. “Next time I see you, you’ll have Gantrua in your pocket.”

“I can’t do that,” Finn told him. “That would be crazy.”

Leaning down and thrusting his single eye in Finn’s face, Sulawan snarled. “I hear old Cornelius and Hiss saved your life once. And your father’s. Maybe you should think about that before going all selfish on us.”

There was a stirring in the water, a blackness moving through the waves towards them.

“So, let’s say I decide to grab Gantrua,” asked Finn hurriedly. “What then? I just reanimate him, tell him it’s all been a big mistake, ask him for a charm and hope he doesn’t pull my head off?”

“You call us,” said Cyclops, and handed him a tube, a little longer than Finn’s open hand, and made of some kind of thick shell, ridged and lumpy on the outside but smooth inside its rim.

“In here are three of the crystals we smuggled out of this mine over the years and kept out of Gantrua’s hands. You push the end of this Gatemaker, a crystal will poke out the other end. It’ll be enough to punch a gateway open for a brief few seconds. We’ll know you’re ready then.”

Finn took the thing, felt a squirming within the thick shell.

“The crystals are attached to living scaldgrubs,” said Beag, “so they can survive the trip to your world.”

He saw the disgust on Finn’s face.

“Don’t worry, they’re only baby scaldgrubs,” said Sulawan. “Just don’t go putting your finger in there. They nibble.”

“I can’t steal Gantrua,” said Finn.

“You will. For some reason Hiss thinks you can be trusted with this job,” said Sulawan.

“Sulawan doesn’t trust anyone,” said Beag, smiling.

The noise from the other side of the cliff was of pure havoc, of serpents screeching, of the Bone Creature attacking.

“This is a crazy plan, you do realise that?” Finn said over the encroaching noise.

Sulawan thought about that. “Yeah,” he decided. “It is.”