Worlds Explode

Copyright

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015

Published in this edition 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is:

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Shane Hegarty 2015

Illustrations copyright © James de la Rue 2015

Design by HarperCollinsPublishers © 2017

Character illustration © James de la Rue; claw mark illustration © Peter Crowther

Shane Hegarty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

James de la Rue asserts the moral right to be identified as the illustrator of the work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007545674

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007545759

Version: 2017-02-14

For Oisín

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Previously in Darkmouth

‘The Arrival of the Human’: From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by inhabitants of the Infested Side

Chapter 1: Thirty-Two Years Later

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

‘The Arrival of the Human’: From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by inhabitants of the Infested Side

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

‘The Execution of the Human’: From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by inhabitants of the Infested Side

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

‘The Three Explodings of Niall Blacktongue’: From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by the inhabitants of the Infested Side

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

‘The Purge’: From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by the inhabitants of the Infested Side

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

‘Hugo’s Rescue’: From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by the inhabitants of the Infested Side

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

‘The Leaving of Niall Blacktongue’: From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by the inhabitants of the Infested Side

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Thank Yous

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Books by Shane Hegarty

About the Publisher

Maps

PREVIOUSLY IN DARKMOUTH

(AND THE MESS THINGS WERE LEFT IN)

It was, everyone on the Council of Twelve agreed, a bit of a mess.

Actually, it was a lot of a mess. In fact, ‘mess’ understated things a little. It was more of a disaster really. A catastrophe. A complete catastrophe.

It was, everyone on the Council of Twelve eventually agreed, a complete catastrophe.

What was the worst part of the catastrophe? There was so much to choose from.

Darkmouth was the last town left on Earth where Legends of myth still invaded, but Hugo the Great, the only active Legend Hunter left to fight them off, was lost on the Infested Side.

As if that wasn’t bad enough – and it was very, very bad – Darkmouth had been left in the hands of his son Finn, a boy still almost eleven months away from his thirteenth birthday when he would become Complete as a Legend Hunter.

Worse yet, this boy was not exactly top of his Legend Hunter class. Which was some achievement given he was the only boy in his Legend Hunter class.

Somehow, that wasn’t even the end of the mess.

The Twelve had managed to plant a spy in the town. Steve, a Half-Hunter from a long line of Legend Hunters, had never properly hunted until he arrived in Darkmouth. It turned out he had never properly spied either, as his cover was blown by Finn, the very boy he was supposed to be keeping a close eye on.

There should have been a positive in the form of Steve’s daughter, Emmie, who not only befriended Finn, but also showed a desire and heart for fighting Legends that the boy lacked. Except it was increasingly clear that her enthusiasm would cause trouble someday – and that day came when she helped a Legend, Broonie the Hogboon, escape back to the Infested Side from which all Legends come.

And then, just to add icing to the whole cake of catastrophe, Darkmouth turned out to be harbouring a traitor. Mr Ernest Glad was supposed to be a Fixer, a helper, a lifelong friend to Hugo. Instead, he was collaborating with the Legends and helped them invade. And he ended up opening a gateway to the Infested Side and pushing Finn’s mother, Clara, through it. Eventually, Clara was rescued by Hugo, but he became trapped in the world of the Legends.

Yes, Finn did shove Mr Glad into the gateway, trapping him and turning him into a million points of light. And yes, he did admittedly defeat a Minotaur and stop an all-out invasion of Legends.

But buildings were destroyed. People were hurt. Every goldfish in Darkmouth disappeared. Hugo the Legend Hunter was gone.

And it would not help matters at all if the boy tried to get him back. No, that would only end in further, final catastrophe.

Or something far worse.

‘The Arrival of the Human’ From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by inhabitants of the Infested Side

THIRTY-TWO YEARS LATER

Finn’s father had told him to go to room S3 in the house.

Then he’d pushed Finn out of the Infested Side, back through the buckling gateway to their own world and safety. Finn’s dad had gone to the Infested Side to rescue Finn’s mam, and Finn had gone there to rescue both of them. The last time he saw his dad, he was stepping towards the onrushing Legends and the human who led the charge – Hugo’s own father, Niall Blacktongue.

So, once the gateway had closed, trapping his father on the other side, Finn ran straight to room S3 in the Long Hall. All he found there was a plain box. Inside it was a handwritten note with a simple instruction: Light up the house.

So Finn did. He switched on every lamp and light bulb from the library to the bedrooms, from the bathrooms to the storerooms. He replaced spent light bulbs. He filled empty sockets. He lit up rooms he’d spent hours training in. Rooms he’d never been in. Rooms he’d hardly even noticed.

By the time he’d finished, the house must have been visible from the moon.

“Find the map,” his father had also said.

So Finn found maps.

Lots of maps. Two weeks of hard searching later, he hadn’t found his father, but he was still finding maps.

They were now stacked in piles the length of the Long Hall, under his ancestors’ portraits lining the wall. One mound of maps was overseen by the painting of a meek, almost shameful Niall Blacktongue that Finn could hardly bring himself to look at since losing his father.

Pages were heaped up across the circular floor of the high-ceilinged library, scattered about the device in the centre of the room that his father had built to desiccate Legends, but which Mr Glad had used to awaken them for the invasion. And, at the very spot where Glad had been trapped by a collapsing gateway and scattered into light, there was a small mountain of maps, sorted, discarded, ruled out or held on to for further investigation. Finn sat on one of its slopes.

But he wasn’t alone.

“I’m guessing we can ignore The 1956 Guide to Norway’s Best Pudding Restaurants?” he asked Emmie.

“The Great Scourge of 1886: A Map of Missing Legends,” she read from where she stood by a half-ransacked section of the vast shelves that ringed the room. “How many Legends went missing? And how can there be a map of them if no one knows where they are in the first place?”

They had spent a fortnight leafing through books of maps, fold-out maps, laminated maps, two braille maps, even a jigsaw map of Ireland that Finn used to play with as a child. That very afternoon, they had put the jigsaw together and become very excited when they discovered the piece for County Tipperary was missing.

“It must mean something,” Emmie had said excitedly, until Finn remembered that he’d almost choked on Tipperary when he was very young and the piece had been thrown away as a safety precaution.

He and Emmie continued sifting through the maps in the hope that something might jump out at them. Although, given that they were surrounded by the desiccated husks of Legends, shrunken and frozen but not at all dead, they quietly hoped that nothing would literally jump out at them.

Since his father’s disappearance, no alarms had wailed. No gateway had opened. No Legends had come through. Instead, it had been all about the maps, with the problem being that even if they found one that looked right they didn’t have a clue what it would lead them to.

A weapon? A person? A Legend with its mouth wide and teeth sharpened? Maybe it would be a convenient path to the Infested Side, and they would skip their way along it to find Hugo sitting in a room somewhere, grinning at them.

With the way things had gone so far, that seemed unlikely.

“We’ll know it when we see it, I guess,” Emmie said, apparently sensing Finn’s despair. “I’m sure that at some stage the map we’re looking for will just drop out of something like …” she looked at the book she was holding, “… An Illustrated Atlas of the Last Stands of Slain Legend Hunters. OK, bad choice.”

Finn was flicking robotically through another book, The Happy Rowers’ Guide to the Inlets of Southern Sweden, 1974 edition (Now with Added Coves).

“Dad wouldn’t have told me about it if he didn’t think we could find it,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as Emmie. “And he told me he knew I wouldn’t give up. So I won’t. Except …” From the book he was holding, a small, red, frayed hardback notebook dropped to the floor. “… we’ve been doing this for weeks now, looking for something we mightn’t even recognise.”

“We’ll find it soon, Finn,” said Emmie.

“I’m not saying we won’t,” Finn replied, picking up the notebook. On the inside cover were the initials NB, and he scanned its pages of hand-drawn mathematical symbols, diagrams and shapes, the writing so small it was like a spider had fallen in an inkpot before scampering across the page. NB, he thought. Niall Blacktongue? Was it possible this notebook belonged to—?

A crumpled-up bit of paper bounced off the side of his head. “Earth to Finn?” said Emmie, with a sympathetic grin.

Finn blinked. “Oh. I’m not saying we won’t find it, I’m just afraid we’re looking for the wrong thing in the wrong places.”

Which was the exact moment he found a map.

Low evening sunlight flooded the small Darkmouth alley, forcing Finn to pull his visor down to block its glare. He crept low along the narrow laneway, brushing the high walls on either side, the butt of his Desiccator pressed into his armoured shoulder, ready to protect him against whatever he might find. Whenever he found it. Whatever it was he was looking for.

He backed along a wall, the armour of his clattering fighting suit screeching across the stone. Keeping out of sight, he took a hard right into another alleyway of high glass and nail-rimmed walls in a town built for defence. Gouges and missing chunks in the brickwork were a reminder of the invasion only two weeks before, of the chaos and near catastrophe wrought by multiple Manticores, a Minotaur and those trying to hunt them down.

He scuttled down the laneway where Mr Glad’s burnt-out shop stood behind a criss-cross of police tape warning trespassers to keep out, a blackened reminder of the traitor who had opened a hole in Darkmouth through which Finn’s father and mother had gone and only one had come back.

Where the lane bisected another, Finn stuck his head round the corner. From a parallel alley, the barrel of a weapon emerged, followed by a helmet and a flurry of exaggerated hand signals.

Palm out flat. Knuckles curled. A swirling motion.

Finn flipped open his visor, squinting against the sun as he tried to properly convey his bemusement. “What?” he mouthed.

Steve pushed his visor open and repeated the gestures, this time adding some kind of pumping fist motion.

“Lie down?” asked Finn. “Hop?”

Steve gritted his teeth with obvious frustration. From behind his back, another head appeared.

Emmie, her helmet propped on her head, tight red hair avalanching from it, waved at Finn. He waved back.

Her father gently but firmly pushed her behind him and then, pressed against the wall, crab-walked towards Finn. Emmie followed, no Desiccator in her hand. She wasn’t allowed one. Her sole weapon was an eagerness that almost burst from her.

The three crouched at the wall. Finn’s fighting suit was pushed up uncomfortably at his neck; his kneepads dug into the top of his shins. He shifted awkwardly and loudly as Steve spoke.

“We’re to follow that lane north for another forty metres,” said Emmie’s father, pointing ahead, “then west for twenty metres. That’s where we’ll find our target.”

Finn narrowed his eyes to see. “But that’s the wrong way,” he said.

“No, it’s the right way.”

“It’s not,” Finn insisted, pointing instead at the sliver of alleyway directly ahead of them. “I’m sure that’s what the map tells us.”

An old man cycled towards them, whistling a tune that he left hanging in the air as he saw them, crouched, in armour, and wielding their fat silver Desiccators. He stopped, turned his bike clumsily in the narrow alley, climbed back on to the saddle and cycled away in the direction he’d come from, mumbling curses as he went.

They watched him go, then resumed their planning. “It’s the correct way, Finn. It’s the only possibility.”

“I know these streets. My dad made me memorise them.”

“Look, Finn, I am in charge here. Those are the orders, so that’s just the way it is, whether we like it or not.”

Steve didn’t just like it, he loved it. That was obvious. Since the Council of Twelve had ordered him to stay on in Darkmouth and act as temporary Legend Hunter, he’d been practically giddy with authority, and even more disappointed than Finn that a gateway hadn’t opened since.

“Finn does know them, Dad,” said Emmie, pushing open her visor to reveal her face. “Trust me.”

“Do you want to go back to the car?” Steve asked her.

“No,” she answered.

“Then let me deal with this. We almost got killed in this town because of invading Legends. This is serious stuff.”

“But you said I could do a bit more, Dad.”

“Yes, you can observe more.”

“Come on, Dad. I just want to help.”

Steve rooted through a pocket of his fighting suit, pulled out a set of car keys and held them out to her.

Emmie let out a deep sigh.

Content he’d made his point, Steve pushed the keys back into his pocket and again turned his attention to Finn, who had already stood up to cross the road in the direction he knew they needed to go. Steve pulled him back down by the shoulder and eyeballed him. A shudder went through Finn’s fighting suit. It was tough to exude ferocity when sounding like a wind chime.

“This is the right alley,” insisted Steve, rising to move forward. “So, follow me and let’s see what’s down here.”

It was the wrong alley.

A dead end.

“They must have put this in after making the map,” said Steve, coughing to hide his embarrassment. Finn and Emmie’s silent response said it all. Steve eventually cracked.

“OK, let’s go the way Finn thinks we should,” said Emmie’s dad and the three of them moved back towards the other laneway. “And let’s hope he’s not wrong.”

Finn felt his frustration rise sharply, but kept it to himself.

They moved through the jagged shadows of the laneway’s cobbled defences, past houses of chipped paint and gouged windowsills. They ducked past old, dirtied walls dotted with fresh brick, like fillings in a tooth.

It eventually led them to a wooden door, the entrance to a backyard. As was standard in Darkmouth, its wall was ringed by broken glass, nails, tacks, sharp stones, anything that might keep a Legend out. Softened by decades of rain, though, the splintered door pushed open easily, revealing a yard half filled with blue plastic barrels and large bins.

Finn felt a jolt of uncertainty: this wasn’t right at all.

Before he could speak, Steve held up his hand and began counting down with his fingers. Finn drew his Desiccator to his shoulder and followed him. Emmie stood behind them and tried to look as tough as she could before remembering to snap shut her helmet’s visor.

They edged forward, between bins and barrels and the occasional waft of something rotting, until they reached the back door.

Steve placed his hand on the handle.

“This is ridiculous,” Finn’s mother, Clara, said from the yard behind them, causing each of them to almost jump clean out of their fighting suits. They spun round. “What do you think you’re going to find here?” she asked.

“We were just about to discover that before you interrupted,” answered Steve, deeply frustrated by this disturbance.

“Give me the map,” demanded Clara, hand out.

“Keep your voice down,” Steve hissed.

Finn snatched the map from where it was tucked into the utility belt on Steve’s fighting suit and, despite the man’s protests, handed it quickly to his mother.

Clara held it up. “Do you really think it would be on a beer mat? You don’t think that just maybe Hugo would have told Finn to ‘look for the map on the beer mat’ if he wanted you to find it on an actual beer mat?”

She turned it over in her fingers. On one side was an image of a full and frothy glass (Widow Maker – as refreshing as a kick from an eight-hooved Sleipnir). On the other, the print had been picked clean off and on the soft white cardboard a pen had been used to scribble what seemed to be a criss-cross of laneways, with an X at one corner.

“It’s the best map we’ve come up with,” said Steve, his Desiccator wilting somewhat.

“Better than when you thought you’d found the right one, but ended up bursting into Mrs Kelly’s crèche at nap time?”

“The mark on that map seemed legitimate,” said Steve, flipping open his visor.

“It was a coffee stain. And you set a dozen toddlers’ toilet training back a month.”

“We’re trying our best, Mam,” said Finn.

“I know you are, Finn. This isn’t your fault. I just don’t like to see you being led around blindly while carrying a dangerous weapon.”

“Oh, that thing’s not even loaded,” said Steve, motioning at Finn’s Desiccator. Registering the shock crossing Finn’s face, he added, “Come on now, if you had to use it, you’d probably do more damage to yourself than anything else. But it kept you quiet to think it was working.”

The door behind them swung open with a clang.

Finn and Steve spun round, their raised Desiccators almost scratching the nose of the man who stood in the doorway, wearing a white apron and holding an open-topped blue barrel. He thrust his hands in the air, dropping the barrel so that everyone had to leap out of the way while water and slices of potato washed across the concrete.