Worlds Explode

Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)

Thank Yous (#litres_trial_promo)

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About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Books by Shane Hegarty (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Maps (#ulink_d7efbaab-4af7-57ce-b86d-18e6462bb1fb)

PREVIOUSLY IN DARKMOUTH (#ulink_95b5a5be-9f36-5747-a970-5b7417e39954)

(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’ (#ulink_929eead5-f145-562c-a87e-96bec0a63445) From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, (#ulink_929eead5-f145-562c-a87e-96bec0a63445) as told by inhabitants of the Infested Side (#ulink_929eead5-f145-562c-a87e-96bec0a63445)

(#ulink_3ad85045-60ee-51fb-96b2-a6b1d16554a0)

THIRTY-TWO YEARS LATER (#ulink_3ad85045-60ee-51fb-96b2-a6b1d16554a0)

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.”