Hero Rising

There was another momentary burst of light.

Finn placed his hand on the bark of the tree to keep his balance as he leaned over the hole in the cliff, but its sap’s stickiness was enough to pull at his skin. The birds were making a lot of noise too, above them and across the trees scattered over the crumbled cliffs.

He stood to gather his thoughts, trying to pick the drying sap off his hands while figuring out exactly what to do now. “What do you think, Emmie?”

“I think there’s something very weird going on with that little bird over your head,” she said.

He looked up. A tiny finch was hanging upside down from a leaf, desperately pecking at the branch and beating its wings, unable to pull itself free.

Finn reached up to the branch and felt the sap covering the bird, and he realised it was seeping from every part of the tree. As gently as he could, he helped free the small bird. It did not fight him, its exhaustion overpowering its fear. He felt its heart beat at a panicked pulse, held it out delicately to show Emmie.

She took a bottle from her bag and gently squeezed water over the bird’s back and wings while he massaged it as carefully as he could, until the sap gradually eased out and, with a shake, the bird found freedom again in its wings.

Finn held the bird out on the palm of his hand, where it stayed for a little while longer, regaining its energy. Eventually, it spread its wings and flew, dropping low along the grass before picking up and rising higher as it disappeared across the hill towards the town. They followed its flight, Finn feeling pleased that they had freed it, saved it from certain death.

Until he realised that in every tree in sight there were birds fighting, struggling, failing to free themselves from the sap that oozed from the leaves and bark. He nudged Emmie and showed her.

“That’s weird,” said Emmie.

“Are you spying on us?” asked Scarlett, her head popping up through the hole in the ground.

“I think they were spying on you,” said Estravon, appearing behind them, flanked by two assistants, stocky men who filled their suits, thick necks spilling out over their collars. “And I’ve had to ruin a good pair of shoes spying on them. Come with me, you two. Lucien will not be happy.”

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Lucien was annoyed with his kids. Lucien was always annoyed with his kids.

“Put down that head, Elektra,” Lucien ordered his daughter, an eight-year-old girl with seemingly inexhaustible batteries. She had an eye for trouble. And another eye for mayhem. Right now she was wandering around the wide, circular library of Finn’s house with a 250-year-old stuffed Minotaur head on her thin shoulders, wobbling and giggling, while her six-year-old brother Tiberius hit her with a large spear.

Finn and Emmie watched from where they stood in the long corridor, right beside the bare spot on the wall where Finn’s portrait was supposed to be hanging. Beside it was the square in which his father’s portrait was meant to be, and alongside it the dark rectangle from where his grandfather Niall Blacktongue had once gazed. He was gone too, considered the first bad apple in what Lucien had decided was a rotten crop.

“Put down that spear, Tiberius,” Lucien ordered his son.

Tiberius brought it swinging down on his sister’s head, and she staggered backwards into a shelf of ancient desiccated Legends.

From the hallway to the library, Lucien strode angrily to the door, gripped it with knuckle-whitening frustration, considered saying something, but reconsidered before slamming it shut just as Elektra hit the floor and Tiberius leaped on her tummy.

“They’ll get tired eventually,” he said.

From the other side of the door they heard the sound of a spear hitting a stuffed Minotaur head, followed by a muffled sound of pain.

Lucien drew a long, steadying breath and turned his attention to the other problematic young people in his life.

“You know the writer for The Most Great Lives is due to visit?” he said to Finn. The Most Great Lives of the Legend Hunters, from Ancient Times to the Modern Day was the most prestigious, popular and long encyclopaedia. Its publishers had waited years for Finn to become a proper Legend Hunter so they could print, and sell, a new version.

Unfortunately, The Most Great Lives had a section on traitors.

“They want to write an entry even though you are not yet a proper Legend Hunter,” continued Lucien, unblinking. “There is such demand for your story. Everyone wants to hear it. But the rumour is they have not yet decided if you should be among the heroes at the front, or the traitors hidden under black pages at the back of the book.”

Lucien rubbed a palm over his few wisps of hair. “So I wonder, young man, why you look so satisfied for somebody on the verge of destroying his family’s legacy?”

Letting that thought sit, Lucien set off down the corridor so that he and Emmie were forced to walk alongside him.

“How many times do you have to be told to stay out of things in Darkmouth?”

“Dunno,” Finn answered, as insolent as he could manage. “How many times has it been so far, Emmie?”

“Quite a lot,” she said.

Lucien stopped, and even though he was neither tall nor imposing, he radiated a menace that made Finn bristle all the same. He felt the hair prickle on his neck, hoped it hadn’t been noticed.

“You are a cocky young man these days,” Lucien said, his breath as sour as his mood. “You weren’t always like that. I know this from previous reports. From everything Estravon told me.”

“That was before you kicked us out of our home.” It hurt Finn to know he was only visiting his own house. He missed every part of it, and it all seemed so much sharper to his senses now he was hardly in it. The distinctive must of the corridor, of metal and wood and peeling portraits. The vinegary odour of Desiccator fluid that had leaked into the walls over the years.

Lucien’s kids had filled much of this place with their toys and clothes and stench. It made Finn nauseous to even contemplate it. But he needed to keep his mind focused on one job right now. Which was being really obnoxious to Lucien.

“I have been very lenient on you and your family given what you have done,” Lucien told him with a wave of his hand while walking on again.

“We’ve lost everything because of you,” said Finn.

“I have allowed you to stay at home here in Darkmouth.”

“The other house is not my home,” said Finn, unable to stay patient, and stepping in front of Lucien.

There was a thud and a wail from way behind them at the library door, as Elektra or Tiberius succumbed to some inevitable stuffed-Minotaur-related accident.

Lucien did not flinch. “I have allowed you to stay in Darkmouth while we examine exactly what happened, how and – most importantly – who was involved. You forget that I could have sent you and your parents to Liechtenstein HQ to be imprisoned. Or far worse.”

“Like how you sent Steve away,” said Finn.

Emmie’s face tightened at that.

“As someone who was trapped between worlds, he is helping us understand the threat we all face, that is all,” said Lucien.

“Or you’re getting one more problem out of Darkmouth,” said Finn.

“There are many worse things we could have done to your family. Many, many things that are allowed by the Legend Hunter punishment book.” Lucien paused, then called out. “Estravon?”

Estravon stuck his head out of a small training room off the corridor. “In 1867, Jan the Intolerable was made to eat forty rotten boiled eggs in under three minutes as punishment for his cowardice at the Battle of Little Death.” Estravon retreated back into the room to finish whatever he was up to in there.

“Something’s going on,” Finn said. “You’ve sent the Half-Hunters home. You’ve sent Steve to Liechtenstein. It’s almost like you want them all out of the way.”

“That’s clever. Exactly the kind of quick thinking I would want if I was, say, a traitor working for the Legends,” said Lucien, pausing at the top of the corridor at the first, and oldest, portrait of one of Finn’s ancestors. The painting itself was so ancient it was merely a square of varying brown blobs. A worn plaque beside it declared it to be of long-dead Legend Hunter Aodh the Handsome.

“You’re doing something in the cave,” said Emmie.

“It’s a place where incredibly important and dangerous crystals grow,” explained Lucien. “The only place on Earth, in fact. Those crystals have the power to spontaneously open gateways to the Infested Side. Of course we’re doing something. We’re looking into that strange phenomenon.”