Hero Rising

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.

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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.”