Darkmouth. Shane Hegarty

Finn. In the classroom, you’ve the potential to be a very good Legend Hunter—”

      “Well, bring the Legends to the classroom and I can tackle them there,” said Finn.

      “If you were as quick with your hands as you are with your mouth, this wouldn’t be so difficult,” his father replied.

      Finn sat on the ground, breathing hard.

      “Stay fresh,” said his dad. “You can read a couple of entries in The Most Great Lives when we’re done here.”

      “Ah, Dad, really?”

      “You’ll be in there yourself some day.”

      “So you keep saying. There won’t be much to say about me,” said Finn.

      “That hasn’t stopped them before. Besides, they’re desperate for you to come through. No Completions, and no true Legend Hunter in years, mean no new edition of the book. No new edition, no profits. They’re badly in need of an update.”

      Finn was well aware of this already, thanks to the publisher’s repeated letters.

      “Looking forward to your Completion,” Plurimus, Magesterius, Fortimus & Murphy wrote. “How’s the training going?” they asked. “We don’t mean to rush you, but …” and so on. Finn spent a lot of time trying not to think about the queue of people lining up to be disappointed if he didn’t Complete. Nevertheless, his conversation with Emmie had reminded him he wouldn’t be the first family problem.

      “Dad, what really happened to Granddad Niall?”

      “No one likes to talk about it, you know that.”

      “I want to talk about it.”

      “And I don’t. Now quit stalling and get up.”

      Finn had almost got his breath back, but kept up the heavy panting to get a couple more moments’ rest.

      “Maybe I won’t fight them when my time comes,” he said.

      “What?”

      “Maybe it’s the fighting that keeps the Legends coming, you know,” said Finn, a clamminess rising in him as he realised he was treading on thin ice. “Maybe talking to them isn’t such a bad idea.”

      “Which bit of the ‘no one likes to talk about it’ is hard for you to understand?”

      “Maybe we can learn something from it.”

      His dad squatted down to stare directly at Finn, holding his gaze until Finn’s eyes began to want to jump out of their sockets and run away. Finally, his father spoke. “What my father did is not something I will ever be allowed to forget, no matter how hard I try. That’s all the lesson we need to learn.” He offered Finn a hand up. “Now let’s get fighting again.”

      “Is this going to be needed, though?” asked Finn. “The gateways are dying out. They’ll be gone from here too eventually. Besides, we have Desiccators. Why do I need to learn this stuff?”

      “You might have noticed that the Legends aren’t gone yet.”

      “Then why do they keep attacking here and nowhere else?”

      “I don’t know. What do you think?”

      Finn took a moment to ponder this. “I think I’ve scared the bigger ones away.”

      His father grinned at that, held out a hand and helped Finn to his feet. Then he jumped back. “OK, buster, wrestle me.”

      Finn’s sigh of annoyance was lost in the clatter of an alarm rattling through the building. That noise had been the soundtrack to Finn’s life – the signal that a gateway had opened somewhere in Darkmouth.

      “Excellent,” said his father, perking up immediately. “Who needs training when we have a live Legend to help us out? Besides, if we get into trouble, you can just give the Legend the look you’re giving me now. That’ll scare it.”

      Finn bit hard on his lower lip.

      His father grinned. “Yep, that’s the one.”

      

      Broonie walked through the gate and emerged into a world of rain.

      What he noticed first was not the scenery, but the air. It had a purity that was invigorating. At least it had a purity once he sniffed his way past the many impurities that were layered over it: fatty foods, burnt fuels, seaweed, decaying flowers, all overlaid by tons of perfume-doused sweat. It carried in the breeze and through the light rain.

      But, underneath all that, the air was so fresh that he wanted to drink it.

      Everywhere he looked there was a vibrancy that he had never experienced. Each colour was divided into shade upon shade – even the greys exploded across a spectrum.

      This was the Promised World. This was what centuries of war had been waged over. He understood it now.

      He was on a Darkmouth street. So orderly, he thought. Flowers growing from baskets in the air: novel. Numbers on doors: curious. The ground is painted with rectangles and vehicles are abandoned in them. Odd.

      Broonie felt grubby in his dull rags crusted with his own blood. He saw that he was covered in a fine layer of dust that seemed resistant to the rain. Instead, it shed from him as he nervously shuffled on the spot, trying to decide what he had to do next. He had been told his mission. He still didn’t understand exactly what it was.

      “When you see them, you can attack,” the Fomorians had said.

      “Attack?”

      “Attack.”

      “Shouldn’t I take a bigger weapon with me?” he had asked, holding up the small knife they had given him.

      “Your best weapon is your ingenuity,” they told him.

      “While I appreciate the compliment, I’m not sure it will be entirely sufficient to—”

      At which point a boot kicked him through the rippling gateway.

      There was an incessant ache where his finger had been removed and clumsily replaced with a new digit made of crystal. It already felt loose at the knuckle. Even in his disbelief and pain, he was annoyed at the Fomorians’ shoddy workmanship.

      An older human in a headscarf crossed his path, pulling some kind of square bag filled with provisions. When she saw him, she screamed and scuttled away, leaving her bag to spill at his feet. Broonie rummaged through its contents. He was desperately hungry, and slurped from a carton of milk, then bit into an egg and sucked its contents. They tasted so fresh he shuddered in delight. He rifled through the bag some more and recoiled. Inside a clear package was meat. Bloody. Sliced neatly.

       These people must be more vicious than it is taught. Even the elders carry the raw parts of their prey.

      It was time to run.

      He struggled through Darkmouth’s maze of dead ends and blind alleys, continually failing to find a clear path.

      Turning on to a wide street, he ran into a bustle of humans moving through the town. One noticed him and his shriek alerted the others. A small hairy animal at the end of a leash went wild, straining and snarling until Broonie thrust his knife at it, pricking the creature in the paw so that it squealed and withdrew, bleeding.

      Its owner kicked at him and Broonie stabbed impulsively at him too, nicking his ankle, before jumping backwards on to the road where there was a horrible squeal of machinery as an oncoming metal vehicle braked only an ear-hair’s width from his face.

      Adrenalin