Darkmouth (24 page)

F
or a moment, Finn was nothing but light.

T
hen Finn experienced a sensation like the jolt between waking and sleeping, like the last embers of a dream. It was his consciousness being scrambled for a nano-moment and put back together in almost exactly the right way.

It was exhilarating.

Then he reached the Infested Side and spent his first seconds there being violently ill, bent double with the shock of the foul air. Steve was standing beside him, peering into the grim light, his helmet still on and his visor down, offering protection from the wretched atmosphere.

As Finn recovered, he wondered what Steve was looking at. Then he saw the two bodies lying in the scrub.

F
inn and Steve ran to the bodies, crumpled in a hollow among spiked reeds.

“Fomorians,” said Steve. He examined the two large prostrate figures, each with a crescent scar branded into its forehead. “Even uglier than we've been taught. And still alive, it seems. They'd be pretty hard to kill with your bare hands, so I'd say your father's done well to do this much damage. Presuming it was him, of course.”

Finn stood and looked around. Behind them, Broonie was standing by the light of the gateway, which seemed far more piercing here, its radiance contrasting with the almost complete lack of charm anywhere else in this world.

“It's wonderful, isn't it?” squealed Broonie with sincere delight. “Oh, I didn't think I'd miss it so much, but it tastes as sweet as slugwine.” He did a little jig of happiness.

Finn gagged, then composed himself enough to shout, “Dad!”

“No one out there,” said Steve. “Not that I can see.”

“Mam!”

“You shouldn't hang around,” warned Broonie. “There are bandits on these roads and, whatever price a Hogboon skull would fetch as an ornament, you don't want to find out what a human's would be worth.” He took a couple of seconds to assess the boy, until he dismissed the dark idea forming in his head. “No, I shouldn't. It wouldn't be right. Honor above wealth. Always. Even if wealth
and
honor would be nice. . . .”

Ignoring Broonie, Steve added his voice to Finn's and their shouts carried across the hard grass toward the gnarled, leafless trees that bordered the clearing. The field stretched away from them, up a hill, beyond which the land dipped and then sloped upward again to the foot of bare, forbidding mountains.

“Dad! Mam!”

“Hugo! Clara!”

In the distance, a squawk pierced the foul air.

“You can shout all you want,” said Broonie. “I'm not waiting around to see who answers.”

Steve, his voice still muffled by the visor, leaned down
toward Finn. “They could be gone by now. And our gateway isn't going to remain open much longer. We'll have to leave soon.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” said Finn. He called again for his parents, ending with more gagging.

There was another squawk from above, and nearer this time. Steve pointed the Desiccator at the sky. A shadow moved through the low cloud. Fast.

Finn took a couple of steps away from the still-open gateway and cocked his head toward the distant mountains. “Do you hear that?” he asked Steve. It was an almost imperceptible rumble through the ground.

“I hear nothing, Finn. And we have to go.”

The shadow crossed over them. A high-pitched call stabbing through the cloud. Finn, Steve, and Broonie turned their attention skyward.

From the ground, they sensed the tiniest tremor.

The anxiety in Broonie's voice ratcheted up a notch. “Well, I have a hovel to attend to, so if you'll excuse me.”

A creature bolted from the cloud. Serpentine, with wings scooping at the sky, it coiled its body, bared its fangs, and shot forward toward the isolated Broonie.

The Hogboon screamed and ducked, hands over head. The mouth of the winged serpent enveloped Broonie's
crown, his skin grazed by the tip of a fang.

Phzzzzt
.

With a
whuuupfh
, the creature crumbled, half-desiccated, its head and a wing mashed into a rough sphere, its tail writhing on the ground, every flail of its undesiccated wing pushing it farther around in a circle. Broonie peeked out from the gap in his hands as the serpent quickly exhausted itself and stopped still in the scrub, the gateway illuminating its horrific state.

“Interesting,” muttered Steve, lowering his smoking weapon. “The Desiccator doesn't seem to work as well here.”

Finn didn't hear him. He was again concentrating on the rumble, which was getting louder, closer. The gathering tremor in the ground now tickled at the soles of his boots.

The sparkling edges of the gateway dipped for an instant.

“The gateway's going to close soon,” said Broonie, beginning to back away from the scene. “It was interesting meeting you. Let's never do it again. Good-bye.” He sprinted toward the twisted forest.

Steve gripped Finn's shoulder and pulled him over to the gateway. “We're going.”

Finn shrugged him off. Steve grabbed him again, hauling him to the edge of the light. “We will come back for them, Finn. Somehow, we'll come back.”

Feeling the gateway's warmth against his skin, Finn looked back at the empty, bleak world, making a silent promise to return. He began to step into the hole between worlds. Then he heard it.

“Finn!” His father's voice reached them from the edge of the trees. Then two figures appeared. In the gloom, they were hardly recognizable, only dark shapes kicking up dust. Finn's mam's arm was slung around his dad's shoulder as they ran toward him.

“Dad!” He jumped forward a few paces. Steve shouted at him to stay where he was.

Hugo and Clara separated, both concentrating solely on Finn, but, even in just a few steps, Finn's mam had fallen behind and Finn watched as his dad stopped for a moment, grabbed her hand, and then began running again.

The earth shuddered. The tremor worked its way up through Finn's armor, forcing a rattle through his fighting suit. He peered out at the hill.

Over its crest emerged an army.

Manticores and Wolpertingers in the front, giant loping Fomorians following, and between them an array of other Legends. It was a crazy mass of shapes, scampering, lumbering, snarling, charging toward them.

“Hurry!” Finn screamed as loudly as he could.

F
inn's parents ran hard, their gaze fixed on the gateway. Steve fired a volley from his Desiccator. The net traced a blue arc toward the hill, but fell short.

Behind Finn, the gateway groaned a little, beginning to collapse inward. “Quick!”

Over the trembling earth, the army raced. At its head there were two figures riding on the backs of enormous three-horned, four-legged beasts. One of the individuals was a giant, and even at this distance Finn could make out a jagged grille reaching upward from his neck.

The other figure looked puny beside him, almost completely concealed beneath a hooded cloak.

Finn watched his father and mother race across the hard ground. Steve fired off another shot toward the onrushing Legends and this time the net landed in the front ranks, sending creatures sprawling and falling. The rest of the army plowed through the victims and ever forward.

Finn stood at the precipice of the gateway. “Hurry. Hurry!”

The light bent again as a prelude to the gateway's imminent closure, just as his parents reached it.

Hugo grabbed Steve's Desiccator, thrust Clara toward him, then pushed them both toward the gateway.

“I suppose I have to thank you now,” he said to Steve.

“Nah. Looks like you had everything under control here,” said Steve before taking Clara's arm, the light swallowing them as they both vanished to safety.

Now only Finn and his father were left on the Infested Side.

The wall of cursing, ravenous Legends was almost on top of them. The two lead riders pulled hard on their beasts and halted as the hordes bore down behind them. The giant at the front snarled through the broken teeth lining his mask, pushing up the scars that crisscrossed his face, holding the beast below him in place with arms that were each wider than Finn's father's chest.

The Legend held Finn's stare, as if he knew exactly who this boy was. At that moment, Finn realized that this must be the Fomorian Broonie had talked about. This must be Gantrua.

Beside him, the hooded figure held tight against the
bucking of the beast beneath him, face lost beneath the hood.

Finn refocused. He was standing at the rim of the buckling gateway. “Dad, we need to go!” he called. But instead of leaping through the gateway, Finn's father aimed the Desiccator at the two leaders on their beasts before setting his sights on just one of them. His target pulled the hood slowly from his head.

Hugo recognized him instantly, at least as far as Finn could tell from the way he staggered back, horrified. It took Finn a moment longer.

The man's skin—because it
was
a man, not a Legend . . .

. . . the man's skin was drained of color and terribly scarred, his eyes a burned-out pink, but enough remnants of the face from the portrait clung on. Hugo lowered his weapon, his mouth hanging open in disbelief as a wry smile crept across his father's wizened lips.

Niall Blacktongue, the man who had tried talking to Legends and it didn't end well, Finn's father's father, the one who was lost, stared back at them until he was swallowed by the swarm of Legends clamoring to reach the intruders.

The gateway groaned. Finn screamed at his father to go, but Hugo didn't move at first, instead keeping his
eyes glued to the spot where Niall had been before the Legends engulfed him. He finally turned to Finn.

“Tell your mam I love her and I'll see her soon,” he shouted, “but I have to do this.”

“Do what?” asked Finn.

“Go after my father.”

“But—”

“You'll be all right. You'll find a way to get me back here. You've already shown me that. Finn the Defiant.” He looked behind them quickly, the clamoring wall of Legends now almost upon them. “Listen to me, Finn. There's a map somewhere. In room S3 in the house. Do you hear me? Find the map.”

He pushed his son through the gateway.

Finn's last tumbling vision from the Infested Side was of his father turning away and charging into the oncoming army of Legends.

He lay on his back, the acrid breath of the Infested Side escaping his lungs. His mother crouched beside him, hacking, while Emmie and Steve attempted to comfort her. Finn reached out and touched her hand.

The gateway snuffed out.

 

From
A Concise Guide to the
Legend Hunter World, vol. 7,
chapter 42:
“The Great
Unpleasantness,” from footnotes
to the introductory paragraphs