Shane Hegarty - Chaos Descends

He sounded French. Or Swedish. Or maybe Korean. Finn wasn’t great with accents.

“Please,” said the Half-Hunter. “I need help.”

Finn sighed, closed his eyes in a long blink to compose himself, while Clara carefully opened the door. A Half-Hunter was dancing about on the doorstep, wearing some kind of black, naval-type uniform, complete with coloured strips on his left breast and chunky red and black cufflinks.

“Thank you,” he said as he burst in. “Where’s the toilet?”

Clara nodded towards a door under the stairs, and the Half-Hunter dashed straight for it.

There was another knock on the door. “Toilet’s already full,” said Finn.

“Do you need me to unblock it?” asked Emmie, pushing her head round the door.

“That’s not what I …” said Finn, flustered. “Hi, Emmie. You’re here.”

“I wouldn’t have missed your big ceremony for anything,” she beamed. “You know you’ve a split in those shorts?”

Finn felt himself blush. “Good. Not my shorts. I mean, it’s good you’re back.”

“Just for the ceremony,” she said. “Unless something goes terribly wrong again in Darkmouth. I’ve my fingers crossed for that.”

“I’ll do my best,” he smiled, while hoping nothing whatsoever would go terribly wrong.

“Hey, Finn, Clara,” said Emmie’s father, Steve, walking in after her. “You know there are a lot of people out there taking pictures of your garden wall.”

“I signed an autograph,” said Emmie, excited.

“No one wanted mine,” said Steve, failing to pretend that this hadn’t bothered him a bit. “I guess no one cares about the guy who rescues you every time you need it.”

Hugo arrived from the Long Hall. “We’re all about to need rescuing from the tourists following me up from the training room.”

“I’m always available to bail you out,” said Steve. “Unless it’s an issue with the toilet.”

Hugo looked puzzled. They heard the toilet flush. The door opened. The now much calmer intruder emerged, drying his hands on his trousers before giving an exaggerated swipe of relief across his forehead. Realising he’d hit the Legend Hunter jackpot, he thrust out a hand to shake Finn’s, who took it reluctantly and squirmed at how damp it still was.

“Oh boy,” said the excited Half-Hunter. “I am Nils, from the Norwegian Blighted Village of Splattafest, and you are all here. In Darkmouth. Together. Are those flowers poisonous?” He inspected a bunch on a small table.

“No,” said Clara.

“But those coat hooks shoot deadly darts, yes?”

“I’ll just get that door for you,” said Hugo. “It’s been lovely to meet you, but …”

“We are all looking forward to the great Completion,” said Nils. “Especially what they plan to do with the dozen golden monkeys. Something to do with the six hundred scorpions, I think.”

“OK, it’s about to get crowded in here,” said Hugo, looking back at the group of raffle winners coming up the Long Hall.

“I made special souvenir cufflinks—” Nils said, but he was cut off as Clara politely ushered him out. As she did, the front door gently swung open to reveal a queue of maybe half a dozen Half-Hunters.

“I need the toilet as well,” said the one at the front, dancing on the spot for added effect.

“Oh yeah, me too,” said the next.

“I’m bursting,” said the third.

Either side of Finn, there were Half-Hunters crowding into the house. He looked at Emmie. “I need rescuing.”

“Rescuing you is my speciality,” she smiled. “Let’s get out of here. Although you should probably put on some trousers first.”

“Do you still get the stink?” Emmie asked Finn, and offered him a sweet from a brown paper bag.

They were sitting on a low step at Darkmouth’s largest monument, a grey, grimy obelisk with a white plaque whose words were so worn no one knew any more why it had been put there. There was warmth in the day, and blue sky mixed with bubbling cloud. Finn had his hoodie pulled tight over his head as a disguise against the Half-Hunters swarming the town.

“Do you mean the smell of the Infested Side?” Finn replied. “Like rotting vegetables that were already stuffed with old cheese?” He dug in the brown paper bag.

“I’d say it smells more like a fish wearing yesterday’s socks,” said Emmie, chewing on something that was gradually turning her tongue blue.

Finn crunched down on a red sweet, letting the sugar fizz through his mouth. “It’s been worse for my dad,” he said. “Because the serpents hid him among Legends so smelly that no one else would go near them, that stench lasted ages afterwards. He had to burn his clothes. And then he had to burn the bonfire he’d burned those clothes on.”

“At least there’s been no Legends since,” said Emmie.

“Yeah,” said Finn.

“Just normal stuff, like school and whatever.”

“Yeah. Just normal stuff.”

They each rummaged in the paper bag open between them, popped a sweet in their mouth and sat quiet for a little while longer.

“It’s boring, isn’t it?” Emmie exclaimed eventually.

“ So boring,” said Finn with a burst of relief at being able to share. “I never thought I’d say it. Never. But it’s just that after everything we went through …”

“Legends. Crystals. Serpents,” said Emmie.

“Gateways. Shapeshifters,” said Finn.

“And everything we saw there.”

“Stuff no one has seen,” said Finn. “At the time, I thought I never wanted to see a gateway again, didn’t want to meet another Legend. I just wanted to go on as normal. But—”

“Normal is boring, right?”

Finn gave her a guilty look. “Kind of. I mean, me and Dad still train a lot, but now I’ve nothing to use the moves on.”

“Welcome to my life,” said Emmie.

“He doesn’t like to show it, but I think Dad’s bored too,” said Finn. “He spent weeks on the Infested Side and, even though all that time he just sat there, waiting to escape, it was still like nothing anybody had done before. Well, nobody except Niall Blacktongue, but no one likes to talk about that.”

“At least people know he went to the Infested Side,” said Emmie. “I’m back at school in the city and no one there has a clue what I did. They just think I was away for a while with my dad’s work, but they have no idea what he really does.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That he’s a travelling DJ.”

“ What? ” laughed Finn.

“I didn’t know what else to say,” she said. “And it sounded kind of cool.”

“DJ Steve.”

“Hmm. Maybe not so cool.”

Finn threw a green sweet into his mouth.

“Anyway,” Emmie said, “you must be all set for the Completion Ceremony, right? It’ll be a big deal. The whole Legend Hunter world is going to be watching.”

Discomfort immediately contorted Finn’s face.

“Sorry,” Emmie said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No,” he grimaced. “Be careful of those green stripy sweets. They’re really sour.”

She laughed at that. He swallowed the offending sweet with an anguished wince.

“Oh, I wish they’d go away,” said Finn, nodding towards a couple of Half-Hunters across the street, irritating locals by taking pictures of every hole in a wall.

“Maybe we can sign another autograph.”

Finn grimaced at the thought. “Or maybe we can get out of here before they spot us,” he said, pushing himself up and heading away from the obelisk.