Shane Hegarty - Chaos Descends

Scrunch .

Kenzo sighed, tired of these intrusions.

Scccrunch .

“Please, children,” he muttered, “I must get my rest.”

Kenzo stood again, but this time found himself under a tall shadow. The shadow of a shadow. A shifting shape that emerged from the air, pulled from a scream, the edges coalescing in a swirl. Its hair was like thin snakes writhing from its head, the eyes pinwheels of red, and the distorted mouth carrying a malevolence that could cut a person in two.

Kenzo swung his sword at the intruder, catching it in the side. But the ghost’s molecules moved away, letting the blunt blade pass through.

The phantom reached out, touched Kenzo’s chest.

The last thing Kenzo saw before he disappeared was the very person he had come to Darkmouth to celebrate. It was Finn. Approaching the wreck.

Their eyes met.

Then Kenzo was full of stars.

To Finn it was as if the Half-Hunter had been sliced by light from neck to belly, the light dancing for a moment before spreading out in each direction and swallowing the man.

The victim’s stare burned on to Finn’s mind. Eyes wide. Fear vivid. And then nothing. Just a vague yellow smudge carried across the air slowly. And, in the sand where he had stood, scorch marks around bootprints.

Lingering, a face that was mutated and mutating, a figure rearranging itself in the breeze. But Finn recognised who this was instantly. Even if he couldn’t believe it.

“ Tick, tock ,” said the phantom before scattering into nothingness in the grey light of evening.

Emmie scrunched on to the scene. “What’s going on, Finn?” she asked. “Why did you come over here?”

Finn gawped dumbly, hardly able to explain. “I thought I saw something, like a light dropping from the sky, and came over to look. But when I got here …”

He stood aside to let her see the scratches in the air.

He showed her the scorched bootprints.

“That’s Kenzo,” he said. “The Japanese Half-Hunter. Was Kenzo. He was swallowed or something.”

“It’s like those marks at the hotel,” Emmie said, eyes wide in amazement.

“But that’s not the scariest thing,” said Finn.

“It’s not?”

“No. I saw what swallowed him,” Finn said. “It was Mr Glad. He’s back. He killed Kenzo.”

The headquarters of the Council of Twelve was on a side street, in the small capital city at the heart of the tiny Alpine country of Liechtenstein. There was no sign above the door, no plaque on the wall, no hint at all that this was the nerve centre of the Legend Hunter world except for a missing chunk of the third floor caused when someone pressed the wrong button on the wrong weapon many years ago.

Inside was a warren of corridors and staircases, criss-crossing at odd points, or leading to dead ends. There were large doors to small rooms and small doors to large rooms and at least one door that for some reason opened to nowhere but a fatal six-storey drop to the pavement outside.

On the seventh floor – which could be reached only by first taking an elevator to the ninth floor – there was a small room with a plaque on the door describing it as the Office of Lost Arts.

Inside that room sat a fellow by the name of Lucien, one of the great many assistants to the Council of Twelve. One early afternoon, he was pondering what was generally the most serious decision of his working day – whether to have a sandwich or a salad for his lunch – when a small canister arrived through the communications tubes that networked the building and landed with a fwhop on his desk.

Lucien adjusted his oversized glasses, which immediately slid back down the bridge of his small nose. He twisted open the container and unfurled the pages inside. These were notes from the Council of Twelve and they detailed a tale of heroism and survival so extraordinary, and an invasion so fierce, that it was almost unprecedented in the annals of the Legend Hunters.

It told the story of mere children, Finn and Emmie, of the last active Legend Hunter, Hugo the Great, of Estravon the Assessor. Of gateways and lost Legend Hunters. Of time travel and a beach battle.

The message further instructed Lucien to read up on it, check all the reports and to write a report about those reports. And then he would be expected to report back on whether there was anything further to report.

He was ordered to do all this without delay.

Naturally, Lucien went for lunch first. Later, munching on a salad sandwich, he licked a finger, turned the pages, peered at a blurry photograph of Darkmouth’s beach post-battle, which showed a carpet of desiccated Legends half buried under collapsed earth. He marvelled quietly at this scene.

What Finn, Emmie, Estravon and Hugo had achieved simply by returning from the Infested Side was unprecedented. Here was a small group of people – a Legend Hunter, an Assessor, two children – who had done not just something extraordinary, but almost unbelievable.

They had gone to a stale and ruined world full of creatures hellbent on destroying humans. A place where, it was said, even the soil tried to kill you. And they had lived to tell a story that would echo through the generations.

As he pushed a rogue piece of lettuce into his mouth, Lucien felt a twinge of envy towards those Half-Hunters who had been there for the battle. He had a bolt of longing for the adventure experienced by mere children, especially that boy Finn who had now gone through two gateways in his lifetime and come back alive each time.

Lucien was here in Liechtenstein, twiddling his thumbs, shuffling through bits of paper, finding occasional excitement from seeing how far he could tip his chair back on two legs before he fell over.

Meanwhile, Darkmouth was the last battlefront in a long war against Legends. And it was home to a true hero. There was no doubt about Finn’s heroism. No doubt whatsoever.

Unless you thought about it.

Which Lucien began to do.

Finn sat on the edge of his bed, his toes wriggling in giant claw slippers he’d got for Christmas, knuckles pressed hard into his stinging eyes as he tried to rub away the images of the night before. As morning sun slanted through the blinds, his mind was still unable to comprehend the reappearance of a man he thought long gone, but who was back. Just not in a form Finn recognised. He’d called his father immediately and together with Emmie they’d spent the late hours examining a scene none of them could fully understand.

As if that wasn’t enough to worry about, he was waking to a momentous couple of days. The Completion Ceremony would take place tonight. He would be thirteen tomorrow. It had been building to this his whole life.

But, right now, something else was beginning to dominate his senses.

Pancakes. He could smell pancakes.

He stood and put his head out of the bedroom door.

“Something’s going on,” said Clara, passing him on her way to the stairs. “Something is always going on.”

Finn didn’t know what she knew, and thought it best not to offer any information. He didn’t like holding things back from his mother, but neither did he want to be responsible for blurting out that a couple of Half-Hunters had been disintegrated by the returning phantom of Mr Glad. That kind of thing would spoil anyone’s morning.