Hero Rising

First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is:

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Shane Hegarty 2017

Illustrations copyright © James de la Rue 2017

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Character illustration copyright © James de la Rue 2017

Monster footprint illustration copyright © Peter Crowther 2017

Shane Hegarty and James de la Rue assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008165673

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007545667

Version: 2017-04-05

For Aisling & Laoise

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Previously in Darkmouth

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Meanwhile

Chapter 60

Thank Yous

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Books by Shane Hegarty

About the Publisher

Maps

PREVIOUSLY IN DARKMOUTH
(How it was won. And lost.)

They had won the battle but lost Darkmouth.

There had been an invasion, a fight, death, victory … and when it was all over Finn was accused of being a traitor.

When this shocking reversal began to sink in, Finn’s mother, Clara, suggested that the awful situation should force them to do something they’d not done before.

“Let’s go on a holiday,” she said.

Worse than that, she thought she knew exactly where they should go.

“Let’s go to Smoofyland.”

Smoofyland was a theme park based on a popular TV unicorn she kept telling Finn he loved. It was fifty miles up the road from Darkmouth and yet, because Legends kept getting in the way of their plans, they’d never been.

“You would love Smoofyland,” Clara told Finn.

“I would not,” Finn insisted.

“You love Smoofy,” Clara told him.

“I do not,” he said, deeply unamused by the very suggestion.

“Well, you used to,” she said.

“When I was a baby,” he conceded.

“You had a Smoofy cake for your ninth birthday,” Clara reminded him.

“You promised not to mention that again,” said Finn.

“You used to love the Smoofy the Magic Unicorn TV show theme tune,” his mother said, before bursting into song.

“Who’s the sparkly unicorn with magic in his mane?

“Smoofy! That’s who.”

“If you sing one more line—” Finn warned.

Clara sang two more lines.

“Who’s the flying unicorn who’s friends with a rainbow train?

“Smoofy! That’s who.”

Finn did not want to hear the Smoofy theme tune. He did not want to go to Smoofyland. He did not want a holiday at all.

He wanted Darkmouth back. For his family. For his dad. For himself.

They had saved the town from an invasion by Fomorians led by the particularly brutish Gantrua, who had brought with him a house-crushing Hydra. They had rescued a group of Half-Hunters, including Emmie’s father Steve, who had been trapped between worlds by the spectral traitor Mr Glad. This had occurred on Finn’s birthday, when he was supposed to be made a proper Legend Hunter. But that did not happen because a man called Lucien had turned up, and stolen Darkmouth from them.

An assistant to the Legend Hunters’ leaders, Lucien had seemingly spent too long in a small office in a narrow corridor in a tall building in Liechtenstein, and wanted some proper action for once. He had struck lucky when all those leaders – the Council of Twelve – were desiccated at the same time.

It cleared the way for him to give orders and take control of the shell-shocked and confused Half-Hunters who had survived the Darkmouth invasion, and who didn’t know who to believe. Lucien pointed out that a boy who had spent time palling around with Legends should be the last one to trust.

Estravon Oakbound, the rule-obsessed assistant who had once journeyed with them to the Infested Side, agreed.

That sealed Finn’s fate.

Lucien captured Broonie the Hogboon and took him away for Desiccation. He stripped Finn and his father Hugo of their right to defend Darkmouth and forced them to move into a small house with Emmie and Steve.

In the weeks that followed, that house saw disappointment, anger, bewilderment, and several arguments about who ate the last of the biscuits.

What happened next? Steve was sent to Liechtenstein to report back on his strange experiences. The Half-Hunters had gone home too, as the threat was over for now – besides, most of them had to go back to their jobs as accountants or washing-machine repair technicians or balloon-animal makers and the like.

Lucien stayed in Darkmouth though, bringing loyal assistants with him. He claimed to be looking for the truth of what happened. But nothing about Lucien rang true.

It was clear to Finn and Emmie that Steve had been sent to Liechtenstein not just for information but to get him out of the way. It was even clearer that there had been a conspiracy to take Darkmouth for the assistants. Knowing how to reveal this truth was another matter.

Finn would not let it go, though. He would fight to get Darkmouth back.

There would be no holiday yet.

“You really would love Smoofyland,” his mother kept insisting. “You know it’s in Slotterton? It was an old Blighted Village, once filled with Legends, so you never know what might happen.”

“I’ll be bored and embarrassed, that’s what’ll happen,” said Finn.

“Smoofyland has a rollercoaster.” She smiled. “The sparkliest rollercoaster ever built.”

“Exactly,” said Finn.

“Hello,” Finn said as he passed a man sponging down a car.

“Hello,” said the man from Bubble Blast Car Wash.

If Finn had stopped to think about it for a moment, he might have noticed that the Bubble Blast Car Wash man was washing the same part of the car over and over. And that he wasn’t really washing it too well anyway, just sort of waving a hand over a windscreen that looked shiny enough as it was.

But Finn was distracted. Firstly because he had managed to get a glob of Squishy Bar stuck between his teeth, which required trying to dislodge it with his finger. Secondly because he was following two people through the many back lanes of Darkmouth while trying not to be seen. Or heard.

Hanging back, with a baseball cap pulled low, he dialled a number on his phone. It was quickly answered.

“They’re talking about cakes, I think,” he whispered down the line.

“Cakes?” asked Emmie’s voice loudly.

“Cakes,” replied Finn.

Ahead of him, two assistants were walking purposefully towards some unknown destination. They wore the greyest of grey, as if someone had designed it specifically to be the least interesting colour ever invented. There were too many of these suits, and the assistants wearing them, around Darkmouth these days. Finn had begun to recognise these two, though. She was Scarlett. He was Greyson. Finn had made it his business to find out what they were up to.

Scarlett and Greyson stopped.

Finn nipped behind a bin, pressed in tight against the wall, and listened.

“Why hasn’t it worked?” Greyson asked. “It should have worked.”

“We can’t talk about this in public,” said Scarlett.

“We’ve added the sherbet,” replied Greyson, tapping his head as if hoping an answer would fall out. “We’ve added chocolate. We’ve even experimented with custard.”

“Please, we can’t—”

“And no one likes wasting custard.”

“Stop,” Scarlett ordered him, looking around to see if anyone was listening.

Finn was so close to them, crouched behind a bin, hardly breathing for fear of being caught. He pressed a hand against his mouth to stop himself making any noise.

“We have to be careful,” said Scarlett. “The walls have ears.”

Greyson examined the wall, ran his hand along it.

“I don’t mean they actually have ears,” said Scarlett. “Come on, let’s go.”

“If it doesn’t work at the cliff today, we should try rainbow sprinkles.”

“What did I just say?” Scarlett asked, exasperated.

They resumed their walk again. From behind the bin, squeezed into the darkness of the narrowest of gaps between buildings, Finn breathed again, mightily relieved they hadn’t heard Emmie on the far end of the phone asking repeatedly, “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” answered Finn, because he didn’t. All he knew was that something was going on. Something had been going on for a while now. Something strange. He’d spotted assistants moving suspiciously in and out and around the town. These two especially.

“They’re heading for the cliffs. Meet me there,” he said and hung up.

Using his local advantage over the assistants, Finn ducked into the laneways that criss-crossed Darkmouth. He knew that if he dipped in at Scrapers Lane there would be a shortcut to Red Alley. And if he nipped into the gap between two houses off Red Alley it would bring him to Stump Street, which in turn would allow him a quick route to Limpers Rock.

He emerged at the beach road ahead of the assistants. At the same time, Emmie arrived from another of the narrow lanes.

“Hey,” she said. “What do you think those assistants are doing? And why are you wearing a baseball cap that says ‘Cool Dude’?”

Finn took her elbow and pulled her around to face a shop window.

Scarlett and Greyson approached along the path. Hunched, with his baseball cap pulled down, Finn hoped they hadn’t noticed himself and Emmie or that the two of them were looking in a shop window long empty except for dead flies and dirt.

“They’re up to something,” Finn said after the assistants walked past. “They’ve been up to something for a while. We need to find out what.”

Emmie kept looking at his hat.

“And the best disguise I could do at short notice was this dumb baseball cap, OK?”

“You should have grown a moustache or something.” She smiled.

“This is serious,” Finn said. “Whatever they’re doing, we need to find out what it is so we can have our old lives back. Do you like sharing one toilet with loads of people every morning?”

“Good point,” she said. “Come on.”

The assistants climbed a path towards what remained of Darkmouth’s cliffs, a slumped mass of rock and earth on which grass grew and trees clung at precarious angles. They had collapsed when Finn’s grandfather Niall Blacktongue had returned from the Infested Side and exploded in a cave below the cliffs to destroy an army of invading Legends. During that adventure, Finn had also turned into a walking bomb and while he’d had a few explosive moments since, in the months since Gantrua’s invasion he was beginning to feel like the strange energy had finally dissipated, that he had gradually returned to something like normal. The cliff, though, would never be the same again.

Finn and Emmie took another shortcut, dashing along the stone shore, carefully making their way across the narrow strip of shingle squeezed between the soil and the sea. They clambered up the long, steep slope of weeds and grass just as the assistants arrived from the other direction. The breeze carried their curses as briars caught at their suit trousers, as they stumbled over ground that had come crashing down in one terrific, almost catastrophic implosion.

The cave.

That’s why they’re here, thought Finn. That was what they were looking for. The Cave at the Beginning of the World, as it was once known. A place where crystals had grown, where gateways to the Infested Side had popped open and shut.

But it had been destroyed, pulverised by the exploding Niall Blacktongue. Hadn’t it?

The assistants paused to look around them, and Finn and Emmie dropped behind the tendrils of a half-uprooted tree, still heavy with leaves, but its branches almost touching the ground on one side, as if it might topple fully at any moment.

They carefully manoeuvred themselves so that they were behind the web of roots that had been thrust into unwanted daylight and peered through them. The assistants were gone.

“Where are they?” asked Finn, pushing himself up for a better view.

“They just kind of dropped out of sight,” said Emmie.

They crept into the open again, carefully at first, presuming they’d see the assistants’ heads over the crest of the land. But there was no sign. They moved past a couple more lopsided trees, towards where they had last seen them, and Finn noticed a patch of ground that looked out of place, like a wig on a bald head.

He carefully pulled at it and the grass and dirt fell away like a kind of mat. It revealed a hole that, if he was to guess, was large enough to fit an adult with relative comfort.

“Is that a rope ladder just inside?” Emmie asked.

Finn knew every inch of Darkmouth – above ground and, more recently, the tunnels and caves below. “This was never here before,” he said.

From the collapsing trees angling behind them, birds sang, noisy. Something sticky landed on Finn’s neck, and he swatted at it while trying to concentrate on the voices he could hear rising from the hole in the ground.

“That didn’t work,” they heard Greyson say, and Emmie moved back instinctively, her feet pushing away a sliver of rocks and soil so they formed a tiny avalanche as they tumbled down the slope.

“We’ll try again,” they heard Scarlett reply from deep down below, in the ground.

Feeling a little braver, Finn stood higher, craned over the hole to listen better.

“Do we hold it this way, or that way?” Greyson asked.

“Well, we held it that way last time,” Scarlett replied, “so we should probably hold it this way this time and see what happens.”

Finn and Emmie looked at each other, frowning.

All went quiet. There was only the sound of the breeze and birds, and the pebbles sliding away from their feet. Finn began to wonder if the assistants had left the cave and headed out some other way.

Then a spark rose up from the darkness, a burst of light, lasting just a millisecond.

“What was that?” asked Finn.

It happened again.

And again.

“Again?” he heard Greyson ask.

“Again,” confirmed Scarlett.

There was another momentary burst of light.

Finn placed his hand on the bark of the tree to keep his balance as he leaned over the hole in the cliff, but its sap’s stickiness was enough to pull at his skin. The birds were making a lot of noise too, above them and across the trees scattered over the crumbled cliffs.

He stood to gather his thoughts, trying to pick the drying sap off his hands while figuring out exactly what to do now. “What do you think, Emmie?”

“I think there’s something very weird going on with that little bird over your head,” she said.

He looked up. A tiny finch was hanging upside down from a leaf, desperately pecking at the branch and beating its wings, unable to pull itself free.

Finn reached up to the branch and felt the sap covering the bird, and he realised it was seeping from every part of the tree. As gently as he could, he helped free the small bird. It did not fight him, its exhaustion overpowering its fear. He felt its heart beat at a panicked pulse, held it out delicately to show Emmie.

She took a bottle from her bag and gently squeezed water over the bird’s back and wings while he massaged it as carefully as he could, until the sap gradually eased out and, with a shake, the bird found freedom again in its wings.

Finn held the bird out on the palm of his hand, where it stayed for a little while longer, regaining its energy. Eventually, it spread its wings and flew, dropping low along the grass before picking up and rising higher as it disappeared across the hill towards the town. They followed its flight, Finn feeling pleased that they had freed it, saved it from certain death.

Until he realised that in every tree in sight there were birds fighting, struggling, failing to free themselves from the sap that oozed from the leaves and bark. He nudged Emmie and showed her.

“That’s weird,” said Emmie.

“Are you spying on us?” asked Scarlett, her head popping up through the hole in the ground.

“I think they were spying on you,” said Estravon, appearing behind them, flanked by two assistants, stocky men who filled their suits, thick necks spilling out over their collars. “And I’ve had to ruin a good pair of shoes spying on them. Come with me, you two. Lucien will not be happy.”

Lucien was annoyed with his kids. Lucien was always annoyed with his kids.

“Put down that head, Elektra,” Lucien ordered his daughter, an eight-year-old girl with seemingly inexhaustible batteries. She had an eye for trouble. And another eye for mayhem. Right now she was wandering around the wide, circular library of Finn’s house with a 250-year-old stuffed Minotaur head on her thin shoulders, wobbling and giggling, while her six-year-old brother Tiberius hit her with a large spear.

Finn and Emmie watched from where they stood in the long corridor, right beside the bare spot on the wall where Finn’s portrait was supposed to be hanging. Beside it was the square in which his father’s portrait was meant to be, and alongside it the dark rectangle from where his grandfather Niall Blacktongue had once gazed. He was gone too, considered the first bad apple in what Lucien had decided was a rotten crop.

“Put down that spear, Tiberius,” Lucien ordered his son.

Tiberius brought it swinging down on his sister’s head, and she staggered backwards into a shelf of ancient desiccated Legends.

From the hallway to the library, Lucien strode angrily to the door, gripped it with knuckle-whitening frustration, considered saying something, but reconsidered before slamming it shut just as Elektra hit the floor and Tiberius leaped on her tummy.

“They’ll get tired eventually,” he said.

From the other side of the door they heard the sound of a spear hitting a stuffed Minotaur head, followed by a muffled sound of pain.

Lucien drew a long, steadying breath and turned his attention to the other problematic young people in his life.

“You know the writer for The Most Great Lives is due to visit?” he said to Finn. The Most Great Lives of the Legend Hunters, from Ancient Times to the Modern Day was the most prestigious, popular and long encyclopaedia. Its publishers had waited years for Finn to become a proper Legend Hunter so they could print, and sell, a new version.

Unfortunately, The Most Great Lives had a section on traitors.

“They want to write an entry even though you are not yet a proper Legend Hunter,” continued Lucien, unblinking. “There is such demand for your story. Everyone wants to hear it. But the rumour is they have not yet decided if you should be among the heroes at the front, or the traitors hidden under black pages at the back of the book.”

Lucien rubbed a palm over his few wisps of hair. “So I wonder, young man, why you look so satisfied for somebody on the verge of destroying his family’s legacy?”

Letting that thought sit, Lucien set off down the corridor so that he and Emmie were forced to walk alongside him.

“How many times do you have to be told to stay out of things in Darkmouth?”

“Dunno,” Finn answered, as insolent as he could manage. “How many times has it been so far, Emmie?”

“Quite a lot,” she said.

Lucien stopped, and even though he was neither tall nor imposing, he radiated a menace that made Finn bristle all the same. He felt the hair prickle on his neck, hoped it hadn’t been noticed.

“You are a cocky young man these days,” Lucien said, his breath as sour as his mood. “You weren’t always like that. I know this from previous reports. From everything Estravon told me.”

“That was before you kicked us out of our home.” It hurt Finn to know he was only visiting his own house. He missed every part of it, and it all seemed so much sharper to his senses now he was hardly in it. The distinctive must of the corridor, of metal and wood and peeling portraits. The vinegary odour of Desiccator fluid that had leaked into the walls over the years.

Lucien’s kids had filled much of this place with their toys and clothes and stench. It made Finn nauseous to even contemplate it. But he needed to keep his mind focused on one job right now. Which was being really obnoxious to Lucien.

“I have been very lenient on you and your family given what you have done,” Lucien told him with a wave of his hand while walking on again.

“We’ve lost everything because of you,” said Finn.

“I have allowed you to stay at home here in Darkmouth.”

“The other house is not my home,” said Finn, unable to stay patient, and stepping in front of Lucien.

There was a thud and a wail from way behind them at the library door, as Elektra or Tiberius succumbed to some inevitable stuffed-Minotaur-related accident.

Lucien did not flinch. “I have allowed you to stay in Darkmouth while we examine exactly what happened, how and – most importantly – who was involved. You forget that I could have sent you and your parents to Liechtenstein HQ to be imprisoned. Or far worse.”

“Like how you sent Steve away,” said Finn.

Emmie’s face tightened at that.

“As someone who was trapped between worlds, he is helping us understand the threat we all face, that is all,” said Lucien.

“Or you’re getting one more problem out of Darkmouth,” said Finn.

“There are many worse things we could have done to your family. Many, many things that are allowed by the Legend Hunter punishment book.” Lucien paused, then called out. “Estravon?”

Estravon stuck his head out of a small training room off the corridor. “In 1867, Jan the Intolerable was made to eat forty rotten boiled eggs in under three minutes as punishment for his cowardice at the Battle of Little Death.” Estravon retreated back into the room to finish whatever he was up to in there.

“Something’s going on,” Finn said. “You’ve sent the Half-Hunters home. You’ve sent Steve to Liechtenstein. It’s almost like you want them all out of the way.”

“That’s clever. Exactly the kind of quick thinking I would want if I was, say, a traitor working for the Legends,” said Lucien, pausing at the top of the corridor at the first, and oldest, portrait of one of Finn’s ancestors. The painting itself was so ancient it was merely a square of varying brown blobs. A worn plaque beside it declared it to be of long-dead Legend Hunter Aodh the Handsome.

“You’re doing something in the cave,” said Emmie.

“It’s a place where incredibly important and dangerous crystals grow,” explained Lucien. “The only place on Earth, in fact. Those crystals have the power to spontaneously open gateways to the Infested Side. Of course we’re doing something. We’re looking into that strange phenomenon.”

Finn felt cornered, trapped by Lucien’s logic.

“You’re looking a little annoyed now,” Lucien said to him. “Be careful. I know you haven’t exploded in a while but I’ve only just had this door painted and I wouldn’t want you ruining it.”

“You can’t keep doing this,” Finn told him.

“This is your final warning,” said Lucien. “The next time you look like you’re spying on behalf of the Legends, your family will have to go. You. Your mother. Your father. All gone. No more Darkmouth. No more home.”

“You’re framing us,” said Finn.

“Emmie will be gone too. And it will be your fault.” Lucien looked at her. “I don’t even have to ask how upset you would be about that.”

Finn retreated into silence.

Lucien eyed him, pushed his glasses up his nose. “It doesn’t need to be this way. Think about that. Think about your future.”

He casually closed the front door after Finn and Emmie.

They walked down the street a bit, quietly furious, until they were at the corner to the house they now shared.

“We’ll go and check out the cave later,” Finn said. “We know how to get into it now. They’re up to something else, for sure.”

“You heard him, right?” Emmie said, sympathetic but reluctant. “We’re in danger of getting into worse trouble than we’re already in.”

“I remember when you were the one pushing me into things,” Finn said to her.

“And I remember when you were the sensible one,” she said, but he was already jogging on down the street.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To see Dad at work,” Finn called back over his shoulder. “He’ll know what to do.”

So it was that, five minutes later, Finn was in the back of a shop called Woofy Wash, looking at a very grumpy Hugo giving a labradoodle a bath.