LITMIR.BIZ

      Ten months after returning from the Infested Side, Finn still had to be careful where he sneezed.

      If he sneezed in the kitchen, the microwave went ting.

      If he coughed too hard, the television changed channels.

      One night he snored so loudly it woke him with a terrible start and the sound of thunder in his ears. He sat upright, calming his breath, convinced he had caused something, somewhere to explode.

      Things had, after all, exploded before. Everything had exploded. Gateways. Caves. Worlds. People. Finn.

      While trying to find his father, Hugo, he had accidentally thrown himself, Emmie and Estravon the Assessor into the Infested Side. There Finn had discovered that he had the ability to ignite – to explode with devastating power, sending out a wave of energy that laid waste to everything around him. Although he had found this out only once he had exploded.

      He had been further astonished to find it left him in one piece. More or less. A scar across his chest reminded him of what had happened. As did the occasionally problematic sneezing fit.

      So much else had happened on the Infested Side. He had walked with the enemy, blown a giant hole between worlds, found his long-missing grandfather, Niall Blacktongue, become involved in a Legend rebellion and, to the loudest complaints of all, ruined Estravon’s best trousers.

      He’d done all of this having landed in the right world, but three decades too early to find his father. It meant he could add time travel to the list of things he hadn’t meant to do.

      Yet, despite this, his father had been rescued and the Legends had been defeated at Darkmouth’s Cave at the Beginning of the World.

      Ten months on, and that same energy occasionally welled inside him, unexpected, uncontrolled, but otherwise all was quiet in Darkmouth.

      Finn sat in his classroom, paying little attention to the teacher, looking instead at the empty chair where Emmie used to sit. With her father, Steve, she had been sent to spy on Finn, but had ended up sharing these adventures with him. When all that was done, she’d had to return to the city with her dad.

      Life was quieter without Emmie. He missed her. Not that he’d admit that to her.

      Finn stared out of the school window for a while. There wasn’t much to see. No Legends. No gateways. Darkmouth had not been attacked by a single Legend since and was becoming just like any other town. His family was in danger of becoming just like every other. And even the Savage twins sitting here in his class, two bad attitudes and one chewed ear between them, had stopped bothering him and instead treated him with as little interest as they did the rest of the kids.

      The collapsed section of the cliffs, where the gateway to the Infested Side had been opened and then dramatically closed, was covered now with tall green grass, bringing a sense of new growth following destruction. The people of Darkmouth wondered if their town might join those others around the world that used to be plagued by Legends, but which were now free from that blight for the first time in a thousand years.

      Finn’s birthday was approaching. His thirteenth. A big one, especially for an apprentice Legend Hunter like him: it was the age at which he could finally become Complete. That was something Finn had always dreaded. But, as he gazed out of the school window, he let his mind dwell on dangerous questions. Would he now live an ordinary life, free of the responsibility of being a Legend Hunter? Was the war actually over? Was it this from now on in? No destiny. No prophecies. Just life. Ordinary, everyday, Legend-free, unexciting life.

      He

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