Hero Rising
The edge-of-your-seat, monstrously-exciting, laugh-out-loud adventures of the most unfortunate monster-hunter ever to don armour… continue.Things can’t get any worse. Legends are running riot. Half-hunters are out of control. Darkmouth has been taken away from Finn and Emmie, and Finn’s dad Hugo – proud Legend Hunter – is washing dogs for a living.But something even more terrifying lurks beneath the surface: an ancient horror threatening both our world and the Infested Side.So scratch that. Things can get worse. Much worse.More than ever, Darkmouth is going to need a hero…Sadly, all it’s got is Finn.
Читать Hero Rising онлайн беплатно
First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Childrenâs Books in 2017
HarperCollins Childrenâs Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins website address is:
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
(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, Finnâs mother, Clara, suggested that the awful situation should force them to do something theyâd not done before.
âLetâs go on a holiday,â she said.
Worse than that, she thought she knew exactly where they should go.
âLetâs go to Smoofyland.â
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, theyâd never been.
âYou would love Smoofyland,â Clara told Finn.
âI would not,â Finn insisted.
âYou love Smoofy,â Clara told him.
âI do not,â he said, deeply unamused by the very suggestion.
âWell, you used to,â she said.
âWhen I was a baby,â he conceded.
âYou had a Smoofy cake for your ninth birthday,â Clara reminded him.
âYou promised not to mention that again,â said Finn.
âYou used to love the Smoofy the Magic Unicorn TV show theme tune,â his mother said, before bursting into song.
âWhoâs the sparkly unicorn with magic in his mane?
âSmoofy! Thatâs who.â
âIf you sing one more lineââ Finn warned.
Clara sang two more lines.
âWhoâs the flying unicorn whoâs friends with a rainbow train?
âSmoofy! Thatâs who.â
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 Emmieâs father Steve, who had been trapped between worlds by the spectral traitor Mr Glad. This had occurred on Finnâs 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 Huntersâ 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 â the Council of Twelve â 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 didnât 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 Finnâs fate.
