Chaos Descends. Shane Hegarty

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      Finn could hear his own breath. Worse, he could smell it. Stale. Hot. Filling the helmet so that it made his nose twitch and his eyes water.

      “My visor’s steaming up and—” A long wooden sword hit him hard on the side of the head. “Ah, come on!” Finn protested, through a ringing ear and murky vision.

      The sword clattered him on the other side of the skull.

      Through the fogged-up visor, Finn saw his father thrust forward from the long white space of the training room, his feet light on the soft mats that covered the floor. Finn dodged quickly and spun away.

      “You can’t keep running,” said Hugo, turning to face him. In the sleek reflection of his dad’s helmet, Finn saw his own visor-covered face, the sides of his helmet daubed with red streaks of paint meant to imitate blood.

      His father moved in with a skilful swish of a blade aimed at Finn’s nose. Finn just about reacted in time to block it, but his father loomed over him, pressing down slowly, surely, so that Finn’s knees began to buckle beneath him. “Sooner or later,” said Hugo sternly, “you’re going to have to fight back.”

      “I hate to admit this,” said Finn, sinking under the pressure of the sword, his back beginning to bend precariously over his legs, “but you’re right.”

      He dropped suddenly, almost limboing away from his father as Hugo stumbled forward at the sudden removal of the body that had been holding him up.

      Finn hit his father in the hinge of one leg. Hugo dropped to one knee and Finn released a tiny laugh of satisfaction. He immediately regretted this celebration for two reasons.

      First, the smell of this morning’s boiled egg filled his helmet.

      Second, his father hit back.

      The tremor from Hugo’s blow worked its way through Finn’s armour, a rattle that reached his shoulders and shook the golden ropes of the epaulettes that hung on his shoulders.

      To catch his breath, Finn pulled the helmet from his head. Gathering himself, Finn glared at the mirror that ran the length of the wall, saw himself in the new fighting suit he’d spent recent months working on. Making your own fighting suit was the Legend Hunter tradition. It was also necessary in Finn’s case, since the last one had been destroyed on the Infested Side.

      This new one was made of dull steel, shiny leather, overlapping straps. The fat buckle on his belt was moulded into a wide biting mouth. There was a somewhat unconvincing painting of a Minotaur’s horns and gaping mouth across his chest. And the quivering epaulettes had been added because this was a fighting suit he’d made not just for future battles he hoped to avoid, but also a graduation ceremony he knew he couldn’t. Unfortunately.