Archive of Our Own

Happiness

He’s three years old.

He’s been waiting for this day for a long time. It’s felt like forever since he got the news. Best of all, it’s early. A full week earlier than any of them had expected.

He can barely breathe as he steps into the room, led by his father’s gentle hand. It’s quiet. Everybody speaks quiet. Everybody breathes quiet. He doesn’t dare talk. He wants it to stay quiet.

His mother sits up in her bed, smiling at him. Her hair is a mess and her eyes look tired. She cradles something in her arms. It’s wrapped in a white blanket.

When he reaches the bed, his father grabs him under the arms and lifts him up to sit beside his mother. She shows him what’s wrapped in the blanket. A little pink face nestled in the soft white fabric, with his mother’s round, dark eyes wandering around, unfocused.

For a moment, little Hershel can swear those eyes land on him.

This is your little brother, his mother tells him.

This is Theodore.

Happiness

He’s five now. Mum can’t stop smiling about what a big boy he’s getting. Dad is looking forward to showing him all his work. Hershel can’t wait to finally see inside his office. The forbidden place. All those books he doesn’t know how to read. He can’t wait to see inside them.

Theodore’s two and he’s getting good at running. For someone who stumbled so much not even a year ago, it’s almost scary how fast he’s getting. It seems like Hershel is the only one who can catch him.

He’s learning to speak. Can’t string a sentence together to save his life, but individual words are like a fun game they can play together. Hershel asks him to say a word and Theodore, only barely able to understand what he’s saying, tries to mimic him.

So far, their favourite is “syllable”.

Hershel doesn’t know what it means, but he heard Dad say it once.

He tells Theodore to say it.

Theodore’s response is “shubblah!”

It’s the funniest thing either of them have ever heard in their lives.

Fear

Strange men are here.

They’re angry. Hershel doesn’t know what they’re angry about. He wants them to go away. He holds Theodore tight and keeps the frightened four-year-old from looking in the angry men’s direction.

His mother tells them it’ll be okay. Don’t be scared.

She’s lying.

The angry men are grabbing Dad. He tells them to let go. They don’t. They’re hurting him. Mum jumps up and tries to push the angry men away. They shove her back and she falls to the floor.

Hershel doesn’t move. He stays holding Theodore, keeping him from looking.

As Mum gets up, the angry men grab her too. Hershel finally lets go of Theodore and runs over to her, trying to help her, trying to shove the angry men off her and make them stop hurting her.

She pushes him back.

He falls over. The floor hurts his head. Theodore runs over to him. He’s crying. He’s scared too.

The door slams and the lock clicks.

Hershel pushes himself up. He runs to the dresser beside the front door. Wrenches open the drawer. Fumbles around, standing on tiptoe and unable to see inside it, until his fingers find the spare key and he pulls it out.

Theodore has sat on the ground, wailing and hiccupping, by the time Hershel reaches the door and unlocks it.

There’s nobody outside.

The angry men are gone and so are Mum and Dad.

Sadness

Nice people are coming. Mr and Mrs Layton want to take Hershel in. Hershel’s been waiting for them, packing a bag to pass the time.

He’s not going with them.

Even though he’s only seven, he knows how to take care of himself. He spent a long time watching Mum and Dad and he’s got a good idea of what to do. Eat a meal three times a day. Take a bath every evening. Kiss a grazed knee to make sure it gets better.

And when the food runs out…

Well, that’s a bridge to cross when he comes to it.

Theodore can’t ever come to that bridge. He’s too small. He needs somebody to take care of him. He needs a Mum and Dad.

Hershel doesn’t.

So he isn’t Hershel anymore. Mr and Mrs Layton don’t know and don’t need to know.

They’re here.

Hershel introduces them to his brother, having told him not to call himself Theodore anymore and to never tell anybody what his real name is. It isn’t his real name anymore.

Theodore Bronev steps out of the house and lets go of his brother’s hands, and the kindly couple walk him to the car.

The nameless boy watches his little brother, Hershel Layton, drive away.

Only then does he run upstairs and cry where nobody can see him.

Fear

Somebody in the village said something about a little boy living all by himself in that big house on the hill. Men in uniforms came knocking at the door. The nameless boy didn’t let them in. He didn’t want them to find him. He didn’t know when the angry men might come back and take him away like they did Mum and Dad.

He just wants to read Dad’s books.

He wants to learn.

He wants to know why someone wanted to take Mum and Dad.

When he’s tired of reading, he brings his pillow and quilt to the radio, switches it on and listens to the world. Fire at Hampton Court Palace. A war that went on for three hundred and fifty years finally ends. A… nuclear? Nucular? An accident in Chernobyl. Hands Across America. Top Gun.

So many things. So many places. So many people.

The men in uniforms break the door down. They find him while he’s trying to gather the books together. He doesn’t want them to take them. He doesn’t want them to take him.

But then they’re nice to him.

One makes him a pancake with the last egg left in the fridge. Another asks what his name is and where his Mum and Dad are.

The nameless boy doesn’t know and doesn’t tell him.

When it comes to his name, he panics. Thinks about the books. Archaeology. Geography.

J. Desmond Clark.

The boy splutters that his name is Desmond.

The men in uniforms let him take his books with him. He grabs all the papers he can find on Dad’s desk and shoves them between the pages. Nobody except him will know where they are. When he has time, he can read them.

The men in uniforms hand him off to men and women in suits who call him “young man” and “sweetie” and ask him where he’d like to live. He doesn’t know. Somewhere with lots of books. Somewhere he can learn. Somewhere where angry men won’t be able to get him.

He’s taken, along with all of his books, to somewhere else. Another part of the country. The edge of a city called London. Far away from the hills and fields he knows.

The new house is big. Bigger than he thought houses ever could be. A man comes out to pick up his things. The boy now called Desmond tells him to be careful. The man says Raymond is always careful and that he’s impressed by how many books this little boy has.

It takes him a moment to realise that Raymond was referring to himself. He’d never heard anybody speak like that about themselves before.

When he goes inside, a happy man and woman are waiting for him. They smile and say their names are Mr and Mrs Sycamore. That he’s going to be staying with them for a while.

A while will probably be forever.

Hershel was a part of the Bronev family.

Desmond is a part of the Sycamore family.

He tries his hardest to never let little Theodore’s face fade from his mind.

Anger

By the time he’s eleven years old, he understands.

He’s learned enough words, learned enough concepts, learned enough history. By now, he understands.

Dad had been researching the Azran civilisation. People who lived long, long ago, long before London was built, long before England was its own country. Long before England was separated from the rest of Europe by the end of the Ice Age he’d read about in the only “age appropriate” history book he’d allowed his new Mum and Dad to give him.

They were powerful. They’d ruled the entire world. Ruins of their cities and remains of their technology were still being dug up and even today, nobody knew how they had so suddenly disappeared. He’d found that Donald Rutledge in particular seemed rather fascinated. His book on Ancient Histories had proved very informative.

This was why the angry men wanted Dad.

They were from Targent. An organisation that seemed more like a private army than anything else. They wanted everything Azran so that they could take over the world.

If he wasn’t so furious, Desmond might have laughed. They sound like villains from the cartoons he watches every Saturday morning, sitting on his bed, allowing himself a mental break before he dives headfirst into those books and notes again.

Part of him wonders if Mr and Mrs Sycamore would be concerned if he didn’t watch these cartoons.

They’re nice, Desmond thinks. As nice as a pair of genetic strangers could be. Part of him wonders if their hearts are really in the idea of being parents. Maybe they just see this as part of being a married couple. Maybe he isn’t here to be loved. Maybe he’s just a ticked box on a checklist. There’s something numbing in how every evening, Mum asks him how his day had been even if it hadn’t been a school day. Something repetitive in how Dad tries to make a joke out of everything, even if there are no words to play on. Something annoying about how they never look Raymond in the face when asking him to do something for them.

Desmond always makes sure to look him in the face. Raymond deserves it. Raymond, who always brings him a cup of hot tea whenever he has to stay up late researching, deserves better than either of these people.

Raymond is the only one who asks about his research and, by default, is the only one Desmond trusts with his findings.

And his feelings.

How angry he is.

How every scribbled note, every smudge of ink in a book’s margin, every clumsily dotted I and crossed T in every sentence that talks about the Azran people leaves him unable to decide if he should punch the wall or ball up and cry.

How it makes him think of Theodore.

How everything makes him think of Theodore.

How he wishes he could be better at drawing so that he could capture the little boy’s image and doesn’t have to live with the fear of his baby brother’s face fading from his mind.

And how if this was the result of his father’s research, he wishes that blasted civilisation had never existed in the first place.

He wants to travel the world, find every last ruin of theirs, every last artifact ever recovered…

…and annihilate it.

When Raymond points out that perhaps joining Targent would be the best way to track it all down, Desmond half-heartedly threatens to have him fired, then laughs along with him and takes care not to spill his tea.

He doesn’t laugh for long.

Targent makes him just as angry. Targent are just as deserving of annihilation as the Azran.

Even if it takes him the rest of his life, he’s going to make them pay for tearing his family apart.

Anger

At twelve years old, his new parents are getting concerned.

You’re spending too much time in your room, they tell him. You need to go outside more. You need extracurricular activities. Do you even understand those books you keep reading?

Of course I do, Desmond wants to tell them. I’m not an idiot. Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I know what I’m doing. Stop thinking so little of me and treat me like a human being rather than a pet.

He doesn’t say that. He’d get in trouble if he did.

He just stays quiet.

They sign him up for out-of-school activities one night after he goes to bed. The same Super Fun classes that Mr Sycamore had taken part in when he was Desmond’s age. You’ll have a great time, they tell him. You’ll make lots of new friends and learn things you’ll never find in any of those dusty old books.

Desmond looks at the new schedule they’ve given him.

Drama classes.

Fencing.

He knows he’ll get into trouble if he doesn’t show up. He’ll get sent to his room. No dinner. The chance of Raymond getting into trouble if he’s caught sneaking the boy a slice of steak and kidney pie when Mr and Mrs Sycamore aren’t looking.

So Desmond obediently attends, like any good young boy is supposed to.

It’s more fun than he had expected. He’s finally able to do something with the rage that’s been building up inside him over the past five years. Operatic, the drama teacher calls him. Powerful. Emotional. Perhaps a little overeager. The fact that he constantly asks to play the villain is considered questionable, but Desmond doesn’t care.

Why would he care when the villains have so much more fun?

Fencing doesn’t go so well. It turns out he’s too good at it. Too eager. He thrusts too hard and uses illegal moves. Other students comment that he looks like he’s trying to kill people.

When they do, Desmond challenges them.

They quickly shut up.

Isn’t that the point, he asks? Aren’t they supposed to be learning to fight? What’s the purpose of a club training to hit people with swords if they get told off for being too good at hitting people with swords?

The teacher tells his parents and he loses a weeks’ worth of dinners.

He doesn’t care.

If anything, this is just helping. The classes his parents put him in to distract him from his pursuit of vengeance are only going to prove beneficial in the long run.

He’s going to stab every Targent troop he comes across square in the chest.

And he’s going to frighten the life out of them while doing so.

Anger

Her name is Kalliope Argyris.

She insists on being called Kally and she’s the new girl that everybody in the group is fawning over. With her hair like polished ebony, eyes like the sea on a tropical shore and near-constant smile, it’s easy to see how she could wrap everyone around her little finger.

Desmond doesn’t want any part of it.

She brushes her hair during readthroughs and leaves stray strands all over his sleeve. She’s constantly singing to herself even though she needs a handle to carry a tune. Her smile, which she flashes at every opportunity, is crooked and lopsided and the asymmetry drives him up the wall.

But more than anything else, she’s loud.

Loud and proud.

Louder and prouder than he is even after three years in this group. 

He’s suddenly not the most operatic person on the stage. No matter how powerfully he declares his lines, Kally either matches or surpasses his volume. Their teacher has them perform as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in That Play Which Actors Refuse To Say The Name Of For Some Reason, and during the scene of Lady Macbeth talking her husband into committing murder, the other students laugh and the teacher buries his face in his hand as the quiet moment of suspense turns into an intense shouting match.

People walking their dogs past the church hall stop and look through the doors just to see what all the yelling is about.

But of all her faults, what bothers Desmond most about Kally is her insistence on staying by his side. Their homes are in the same neighbourhood, so she always walks with him, asking him questions and discussing their roles and giving him performance tips that he does not need, thank you very much.

She seems to be under the delusion that they’re friends.

Desmond wonders if she would be hurt by him telling her that he considers them rivals at best.

At the very least, she isn’t in the fencing class, in spite of how much he wishes to prod her with a rapier in the hopes of finding her off switch. Knowing this girl, she’d probably end up outranking him in skill within a week.

His parents, too, have assumed that they’re friends. This was something Desmond had been forced to learn. Any parent, no matter how experienced, will automatically assume that any person the same age as their child is their friend. It annoys him that they seem to have taken a particular interest in Kally. Mum asks if they walk home together every single day. Dad refers to her as Desmond’s girlfriend.

It’s all Desmond can do not to punch the man in the nose. He’s fifteen now, after all. He could get charged as a juvenile offender.

So he locks himself in his room instead with every tome he’s ever been able to unearth about the Azran. Some he’s bought. Some are borrowed from libraries. He struggles to remember which is which so that he doesn’t write in the margins of any library book. The only time he unlocks the door is when Raymond brings him a cup of tea, sometimes with a French fancy or two on the side.

He hopes to whatever god might be listening that Kally never takes it upon herself to invade his home and discover his room.

The last thing he needs is yet another person asking inconvenient questions. Especially when it comes to the world map he’s set up on his bedroom wall and all the pins he’s shoved into it, some connected by coloured threads. They wouldn’t understand if he tried to explain that these are known Targent locations, known Azran sites, rumoured Azran and Targent positions that he’s been able to keep track of thanks to this wonderful new development known as the Internet.

He doesn’t have the heart to tell Mum or Dad that he’s storing his clothes under his bed so that his wardrobe is light enough to hide his map.

Then again, if either of them knew, he’d have to spend a whole month going without dinner.

And knowing Kally, if she ever found out about that, she’d probably shove some disgusting fried food in his face and insist that he eat it.

Thank goodness he’s good enough at acting to pretend that he likes it.

Sadness

The drama teacher issues his class a challenge. Every student is to write their own play. The creator of the best play would see their work performed onstage at the end of the year for all their mums and dads to see.

Desmond, of course, weaves a tale of vengeance. He pulls from everything he’d learned over the past eight, nearly nine years of reading on the Azran, his time tracking Targent and their operations all over the globe. He drops the names of locations he’s come across: Misthallery, Akbadain, Ambrosia. A story about a small-town boy whose family are murdered and he grows up to avenge them in the most brutal way he can imagine.

He’s swelling with pride as he passes it over to the teacher.

The students take turns running through scenes from Waiting for Godot while their teacher reads through the scripts he’s been handed, but Desmond’s heart falls as he sees the man’s eyes widen, his jaw drop, his eyebrows knot and teeth clench as he reads through the script the boy had poured his heart and soul into.

No way was he going to be the lucky one.

The announcement comes at the end of their class. Having read through every script handed to him, the teacher has decided their performance is going to be that of King of the Chasm, penned by Kalliope Argyris. She gasps in delight. Other students applaud. Desmond sighs, rolls his eyes, and wordlessly picks up his bag to leave.

As always, Kally is hot on his heels.

But this time, she does something Desmond had never expected.

She asks why he’s upset.

Why would he be so worked up? He wasn’t the only one whose play had been passed over. Didn’t he know how disappointed the other kids would be at their works being rejected? Davey’s script had been twice as long as either of theirs and Marjorie’s was hand-written! Since both of them had used typewriters, that was less work, right?

Desmond lies. Tells her he wanted to play the leading role.

Then Kally tells him that he technically will.

He stops. Stares. Asks her what the heck she’s talking about.

She tells him that she’d written the play with him in her mind the entire time. That the largest and most important role in King of the Chasm was that of the villain – a diabolical manipulator by the alias of Jean Descole – whose charisma and exuberance were enough to successfully tempt the hero’s wife from his side and turn her to evil. Even his name is one heck of a lot of fun to say out loud.

Desmond has no idea what to say.

He’s a boy who only ever desires vengeance. Whose mind is daily occupied by the idea that he might crush his enemies to dust for all the pain they’ve caused him.

If there’s one thing he’s found that he loves, it’s being dramatic.

And this girl whom he despises had seen to it that he can do what he loves.

That play she had written…

How in the world is he supposed to be able to hate her after a gift like that?

He walks on in silence for almost the entirety of their journey home, but this time, he notices that Kally doesn’t stray off and make for her own house like she usually does. She stays by his side. Follows him the rest of the way to his house. He doesn’t speak until he plucks up the nerve to ask her just what it is she thinks she’s doing.

She flashes that crooked smile as she tells him; Descole is a master of disguise. You never know which character he could be until he reveals himself. With that being said, there are some things Desmond needs to learn if he’s really going to nail the role. Time to learn her family’s trade, she tells him, which she’s trying to escape from by studying acting rather than magic. Time to learn the masterful art of quick change.

Still Desmond has no idea how he’s supposed to respond.

Raymond smiles as he lets them in. Doesn’t make any of the untoward remarks about Desmond bringing a girl home that of course his mother and father practically scream. It’s all he can do to thank his lucky stars that they aren’t actually related. They tease. They prod. They laugh at how red his face has become and of course, the ignorant Kally laughs with them.

They say it’s fine for Kalliope to stay until dinner so long as she leaves immediately afterwards, the unspoken reason being that no way is their teenage son going to be alone in his room with a girl during the evening.

Kally is halfway up the stairs before Desmond can stop her.

She reaches his room before he even has a chance to finish saying her name, and by the time he catches up to her, she’s standing in his doorway and staring.

Staring at the map on the wall, held in place by tape on each corner and the myriad of pins that have been thrust into it. At the stacks of books surrounding it, so thick and piled so tall that they practically form a throne of archaeological and geographical knowledge. At the papers strewn all over the floor, covered in black and blue writing and vivid red scribbles, arrows and circles, and the towering pile of scrunched up balls of paper that threatens to tip out of the bin in the corner.

She steps inside, ignoring the excuses Desmond desperately tries to conjure up, and she turns to him and asks that question he had been dreading.

What is all of this?

Who’s Azran? What’s Targent? Why are they so important? Desmond Sycamore, are you some crackpot conspiracy theorist?!

He sighs.

He has no choice.

The cat’s out of the bag. If he doesn’t tell her now, she’ll almost certainly find some way to make this ruin his life.

So he sits on his bed and he tells his mortal enemy everything. He tells her about the Azran civilisation that his father had been researching. No, not Mr Sycamore, he assures her. His real father. He tells her about all of the excavations that had been conducted, all of the artifacts that had been discovered which confirmed that not only were the Azran real, but that they had been extraordinarily powerful and impossibly intelligent.

She takes a seat amid the books as he tells her about Targent. About these terrible men who wish to use the Azran for power and fortune. About how they had stormed his home one night and ripped his mother and father away from him.

About his baby brother who, at no older than age four, had been forced to adopt a new identity in order to be cared for.

About Theodore Bronev, who had become Hershel Layton right there on that doorstep, and whose sweet little round face he longed to see again, just one last time …

He would be twelve by now.

Nearly a teenager.

By this point, Desmond can’t even begin to imagine what he looks like. In his mind, that boy is always four years old, always tiny, always frightened, always letting go of his hands for the last time, never to see him or play with him again…

He doesn’t even realise he’s crying until Kally presses a handkerchief to his cheek.

She sits beside him on the bed. Apologises. Tells him she’d never have been so pushy with him if she’d known everything he’d been through. Asks if he would prefer to be called Hershel or Desmond.

Desmond, he replies. He could never go back to being Hershel Bronev. Not anymore. As far as he knows, Leon and Rachel Bronev are both long dead, and he definitely knows that Theodore Bronev is no more.

No wonder he always has such a sour face, she comments, but she doesn’t laugh for long.

He finally asks her. Asks her why. Demands to know why she had never left him alone, even with how hard he had tried to ignore her.

She just says that he looks like someone who needs a person to be nice to them.

And again, Desmond has no idea what to say.

Other than that he feels like an absolute bastard.

So he apologises. Admits that he’d really wanted to hate Kally for outshining him. Tells her that brushing her hair during readthroughs is annoying. Wishes that she’d stop trying to compete with him in volume every time they’re onstage together.

But the idea of having a rival is fun. It turns out neither of them want to let that go.

So they agree they can be rivals, so long as they’re the friendly kind.

And as he shakes her hand, Desmond notices something he’d never seen before.

That crooked smile of hers… whenever she smiles, it makes dimples in her cheeks, and her eyes sparkle like sunlight on the ocean that had coloured them.

Something about that sight makes his heart skip a beat.

He doesn’t know what might have happened had Raymond not entered at that moment, carrying a tray of tea and a freshly baked Battenberg cake.

They spend the rest of the evening together – until Kally’s father comes to collect her, at least – and by the time she goes home, Desmond has mastered the art of switching from his school uniform to his pyjamas in nothing but the flourish of a blanket.

Happiness

They were touring prospective universities with their class when it happened.

Gressenheller’s drinking fountains were well-worn plumbing disasters waiting to happen, and Kally had only stopped for a moment to take a small mouthful when something ruptured and she was splattered all over with water.

She stood in place, frozen in shock, dripping from head to toe as she wordlessly lifted a sopping black lock of hair away from her face.

Desmond moves quickly. He whips off his uniform blazer and rests it around her shoulders, ushering her away from the group and assuring their teacher that they’ll be right back. He pulls out a handkerchief and starts wiping Kally’s face dry, and is in the process of trying to wring out that lock dangling over her face when it happens.

She stands on tiptoe and plants a kiss on his lips.

Now it’s Desmond who’s frozen on the spot. In the two years that have passed since he met Kalliope Argyris, he’s never suspected that she might do something like…

…like that.

She apologises for being sudden and Desmond can only splutter out a half-hearted assurance that it’s okay, there’s no problem, nothing to worry about here.

Her face red as their uniform tie, she tells him that she likes him. No, not just that, but that she likes him. That she has for a long time. Ever since that evening when she taught him how to quick change.

She fumbles with her blouse as she speaks, wringing out the water onto the floor and splashing all over Desmond’s shoes before gasping out a horrified apology.

Desmond can’t help but laugh.

She laughs too. That crooked smile. Those little dimples. That voice that’s far too loud to have come from such a young woman.

Now that he stops to think about it, there’s a strong probability that he likes her right back.

So he tells her as much and she kisses him again, on the cheek this time, smearing her wet hair all over his face.

It takes them a moment to remember where they are, what they’re doing and what they’re meant to be doing, and Kally points out that they should get back to their group before they get abandoned.

Still burning in his cheeks, Desmond pulls her around the corner and they hurry back to their class.

It isn’t until they rejoin the flock of other seventeen-year-olds that they remember Kally is still wearing Desmond’s blazer over her shoulders, and almost every other drama-loving teenager laughs at the pair of them.

Desmond longs for the earth to open up and swallow him whole.

Kally makes it up to him by buying him a massively overpriced book of wordsearches from the university’s bookshop, even though the only thing he can afford to buy her in return is a pencil.

Anger

Thirteen years after they were separated, now majoring in archaeology and mechanical engineering at the university where he and his girlfriend had admitted their feelings for one-another, Desmond finally sees his brother’s face again.

In a newspaper.

In a photograph with two other teens; a bespectacled redhead and a nervous blonde.

He looks impossibly different to how Desmond remembers him. He’s taller, for one. The diminutive stature of a small child has been replaced by the skinny frame and long limbs of an awkward teenager. His hair is a mess, a frizzy mop of brown that sits on his head like a cloud trying to eat his square face.

He still has those same dark eyes.

Desmond’s heart stops when he sees the article’s title.

Teen Killed in Archaeology Expedition Accident

This on the same page as an advert for washing machines, a two-paragraph piece about an overweight hedgehog and a four-paragraph article detailing how the Queen had opened Scottish parliament for the first time.

Ignoring how he might look to everybody else in Gressenheller’s cafeteria, Desmond slaps himself down at the table and scours the article for information.

His heart doesn’t start beating again until he’s finished it.

In a physical sense, Hershel Layton is fine. While it’s true that two boys had entered the ruins of Akbadain, he was the one who had emerged alive. The other – his best friend, prospective archaeologist and Azran scholar Randall Ascot – fell victim to a trap and plummeted to his death.

Desmond’s heart aches as he reads over the article a second time, wishing he could imagine the sound of his brother’s voice inside his head.

“I tried to save him. I really did, but I failed. He was my best friend. I was supposed to keep him safe and I failed.”

His fingers curl into a fist on the tabletop.

He notices, for the first time, the small caption listed under the photograph. LEFT TO RIGHT: Friends Angela Cartwright, Randall Ascot and Hershel Layton.

Seventeen years old.

Such a cruel twist of fate and they were only seventeen bloody years old. So young and yet the Azran had stolen yet another innocent life. Not even graduated from secondary school yet…

It stews in his mind all through his classes and he can feel it starting to boil over as he departs the campus at the end of the afternoon.

He has to pause in the middle of a park on the way back to his flat. He snatches up a fallen branch and whacks and whacks at the tree which had dropped it. They didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserved that. The Azran had already ruined his little brother’s life once! Did they really need to tear his existence apart for a second time?!

His arms are sore by the time he’s worn himself out. The sun is going down. The branch he had snatched up is splintered and broken into shards spread all over the park. People walking their dogs and mothers and fathers with small children are eyeing him horror.

The tree he had been attacking shows no sign of damage whatsoever.

He falls to his knees in the grass. Splinters dig into his legs as he stares emptily into the roots. He barely even has the energy to breathe anymore, let alone get to his feet and finish his walk back to his flat.

It isn’t until Kally comes to find him, long after the sun has gone down and the late spring chill has set into the evening, that he allows himself to be pulled back to their flat and sat down on the sofa, which finally gives him a chance to talk to somebody about everything that had gone through his mind.

About how the Azran, not content with simply ruining the life of a child, had elected to kill one.

Some part of him, perhaps what little remains of his optimism, wonders if there’s any chance that boy is still alive. If he is, maybe there’s some possibility of an ally in the pursuit of vengeance.

Kally finds the newspaper he had been talking about this entire time and tracks down the article. She’s just as annoyed as he is about how casually this incident is treated by the press. Yes, an innocent teenager had been killed, but was that really as important as Buy Now, No Interest, No Monthly Payments for Five Years 3 Speed Stainbuster?

And once she finishes reading, she thrusts herself to her feet and points out what she considers the most important part of the article.

The Ascot estate have offered a reward for any information relating to their son and his whereabouts.

It seems in her mind, that’s confirmation that there’s a possibility of this kid still being alive.

Which means, she tells Desmond, that the two of them are going on an expedition.

If there’s one thing she’ll never forget, it’s how to leave him speechless.

Happiness

One last call to Raymond, requesting all of his research materials on the Azran be delivered to his flat while they’re away, and then they’re off.

It’s a long journey. Two trains, a bus and ultimately a horse-drawn wagon to complete the roughest part of the terrain. Kally naps on his shoulder while he works his way through a book of puzzles he’d bought from a newsagent, somehow not waking up during his growls of frustration as he struggles. Junior jumble? Senior jumble was more like it.

The wagon ride is rough and hot. So bumpy that they’re both warned not to talk or else they’d bite their tongues in half.

Not that it matters. They’re trained actors, after all. If there’s anything they’ve learned, it’s that a full conversation could easily be conducted with nothing more than the waggling of eyebrows.

Although that does earn them a strange look or two from the driver.

It’s hot out here. Hotter than he ever could have imagined. Even the warmest summers he could remember had never been like this. He’d been confused by Raymond’s recommendation that he and Kally take scarves with them, but now he understands why they’re necessary, and he makes sure her head and the back of her neck are properly protected from the harsh sun’s glare.

He hadn’t known what to expect when they arrived. Akbadain is a chasm of paralysing depth, its red rock walls looking not so much like it had been eroded away as much as cracked open to expose the dust underneath, and that dust is pockmarked with towering stalagmites. He has to remind himself not to spend too long looking down into it or else vertigo will send him plummeting into a natural spike pit.

What two seventeen-year-olds were hoping to accomplish in a place like this, he has no idea.

Kally asks if he’s going to take this place for himself, if he’s going to become the King of the Chasm, to which Desmond replies (as dramatically as he can) that Jean Descole will take this place by force and make the beautiful wayward adventurer his bride. Kally, equally as dramatic, swoons into his arms, and after taking a moment to gather their composure, they begin their descent into the ruins.

His first archaeological expedition and it’s to try to find a lost child.

Part of him wonders if he should try for social services instead, but no. His personality just is not suited to a job like that.

He’s glad they thought to bring torches and spare batteries. The ruins are almost pitch black. Only the tiniest amount of light filters down into the dismal tunnels, and compared to outside, this place is like a refrigerator. He hears Kally’s teeth chattering and pulls her against his body to keep her warm.

He can see places where the ground was dug up and disturbed. No doubt those kids were searching these tunnels for anything they might possibly find. And no doubt they came across nothing. From what he’s already discovered, Desmond doubts the Azran were prone to leaving their possessions simply strewn about on the floor.

When Kally asks if this is what he expected from his first expedition, all he can say is that he didn’t know what he expected. From their nights spent curled up on the sofa watching Time Team, the picture of archaeology formed in his mind has been one of shallow trenches cut into fields and people’s back gardens, unearthing remnants of walls, possibly a floor, maybe they would find a broken vase or a coin or two.

He never expected to be walking through a dank yet spacious tunnel with his girlfriend clinging to his body for warmth, trying to ignore the strange dripping noises that seem to be echoing from around every corner.

The deeper they go, the colder it gets and the mustier and thicker the air becomes. Every now and then, he and Kally come across a gigantic boulder, almost perfectly spherical, laying at the end of a track strewn with crushed metal and strips of fabric.

These boys had been busy. Desmond feels a swell of pride in his chest at the sight of such relentless devastation.

Part of him wishes he had thought to bring some dynamite so that they could really go to town on this place. No, plastic explosives. Better control over the time of the detonation. He and Kally could explore this place to their heart’s content and then he could simply throw a switch and they could watch, seated a safe distance away, as Akbadain crumbled into nothingness and took Targent’s hopes for triumph along with it.

He has no idea why this place is so significant, but he does know the best thing for the good of the world would be to wipe it from existence.

Kally trips and stumbles and almost takes both of them down. A brief, nervous giggle after regaining her balance and Desmond pulls off his scarf. He wraps it around first his wrist, and then hers. A precaution, he tells her. They don’t want to get separated in a place like this.

As they move deeper into the shadowy tunnels, their torches throwing loose rocks and stalactites into sharp relief, they see a strange, unearthly light emanating from somewhere further in.

And as they round the corner, they discover its source.

Crystals. Immense pale blue crystals that jut out of the earth like broken teeth. Their structures give off a gentle white glow, and when Desmond runs his hand over a glassy facet, he finds that it’s warm to the touch.

Typical precious-looking stone, he comments to Kally while they’re fixated on this beautiful rock. Silicates love to take root in any empty space they can find, and when enough of it bunches together, it creates shapes like this. If they come back in another thousand years or so, they’ll probably find the entirety of Akbadain completely overgrown by these crystals as though they were some metamorphic weed.

Best to get rid of it then, Kally comments, and before Desmond can stop her, she lifts a heavy hiking boot and slams it into the crystal.

A massive chunk of it snaps off and goes spinning down the tunnel.

It’s Desmond who hears it first. Something shifting in the shadows behind them. For a moment he wonders if it’s a cave-in, but when he swings his torch around to see, he discovers that it’s…

…some kind of mummy.

It’s approaching them on a wheel.

It’s swinging a sword.

There are two more behind it.

Desmond grabs Kally by the hand and together they run into the tunnels, with Kally stumbling and struggling to keep up because damn it Desmond my legs are not as long as yours! His torch’s light bounces and flails all over the place as they run and he doesn’t even know which direction they’re going in anymore, how deep they’ve ventured into these ruins, but up ahead he sees a gaping black opening and pulls Kally into it after him, thinking there might be stairs but no there aren’t stairs and now he’s slipping and sliding all the way down into the void-

-and they finally come to a stop in the mud at the bottom of the slope.

At first, the only sound he can hear is his own breathing. Heavy breathing. Relieved breathing. Exhausted but still definitely there breathing.

And then another sound reaches his ears.

Laughter.

His own laughter.

He’s laughing.

He can hear Kally laughing along with him, slumped beside him, at how ridiculous their situation is, how lucky they are to be alive. His heart’s pounding, his lungs burn, a painful stitch is stabbing him in the side and he can now state, with full confidence, that he had NOT expected his first archaeological venture to turn out this way.

He’s got a long way to go before he can call himself Accomplished in any sense of the word.

He checks that Kally is okay, and aside from mud in her hair and a skinned knee, she’s fine. More than fine, she tells him, and proudly presents him with the big chunk of crystal that she broke off. It’s at least the size of a pint glass and casts a gentle glow on her face as she wiggles it beside her head.

Seeing her crooked smile again, Desmond can’t bring himself to crush her dreams and tell her that in a place like this, a natural rock formation such as that crystal wouldn’t count as an archaeological find. That it was like if Tony Robinson had been excited about the grass he found beside the trench he was presenting to Britain, having unearthed the remains of a Roman villa.

He stands up, brushes himself down and helps Kally to her feet. The slope they slid down must have been stairs once upon a time, but they’re worn down and eroded to the point of flatness. Without ropes or climbing equipment, they’re going to have to find some other exit. No way they could climb back up a slope like that.

So they press on. They pass more disturbed earth, more flattened remains of this ruin’s guards, ancient traps triggered by the last foolish souls to pass through. Every now and then, they pass one or two more of those strange mummies, forcing them to hide in shadows until it’s safe to keep going.

Somehow this almost doesn’t feel real. It’s like they’re walking through some schlock horror movie from the 50s. Not content with simply being tied by the wrist, Kally holds onto Desmond’s hand and interlocks their fingers, and he has to remind himself that he is not a fifteen-year-old boy anymore, so there’s really no need for him to get so embarrassed.

After what feels like an eternity of walking, they finally come to the end.

An immense cavern awaits them, illuminated by sunlight pouring in from somewhere far above. Vines are strewn all over the rock face and trail down the edges of the cliff that waits before them. A gigantic gaping maw, cut as though some giant had carved it into the earth with their finger, and the sight of it causes both of them to tighten their grip on one-another’s hand.

According to the article they had read, this is where it happened.

This is where that boy plunged to his death.

It’s taken them what feels like an entire day of walking and exploring to get to it, but here they are.

They can see stairs on the other side of this crater. A door sits at the top of those stairs, no doubt sealed, but Desmond can’t see any way to get across to it short of spontaneously sprouting wings.

That’s going to be his project for his engineering class, he decides, once they get back to civilisation. Some machine that would allow him to easily cross such gigantic crevasses. The benefits to archaeological investigation and exploration were unimaginable!

Kally hears running water.

She leans over the cliff, aiming her torch down into the darkness, but it’s useless. The light just isn’t strong enough to have any effect on those shadows, but Kally leans down, saying quite pointlessly that she can hear water, wondering if maybe there’s an underground river somewhere down there that could have broken that boy’s fall-

-and then the cliff starts to crumble.

Desmond seizes her and jumps back. The torch flies from her grip and tumbles into the darkness, but neither of them notice as they scrabble back to safety, struggling for breath once they’ve put enough distance between themselves and that nightmarish drop.

He tells Kally that she’s the clumsiest girl he’s ever met.

The unspoken caveat is that he wouldn’t have it any other way.

And that he doesn’t want anything so awful as falling off a cliff to happen to her. He doesn’t want to let her go.

He couldn’t let her go no matter how hard he tries.

She flashes him that crooked smile again.

It’s so tempting to kiss her right here and now and show her how much he treasures her…

But then others come. Explorers. Jovial adventurers who have heard about the reward for the lost boy’s safe return or information thereof.

They take the amateur archaeologist and his companion back up to the surface, by which point the sun has long since set. The two are led to the base camp, where the group’s apparent leader is waiting. A sullen-looking teenager, who speaks politely and makes everyone tea, but never looks anybody in the eye.

His eyes are swollen and bloodshot and his voice sounds heartbreakingly strained.

As their presence was unexpected, Desmond and Kally are forced to share not only a tent, but a sleeping bag. There just wouldn’t be enough room for everybody otherwise.

Not that they mind.

They end up doing far more than kissing that night.

Happiness

If there’s one thing the pursuit of vengeance has taught Desmond, it’s patience. Good things take time. You won’t be satisfied in the long run if you hurry into things without any plan of action.

Which is why he’s so glad that it’s finally today.

He occupies himself with his research – trying to figure out what made this town of Misthallery so significant to Targent and how it related to the Azran – while he waits for her to come home from work. Part of him knows that he should probably get a little bit of university coursework done, but this is more important. This will ALWAYS be more important.

So an untainted garden, hidden and protected from modern progress, sat somewhere in the region and had yet to be found…

Fascinating.

No doubt a more advanced system of excavation would aid in finding the place.

He hears the door click. She’s home. He whips up from his desk, snatches the little velvet-coated box from beside his empty teacup and a haphazard stack of notes and hurries to the front room where she’s hanging her coat on its hook.

He asks if she remembers their expedition to Akbadain a few months ago. Of course she does. How could she not? She still laughs at the memory of his face when they almost fell into that huge underground pit.

He holds up the box for her to take.

She opens it and gasps with delight. So that’s what happened to that crystal we took!

He fastens the pendant around her neck. It’s quite simple – just a polished stone with a small silver hoop hooking it onto a thin chain – but it compliments her perfectly. He loves how its’ almost imperceptible glow sparkles in her tropical-ocean eyes and those dimples that come up when she smiles at the sight of it.

To make her smile more, he shows off his own. An identical pendant he’s been keeping tucked under his shirt for weeks at this point.

They match!

Kally laughs and presses a kiss to his cheek before asking what he made for a birthday dinner. Desmond suddenly remembers that it was his turn to cook and realises he had spent all that time studying at his desk, so they shrug and order a Chinese take-away to eat while curled up on the sofa watching Midsomer Murders.

He doesn’t tell her about the third piece of jewellery that he had made using that crystal.

Not yet at least.

Happiness

Eight years to the day after they first met, while enjoying dinner at an uptown restaurant to celebrate the success of his first publication, he presents her with not only that third piece, but a question that will change their lives forever.

She says yes!

Happiness

An established star in local theatre and a rising star in archaeology.

They spend as little money on the ceremony as they can get away with. Kally wears her mother’s wedding dress; a single-shoulder gown styled to look like a toga, harkening back to her family’s heritage. With flowers in her hair and strings of pearls hanging from her wrists and ears, the crystal pendant around her neck as she had insisted, she looks as though the goddess Aphrodite herself had descended from Mt Olympus to walk among the living.

Desmond just rents a morning suit. No way could he compete with that.

His mother tells him that he should ‘smarten himself up a little’ even after seeing him fully dressed on the day of the ceremony, so he tries on a pair of glasses. Not that he needs them. They aren’t prescription, not even for reading. It’s more spite than necessity. Glasses lend an air of intelligence to a person and while this isn’t what Mrs Sycamore meant by ‘smart’ she doesn’t try to complain.

He’s twenty-four now. Any complaints she has are those he’s long since built an immunity to.

Besides, he looks pretty good with glasses.

Raymond helps him straighten his tie and comb his hair. He tells Desmond that he couldn’t be prouder of the man he’s grown into, and after seventeen years of knowing him, there’s nothing Desmond could do that will ever repay him for all his kindness.

In response to this comment, Raymond simply responds that he will always be Desmond’s loyal servant.

It’s as he’s leaving that his parents tell him something he never could have predicted: after today, they’ll be moving to the Bahamas. They’ve enjoyed their time in England and all the happiness it’s brought them, but now that their son is getting married, they feel ready to retire.

When Desmond asks what will happen to their house and to Raymond, he’s simply told that it’s his house. Raymond is his butler now. That he should consider them a wedding present.

For the first time in nearly two decades, Desmond wonders if the two of them actually did care about him all this time, and he allows them to hug him before they leave for the ceremony, his mother lecturing him on how to maintain the house for the entire journey.

He doesn’t mind by the time they arrive. No need to get upset now that he knows he won’t have to put up with them for much longer.

He almost cries when he sees Kally walking down the aisle. Even if he searched to the ends of the globe, he could never find anybody as beautiful as she is. He’s glad he chose to wear those pointless glasses today because they hide the tears he can feel welling up in his eyes.

He takes her hand.

They promise commitment to one-another for the rest of their lives.

They slip rings onto each other’s fingers. There had been enough of that crystal left to make a second ring, and Desmond finds himself reaching for a handkerchief when he sees that subtle glow on his hand.

The officiator makes the announcement.

And Kalliope Sycamore stands on tiptoe to kiss her husband.

Happiness

It’s been three years since he got married.

Seven years since their first expedition into the ruins of Akbadain.

He’s making a name for himself in the field of archaeology. He’s annoyed that he can’t access Akbadain anymore because of the hotels, restaurants and casinos that are springing up like pimples all over the place. He’d have to join up with a team of explorers and like hell he’s going to let any of them get in the way of his work.

But nevertheless, Desmond Sycamore is becoming well known as an authority on the Azran civilisation, even moreso than Donald Rutledge or any of his contemporaries. Perhaps he doesn’t have every last piece of information about them, but his collections of his learnings are among the most comprehensible in the field.

Every day sees him receiving at least ten emails from university students thanking him for writing in a way they can understand, as opposed to the overly flowery language that so many of his colleagues use. He’s been told he’s staved off many an all-nighter of cramming. Many other experts in the field deride him for talking down to them and appealing to the common man, but so many others are praising him for inviting further public interest in a science that doesn’t garner anywhere near enough appreciation.

There’s only one person whose email he’s never had the courage to respond to.

Hershel Layton.

To try to compose some professional reply, even though this email has been sitting in his inbox for over a year at this point, would tear him apart.

Nevertheless, he’s been keeping tabs on his little brother’s life. The internet coming into more common use throughout the country has truly been beneficial.

After leaving Stansbury following the unfortunate disappearance of his best friend, young Layton had begun study at Oxford University. Not Gressenheller, it seemed. Desmond doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that there had never been any chance of them running into one another. After graduating with honours, the young man – twenty-four, his little brother is twenty bloody four – had begun aiming for a teaching position. Not at Oxford, he’s still considered too young for that, but Gressenheller seems to be watching his progress with interest. Until he reaches that goal, he’s working part time at a Sainsbury’s to cover his half of the rent and recently started dating a physicist at a lab researching… something or other, it doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that the prospective scholar formerly known as Theodore Bronev is living a happy, worthwhile life.

As a matter of fact, Desmond saw his name in the newspaper not long ago. Not for any particular reason, however. The young man had written in to issue a correction to one of the crosswords featured at the back of a previous edition.

So it seems that an affinity for puzzles runs in the family.

He wonders which of their long-dead parents they inherited it from.

Someday, somehow, he’s going to have to find a way to repay Roland and Lucille Layton for the kindness and love they showed to his little brother.

Someday they’ll be able to meet in person.

Surely someday …

He’s shaken out of his thoughts by a knock on his door. It’s Raymond, carrying a cloth over one arm, telling him that Mistress Kalliope wishes to speak with him about an important matter.

Cold dread pools in Desmond’s stomach. She’s been terribly sick recently. Constantly pale, rushing to the toilet to vomit multiple times a day, never the same mood from one minute to the next, incredibly sensitive to tastes and smells to the point that she’s asked him to stop wearing his favourite strawberry cologne that she gave him as an anniversary gift…

He finds her in their bathroom. She looks terrified. Her long black hair is clogged with sweat and her cheeks are like candle wax. Although the thought of asking the necessary question petrifies him, Desmond does so.

What’s wrong?

She turns to him, suddenly smiling, and holds up a white stick. It’s blue at one end. He can see a positive symbol on a little display in the middle.

If he had died at that moment, Desmond would have died a happy man.

Happiness

They name her Zoe.

She has a thin layer of her mother’s ebony-black hair on her head, coupled with her father’s eyes. Carnelian, Kally calls them. They glimmer and sparkle whenever she smiles, and that smile is her mother’s goofy crooked grin, complete with dimples on her chubby little cheeks.

Her hand is only barely large enough for her tiny fingers to wrap around Desmond’s thumb, and every time she manages to get hold of him, he doesn’t ever want her to let go.

Kally laughs at him as he struggles to stay awake, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to shut his eyes and risk looking away from this perfect little face, but even so, he passes Zoe to her mother and tries to get some sleep.

They take her home the next day. Raymond is overjoyed to meet the latest addition to the Sycamore clan. As the new parents contact their families to inform them of the situation, the faithful butler sets about installing gates and locks on every doorway and cupboard that needs it. The less places for a baby to wander about, the better.

They’ve bought toys, of course. Small plushies for her to cuddle, blocks for her to play around with, a wind-up mobile to hang over her cot. In spite of all of these purchases, nothing amuses her more than her mother or father twirling their pendants above her. She stares up at them, wide-eyed and giggling, and grasps at the still-glowing stones with her chunky little hands.

She’s small. Amazingly small. Impossibly small. Desmond is amazed that he’s able to cradle an entire human being in a single arm, and that this entire human being was inside his wife up until a mere few hours ago.

He knows now that he’s never going to stop loving her. Either of them. If anything ever happened to them, he doesn’t know what he would do with himself.

He hasn’t stepped inside his study for two months.

Fear

Kally is developing King of the Chasm for her troupe to perform onstage. She needs help expanding the story and characters to a two-and-a-half-hour-long performance, so she sits with her chunky laptop in the living room and bounces ideas off everyone around her.

When Raymond brings her tea, she reads out lines to him and asks for possible synonyms she can use to make the dialogue stronger, more dramatic, more impactful. When she wants to check for historical accuracy, she forces Desmond to look up from his games with Zoe and questions him on what these people did and if this had been invented yet. When she wants to get a good sense of what a scream sounds like, she asks two-year-old Zoe to yell as loud as she can and does her best to transcribe what she hears.

As she’s working her way through the climax, she decides she wants to get a better sense of what this dialogue will sound like when read aloud. She prints out what she has so far and has Desmond read through it with her, and with Zoe watching with intrigue, he hams it up as much as he possibly can. He shouts. He declares. He proclaims. He gestures with his hands and grins maniacally.

He puts on such an impressive display that Kally brings home a variety of costume pieces with her the next time she heads to the theatre, and she asks her husband to put them on over the top of his best suit.

He can’t help but laugh when he sees himself in the mirror upon donning everything she brought him. A layered cloak that billows around his body. A faux fur stole that he holds in place around his neck with a safety pin. A grey wig that’s fallen apart at the back and exposes his own auburn hair. A high-topped tricorn hat left over from her colleagues’ production of Pirates of Penzance and a domino mask from their take on Phantom of the Opera.

It’s extremely dramatic. Very operatic.

And very warm.

He twirls into the living room with a flourish of his cloak and the loudest cackle he can manage. Kally bursts out laughing at the sight of him, stating that she hadn’t meant for him to put on everything. Zoe screams and hides behind her mother, requiring him to remove the headgear long enough to reassure her that it’s okay, it’s just Daddy! It’s just Daddy playing a game of make-believe, nothing to be afraid of, darling. Raymond sets out in search of her favourite blanket so that she can calm down and stop crying.

They read through the script. Desmond tosses the cloak around, tips his hat, throws his lines out like a javelin. He snatches up a poker from beside the fireplace and brandishes it like a sword, prompting Kally to take up the fireplace shovel and do the same in return.

He has to take a moment to correct her form. As someone who’s never even touched a sword, let alone used one, she has no idea how to brandish it properly.

There’s a knock at the front door.

Raymond interrupts the impromptu rehearsal to inform his master of who’s come to see him.

A group calling themselves Targent.

Desmond’s blood runs cold.

Targent.

The organisation that tore his family apart and ruined his and his brother’s lives. They’re literally knocking on his door.

He rips off the costume pieces and tells Raymond to take Kally and Zoe into the kitchen once he’s shown those people to his office. Not his study. Not where he’s keeping all of his research. The office he uses for meetings and negotiations. It’s better that his family be in the kitchen because there’s only one point of entry from inside the house and they can flee out the back door if they need to, and there are plenty of knives for self-defence should that become necessary.

Once he’s sure his wife and daughter are safely hidden from these bastards, he gathers his thoughts, heads up to his office, grabs his own wrist to try to stop his hands from shaking and opens the door to his office.

He’s met by two Targent officers and his father.

It’s been twenty-three years, but he could never forget what his own father looks like. His hair is a mess, he’s grown out a beard and he’s wearing dark glasses, but even if Desmond hadn’t recognised him on the spot, the man gets to his feet and immediately introduces himself as Leon Bronev.

Desmond swallows as he steps into the room and politely shakes the older man’s hand.

It wouldn’t take a genius to realise that this man – his own father – doesn’t recognise him in the slightest. He speaks not like a father to his estranged son, but like a wealthy corporate fat cat to the owner of a small business he’s looking to absorb. Once sat at his desk, Desmond slips his hands out of sight so that none of these people can see him trembling.

They’re asking him to join them.

He should have known it was a mistake to try to profit off his knowledge of the Azran, he thinks to himself as the words wash over him. He’d put himself on their radar. He’d practically proclaimed his existence and his expertise to the entire world. He might as well have tied a bow on his head and presented himself to them on a silver platter.

The people who had ruined his life, whom he’d been tracking and following and planning his revenge against for almost as long as he can remember, now want him to join their ranks.

He cautiously asks what would become of his family if he was to take them up on this offer.

Bronev states that they would be cared for, but it’s doubtful whether he’d ever see them again. He says that he can’t even remember the last time he saw his own sons. And that his wife sickened and died years ago.

Desmond’s blood runs cold again.

He asks what would happen if he refused.

His father simply replies that he can’t promise it would end well. Especially for that little girl of his.

He’s happily promising to kill his own granddaughter.

That’s enough. Desmond thrusts himself from his chair and speaks his mind. He states that he’s astounded and disgusted that these men would ever think he would agree to join them, especially after a threat like that. He demands that they leave immediately and don’t even think about coming back, negotiating, or making another offer. They can see themselves out.

He sits in his chair, trying to quell his quivering hands, and waits until he hears the front door shut. He watches out of his window until he’s sure they’re gone, at which point, he closes his curtains.

He hurries downstairs to the kitchen where he finds Raymond, knife in hand, standing in defence of Kally and Zoe. He assures them that they’re gone, that they’re safe for now, but he doesn’t know whether it would be worth leaving and finding somewhere to hide or if these people would track them down and try to recruit him by force.

He doesn’t tell any of them that his own father is now, by the looks of things, the leader of Targent.

The ever-stubborn Kally points out that of course they’d be chased if they tried to run away. Given the size and strength of this organisation, would there be any point to it? They should stand their ground. Show these people that they are not afraid.

In spite of how badly his hands are still shaking, Desmond agrees. Anybody who would come to a man’s house and threaten his family and somehow think he would agree with them following that effort… they’d have to be rather pathetic. More to the point, since these people were so obviously trying to intimidate him, it would be better to show no response whatsoever. Bullies are only searching for a reaction, after all.

Her confidence is reassuring, but it isn’t enough to entirely calm his nerves. He asks Raymond to take all of his research materials and move them to the old flat near the university just in case they do decide to try going into hiding.

He doesn’t get any sleep at all that night.

Fear

He’s only gone for two hours.

Kally had got herself in trouble for taking costume parts home without permission, so Desmond takes it upon himself to return them for her, as well as delivering the first draft of the expanded King of the Chasm to her theatre for the director to read over. She and Zoe should be alright with Raymond watching over them, so he trusts that it’ll be safe to leave them at home for the time it’ll take to go and come back.

The traffic is a nightmare. On a good day, it only takes around twenty-five minutes to drive from his home to the theatre, but some kind of accident has shut down a large region of the city and the journey takes at least twice as long.

Desmond doesn’t dare tune his radio to the news. If it’s Targent, he wants to stay the heck away from it.

When he finally gets to the theatre, he’s forced to sit in the lobby and wait for the director to arrive. He watches the TV while he waits and the receptionist kindly turns up the volume for him.

A laboratory had experienced a devastating accident. Something had gone wrong with an experimental machine and the resulting explosion had been enough to destroy a block of flats next door. 105 people are confirmed dead, including researcher Claire Foley, who had been at the epicentre of the blast. 76 more are missing. 82 are injured.

Then there’s a witness interview.

“ I ran this way as soon as I heard about the accident. I thought that perhaps there was still time… that if I got here as soon as possible, I might find Claire and see that she was alright… I realised the moment I arrived that I was wrong to hope as much. That she’s lost to me forever. I’m never going to see her face again.”

Even if it weren’t for the voice wracking Desmond’s brain with déjà vu, there’s no way he wouldn’t be able to recognise that face.

It’s his baby brother. Now twenty-seven years old, fingers delicately adjusting the brim of a fashionable top hat, his features drawn, eyes bloodshot and cheeks sparkling and damp.

The sight of the grief-stricken man causes Desmond’s fingers to carve grooves into the sofa he’s sitting on. He curses himself for his annoyance at getting stuck in traffic. If he had known… if he had known that this was what caused the delay…

He’s willing to bet that Targent may have had some hand in this, but he doesn’t dare hurry there to find out. If Leon Bronev somehow recognised him on the television and saw that both of his sons were still alive, who could say what might happen? No. No, there was no way he was going to endanger them both, especially when Theo- when Layton was obviously shell-shocked from what had just happened.

Maybe later. Maybe once everything’s cooled down a little, he can reach out and offer his sympathies, one archaeologist to another. He’s heard that Layton recently became a professor at Gressenheller University, so it was worth reaching out to congratulate him for that as well.

Later though. After he’s had some time to mourn.

The director arrives. Desmond apologises, hands over the costume parts, and passes him the script with an aside comment about how it was a family effort that everybody in the household contributed to.

One raised eyebrow of confusion later and Desmond is excusing himself and getting back in his car to head home. He has to take the long way home to avoid the traffic jams, adding another hour to his journey, and he considers stopping to pick up fish and chips for dinner as a treat to calm his nerves.

But as he enters their suburb, he notices something that pools cold dread into his stomach.

Smoke.

An immense, thick column of black smoke towering into the sky. He had thought it was just a low-hanging rain cloud at first, darkened by the early evening, but as he draws nearer…

…he realises it must be coming from somewhere near his home.

And then he turns onto their street.

He can feel the heat from here. Smell the ashes. His eyes sting. His throat burns.

His heart stops.

He abandons the car. Wrenches the door open and throws himself out and runs down the street to where Raymond is sprawled on the footpath. He slaps the bruised man into consciousness and demands to know what happened. Who did this. Where Kalliope and Zoe are.

Raymond apologises.

He tried to stop them. Tried to fight back. There were just too many of them.

Kalliope and Zoe are…

He looks to the burning house. All that’s visible through the windows is fire. A flicking orange glow is cast onto the front lawn.

All Desmond can hear is the roaring of flames and collapsing of wood from somewhere within.

Before Raymond can stop him, he runs to the front door and all judgement vanishes as he kicks it in. A blast of fire blows him backwards and he crashes onto the ground, but scrambles to his feet again, his shoulder screaming from the impact.

Raymond seizes him around the waist and pulls him back. Desmond falls to his knees, tugging at his butler’s arm and demanding to be released. He snatches uselessly at the empty air in front of him, screaming the names of his wife and daughter.

There’s no response.

He slumps in Raymond’s arms, hot tears gushing down his face, and his throat aches as he wails in horror and grief.

Two hours.

He was only gone for two hours.

Anger

Some unknown accelerant. That’s what they said. Arson, they said. Arson and murder.

Desmond’s alibi is corroborated by the theatre’s director, who has cancelled their performance of King of the Chasm not only as a sign of respect for its writer, but also due to half of their troupe being killed in the terrible accident in the city that day. Raymond’s injuries are analysed by doctors and determined to be defensive wounds from at least three different assailants.

Two severely burned bodies are recovered from the wreckage. Post-mortem examination shows signs of smoke inhalation, meaning they were alive when the fire started. Extensive damage to facial features and complete erasure of fingerprints leads coroners to use dental records to confirm the identities of these bodies.

Kalliope and Zoe Sycamore.

One aged thirty. The other aged two and a half.

Even the lead coroner tells Desmond that it’s the worst examination she’s ever had to perform, and she passes him an item that was found on one of the bodies.

Kally’s crystal pendant.

He wipes the char away with his thumb, revealing the silver and subtle glow underneath. The chain is too damaged to be of any further use, but the pendant itself is still miraculously intact.

Only one other item is recovered from the wreckage. Inside a sealed metal box, investigators find a handwritten note:

YOU WERE WARNED

Desmond says nothing.

He recognises the handwriting from all his years of poring over the notes from its writer before he had been taken by Targent.

They have to take the note from him to prevent his clenching fists from destroying the paper.

He leaves them to their work without saying another word.

He’s had enough.

Some part of him had hoped that perhaps he could lead a peaceful life with his family and forget about his pursuit of vengeance, but any hope of that has been utterly dashed. The only thing he has left of that life is Raymond, and Raymond is just as enraged by this horrific event as Desmond is.

He’s been supportive in the background up to this point, but now he’s equally as hungry for revenge.

By this point, Desmond knows that if he’s going to lash out at them, he needs to make a statement. Something dramatic. Something they would never be able to ignore.

He knows exactly what he needs to do.

He needs to claim the Azran sites they’ve had their eyes on. He needs to find them, take them, before Targent can swoop in and steal control. Military might has to be defeated by the pure-hearted pursuit of knowledge and education.

But at the same time, he knows he needs to maintain his reputation. A man’s wife and daughter are killed in a devastating fire and then he deliberately vanishes from the public eye? No matter which way you sliced it, that wouldn’t look good for him.

So he’ll have to create some other persona. Some other version of himself to fight on his behalf and devastate anybody who would get in the way of his rampage.

He knows exactly what to call his other self.

In the middle of the night, he breaks down the theatre’s green room entrance.

He takes the pieces he had worn on the last day he had been happy and relaxed with his family. Putting them on feels like he’s stepping into another body. Another life.

He kicks in the door to the director’s office and snatches the script for King of the Chasm off his desk, and carries it under his arm and out of the theatre.

He entered that building as Desmond Sycamore.

He steps out into the night as Jean Descole.

Anger

It’s time to prepare.

If he’s going to make a dramatic entrance, he needs to do everything he can to not only ensure that it’s as dramatic as possible, but retain the energy of the performance and keep his audience from getting bored.

With the fortune he’s raised from the sales of his books, Descole purchases a zeppelin. More elegant than a plane while equally as versatile, and far less risky for a mechanical engineer to play around with. It provides them with a mobile base of operations that will make it more of a challenge for Targent to apprehend them should they try.

His so-called loving parents refuse to support him. The last time he heard from them was a single email offering condolences for Kally and Zoe’s deaths and that was it.

As for the Argyris family, they had departed for their homeland the moment their daughter’s funeral was over.

Raymond is all he has left.

But Raymond is more than enough.

He names their airship the Bostonius, after the city of Boston, Lincolnshire, that he had hoped to retire to with his family once his vengeance had been fulfilled. Knowing that the profits from his book sales won’t be enough to see his goals through, he decides that before anything else, they’re going to make a stop in Monte Carlo, the gambling capital of Europe, and he sets up an office for himself during the flight to Monaco.

A loud man in a billowing cloak will make an impression no matter where he goes; his arrival at the Monte Carlo Casino draws stares of alarm and confusion, occasionally amusement, from the wealthy patrons gambling their lives away. He doesn’t care. He knows that his appearance will be burned into their minds for the rest of their lives. Years from now, they’ll be telling their grandchildren about this day, and the thought of that notion fills him with pride.

Needless to say, he’s not an idiot. He knows the sorts of things that casino employees get up to. He gives off the clear impression of a high roller, so they’re going to do everything they can to bleed him dry.

Raymond takes care of that. A gun barrel in the small of the back is more than enough to prompt compliance.

Roulette. Poker. Blackjack. Trente et Quarante. Craps. Baccarat.

None of them dare to allow him to lose.

When security is called to investigate this strange, exuberant, and suspiciously victorious man, Raymond covers their tracks with a smoke bomb and they flee with their winnings.

Just as he had planned, a single day in Monte Carlo has seen him become a multi-millionaire, and he and Raymond return to England before the frogs know what hit them.

The first thing he buys is a hangar in a London aerodrome. Not only is it a place to keep, modify and improve the Bostonius, but it allows him plenty of space to construct and experiment and test, test, test.

His major in mechanical engineering will not be in vain.

So he builds. He builds and he tests and he repairs and he maintains and builds and modifies and buffs and reinforces and tests and repairs and tests and strengthens and maintains and builds and tests and refuels and tests and tests and tests, tests, tests again. Time passes in a blur and he can barely tell what year, month or even day of the week it is anymore. If it wasn’t for Raymond, he might even forget about eating, sleeping, or keeping himself hydrated.

That’s just how it is with science. Nothing is fast. Nothing is easy. Anything is possible and anything can be accomplished, but working through science means a slow, steady, pain-in-the-backside process of trying and trying and trying again.

He builds excavators. Massive machines with razor-sharp claws edged with bort, capable of carving through any material, be it as solid as granite or as soft as a human body. Drill attachments that annihilate solid titanium plating in five seconds flat, and if they do that to titanium, then steel won’t stand a chance. Whatever Targent throws at him, he’s not going to have any trouble shredding it to ribbons.

He builds on the Bostonius. He adds an engine and thrusters and extendable wings and reinforced walls and bulkheads and a far stronger rudder than what the ship had originally been equipped with. Her immense balloon is now detachable for when they find themselves in need of speed. She becomes less like a vehicle and more like a home capable of flight.

He uses his tools so much that they wear down far quicker than any tool should. His spanners and wrenches are smoothed down and lose all sense of grip, his screwdrivers blunt, his hand-crank drills leave painful blisters all over his fingers and palms and his electric drills give up the ghost within at least a few months of purchase.

Mountains of nuts, bolts, gears, washers, and screws. At least a tonne of plating. Miles upon miles of wiring. Gallons of industrial lubricant. More levers and buttons than he ever could have thought existed in the world. Hours upon hours of soldering and welding and screwing and bolting and testing.

And when he’s too sore and exhausted to build and test, he researches. Hunts through the ever-expanding immensity of the internet for any indication of Targent activity. As the bizarre, often confusing concept of social media rises in popularity, the hunting gets easier and easier. Every teenager with a phone becomes his informant. Every bird watcher and train enthusiast keeping logs of their findings becomes his spy. He can read entire articles, entire books, entire libraries worth of research without so much as setting foot outside.

He soon concludes, from everything he can gather, that the Azran had a capitol. A central hub where their people lived and flocked to and worked together.

But if he’s going to find this hub, he needs to gather information from the civilisation’s three most fabled and speculated-upon locations.

The Garden of Healing.

The City of Harmony.

The Nautilus Chamber.

If he can get his hands on all three of these ancient remainders from the Azran people, he can find their centre and erase them from the planet.

Should Targent follow him, all the better. All of his eggs in one easily destructible basket.

When he’s tired of building and testing, when he’s so drained and sore that he can’t even leave his bed, Raymond brings him newspapers. He soon discovers that it’s his best, most reliable source of information on his brother; Professor Hershel Layton has been appearing more and more frequently, and for far more interesting reasons than correcting a crossword.

He’s aiding Scotland Yard with investigations. Whether he’s an official consultant or not is unclear, but as time rolls by, he catches thieves. Apprehends murderers. Exposes hidden criminals. Returns stolen items to their rightful owners and brings justice to those who have been wronged. When asked why a mere archaeologist is so interested in the world of solving crime…

“I am but a simple lover of puzzles. Nothing more and nothing less.”

It’s enough to make his elder brother burst out laughing.

He considers, if only for a moment, contacting this Professor and asking to form an alliance, but he dismisses the notion. Not only does he want to avoid the risk of putting Layton on Targent’s map, but the moral compass this man seems to have developed would cause him to object to every single scheme that Descole could possibly conceive.

He hits upon the possibility that when he begins the exacting of his vengeance, Layton may deliberately position himself in his way.

If he does…

…Descole may have to be careful not to do something he’ll regret.

When he’s strong enough to move again, he continues his building and testing, no matter how much his muscles scream. His hangar looks like the most insane possible episode of Scrapheap Challenge and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

He builds. And he tests. And he refines. And he reconstructs. And he tests.

Time blurs past. Days become weeks. Weeks become months. Months become seasons.

Before he even realises it, six years have gone by.

If anything, it didn’t take half as long as he thought it would, although Raymond remarks that he sorely needs a haircut.

But he’s ready. After all that time of relentless mechanical experimentation, he finally feels ready. It’s time for his operation to begin and he isn’t going to stop for anything.

The nearest, most easily accessible of the three locations he knows of is the Garden of Healing, sometimes referred to as the Golden Garden. From everything he can find, it appears to be in the vicinity of the village of Misthallery.

A village that an Oxford graduate of archaeology recently became a resident of.

He saddles up his most effective excavator and sets off. Time to make a new ‘friend’.

This is going to be fun.

Anger

How had it come to this? How?!

Everything had been fine. Everything had been proceeding according to plan. Everything had been going so well.

An entire year of preparation, investigation, exploring and talking and gentle persuasion…

…for NOTHING.

The moment he returns to his hangar, he slams his fist into the Bostonius’ wall in rage.

So Clark Triton hadn’t behaved himself. No matter. Descole had known exactly what to do about it. He knows the horrific pain of knowing one’s family is in danger, so stealing the man’s wife away and promising her safe return in exchange for cooperation was the most logical next step he could think of.

And when the butler had refused to put up with this? Hide him away as well and masquerade in his place. It would not only deal with a potential spanner in his works, but also give him the perfect vantage point to keep an eye on Mr Triton and make sure he didn’t try anything.

He’d even managed to get the local law enforcement on his side. Third Eye Jakes was a presumptuous, unintelligent, odorous bastard, but he’d held a position of influence in the town and his assistance had proved invaluable during his various investigations of the buildings and what could possibly have lay underneath.

But the boy… that man’s infuriating little brat of a son just HAD to try to reach out to one of his father’s old friends.

He should have known. Should have prepared better. Should have conducted further research on this man and his experience and his background.

He learned too late that during his time at university, Clark Triton was flatmates with Hershel Layton.

He hadn’t wanted to hurt the man. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. He always made sure, thanks to his informing of the local authorities, that the buildings he ripped up in his search for the Golden Garden would be empty. He hadn’t even tied up the wife or butler, for heaven’s sake! And he made sure they were fed and healthy for the entire time they’d been under that cellar!

But then not only that little boy, but Layton…

His own brother just HAD to get in his way.

He pulls his sword from its safe hiding place in his wardrobe door and thrusts it into that front-page photograph of the dark-eyed Professor.

His brother and that assistant of his and those children who had just insisted on trying to stop him from doing something they didn’t understand in the slightest and weren’t ever going to try to understand, even if he HAD taken time to explain himself…

…and some prehistoric water horse that had apparently been living in the nearby lake had done everything it could to try to destroy the excavator he had spent YEARS building and refining and testing and programming and testing, yet these fools had the gall to MOURN it when it died as a result of its own idiocy?!

And now he has no doubt in his mind that as a result of Layton’s interference, the Golden Garden that had been HIS to discover is going to fall into Targent’s hands within a matter of months, if not weeks, if not days.

He wrenches his sword free from the desk he had impaled it into, pulling up the paper while doing so, and he slashes that paper in two with a single swing.

The photograph of his baby brother flutters to the floor.

His sword falls from his fingers. He drops to his knees, snatches up the page and tries to smoothen it out, tries to flatten down the paper, tries to close the hole his blade had punched through Layton’s chest as if that will somehow repair the damage he’s done…

It’s useless.

In the back of his mind, he knows for a fact that it’s useless.

Even if he were to close this hole, reach out to the man and attempt to explain himself and make amends, the damage has been done. For what he did to Misthallery, to his friends and his work, he knows that Layton will never be able to forgive him.

No.

No. Stop thinking about this. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter.

He can return to being Desmond Sycamore. Just for a month or two. After the Golden Garden’s discovery is made public, he can investigate it freely to his heart’s content. So long as he times it carefully, he’ll never even come close to encountering Layton.

He’ll only have a matter of time before Targent thugs overrun the region.

But if he can get the information he needs, he’ll be one step closer to bringing them to ruin.

Yes, he tells himself. It would have been nice to have his name in the papers as the one to have unearthed such a massive landmark in the Azran legacy, but this loss doesn’t matter in the long run.

Until then, he can begin preparations for his next expedition. His next exploration. His next Azran location to carve his name into.

Time to see a man about an opera.

Anger

Damn it all! He had been so close!

Right there. It had all been right there. If it wasn’t for that impudent braggart and his pathetic little whelp of an apprentice, Ambrosia would have been his and his alone.

He wishes there was some way to make this fool understand that wouldn’t require him to reveal some inconvenient truth. Some way, without explaining their relation, of getting Layton to understand that he was all the family that Descole had left, that he was his biggest motivation to continue walking this world instead of passing on to the next one, that everything he’s doing is to destroy the disgusting people and the accursed civilisation that had torn their lives apart …

He doesn’t want to hurt the man. Definitely doesn’t want to kill him. All he wants is for this upstart to STAY OUT OF HIS WAY.

But he won’t.

He gets in the way of bloody EVERYTHING.

That silly little girl just HAD to call him in, didn’t she? The only thing she’d needed to do was play along, solve the puzzles, come to the castle and, when it turned out she had been the singer he’d needed all along, sing the song that would allow them to raise Ambrosia. Then he would be done. Then he could bid farewell and allow everybody to go home. Perhaps there would even have been time for a cup of tea and a calm explanation of his motivations, had Layton understood that his intentions truly were entirely focused on an archaeological pursuit.

But no. He just HAD to stick his nose in and destroy Descole’s plans. Yes, maybe he had overlooked the Song of the Sun, but had his excavator dug deep enough, they would surely have unearthed the city by more conventional means. Instead, his own younger brother sweeps in and snatches the triumph from his fingers without so much as a single acknowledgement of the insult.

This man had been so determined, so single-mindedly adamant about getting in his way, yet he hadn’t even thought to ask why Descole wanted the Azran sites for himself! He’d just gone about his merry way, tripping him up and interrupting and insulting him and forcing him to do things that he knew would end up hurting people -

He’s had to set up a wooden dummy on the Bostonius. He can’t keep stabbing and slashing at his desk or else there won’t be much of it left by year’s end, and he doesn’t want to keep attacking the photographs of Layton that won’t stop appearing on the cover of the Times.

He doesn’t want to feel that way about his brother.

He’s spent so long trying to avenge them both. So long seeking justice for what they were put through, the family they never got to have, the lives they were never allowed to lead.

He doesn’t want to have come so far, only to end up hating the person he’s been fighting for ever since…

…has it really been almost thirty years since then?

Sometimes it feels like thirty centuries ago. Other times, it feels more like thirty seconds.

He slashes and hacks at his training dummy, sending wooden splinters flying all across the floor and bolts of pain shooting through his body, and he doesn’t stop until his shoulder is too sore to function and his fingers are beginning to get numb. At that point, he sits down and tries to calm his mind, just in time for Raymond to approach with a cup of tea and a slice of freshly baked Victoria sponge.

His mind wanders as he drinks, flying back to that night when his scheme had fallen apart.

If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that he hadn’t been the only Bronev brother to have studied fencing.

He smiles. Yet another coincidence they share.

He thinks back to the excavator he had come to dub the Detragigant. What a magnificent machine it had been, equipped with drills and scoops and one of the most advanced control boards he had ever had the pleasure of developing. The Detragan itself had been a remarkable achievement. An instrument that renders a single man capable of playing music as rich as an entire orchestra. What a concept! Before he dies, he has to find a way to patent it.

Which would no doubt earn him a great deal more enemies in the form of orchestra members left redundant.

At this point, it was hard to care. Descole already had a thousand enemies. What was a thousand more in the long run?

He massages and rolls his shoulder. It’s still stiff from his tumble off the failing Detragigant as it walked to its death. Had it not been for all the trees that had cushioned his fall, he could have broken his back, and had it not been for Raymond finding him and bringing him back to the Bostonius, he would surely have been found and arrested.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to take it easy for a few days. Allow himself time to lick his wounds.

Had it not been for that fall, Desmond Sycamore could have joined in the investigation of the newly-uncovered Ambrosia. As it is, Raymond won’t allow him to physically exert himself too much, and he has no choice but to take his time, relax and wait until his body stops complaining at every movement.

He sees Ambrosia being reported on in the papers and all over the internet. A ground-breaking archaeological find, no pun intended. Professor Layton is cited as the scholar to have discovered it, following his involvement in a bizarre game of life or death. The orchestrator of that game – again, no pun intended – has been identified as Mr Oswald Whistler, who has been apprehended and is expected to face a minimum of twenty years in prison for child endangerment, wrongful imprisonment, destruction of property and at least three hundred counts of abduction.

If he wasn’t so relieved to be able to continue his work, Descole might have felt bad for the man.

Nobody more than him understands the grief and pain of losing a child.

But he deserves it. For abducting innocent young girls and trying to override their minds with those of his daughter’s, he deserves to be imprisoned. Descole is sickened by the idea that if she was still alive, his own darling little Zoe may have been a possible candidate for the transfer of Melina’s memories.

It was true that her voice had been necessary, but the idea of sacrificing young women for the sake of replacing them with a loved one – in ignorance of those young women’s desires and their own loved ones – it was unpleasant, to say the least.

His latest attempt had only been seven years old.

If Zoe was alive, she would only be a couple of years older.

The thought of his darling little girl’s mind being overridden with that of a stranger… it turns his stomach.

He wishes she was here with him right now.

He wishes he could hug her. Kiss her tiny little forehead. Play games with her. Give her words to say to see how her toddler mind chooses to interpret them, just like he had when he and his brother had been small.

He wishes he could laugh as Kally asks her to provide screaming examples. Wishes he could wear this cloak and mask for some reason other than avenging their deaths. That he could run through scenes with her. Scream out the lines she had written. Give her a sense of just how much more dramatic she should make it.

He wants to see his wife.

He wants to see his daughter.

He wants to see them so much, it hurts.

It takes him a moment to notice Raymond gently wiping his tear-stained cheek with a napkin, and he thanks his faithful butler for the gesture.

Damn it all. He needs some way to turn his brain off.

What is there to find on the circus of social media today… not that he wants to know very much. He’s found that keeping to himself is more entertaining than learning what’s going on in this mess of a world he has to live in.

Misthallery has been overtaken by a paramilitary organisation that refuses to provide identification. Wow. Incredible. Who could possibly have seen that coming. How shocking.

More discussion about Ambrosia… a new hotel being opened in Monte d’Or… an insignificant fluff piece about some quaint little village called Craggy Dale that’s no doubt going to be bulldozed to make way for a bypass within a few years-

Hang on.

That photograph.

He scrolls back up and stares at it. At the face of a man perhaps a little younger than him, his hair a deep red mess, with the sort of tan that holiday-goers long for but that can only be achieved through years upon years of working in the sun…

Why does that face look so familiar? Could it be-? What was that boy’s name again? That boy who had fallen to his death after dragging Layton along…

He boots up the first search engine that comes to mind and trawls through nearly two-decade-old articles about Akbadain, searching for what he and Kally had set out to investigate all those years ago, that boy who had plunged to-

Randall Ascot. That’s the name. He finds it on a newspaper archive site, along with the photograph of the boy with his girlfriend and the skinny young Layton.

He pulls up the two photographs side-by-side.

There’s no doubt.

He’s older, tanned, missing his glasses and his hair is ridiculous, but it’s him. It’s the Ascot boy. He’s still alive. He survived that fall. He’s been alive all this time.

Curious, Descole decides to learn a little more about the people he had left behind. He knows all about Layton, of course, but what of that girl he had been pictured with? What of that sullen young boy who had apparently been leading that expedition to find him?

Looking through more articles about Monte d’Or, the city blocking the path to Akbadain, he finds an image of the man that boy has become. Henry Ledore. Now a millionaire entrepreneur of hotels, casinos and restaurants, and the founder of the city itself. A real rags-to-riches story. So heartwarming that it makes Descole feel sick.

And there’s his wife.

It’s that blonde from the photograph.

Somewhere along the line, Angela Cartwright had become Angela Ledore.

This after that article had made it clear that she was Randall Ascot’s girlfriend.

And looking through this article, it seems that Henry Ledore was once a servant in the Ascot household…

He sips on his tea. This is spicy.

After how horrible he had felt a mere half an hour ago, he suddenly feels a powerful urge to laugh.

Hmm… Monte d’Or had been built right on top of the ruins of Akbadain, and now that people know of the figure calling himself Jean Descole, he won’t be able to freely tear it apart at his leisure like he had with Misthallery. To do so would immediately bring who knows how many troops upon him in an instant.

A more subtle infiltration of the city would be necessary.

When a sudden thought occurs to him, he drags over his old dog-eared copy of Ancient Histories and pages through it. Something in there was important to Akbadain. Something Rutledge had mentioned would bring the old Azran ruin back to life-

The Mask of Chaos.

There it is. Only speculated upon, but according to this article from Ascot’s supposed death – according to the young Layton’s account – Ascot himself had acquired the Mask of Chaos and taken it with him when he disappeared.

Could he perhaps still possess it?

There’s really only one way to find out.

Trawling through more of the internet presents him with an address. The location of Craggy Dale. He suspects that the Ascot boy must have been rendered amnesiac by his accident, otherwise he would certainly have attempted to return to the wider world and announce to his loved ones that he was still alive.

The very moment he’s sure of where the man now lives, Descole has Raymond bring him some paper, a pen, an envelope, and a stamp.

The scheme he’s already constructing within his mind is going to be his most dramatic performance yet.

Happiness

This is the most fun he’s had in a long time.

Ascot believes every single word he tells him. Careful examination of the Ledore’s relationship has made it clear that their “marriage” is either utterly loveless or an absolute sham, but Ascot has been so thoroughly convinced of its authenticity that Descole is amazed he hasn’t broken into their house and slit both their throats in their sleep.

He’s made it clear that he shouldn’t do that. These Dark Miracles of theirs are infinitely more fun. It’s like a cavalcade of every production that Kally never had the budget to put onstage in her plays. People being turned into horses? Paintings coming to life? Group spontaneous combustion?

Eat your heart out, PT Barnum. THIS is the greatest show on Earth.

He’s almost jealous of Ascot. Getting to position himself front and centre as the showman hosting every single one of these performances and with every single Dark Miracle, he comes back livelier and angrier than before. More enthusiastic to rip this town apart. More determined to ruin the people he views as having betrayed him.

He’s even beginning to suggest potential performances they could host in the future. Trees growing rapidly out of the manholes in the street, uprooting the asphalt and damaging nearby buildings. The attendees of an amusement park vanishing into thin air. A casino exploding, only to miraculously recover mere minutes later. A group of tourists being turned into stone in the middle of the street or floating off into space right in front of everybody’s eyes.

It almost breaks Descole’s heart to remind him of the limits they have. Smoke and mirrors, he warns the man. Not greenscreens and TNT. They’re working with these desperate understudies, not looking to kill them.

Which isn’t to say that they can’t afford anything. The nature of this city is that their budget is potentially infinite. Any time they find themselves in need of funding, he simply makes his way to one of the many casinos littered around this city like spots on a dalmatian’s coat and he and Raymond have the same fun they had years ago in Monte Carlo. They’ve visited a different one every other week and are still nowhere near raiding all of them.

With how terrified this city is of the Masked Gentleman, Jean Descole is barely a blip on the radar.

And that being the case, he’s free to explore this inn to its heart’s content. He already knows of the Mask of Chaos, but it seems that if he’s to unearth the legacy that the Azran left behind in Akbadain, he requires a second item known as the Mask of Order. This city being the size that it is, he could never feasibly investigate every building within it, so he’s had to use deduction to figure out where to search.

If it were discovered, the Mask of Order would naturally be in possession of the person who had been so fixated on studying its counterpart, the Mask of Chaos. That is to say, Henry Ledore. With that in mind, he can think of only two locations that mask could possibly be; his residence or his office in the Reunion Inn, the largest and most luxurious hotel in the city.

He’s already searched the house under the guise of a surprise home inspection, which turned up nothing, so it must be hidden somewhere in the hotel. It sounded easy enough until he took into consideration that this was the ostentatious place in Monte d’Or, not to mention the first hotel that had ever been built here. For all he knows, the Mask of Order could be buried in the building’s foundations.

Well, he won’t know until he finds it.

Ascot returns from his latest performance. The debut of their petrification display. Descole is almost sad that he couldn’t be there to watch, but he doesn’t want to draw any attention away from the Masked Gentleman.

But then he tells Descole of a familiar face he saw in the crowd. A face that chased him through the streets as he made his getaway. A face he recognises from the London papers, with a name that causes his benefactor to carve his fingers into the comfortable sofa he’s seated on.

Professor Hershel Layton.

What in the ever-loving heck is he doing here?

It’s difficult to keep his temper. He takes a deep breath, tries to calm down, tries to clear his head and for once in his nightmare of a life, tries to think rationally.

Layton is here.

His brother, Layton. The founder’s old friend, Layton. Randall’s old friend, Layton. The seasoned investigator and frequent aid to Scotland Yard, Layton. The archaeologist who unearthed the Garden of Healing and the City of Harmony, Layton.

The man who stands perhaps an equal chance to Descole of finding the Mask of Order.

Layton.

If he can somehow draw close to the man without him realising, there’s potential there for him to swipe it from under his nose before he even works out what it is.

A smile spreads across his face and he delightedly tells Ascot that their performances are about to become a great deal more fun, because now on top of humiliating the people who tried to erase his memory, he gets to show up the man who betrayed him and allowed him to fall to his death.

Ascot smiles in return and asks what’s next on their agenda.

Fear

It’s been three hours.

His hands are still shaking.

So close. It had all been so close to working out perfectly. They had used the Masks and activated Akbadain, the Ledore couple had forgiven Ascot for all he had done and he had wept with joy as his old friends welcomed him with open arms.

If he didn’t know any better, he would have suspected the passion Henry Ledore had towards Ascot was that of the cut sleeve.

But it was none of his business, so he had fled. Laughed in Layton’s face, as the man had no idea of just how incredibly helpful he had been, and then departed to claim the prize that the saving of Monte d’Or had provided him with.

The Nautilus Chamber of Akbadain.

After all these years, he had finally found it. The last of the three pieces he needed to locate the centre of the Azran civilisation and destroy them.

He should have known.

Should have been more careful.

Should have known that they would be onto him from the very beginning.

Here he had been, celebrating one of his plans finally ending in his favour and with even his greatest rivals winning the conclusion they had wanted. It was a game where nobody had lost! If anything, Layton and the Ledores should be thanking him!

But then, just as he was about to begin his investigation, Targent had appeared. Storming over the horizon with their tanks and their helicopters and their troops armed with machine guns and-

-and their leader.

Leon Bronev.

The man responsible for the deaths of Kalliope and Zoe. The devastation of the life he had tried so hard to build.

Rage had overcome him. He had charged the man. Beaten back every soldier that tried to block his way. His own father had punched him to the ground and reached for his mask and had already removed it from his face when Raymond stepped in to save his neck.

He covers his eyes with a quivering hand as though that will somehow return what he had left behind.

So close to his identity being exposed…

He feels violated.

He rejects the offer of tea and, apparently sensing that he needs something stronger, Raymond brings him a steaming cup of black coffee that he downs in two mouthfuls.

His stomach is still sore from where he had been kicked.

All he’d had was a glance into the Nautilus Chamber’s depths before he’d had to flee. Would it be enough? Would the scant information he had gathered be sufficient to finding the crux of the Azran’s legacy?

It seems that at this point, it’ll have to be.

He’ll have to put Descole on the back burner for now. If they know his name and his persona, they’ll be hunting for him, and if they manage to catch him… it hardly bears thinking about. He wants to see Kally and Zoe again, but not yet and not like that.

When he has an obstacle-free path to what he wants, Descole can come back, but until then, he’ll have to be the much better regarded and far more unassuming Desmond Sycamore again.

He snatches up a blank sheet of paper and a pen and scribbles down everything he can remember about the Nautilus Chamber’s interior. His desperation makes his handwriting even messier than it usually is, and on other sheets, he sketches out what the inside of the Chamber had looked like.

As soon as that’s done, he excuses himself from the bridge and heads for the Bostonius’ private study, where he can compare his new notes with those he took on the Garden of Healing and the City of Harmony.

He lays them all out side by side. Reads over everything he wrote. Examines his sketches and diagrams that he’d drawn and wishes again that he could have examined the Nautilus Chamber in more detail.

He can’t find any correlation.

Other than the fact they were all Azran locations, he can’t find any common threads connecting them. One’s an underground untapped paradise. One’s a city that sank into the ocean. One’s an immense chamber conjoined with a vast dungeon complex.

He slams his fist on the desk in frustration.

There has to be something!

He turns away from his desk to examine the map he has pinned to one wall. There’s one part missing, so he snatches up a pin and thrusts it into the location that he had just departed.

Then he takes a step back and examines his map.

Ambrosia in the Bay of Biscay, seated comfortably between France and Spain. The Golden Garden in Misthallery, settled in the dales of Norfolk. And now Akbadain, situated in this region near-

Hang on.

Three points. Could triangulation be a factor?

He connects the three points with twine, only to discover that rather than a shape, they instead form a single straight line, cutting through France and England. Its centre is roughly in the region of the English Channel, and as far as he knows, the English Channel didn’t even exist when the Azran were at their height.

Disappointing, to say the least.

Unless… could this line perhaps be pointing towards something?

He grabs his metre-long ruler and holds it up to the map, and traces along its length. Heading south, he passes through Spain and towards the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, which are both locations also not mentioned in any materials on the Azran.

But when he goes in the other direction…

The line leads him straight up to a point in northern Norway. He leans in closer to his map, tracing along that line with his eyes, just about able to see a small settlement with a name beginning with F. It’s too small for him to see, even with a magnifying glass, so he boots up his computer again and finds the location via satellite maps.

A sweet little town called Froenborg, which sets off a bell in his mind.

From what he can find online, it’s a peaceful settlement of around 500 people. A place where it snows all year round, half the houses are partially built below ground to conserve warmth, with no exports save for tourism and cute little trinkets celebrating the scenery. Yet still it seems oddly familiar...

He rushes to his books and notes and scours through every last one of them. Froenborg is a name that’s mentioned three times as a location of Azran significance, with none of them saying anything specific about what could be there. Donald Rutledge speculates that it was once the Azran’s capital, but he passed away long before he ever got to investigate it.

He drops his books and notes and runs to the bridge, and commands Raymond to immediately set a course for Froenborg.

His hands won’t stop shaking until the moment they touch down.

Fear

He’s coming.

Desmond knows this because he’s the one who wrote that letter. He’s the one who summoned Professor Layton to Froenborg. He’s the one who requires that man’s expertise. He’s on his way right now.

Some part of him knows this is a terrible idea, but if he can just keep himself under control until they get this done, there’ll be no need for anyone to suspect anything.

Control yourself, Desmond. Breathe. Just breathe.

Isn’t this what you’ve wanted for decades?

He stands before the glacier, hands trembling in anticipation and anxiety, and looks up at the girl who hovers frozen in the ice.

She’s perfect. Pristine in her condition. She looks almost as though she could draw breath at any moment, perhaps open her eyes or smile. She looks as if she was just sleeping, but that can’t be possible. Desmond is an accomplished archaeologist. He knows for a fact that any person trapped in ice for this long must have at least suffered some degree of decay. Even the best-preserved examples of mummified prehistoric people were little more than shrivelled skin stretched over a skeleton!

But this girl… he’s tested this region with infrared sensors and her body is generating heat.

There’s only one possible explanation for that. She’s alive.

But he has no earthly idea how that could be possible. More to the point, he has no earthly idea how he’s going to get her out of there. He’s tried heating the ice and attacking it with a bort-rimmed excavator blade, but nothing he does can even put a scratch in it.

That had been an excavator blade tipped with industrial diamond, yet it had shattered on impact!

So he has no choice. There’s only one person who knows who is not only trustworthy, but knows as much about the Azran as he does.

And he’s on his way. Desmond has already received the message from Raymond.

He rehearses in his head. Just a casual greeting should be enough. Casual, polite and genial. He’ll have to make sure not to appear too eager or too aggressive. And he’ll have to make sure not to panic.

He rests a trembling hand on the ice and steadies his breathing.

Why is this happening? This is a day he’s been hoping for ever since they were ripped apart. All he’s wanted ever since that horrible day is to see his little brother again. There’s no way he can talk to him about everything that’s happened to him and explain what he’s been trying to do all this time, but at the very least, he wants to be able to say hello.

A hug is out of the question, much as he desperately wants one, but to shake hands might be enough to satisfy him.

His heart is pounding. He continues breathing slowly. The last thing he needs right now is to end up tripping over his words and making a fool of himself. As far as this man knows, they’re little more than colleagues. Experts in the same field.

But much as he’s been keeping track of the life of Hershel Layton, he knows for a fact that Layton is familiar with him too. He still remembers that email – the only email he’s ever received from this man – thanking him for writing such an easily comprehensible book. Even though they’ve never met in person, they still know each other quite well thanks to each other’s work.

Oh no. He can hear footsteps echoing down the stone passage. He’s coming. With company, by the sounds of it. No doubt that overzealous assistant of his and the young Triton boy who’s been following him around like a lost puppy.

Desmond relaxes away from the ice with one hand in his pocket. He has to appear calm. They’re going to think something is wrong if he looks like he’s panicking.

All this time. Over thirty years of being separated and he’s finally going to get to speak to him again. His mind flies all over the place. He remembers holding baby Theodore for the first time, his mother instructing him on how to do it properly and support the infant’s head. He remembers telling the toddler to say “syllable” and getting “shubblah!” in response.

He remembers the horrible night when Targent snatched their parents away and the equally horrible day when he let go of his baby brother’s hands for the last time, watching Theodore Bronev become Hershel Layton, and he swallows the hardening lump that’s forming in his throat.

The approaching footsteps behind him come to a stop and he hears a faint gasp.

No looking back now.

He takes a deep breath and turns around.

“Professor Layton! It’s quite an honour!”

“The honour is all mine, Professor Sycamore.”

Fear

There’s a problem.

Everything is proceeding fairly well. After retrieving her from the clutches of Targent, the young girl in the ice not only confirmed herself to be an emissary of the Azran, but introduced herself as Aurora. She’s told them all that if they truly wish to find the secrets of her civilisation before Targent do, they will have to unite a number of relics scattered all over the globe and bring them back to Froenborg. To where the final Azran sanctuary awaits.

So they’ve set to it. After stocking up for a round-the-world trip, dressing Aurora in contemporary clothes to hide her from Targent and exposing one of that organisation’s moles who had burrowed his way deep into Scotland Yard, they’re now travelling from location to location, taking advantage of Aurora’s odd ability to sense the relics’ energy to track them down.

But there’s a problem. It’s a big problem. Perhaps the biggest problem he could have.

He’s enjoying himself.

With these people by his side, he’s having fun.

He’s realised that although he’s learned things about the man his younger brother has become, he’s never really been able to get to know him as a person, and now that he has, he curses Targent even more for tearing their family apart.

Hershel Layton is an incredible person. His archaeological knowledge is unparalleled and his skills of investigation and deduction are truly to be admired. Many a night has seen him seated comfortably on the sofa on the bridge, one hand stroking a cat that he had picked up somewhere in London and the other filling in a book of puzzles he’s resting on his leg. He loves tea, especially paired with cakes, and just as Desmond had suspected, he too is a student of fencing. They’ve only been on this journey for two months and already the pair of them have had at least three sparring matches.

Layton always compliments Desmond’s skill, and on one occasion, negatively compares him to Descole.

Desmond decides not to mention that he’s been holding back.

The Professor is kind. He’s kind and polite and sociable and determined and funny and he does everything he can to maintain the image of the ideal impeccable English gentleman. The wonderful top hat he wears was given to him by his late girlfriend Claire. His interest in archaeology was piqued first by his secondary school friend Randall and second by his university flatmate Clark. He’s protective of those close to him and deeply fascinated by the Azran.

He’s the best brother that Desmond could possibly have wished for, and the fact that he doesn’t know about their relation is ripping Desmond to shreds.

And then there are the people he doesn’t go anywhere without. His assistant, Emmy Altava, and of course there’s Luke Triton as well.

Emmy is… a lot. Her first solution to most of the problems she encounters is to try kicking them, and if that doesn’t work, she’ll go for a punch instead. She’s always eager to help Layton solve one of the many puzzles they come across and is thoroughly protective of him and Luke. When they run into the occasional stray Targent troop wandering around their destinations, she’s always the first to position herself in their way, her stance showing that she’s more than ready for a fight.

That little bag she carries on her belt contains her camera. She’s been taking photographs like crazy since before they set off from Froenborg. Photos of places, photos of objects, photos of people, photos of her friends. She’ll ask Desmond to stop what he’s doing and not move a muscle because the lighting and composition are both perfect. He’ll find her on the bridge, keeping Layton company while he fills in a sudoku square, snapping her shutter at the cities far below the clouds they skate across.

Every time they find one of the Azran keystones they’re searching for, she insists on a photo with the person or people who proved most instrumental in tracking it down. She seems adamant on chronicling their entire journey. She’s already gone through an entire roll of film and has mentioned that she’s very glad to have bought spares during their stop in London.

If he wants to be honest, Desmond is glad she’s here. To go too far with his own fighting capability would betray his other identity, so a willing and enthusiastic bodyguard is exactly what he needed.

As for little Luke Triton…

He’s a sweet boy. Exactly the sort of person Desmond hopes his darling Zoe could have become. Sweet and energetic and always eager to lend a hand, even if it puts him in danger. He leaps after Layton, Emmy and Desmond without a second thought. Not only that, but his talents are truly unique, if a little odd. Until now, Desmond would never have suspected it was possible for a human to communicate with animals, or that a twelve-year-old boy could be just as astute when it came to puzzles as the adults he was travelling with.

He’s polite and kind. Unbearably naïve and a little selfish from time to time, but that’s the nature of youth. Desmond can easily recall being far worse when he was a child. He adds a childlike energy to their voyage that, it must be confessed, it would likely have been in dire need of were he not to be here. On the nights when Layton is filling a puzzle book and Emmy is taking her late evening photos, he’ll find Luke by the Professor’s side, dozing on the man’s shoulder no matter how often he tells the boy to go to bed.

The sight fills Desmond with envy every time he sees it. If only Zoe could have been here too. He has no doubt that she and Luke could easily have been the best of friends if only she’d been given a chance to grow up.

No wonder Layton is so fond of this boy. He’d been so sullen and withdrawn during the time they had – unbeknownst to him at that time – shared in Misthallery, but the years since then have seen him come out of his shell to a considerable degree and he’s well on his way to becoming a perceptive, sensible and energetic young investigator.

He’s got a bright future ahead of him, Desmond considers. If he loses interest in archaeology, he could easily cut it as a detective or journalist. Maybe even a lawyer, if the fancy were ever to strike him.

Desmond can’t bear to think about spying on him in Misthallery anymore. To do so causes his heart to feel heavy.

But then there’s the last member of their little troupe.

The girl who fell from the ice.

He has no idea what he had expected from the last living remainder of the Azran civilisation, but Aurora is a lovely young lady. She’s graceful, polite and full of questions about the world around them. Desmond has delighted in telling her about every part of the Bostonius that piques her curiosity. She didn’t even know what a sofa was until he had explained it to her, and once she knew, she never wanted to get up from it.

She loves spending time with Raymond in the kitchen, helping him cook their meals. The sight of the chef knives had terrified her at the beginning, but once she had a decent handle on them, she finds it satisfying to peel potatoes, mince mushrooms, dice onions and julienne carrots. Occasionally Emmy will join them and speed up the process; Layton or Desmond will try to step in, but Emmy always pushes them out and takes over and after seeing what she’s capable of, Desmond doesn’t dare to argue with her.

It’s utterly adorable how even the smallest things are earth-shattering revelations to Aurora. She has the body of someone around Luke’s age and a maturity more comparable to Emmy, and yet in experience, she seems to be far, far younger. She’s baffled by onions making Emmy’s eyes water. She joins Luke in completing jigsaws and is delighted by the pieces coming together to form the complete pictures. The English language is fascinating to her, if a little distressing, and Desmond and Layton have been taking turns teaching her how to write with it.

It’s like drawing pictures, she said a couple of weeks ago. Tiny pictures, all in a line, that come together to form messages for people to share and communicate. Like speaking made visual. So different to the pictographic language of the Azran that she can barely comprehend it.

Other customs of humanity amaze her as well. Having set times for eating and sleeping rather than simply doing so whenever it was desired. Performing activities simply for the sake of amusement rather than pursuit of a larger goal. Choosing different clothes day-to-day simply because it’s enjoyable instead of selecting an outfit dependent on the situation or wearing the same clothes when that situation didn’t change.

Last week, they got to show her what a birthday party was.

And what a surprise party was.

And what a very embarrassed newly-36-year-old man in a top hat looks like.

He hasn’t even known Aurora for a quarter of a year, but Desmond knows that if anything terrible was to befall her, he would personally divebomb the Targent HQ with the Bostonius and everybody on board, including himself.

She’s the loveliest person to have walked into his life since the birth of his dear little Zoe.

Yet she’s also the embodiment of the very civilisation that he’s been seeking to wipe off the map ever since his dear little Zoe was taken from him.

He shouldn’t feel such affection for her and he knows it. She’s Azran. By all accounts, he should detest her more than he’s detested anybody in his entire life, and that includes the people who kidnapped his mother and father!

But he enjoys her company. He enjoys the company of all of these people. In the time he’s spent travelling with them, he’s felt happier, more relaxed, more fulfilled than he ever did in any of the time he spent researching the Azran civilisation or tracking Targent or piloting one of his immense excavators.

He doesn’t want this.

He doesn’t want to relax. He doesn’t want to get comfortable with these people. He doesn’t want to fall victim to the notion that their arrangement shouldn’t come to an end, even though they all – save for Aurora, it would seem – have happy, fulfilling, perfectly ordinary lives that they can return to. Not only that, but even if he did end up wanting to keep them around, he couldn’t on account of the fact that every single one of them would disagree with him on principle.

They would want some non-violent means of disbanding Targent.

They would want the Azran to be preserved for future generations to learn from.

If he spends too much time with them, he’ll start to think the same way as they do, and then all his years of researching and building and testing and fighting will have been for absolutely nothing.

He knows that Layton will be the first to object and it destroys him that he couldn’t make the man understand how all of Desmond’s efforts were for him.

He’s not the villain here.

He’s not a bad person.

He’s doing this for justice.

He’s doing this for their family.

He’s doing this for HIM.

But if that’s true, then why is he having so much trouble getting to sleep? Why would the notion of relaxing with these people, especially his clueless younger brother, upset him so bloody much?

He rolls over in his bed and pulls his quilt up over his shoulder, listening to the soothing background hum of the Bostonius’ engine. They should hopefully arrive at San Grio by tomorrow. A tropical island getaway. Maybe that will somehow be enough to soothe his chaotic mind.

Damn it all. It looks like he won’t be sleeping tonight.

He sits up, tosses his quilt aside, and checks the clock beside his bed. 2:38am. He gets up, takes his dressing gown from where it hangs beside the wardrobe, and steps out into the narrow corridor that connects the Bostonius’ living quarters with its bridge. Eyesight fully adjusted to the darkness by now, he easily finds his way to the door and steps inside.

The bridge is awash with moonlight. It’s so bright that he can almost see in full colour. On a clear night like this, part of him wishes they could stop for a bit of stargazing. With how big their own world already seems, he can’t imagine how Aurora would react to learning just how many other worlds could be out there, waiting to be found.

The room isn’t empty.

It takes him a moment to recognise Layton sitting hunched over on the sofa. He’s dressed in a plain shirt and tartan tracksuit trousers – oddly casual attire for a gentleman, Desmond considers, but even a good gentleman wishes to be comfortable when he sleeps – and his top hat, rather than on his head, is sitting on the cushion beside him. In the light cast by the moon, he looks amazingly different without it. Amazingly small and very untidy.

Desmond would have made some joke to himself about that being what he deserved for wearing a hat all the time, but considering Descole’s typical attire, he’s hardly one to throw stones in that department.

As he approaches, he notices the book Layton is cradling in one hand, the pencil he’s fiddling with in the other, and the way his head is hanging indicates that either he’s deep in thought about this latest crossword or he’s far more exhausted than he’d care to admit.

Without a word, Desmond sits down beside him. He doesn’t really need to say anything. It would have been obvious the moment his presence became clear that he, too, was unable to sleep.

He slumps back, leaning into the soft cushions, and stares up at the ceiling.

A few short years ago, he never would have thought this was possible. For so long – as long as he can remember – he had believed that much as he would like to, much as he would fight for it, he would never be able to see his brother’s face in person again.

Yet here he is. Here they both are.

Both of them accomplished professors of archaeology. Both of them gripped by the throes of ambition, although Layton’s is of a far purer and more benign nature, Desmond has to admit. Both of them not knowing what the future will bring, perhaps excited for it, but mostly filled with anxiety.

Both of them unable to sleep, Desmond thinks dryly to himself.

He knows it’ll only be a matter of time before it all falls apart. Somebody’s going to stumble upon his mask and cloak and demand to know what he’s doing with this and then the thread of this tenuous peace will be cut. Somebody’s going to question why he would contact Layton specifically rather than some other expert more knowledgeable about the Azran, and then they’ll force him to explain their connection.

But until then, against his better judgement, he wants this. He wants to be able to relax with the only family he has left and feel, just for a moment, like he doesn’t have to battle to survive.

He blinks.

When he opens his eyes, the light is dimmed. The moon is in a different position. Time has passed. He’d fallen asleep.

Something’s on his shoulder.

One cautious look to his side confirms that somewhere in the midst of trying to solve a clue, Layton had fallen asleep as well.

Neither of them are going to be very comfortable here.

Taking care to disturb his slumbering brother as little as possible, Desmond slips his arms under Layton’s shoulders and legs and lifts him from the sofa. Taking a moment to be surprised by how heavy he is despite his height – how much muscle do those polo shirts hide, he wonders – he gently carries his temporary travelling companion back to his room and sets him down in his bed.

After a moment of thought, he pulls the quilt up over Layton’s body. He doesn’t want him to be cold.

Once his brother is safely asleep in his bed, Desmond returns to his own room and tries, for the fifth time that night, to get more than half an hour of sleep.

Fear

So it seems, after all these years, that his journey is finally about to draw to a close.

The Azran’s legacy turns out to be nothing like any of them had anticipated. It wasn’t the inevitable march of time that had destroyed them, nor any natural disaster or societal unrest. No, they had been destroyed by their own hubris.

Servants which they had created for themselves had turned against them and destroyed them all.

Truth be told, it’s almost laughable.

In spite of this horrific realisation, and what is now about to occur, Descole feels nothing but relief. Layton knows now. He’s told his brother the truth. Told him of their connection, what became of their parents, and the reason he did all of the horrible things he’s done.

And now, because of their father’s blind desperation for power, they are forced to choose between the lives of all the billions of humans that call this planet home…

…or their own lives.

Their own tiny, tortured, insignificant lives.

Descole reflects on everything that’s happened over the past thirty-odd years. All of the things he’s done. The places he’s destroyed. The lives he’s no doubt damaged in his pursuit of vengeance. The vengeance he had sought against a civilisation that, he now knows, had already destroyed itself long ago, and against the cult-like army to whom he’s been little more than a mild inconvenience.

Desmond Sycamore. Jean Descole. The man of a million regrets.

To his astonishment and dismay, young Luke had been the first to act. The first to decide that he wishes to give his life to save the world.

A memory of a house in flames flashes through Descole’s mind.

He can’t let this child die alone.

So now he stands on a dais, between a beam of light and the crystal it’s giving power to, watching Layton, Emmy and little Luke in the same position, struggling to stay on their feet.

And it hurts.

His stomach is burning. He wants to blame that on the hit he took earlier, but his chest is burning too. His limbs are burning. His skin is burning. His head is burning. Every last part of his body is burning in this terrible light.

He stumbles, almost falls, but catches himself and tries to stand up straight in spite of the agony wracking his body.

Aurora can’t help. She’s trying, but the light rejects her. The Azran won’t allow their emissary to be damaged.

So it seems that Bronev – the man who has wasted his life chasing power that has turned out to be nothing but devastation – has, against everything they had expected, elected to take her place.

And Descole’s body burns.

When he thinks back, he can’t say that his life was a total waste. He managed to bring entertainment to a few people’s lives. He filled a part of the Sycamore’s checklist for the Ideal Married Life. He even managed to fall in love once, and be a parent himself, even if it hadn’t been for as long as he had hoped.

He remembers the time he’s spent on the Bostonius with these people. Their journey around the world. He reflects on how peaceful the voyage had been in stark comparison to every battle he had fought before. How much he had enjoyed their time together. Exploring new locations, solving puzzles, finally getting to know the brother he had lost so long ago …

He doesn’t want it to end.

Not here. Not now. He wants to go back. Wants to see those parts of the world that they breezed by on their hunt for the Azran relics. Wants to meet the people he never had a chance to meet. Wants to know if there were any sites they overlooked, any knowledge left to accrue, any other adventures he could possibly experience…

…he wants to see his wife and daughter…

…he wants to have fun with his brother…

…just one last time …

As Bronev takes his place on the final dais, Descole’s ears are filled with the sound of screaming.

And then, at last, the pain fades away, and he knows nothing but darkness and silence.

Sadness

It’s all over.

He had known the moment he woke up, face down on the cold stone, that he no longer needed to fight. Aurora had said so herself. With humanity’s rejection of the Azran’s legacy, the world has no use for them anymore, so they are to destroy themselves and fade away into obscurity.

Including her.

He had turned away as soon as he saw the look on her face. That sad expression, a clear desire for it not to end this way, but being unable to escape her fate.

But even if she’s artificial, he can’t bear to watch a child die alone.

So he had turned back.

As soon as he was sure everybody else would escape safely, he had turned back. Walked into that crumbling sanctuary.

Jean Descole had bid a final goodbye to Professor Layton.

And then he returned, walked into the sanctuary to where Aurora had stood, her body encased in a shimmering golden glow, her nature as a construct clearly the only reason for her eyes not being filled with tears.

He had embraced her. Held her close. Assured her that everyone was going to be okay thanks to her. That her sacrifice had meaning and that he could never express his gratitude for her kindness.

Asked her to say hello to Kalliope and Zoe for him.

And just as she had returned his hug, she had faded away into nothing, and he was left standing there with empty arms and a broken heart.

Naturally Raymond had found him. Swept the Bostonius into the collapsing sanctuary and snatched him out of the falling rock.

And now they’re flying away, leaving the snow-drenched mountains and everybody in them far behind.

He isn’t sure what to do with himself anymore. The Azran can never rise to power again. The arrest of Targent’s leader will see their organisation dissolved and its members, if not apprehended, will be forced to either turn themselves in or live in hiding for the many years it would take for their atrocities to be forgotten.

It’s all over now. He’s won justice for Kally and Zoe. He’s avenged himself for what Targent had done to him.

He wishes he could have spent at least a little more time with his brother.

Perhaps, in a few years or so, he could go back.

Until then, there’s no harm in having a little more fun.

Fear

He doesn’t need Jean Descole anymore. With no revenge to fight for, what purpose does he have for a persona built entirely around it?

The world doesn’t need Desmond Sycamore anymore. Not when it has other specialists on the Azran civilisation. Not when it has Professor Layton.

So who is he?

He can’t go back to being Hershel Bronev. Not after giving that name to his brother and certainly not after over three decades of trying to move forward.

So now, when he gets asked for his name, he has no idea how to respond.

As a result, he and Raymond can’t stay in one place for very long. The world has more awe-inspiring beauty than he’ll ever be able to see in one lifetime, and he’s trying to experience as much of it as he can, but it’s difficult to patronise businesses, talk with locals or even enjoy himself very much when he can’t pin down anything he could call a personal identity.

On one occasion, when prompted for a name, the only thing he could think of to respond with was Des. He’d made it through the first syllable before he realised he couldn’t decide which of his names he should give.

So he had stopped halfway.

Des.

Just Des.

Is that who he is now?

Sitting here in this diner on the outskirts of Las Vegas, sipping from a cup of coffee he had bought with his winnings from last night’s casino jaunt, he can’t get the notion out of his head. The notion that he might not even have any identity anymore.

If he can’t be Hershel Bronev, doesn’t need to be Desmond Sycamore and doesn’t want to be Jean Descole, then who is he?

Surely, after an entire year of travelling the world with Raymond, he should have been able to make up his mind by now.

He stares at his reflection in the dark brown contents of his cup. The dark shadows around his eyes betray the trouble he’s had in terms of sleep, thankfully disguised by the glasses he doesn’t need. Maybe it’s time to get rid of them. Surely there are plenty of prescription spectacle wearers who don’t appreciate his appropriation of their disability.

He runs a finger over his hair, pulled tight across his forehead, thankfully not receding away from his face just yet. His hair that’s grown so long, he can’t just curl it up away from his shoulders anymore. He has no choice but to tie it back into an uncomfortably tight ponytail, or else it flies all over the place.

Perhaps when it grows longer, he can ditch it for a far looser and more comfortable plait.

He glances briefly at the TV that’s tucked in the corner of the room. He sees flames, buildings burning, rubble and police and crying children. He’s in the middle of questioning the purpose of the TV even being on when it’s muted, subtitles on, and a radio is playing quietly from a corner, but then a word in those subtitles catches his eye.

London.

A thrill of panic shoots through his veins and he thrusts himself up from his table, almost spilling his coffee in his haste. In the footage displayed on the screen, he recognises Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, before even more footage of burning and rubble and grieving -

He slaps a healthy tip on his table before sprinting out of the diner, glared at by startled Americans, and he doesn’t stop running until he gets back to where the Bostonius is waiting on an abandoned helipad outside the city.

He runs on board. Raymond almost spills his tea in shock as he passes. He hurries to his office, still bedecked in Azran research that he’s never found the time to dispose of, and he boots up his computer with his heart in his mouth and cold dread pooling in his stomach.

20% of the city of London has been destroyed. The ground beneath the buildings and streets gave way and fell into an underground cavern that nobody had known about until this night, and his heart stops when he discovers that this was no accident. A madman by the name of Clive Dove had abducted a number of scientists, manipulating them with the impression that they had been imprisoned 10 years in the future, and he’d forced them to construct a superweapon under the guise of creating a time machine to return home.

On top of that, he had used the life of the nation’s Prime Minister as leverage, and he had been holding the man captive up until his insane mobile fortress had been demolished.

Due to his actions, a minimum of a thousand people are speculated to have been killed. There are already 650 confirmed deaths, 2195 mortal injuries and countless men, women and children are still missing. City hospitals are overrun with victims in desperate need of treatment and have been forced to outsource as far as Peterborough to avoid overcrowding.

Dove is now in police custody. His motives are still under speculation at this time, but whatever his intentions, this is the most devastating attack launched on the city of London since the rampage of Queen Boudicca.

The Prime Minister, Bill Hawks, was returned to the authorities unharmed thanks to the actions of…

…Professor Hershel Layton.

But Des couldn’t see him anywhere in that broadcast on TV and can’t make out his distinctive headwear in any of the photos on the news sites. The only images of him are generic headshots that were likely taken for identification at the university he works at.

Des rushes to the bridge and commands Raymond to immediately set a course for London.

For the entirety of the day-long journey, he can’t figure out what to do with himself. He sits on the sofa, hands pressing into his hair and pulling it loose. He gets up and paces around, clutching his hands to his chest to try to keep them from shaking, which doesn’t work in the slightest. He spends some time attacking his training dummy and it does absolutely nothing to burn the energy that’s buzzing all over his body. He sits down again and taps his foot, watching the clouds rush past the window.

Somewhere along the line, the adrenaline wears off and he falls asleep on the sofa. When he wakes up, the sun is setting. Raymond is docking the Bostonius in their hangar at the aerodrome and comments that he was just about to wake Master up.

The moment they touch down, Des thanks Raymond and rushes out into the city. He’s known where Layton lived for years now. A comfortable terrace house in Chelsea. A three-bedroom place, no doubt built with a small family in mind instead of a scatter-brained scholar in need of extra space for the messes he creates.

He doesn’t bother with the bus. He knows he won’t have the patience for it. He doesn’t even stop to think about the possibility that someone might recognise him and either ask for an autograph or call the police.

He runs. His heart is in his mouth and his body is buzzing as he runs through the streets of London, flying so fast he barely feels the path underneath his feet and startling every single pedestrian he passes.

Fire and police vehicles zip by as he continues sprinting. The destroyed area must be in the opposite direction to where he’s running to. He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t take a single moment to think. His throat is burning and his feet keep threatening to slip on the icy footpath but he doesn’t stop running even for a moment.

It’s been ten years since he felt this kind of terror.

He can feel tears of fear stinging in his eyes.

If Layton is gone…

He skids around the corner and almost trips into the street. The footpath is empty. Nobody gets in his way as he runs past all the houses, the brickwork and fences blurring together at the edges of his vision.

And then he sees it.

Just up ahead.

A Citroen 2CV, modified with an extra tall cab to accommodate its drivers headwear.

Layton’s car.

The house it’s parked outside has its lights on, and Des can see a familiar top hat sitting at the window.

He’s home.

He’s alive.

He’s safe.

Des feels faint from relief. He falls to his knees and slumps against the fence, chest heaving as he catches his breath, unable to hear anything except the air in his throat and the pounding of his heart. His eyes slide closed against the early evening, the darkness soon cut by the street lamps flickering into life.

The buzzing has finally come to a stop. He feels drained.

As his heart’s pounding softens and his breathing gets easier, he takes hold of the fence behind him and eases himself to his feet.

He needs to see the man. Needs to confirm for himself that his brother is alright.

He’s already at the door and raising his fist by the time he catches himself.

Would Layton want to see him? After the way they had parted?

He can see ivy climbing up the house’s front-facing wall. He climbs over the fence and pulls himself up with that ivy until he can see through the window.

Layton is sitting on his sofa, leaning against its back with his head rested over it, staring emptily at the ceiling. His eyes are bloodshot and swollen. His cheeks are damp. This, combined with the removal of his hat, is enough to crush Des’ heart; the man looks tiny and utterly helpless.

As Des watches, he slumps forward, burying his face in his hands and rubbing his eyes. He gets to his feet and paces back and forth, fingers twitching on his elbows, and pauses with his back to the window, shoulders shaking as if from sobbing.

Des climbs back to the street.

He knows that behaviour.

It’s the same behaviour he himself had exhibited following the positive identification of Kalliope and Zoe’s charred remains.

The man is being hailed as a hero, but any person paying attention would be able to see that somewhere in that destruction, Layton lost someone.

Dear god, Des thinks, let it be anyone but Luke.

The sound of an engine catches his attention. Raymond pulls up beside him in a cab and tells him to get inside before he catches a cold, and Des gratefully complies.

They pass the Triton household on their way back to the aerodrome, and both are relieved to look through the window and see young Luke embracing his mother and father. He’s alright. Again Des feels faint.

Once they’re back at the Bostonius, he finally has time and space to think.

Something happened to Layton during that disaster. Something that caused him to remove his hat for some reason other than sleeping, and from what Des saw of him, it seems to be some terrible grief.

He doesn’t know what it could be.

He doesn’t know whether or not it would be a good idea for Layton to see him.

But he does know he wants to comfort his brother.

An idea occurs to him. He tries to fight against it, but before he knows it, he’s walking to his bedroom on the Bostonius and opening a little velvet-lined box that he hasn’t opened in almost a decade.

He’s met with the faint glow of Kally’s crystal pendant.

He whispers a soft apology to her. There’s somebody else who needs it far more than she does right now.

He goes to his office and writes out a note, wraps it around the box and secures it with wax, and after refreshing himself with a night of sleep, he takes the parcel to Layton’s house and slips it through the letter slot just as the sun is beginning to rise.

He hopes that what he wrote will be enough.

I can’t be sure what happened to you on that terrible night, but please know
that you are loved. You are wanted. You are not alone. It will take time, but the
pain will fade.

You’re a strong man. You will be alright.

With love
- D

Happiness

Raymond retires.

After thirty-five years of serving Des, and over a decade prior to that of working for the Sycamores, he’s earned some time to rest. Des gives him a few of their millions so that he can live comfortably in the Paris flat he’s chosen for the rest of his days, and after one last hug, they part.

Part of Des wants to cry. He’s going to miss his old friend.

But now that he’s had two more years of touring the world, he’s had his fill. He’s ready to settle down. To perhaps give family life one more try.

He returns to London, makes sure his braid is secure and that he looks presentable, and ventures into Gressenheller University to ask after their star professor.

Layton isn’t there.

He hasn’t been for several days now.

Des is stunned when he learns the reason for Layton’s absence.

Paternity leave.

Somehow, at some point during the time that’s passed since their last brief encounter, Hershel Layton has become a father.

Through asking questions and twisting the occasional arm, Des learns more. Accounts differ. Some say that Layton simply found a new-born on his doorstep and took her in as his own. Some say that he snatched the child from a burning building that killed her parents. Some report that a bedraggled teenager showed up on Layton’s doorstep, clutching the baby to his chest after escaping a shipwreck with her, and Layton is simply caring for her until he can find any of the child’s relatives.

Whatever the case, it soon becomes clear that Layton is now a parental figure to a baby girl.

And if there’s anything Des remembers from the time he spent as a father, it’s that caring for an infant by one’sself is one of the most arduous undertakings this world of theirs has to offer.

Layton is going to need help. From somebody with experience.

And it needs to be clear, right from the beginning, that ‘no’ is an answer that won’t be accepted.

He pulls his cloak and mask out of the Bostonius and dons them for what he hopes will be the final time, the final need to make an impression, and he navigates back to that Chelsea terrace house and knocks on the door.

From the other side, he hears wailing.

The Professor wrenches the door open. His hair is even messier than usual, his hat is askew and he’s clutching a bawling infant to his chest with one arm. His eyes are bloodshot and ringed with bruises of exhaustion.

As expected of you, Layton.

Des sweeps into his house after that comment and hangs his cloak beside the door, and takes a moment to admire how adorable the baby is. Positively cherubic. She looks nothing like you!

That earns him a wonderful frown of dissatisfaction.

Layton demands to know what he’s doing here. How he could suddenly appear out of nowhere after all this time. So Des makes it clear that he’s here to provide assistance, as it’s obvious to anybody paying attention that Layton is struggling by himself. Besides which…

He removes his mask to drive the point home.

Any good gentleman knows to defer to those with experience, he points out.

His brother sighs. Relents. He’s too exhausted to argue by this point.

“I don’t even know what I should call you. Professor? Descole? Desmond?”

“Just Des is fine. I’ve found that it’s as good a name as any.”

“…alright. You may as well call me Hershel.”

“Very well! Now please allow me to see the child, you’re clearly not giving her what she wants right now.”

He eases the crying baby out of his brother’s arms.

The effect is almost instantaneous. She takes a breath and calms down, and stares up at Des with wide blue eyes full of wonderment.

She really is an adorable little thing. Des feels as though he’s been swept fourteen years into the past. Right back to the first time he had cradled his darling Zoe.

Hershel explains where she came from. Born on a sinking ship, he says, and brought to him by a shaken and exhausted Luke, who had thankfully survived along with his parents. The child’s mother had, unfortunately, been unable to escape the wreck, and Hershel has been searching for the father ever since.

The father, supposedly named Kyle Azan, appears to have vanished off the face of the earth. No trace of him can be found anywhere.

Until he can be located, the baby girl has been named Katrielle.

Overly fanciful, Des considers, but he expects nothing less from a man who insists on wearing a top hat at all hours of the day.

He tells his brother to go to bed. Get some rest. He’ll care for Katrielle until he himself is worn out, and then he can pass the baton. Hershel stalwartly refuses to leave Des alone with his daughter and, given their history, Des can hardly blame him.

So they sit on the sofa, Hershel dozing on Des’ shoulder, while he cradles his niece and revels in the newfound peace.

Happiness

After two months of calmness, Hershel’s foster daughter Flora comes home from school for the Easter holiday.

Des’ first impression of her is her threatening him with a plastic spatula, having absolutely no idea who this strange tall man with the pink ribbon in his hair is or what he’s doing feeding baby Kat with a bottle. Hershel has to step in to cool her jets and dissuade her from dual-wielding a spatula and a potato masher to try to kill her new uncle.

Once everything’s calmed down, they catch up over a cup of tea. Her full name is Flora Reinhold. She met the Professor after he solved a mystery surrounding her father’s death, had lived with distant relatives until they had been killed in what is now being called the Future London incident, and now Hershel is officially her legal guardian.

She loves cooking, but Hershel warns Des to keep her out of the kitchen at all costs. She’s sweet and polite and loves to share afternoon tea with her newfound family, provided she isn’t allowed to bake anything. She comments to Des one day that if he wore his hair a little differently, restraining it with the ribbon rather than weaving it into the plait, they would match.

When asked why he, a forty-two-year-old man, wears a pink ribbon in his hair to begin with, Des explains that he knew a girl once. A lovely young girl, quite similar to Flora, whom he remembers wearing a long pink dress at every chance she got.

His heart aches at the memory of her fading from his grip, and Flora lends him a handkerchief to dry his eyes.

Her bedroom is quite a mess. Bolts of fabric strewn all over the floor. Pin cushions and boxes of needles forming dangerously pointy landmines. A dressmaking dummy pushed into the corner has a measuring tape hanging around its neck. Just a hobby, Flora explains. None of the shops in London have clothes that suit her taste –none that she can afford, at least – so she’s taken to making her own outfits.

A potential career, Des suggests.

She tries on his cloak and doesn’t want to take it off. Hard to blame her. It’s long and flowy and oh so warm.

After a moment of thought and at least a full minute of embarrassed blushing, Hershel asks to try the cloak on too. The mask as well, if Des would allow him.

He has the time of his life. He tosses the cloak around with all the drama of an opera house ghost and twirls so much that he almost falls over from dizziness. Des applauds and whoops with joy. Katrielle giggles and gurgles. Flora laughs and calls him Tuxedo Mask, and strikes a pose with a promise to punish Des in the name of the moon.

He and Hershel tell her all about the adventures they had, not even bothering to leave out that they were on opposite sides. Conflict makes for a far more entertaining story, after all. They tell her all about the spectre in Misthallery, the magical music of Ambrosia, the miracles of Monte d’Or and the ultimate legacy of the Azran.

Flora hugs them both when she hears about what happened in that sanctuary.

When she’s done being enraptured, she jokingly tells Des that he should write a book or something, because these are all fun stories that surely the world should be told about.

That night, after everyone else has gone to bed, Des begins constructing a plotline.

Happiness

Katrielle starts walking. She totters between her father and uncle, who catch her before she falls and praise her on her progress, each step stronger and more confident than the last. Soon she’s uncontrollable. They have to keep her on a harness and leash to make sure she doesn’t go hurting herself.

She starts talking. Copying the noises her family make from day to day. Des asks her to say “syllable” and she responds with “sillaleh!”

Flora finishes secondary school. She packs up her sewing machine, her pins and her portfolio of dress designs before making for university. Still living at home, but she’ll have her own workspace. She’s going to study to be a fashion designer, she explains. So many girls she’s shared classes with have commented on how pretty her outfits are, so she wants to give them the opportunity to feel pretty too.

Remembering her friends from lower year levels, she happily boasts that she’s going to get a lot of business when the school formal comes around.

Some time after Katrielle turns three, Hershel has to go to Ireland. He’s been asked to give a talk at a juvenile detention centre. Something about getting young offenders interested in education again. In his absence, Des promises to take good care of his mischievous niece, who is, even at that moment, drawing on the wall with a bright yellow crayon.

He’s very glad they decided to put Kat in a harness and leash. He can handle the challenge of taking care of her by himself, but she’s an absolute hellion without her father around. Stampeding around the house like an elephant, crashing into chairs and knocking them over, drawing on the walls and floor and yelling and screaming the entire time. He’s forced to hook her leash over the back of his chair while he writes and even then, she tugs so hard she pulls him away from the computer.

At the very least, she doesn’t complain when he reads his dialogue aloud to test it. Just stares at him in confusion because who are you talking to, Uncle Des?

When Hershel returns a couple of days later, he talks at length not about the lecture itself, but about an inmate he met in the detention centre. Cruelly dubbed Ratty by the other boys, bullied for being the youngest at the age of only eleven and patronised by the officers and guards, he’s apparently nonetheless an intelligent, perceptive and logically minded young boy.

His name is Alfendi, Hershel explains, and he’s been in the foster system for his entire life.

He still has a year to go before his release, but Des can see the writing on the wall. He points out to Hershel that if they’re going to take this boy in, they’re going to have to make room. A little three-bedroom house in Chelsea isn’t going to be enough for five people, even if they convert the attic, and Katrielle is going to need her own bedroom sooner or later. She can’t share with her sister forever.

After the girls go to bed, Hershel stays up late, and Des sees him browsing through houses for sale on the internet.

Happiness

Des isn’t sure what he had expected Alfendi to be.

Part of him had hoped for someone like Luke. A sweet young boy, polite and intelligent, naïve but big-hearted and willing to behave.

Instead, they appear to have acquired Des’ long lost son.

It’s easy to see why the other boys would call him Ratty. He’s skinny and long-nosed, with a mess of deep red curls that look like a mop of rat’s tails was plopped onto his head. He peers out from behind those curls with muddy green eyes that are nearly always narrowed in suspicion, and he gives the impression that as he ages, he won’t so much grow as just… elongate.

The first thing he says upon meeting Des is “the hell YOU lookin’ at?”

And immediately Des knows he’s going to love this kid.

He feels like hugging Hershel with tears of joy. The boy is perfect.

They don’t have long to let him settle in. Not when they have a new house to move to, and Hershel makes it clear to Alfendi the moment he arrives at their Chelsea place that he won’t be putting up with these cramped quarters for very long. At first, Alfendi takes this as a sign that they’ll be getting rid of him, and even seems happy about it, but one night at home with Flora and Katrielle while his new foster father and uncle take said uncle’s first draft to his publisher and all of a sudden, he doesn’t want to leave.

They learn of the antics upon arriving back home. Alfendi and Katrielle had apparently taken a loaf of bread and spread out every slice on Flora’s bed, leading to deep confusion, only for Flora to put one of her dummies in his room and dress it in Hershel’s spare hat and one of Des’ old masks. Alfendi had found it so terrifying that he immediately put it in Hershel’s bed for him to find. He says more, but Des is laughing too hard by that point to understand a single word.

Des gives him a copy of his first draft to read, hoping for feedback from a more honest and cynical mind. It’s a story he’s been working on for a while now: a tale of a wronged man who leads a double life, acting as a pleasant gentleman investigator by day and a costumed vigilante seeking vengeance by night.

At first, Alfendi is confused. These two personas don’t match, he complains. Both these versions of this guy are so dedicated to their characters and quite often, the backstories conflict. What’s going on here, Uncle Des? One time he says his girlfriend died before he could propose and then he’s avenging his dead wife?

And then he gets to the end, finds the twist that the story actually follows long lost brothers, separated at birth and coincidentally given the same name – discovers that the investigator had actually been hunting the vigilante this whole time, while the vigilante only wanted revenge for the family he lost – and he practically screams in amazement.

It’s obvious when he comes across that twist. Des is simply enjoying a late night cup of tea when, from the house’s upper floors, he suddenly hears a cry of “OOOH!” Hershel chokes on his own tea in shock and Des contracts in on himself in laughter.

This boy is adorable. He tries so hard to behave as though he hates everything, as it seems he thinks a twelve-year-old boy is expected to. Keeps hitting Hershel and Des with angry glares whenever they tell a joke. Complains whenever he’s left to babysit Kat. Rolls his eyes whenever Hershel shares an anecdote from one of his adventures.

But he always listens to those anecdotes whenever they get told. Always happily watches movies with Katrielle, provided they’re age appropriate and she goes to bed on time. He groans when Hershel presents him with a puzzle, but if he hated it that much, would he take the time to patiently solve them and then grin with satisfaction when he learns his solution is correct?

Des loves this kid. He hopes they keep him for years to come.

Happiness

The new house is on the outskirts of London, closer to the country while still a manageable distance from school and workplaces, and it’s big. With five bedrooms, Hershel points out, it has to be big. How else would everybody have enough space for themselves?

When they arrive, he presents Flora, Alfendi and Katrielle with a ring of keys, a packet of labels and a pen, assigning them the task of unlocking every door and identifying every key. He and Des then use that child-free opportunity to unload all of their belongings, careful not to damage anything, especially their backs.

They can hear the kids shouting with delight as they explore. The living room’s fireplace is at least twice the size of the one in the old house and the cupboard under the stairs is big enough for Alfendi to hide in and leap out at Kat with a roar. There’s a cellar, they discover, and it even has a big rack of wine the previous owners left behind.

Hershel warns Des that he’d better not hear of his brother imprisoning someone in that cellar, and Des simply replies that the London Times Bestseller List would drop him in a flash if he did.

Just as promised, there are five bedrooms. Katrielle is practically bouncing off the walls at the notion of having an entire room to herself and she immediately starts planning what colour the wall should be painted. Alfendi yells “ECHO!” and listens to the sound bounce off the brickwork and Flora snatches her equipment from the moving van to begin setting up.

Even the attic is big. Big enough for there to be two separate rooms up there. One should be a spare bedroom, Hershel suggests, and the other can be his office. Des can have the cellar if he needs some space for whatever he wants to work on.

The notion of being relegated to the cellar leaves Des aghast at first, but then Hershel drops the words “construction” and “testing” and it’s difficult to hide how much Des’ heart soars at the notion.

He hadn’t even considered that he’d have space to build again.

The kids unlock the doors to the garden. It’s a rolling lawn of pristine grass that drops down in a bank, providing a wonderful view of London and stopping at a hedge that separates it from a road. Off to one side is a small grove of trees and Des can see a treehouse barely visible in the branches. Through the open door, he can hear trickling water, and he just has enough time to register that they have a small stream as well before he sees Katrielle chasing Flora around the garden with a frog in her hands.

“Alfie! Alfie, help! Don’t let Kat put that frog on me!”

“Whoa, Flora! Check out the size of this newt! Ain’t he a cutie?”

“AIEEEEE!”

She rushes back into the house just as Hershel and Des are setting the sofa down.

Once the lorry has been fully unloaded, the kids are unpacking their belongings and the two of them have a chance to relax, Des asks Hershel why they can’t turn both attic rooms into offices. Why one of them has to be a spare bedroom. He knows of Luke, but didn’t Luke move away several years ago?

His brother’s face suddenly flushes.

A different friend, he explains, who may come to visit at some point in the future and will need a place to stay. One he met several years ago, prior to the Future London incident, and bonded with during an investigation in Scotland not long before Katrielle came into his life.

An American, he says. Rather a mess in a number of ways, but nevertheless inherently charming. A lawyer who lost his licence to practise after being framed for forging evidence and who’s currently seeking to clear his name. He’s adopted a daughter of his own, Hershel adds. A lovely young girl a couple of years older than Alfendi. You’d love them both, he states.

Des can’t help but smile as he listens to his brother gush, apparently not even noticing how pink his cheeks have become.

He asks if there’s any possibility of their kids acquiring a new stepfather in the future.

He laughs as Hershel flushes and uselessly tries to hide his face with his hat.

Thank goodness his brother has the chance to be happy again.

Happiness

Des pours a fresh cup of tea.

Hershel sits at the patio table beside him and brushes down a recent fossil he was sent for analysis. Quite a remarkable find. A snail shell that partially transformed into opal and now glimmers in the springtime sunlight. A copy of Metropolis of Blood by Des Layton sits between them, a fallen leaf settled on its shiny dust jacket.

Katrielle and Alfendi sit on the lawn nearby, a bucket of water between them. Every now and then, Alfendi reaches in with cupped hands and smiles at the wiggling tadpole he holds, and tries to show Kat how to properly hold it so the water doesn’t immediately gush back into the bucket. No matter how many attempts she makes, she just can’t get the hang of it, although it probably doesn’t help that her hands are so tiny.

Flora kneels at the flowerbed she’s set up near the grove, tending to the rose bush she’s been carefully grooming since they moved in. Des had suggested they remove it altogether and repurpose it as kindling, but Flora was determined to bring it back to life. If that immense red and white bloom near its top is any indication, she’s far better at gardening than she is at cooking.

The brook that cuts through the side of the lawn is babbling. Birds twitter in the trees and a gentle breeze rustles the leaves, but can’t affect the warm sunlight.

Des relaxes back into his chair and takes a sip from his tea, and comments to Hershel that he wishes he could have had this sooner.

“Had what?”

“A life like this. Peace. Sunlight. A family. I spent so long fighting for vengeance that I fear I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”

Hershel asks what he’s talking about.

He does have a family.

He sets down his fossil and brush and reaches into his collar, and pulls out a thin leather cord, standing up so that what he holds can be seen more clearly.

Hanging from the cord is a simple crystal pendant that casts a soft glow on his tanned fingers.

Des sets his teacup down. His fingers are trembling.

All these years of wishing he could have lived a peaceful life with his brother. All this time fighting for his sake, for justice for their family, travelling all over the world to bring down their enemies and wishing with all his heart that he could have had some life beyond this…

…and now he has it.

They have each other back.

He’s won.

Des loses control. He leaps from his chair and throws himself upon Hershel, pulling him into the hug he’s been longing for ever since they were ripped apart nearly forty years ago.

The moment he understands what’s happening, Hershel returns his hug.

Des doesn’t ever want to let go again.

It’s over.

He’s done.

After all these years of struggling, he’s finally done.