Prologue
He was tired. Sore all the way to his bone marrow, sweat weeping down his face, his nostrils violated by some vile odour. But above all he felt tired; uncharacteristically and insatiably tired.
The area that entrapped him sweltered, causing his skin to burn. Holes spotted his jacket, exposing the orange shirt underneath. Though a large dent bent his favorite top hat inward, it remained intact, requiring little to fix it (a small tear here or there did not warrant tossing the article). He punched the inside of the top hat to relieve the dent and resolutely slapped it on the top of his head; very few people ever saw him without the hat, it was simply not the gentleman's way, and he intended for his head to remain "anonymous," as it were. On his feet, he stumbled to the main entrance as best he could.
But his brain had some sort of fog enveloping all of his decision making powers. Nothing made sense; the main door was upside down, and he stood looking up at his seat, much of it charred away and smoldering. He knew it was his seat, 4F, but something was simply incorrect about it. It should not be above his head. It was improper, of all things. Instead of trying to correct the problem, however, he felt as if he needed to move on to the next area. Clutching the handle on the door, he twisted it as best he could and plowed through the door with every possible ounce of force he could muster. The door inched open as if some other being on the other side fought against him to keep it closed. Something in his brain would not allow anything to make sense.
On the other side, a blazing fire clawed at his face with blazing nails. Covering his mouth with the remains of his sleeve, he weighed his available options in hopes of reclaiming a few of his deductive faculties. His only available options were to somehow crash through the fire to the other side, or so smash out the window next to him. In each option though, he had no clue as to what lie on the other side. For all he knew, only more fire would greet him beyond the one in front of him, and a large cliff dropped out beneath him past the window. Neither options seemed palatable.
Peering as best he could into the window, he could barely see the faint outline of a slope of grass. With little prompting, he battered his shoulder against the large window of the train (Yes, he thought, we were on a train), hoping to at least crack the glass somewhat. The pain that raced along his rams and throughout his back, however, notified him that the window would not budge using his own force. He would need something else to crash through it and gain his freedom. Some sort of iron poking stick lay next to him, used as decoration for a fake fireplace at the front of the car, and he grabbed it with a bit of desperation. However, he immediately dropped the rod as it nearly burned the skin from his palms.
Though he had little time left before all the remaining oxygen in the car was savagely devoured by the flames, he tore the sleeve from his coat and wrapped it around the iron rod. Holding his breath and steadying his grip, he charged at the window like a battering ram, splintering the window into six separate panes. With his other shoulder, he slammed into the window another two or three times to finally burst through the other side. He stood ten feet or so above the grassy knoll, and the danger of possibly breaking another bone (at the moment he was unsure if he had any broken bones or not) struck him momentarily. But he braced himself mentally and let gravity pull him down towards the ground. Rain from hours before caused the ground to become slick and muddy, sending him tumbling farther and farther down the knoll. His shirt clung to him due to a mixture of sweat and rain water, and he needed a moment to catch his breath once again.
On the ground and from a different perspective, he could see the devastation that he just escaped from. The train nearly fell from the tracks, and from what he could see the train slid on its side for some time before attempting to flip entirely upside down. Luckily, a tunnel kept the train from falling completely off the track, but allowed it to turn roughly 45-degrees on its side. Flames jutted from various windows and lit up the sky behind it in a cacophony of oranges and reds as if a demon tried its hand at painting. Something felt horrendously wrong as he stood there, looking at the train as it disintegrated before his eyes.
"My God," Professor Hershel Layton said aloud. "Where is Luke?"