The Earth King Has Invited You to Labyrinthia

Disclaimer: I own nothing in this very strange crossover.


He was Professor Layton his parents were Roland and Lucille...

He was himself. He wrenched himself awake in the dark, hunger pinching his belly but warm and comfortable. It smelled like rising yeast. He uncurled his fingers and touched a warm body. His hand went up to his own head and touched hair.

"Mr. Wright..." he sighed to the dark. "Please stop removing my hat."

Placed again in the space between Mr. Wright and the wall, Layton awkwardly slid himself over the sleeping baker and onto the bedroom floor. No one else in the room was awake. A quick check found Espella in the trundle and Luke and Maya in the bed across from him, soundly asleep and covered up, the shutters locked tight. His hat rested on the same spot on the wall, the mantle above the unlit fireplace. He took his hat first, of course, fixing it tight to his head before searching for his shoes. He tucked them under his arm and tiptoed his way down the stairs and into the bakery.

Utter silence met him below. The only sound came from Patty sleeping in a back room somewhere behind the oven, which even now was putting out heat from the last day's round of baking. All shutters locked tight, everything put away but a fine coating of powder which no amount of sweeping would ever remove.

He sat on the steps and slipped his shoes on. Nighttime would be his ally on this mission. His intuition, even now, was pulling him to that library. That the Storyteller would store his own records so carelessly boggled his mind, or perhaps that wasn't what did it. It was the hubris behind it, that the population believed him so unquestioningly that he could store the volumes in a "public" library and have nothing thought of it. That they would stay, forever untouched, in a vast temple built to himself.

Perhaps he was putting intentions into the man. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, watching shadows flicker on the floor. Easy, Hershel. One piece of information at a time to solve a puzzle.

"Professor?"

It took every ounce of his strength not to make a sound. It was just Mr. Wright's voice, after all, and he stood to his feet so he could probably meet the confused eyes at the top of the stairs. "Mr. Wright."

"What are you doing up? You need to sleep..." His gaze snapped downward. "And why are your shoes on?"

"I'm leaving to investigate." He fluffed his coat, bracing his defenses up against Mr. Wright's searching look. "I shall be back by morning, I'm certain."

"With the firebenders around? By yourself? Wait-" Mr. Wright slipped down the stairs with naught but a click from the soles of his own shoes- and didn't he feel silly for not noticing when Mr. Wright had- and took his shoulders in his hands. "You can't be serious! Where are you-"

His volume was steadily rising, and Layton quickly hushed him with a finger to his lips. Mr. Wright caught himself and copied the gesture.

Nonetheless, the questions continued, just in a quieter tone. Mr. Wright gently removed his other hand from the professor's shoulder. "Where are you even going?"

"To the library," he assured the man. "Nothing more."

"Then I'm coming with you."

"Mr. Wright." He didn't allow himself to raise his voice, but it was startling nonetheless. "You have no obligation to do so. Besides, someone should stay and look after the children."

"I can't go back to sleep knowing you're going out there in the dark!"
"Mr. Wright."

"Sorry..." Down when the volume again. Mr. Wright rubbed at the back of his neck. "I mean, you really trust me to keep quiet and calm while you're out there by yourself? And if I wake up the kids-" He grimaced. "Maya would have my head if she heard me calling her a kid..."

Mr. Wright raised an excellent point, he admitted to himself. If only because he knew how infectious worry could be, he relented. "Mr. Wright, you have made a compelling case."

He was ready to tell to come along, stay close, and be as silent as possible, but something interrupted his thoughts. It was Mr. Wright's eyes again, and how they suddenly flickered and dilated in the night, how the baker lost his focus all at once and suddenly disappeared into his own mind. It almost frightened him.

"Mr. Wright?" He reached out, feeling the gap in their height, and laid a hand on the other's shoulder. "Are you all... there?"

"Huh-" With one last gasp, Mr. Wright snapped back into reality. "What? Sorry, that... I don't know- I feel weird."

"Indeed." He couldn't think of anything else to say to that. He adjusted his hat instead, and bade Mr. Wright to follow him. "Come quickly, then. We haven't a moment to waste."

With a twist of a too-loud lock and a check of the street, the professor and Mr. Wright stole away into the night. It felt like night, even if the light level had not changed from "daytime." Shop windows were closed and no light came from lanterns or doorways. It was still and silent enough for their footsteps to echo as the two broke out into a sprint for the library.

"So is the library open at night?" Mr. Wright asked the professor between heavy breaths.

"I sincerely doubt as much," he answered truthfully. "Our entry methods might take a turn into the untoward."

"You don't mean-"

He allowed himself a moment of snide humor. "I doubt they will punish us as long as we abstain from firebending the door open."

"Don't joke about firebenders, Professor!" Mr. Wright cried out. "That sorta talk will get you in-"

Darkness fell. The two skidded to a halt.

The library stood before them as if it had drained the light from the earth, and framed in its great doors was a figure draped in reds. Dark, blood reds, highlighted in fire bright oranges and yellows, arms clad in gold and face covered by a heavy mask. Wind wicked at its figure even while the air around Layton and Wright was still, as if it were fire itself made into a solid being. Layton held out an arm, keeping Wright behind him even as the baker steadied himself with a hand against the professor's back.

It stood unmoving, watching the two of them. Layton watched. Wright swallowed.

Within a blink it vanished in a curl of fire, and the library door fell open behind it.

Wright swallowed hard enough for Layton to hear it. The professor took a moment before he felt safe enough to move, and forcing himself to relax was akin to breaking himself out of stone.

"What was that?" the baker squeaked.

"A benefactor," the professor answered.

"What do you mean?"

"Someone wants us in that library..." He reflexively reached low, and remembering that Luke wasn't with him, he turned and took Wright's wrist instead. "I shall detail my suspicions to you later. Hurry, Mr. Wright."

"We're walking into a trap..." he replied, but followed nonetheless as the professor gently lead him.

"Perhaps not. If it were, they might have endeavored to keep themselves less conspicuous."

"So it's not a trap because it's too obviously a trap?"

"In a roundabout way of putting it, yes."

"How do you know?"

Safe inside the library, Layton shut the door behind them. "I like to think I have too much experience with these matters-"

A hand shot between the doors, and Phoenix screamed into his hands. Layton flung the door open, ready to-

"Sir Layton! Mr. Wright!" Espella slipped in behind them. "Thank goodness!"

"Espella?" Layton checked outside before shutting the door firmly behind them. "How long have you been there?"

"I woke up!" Espella swallowed to catch her breath, and between pants, she explained. "It felt so quiet, and I woke up and neither of you were there, and neither were your shoes, and I panicked! I followed your tracks, at first, but when I saw the library I knew you must be headed this way."

"You didn't wake up Maya, did you?" Wright asked.

"No! No, I couldn't bring another," she assured them. "The firebenders are out for two companions, not a single traveler."

Layton grimaced. "A soothing thought." He cracked open the door one last time to check. No sign of more followers. He could hear nothing. The books, yes, deep breaths. Find the books.

He gasped and shoved the door closed. "Espella! You know the Story better than all of us, correct?"

"I-" She faltered a bit at that, a hand going up to her chest. "I-I suppose I do, yes."

"Can you find us the most recent book in the library?"

"I think so." She nodded and began to smile. "Yes! Yes, I know so! It will be this way! Follow me!"

"Why the most recent?" Wright asked, tailing behind the two.

"I'm looking for signs of Carmine's arrival. Even if it was not written in the Story-" Layton watched over Espella's shoulder as she scanned the volumes on the shelves. "Then perhaps he made note of it somewhere in the margins."

"The Storyteller writes in the margins? I don't remember that..." Phoenix stroked his chin. "Makes me feel a little better about doodling in my math notes, I guess."

"This one! It's not the very most recent." Espella hefted the big book out of its place and thumped it down on the closest table. "I'm afraid that volume will be with the Storyteller until he's filled it from page to page."

"We'll check at two-week intervals, then, coinciding with the parades."

"Wait a minute, look!" Wright pointed to the pages, to a little gap between the leaf. "There's a bookmark in this one."

"A bookmark?" Espella thumbed to the page and opened the book hurriedly, Layton and Wright on either shoulder, reading.

The bookmark proved to be a sheet of vellum, carelessly creased between the pages and written on in an elegant red script. Modern handwriting, fine cursive, but not the practiced calligraphy of the Storyteller. The writing was smudged in a few places. Wet and fresh, newly written and tucked away to be found in the place they were most likely to look.

"From a long time ago," Layton read aloud, "The ancient flame has been locked in an infinite vault of books, waiting for the awakening." When the sun and moon watching over the sage swap places to show their true form, the door to the past will open. Once a person of perspicacity has fulfilled the challenge, the door will open. Until then, I will wait for the time of awakening."

"They used 'the door will open' twice," said Wright.

"I... I don't understand how this could be here..." Espella whispered in a terrible fright. "Everyone knows better than to tamper with the Story..."

"This is a riddle." A person of perspicacity, was it? If not Carmine before them, it would be him now. The professor scanned the library. The sun and the moon watching over the sage... His eyes fell on the front desk, of the mural above it. The sun and the moon. "And a puzzle!"

"A puzzle?"

"You two, come with me, hurry." The professor dashed to the desk, whipping around it and running his fingers along the seams of the mural. His fingertips were honed for finding the mechanisms of puzzles and traps after many years of archeology, and it was only a matter of moments before he found that the tiles under the sun and moon gave way. "Ah-ha!"

"Professor..." Wright asked behind him. "What's a puzzle?"

"A wonderful thing, Mr. Wright." He found his affordance; a single slot in which a tile could be held whilst he moved the others. "An exercise of the mind and a mystery easily solved."

"Easily?" Wright was closer to him now, he could feel the warmth of his breath over his shoulder. Espella hung back on his other side, watching in silence. "But you can't even take the tiles out!"

"Indeed I cannot," he explained. "But that is part of the thrill of it, is it not? Find any allowance you can exploit, and if the answer does not present itself naturally, then there is simply information missing."

"But why would someone put anything behind a puzzle?" Espella asked.

"Quite frankly, Espella, I believe that whoever hid this information-"

Layton clicked the final piece into place, and stepped back as the wall underneath it slid away into a recess, opening a passage to the three.

"-reserved its location for the chosen few."

"It will undoubtedly be dark inside," Layton told the two. "Stay close to me."

Espella latched onto his arm, and Wright put a hand on his other shoulder. He lead with unsteady footing, both used to and unaccustomed to total darkness. At one point his heel met a stair, and only the iron grip of his two companions kept him from an undignified tumble in to the dark. He made sure to tap his foot down solidly on each step as they descended, and with every one, he was crowded tighter by the other two.

He wondered if the effect was purposeful when his foot fell into the click of a switch instead of a solid floor.

On every side, a flick of a tinder against flint, and then a pillar of fire blasting up stone walls. It singed their skin; Layton was sweating within an instant. Even as the columns snuffed out and the ceiling instead blazed with the light of a thousand torches in chandeliers, nothing prepared him for the site against the far wall. A mural depicting a vicious dragon, wings spread and mouth open wide, breathing fire upon the village of Labyrinthia. Villagers fell upon the ground bathed in flames. Smoke rose in a choking wall, blocking out the moon in the sky.

Before the dragon, the Fire Lord held her hands aloft in triumph, and Layton was momentarily distracted by the fact that the Fire Lord was a woman. Still, grandiose lightswitch or not, they had found their secret. The puzzle had a new piece.

"... are we gonna die?"

"No, Mr. Wright," Layton soothed, "I don't believe we are."

"Okay, good..." Wright pulled an exhausted-looking Espella to his side, where she leaned heavily on him. "Because I feel like my head's trying to pound out of my eyeballs..."

"A drink of water should help with that," he parroted back. Layton was busy scanning the room, and his eyes fell upon the center of the floor, where a scroll lay on a plinth. A massive scroll, ornately decorated in reds and yellows... to pardon the pun, it sent up red flags in Layton's mind. He approached it with caution, measuring his steps carefully.

"Sir Layton, please, be careful..." Espella ground out through clenched teeth. "That's the Grand Grimoire... all of our knowledge of firebenders rests within it."

Without further ado, he opened it... and it was simply a bending scroll. Techniques laid out in steps with their proper names and a short summary of technique beside it. Nothing unusual, except for maybe its comprehensive nature and the fact that, for a scroll, it was very new.

"It is indeed grand..." He scrolled along the document, looking for more hidden scripts and finding none. "Was this where the message was directing us... or were we to see this instead?" He looked back to the mural. "The great fire you told us of?"

"I... I need to go home."

"Espella?"

"I need to go home." Espella pulled away from Wright, clutching her head tight and backing up to the door. "I need to go home I need to go home I need to go home-"

She turned and ran back up the stairs. Wright chased her for a few steps before freezing in his tracks and turning back to Layton. He seemed stuck in fear, and Layton put the scroll back to come to his aide. "Mr. Wright, what is it?"

"I- I can't go with her!" Wright gulped. "That makes us two companions-"

Claire forgive him, but his patience was beginning to wear thin with talk of the Storyteller. "Mr. Wright." Layton firmly pulled down his hat. "I'm not entirely certain of the situation at hand, and I will be the first to admit that. But you must trust me when I say that the Storyteller has no control over you."

"Look, maybe he does!" Wright wailed suddenly. "Maybe! I don't know! I don't know anything anymore! Yesterday I thought I was a normal baker with a normal job and a normal life, and maybe they Storyteller is in charge of it! But here you come with your puzzles and talking about outside the walls and I don't know now! This is- weird! It's really weird! But he doesn't- maybe, I hope- he doesn't control you!"

Wright took a gulp of air and coughed a little, choked on his own words. "And if I go after Espella, I'm just another normal guy out in the middle of the night and at the Storyteller's whims, probably, but when I'm near you... you seem like you know what you're doing. And I feel..." He clawed at the air, searching for the words. "Safer. A lot safer."

Layton, for the life of him, could not find the words. His mouth gaped open at the outburst and still refused to close, and for his part, Mr. Wright was turning a rather ridiculous shade of pink from the ordeal.

"So I... I know Espella will be okay. Storyteller said two companions, and she said she's going home. And I know you'll be okay, because you... You really know what to do, and I don't. At all." Phoenix wiped his brow. "But I want to, so..."

"Mr. Wright..." Layton pulled his hat low. "I am so sorry, to pull you into this situation against your will."

"No, no, i-it's not that I don't want to be here, not really. I-I just want to know the truth. The truth is important, even if it's kind of... overwhelming." Wright looked back to the mural. "And occasionally really scary. But... but if no one looks for it, then..."

His words trailed off, the thought incomplete. Layton held the brim of his hat over his eyes, still, ashamed he'd pulled this innocent man into a mystery obviously too complex for his mind to handle. He'd imposed his own wants for order onto Mr. Wright, he supposed, wanting anyone else to see the illogic in this city other than himself and Luke. It seemed less daunting with an ally, rather than the entire world against him. Even in his clothes from the outside, even with the little cracks in the facade showing through those shining metal buttons and shoes, he was still a citizen of Labyrinthia.

A gentle hand fell on his shoulder. "Hey, professor? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to unload on you like that. I just got scared and then Espella ran off and... It's just been a bad night for everybody, I think. Maybe we should head back home too?"

When he met Wright's eyes, they were soft and forgiving. The fear was gone, and his smile was understanding, if small.

"I still say you can figure this all out." He flashed the professor a little grin. "Let's just go home and try it without the breaking and entering. I mean, can't arrest you for anything as long as you don't firebend, right?"

Layton chuckled once, a dry little laugh and a smile finally back on his lips. "Indeed, Mr. Wright."

"Hey... you can call me Phoenix. If you want to."

"Phoenix Wright..." Layton made his way to the stairs, Phoenix's hand still on his shoulder. "I still find the name too strong for a simple baker."

"Nah, there's nothin' special about me," Phoenix replied with a shy brush of his hair. "Let's go get some sleep and we'll figure this all out in the morning."