Idris came to mere moments later, and stared up into the face of the shattered thrall, its eyes dripping mucus-coloured decomposition onto his cheeks.

Idris gagged, grabbed the hilt of his grandfather’s dagger and swiped at the face. The thrall, with surprising dexterity, lurched backwards before the blade could hit.

“Black bells,” whispered Idris. If the thralls sent vision and sound to Layton, then everything was lost.

Undeterred from its work, the thrall threw its arms towards Idris again, a rattling liquid sound croaking from the back of its throat. Idris gripped the edge of the rug the corpse was kneeling on and tugged, as hard as he could. The thrall stumbled. Idris rolled onto his knees, blinking the stars from his eyes, and pushed himself to his feet.

With the disorientating aria from the skull, it was impossible to focus. Idris stared around Layton’s bedroom, looking for something to stop the thrall, but all he saw were books and papers. As the thrall regained its balance, Idris remembered. He plunged his hand into his trouser pocket, recovered one of the leaf-wrapped pills he had made and prepared his hand.

“Eremont through and through, Father,” he hissed, and when the thrall came reeling at him one more time, he shoved the pill into its open mouth and forced its jaw closed.

The thrall struggled, swaying and trying to claw at Idris’s arms, but the coat sleeves were thick and he could not feel the nails in his skin. The stench, though, was almost enough to make Idris let go. The thrall’s skin was damp and cold.

“Just swallow it,” Idris said firmly, shoving it backwards. The thrall hit the desk, gargled. Idris’s finger broke the thin, weak skin on the thrall’s neck, and the smell was horrific, like a three-week-dead rat.

He jumped back, holding his bile in, and watched the thrall thrash and clutch at its throat.

Idris stayed to watch the pill work. He could not leave this to chance. Haylan had taught him how to make this particular medicine, the day after Idris turned sixteen.

“Just in case,” he had said.

Healers could not kill the undead, but they could effectively immobilise them.

The thrall, finally, stopped kicking. Its arms fell limp. It lay, head lolling, on the desk. Curious, Idris took a step closer, looked at its eyes. They still burned with Layton’s fire, but they no longer moved.

Time was limited. Idris sighed, wiped the thrall’s half-rotted flesh off his finger and looked again at the skull. It stared back, its dark eyes hollow but knowing, the necrosis trickling through its white bone. Quietly, he closed the curtain and hurried to the library.

As he ran, he rubbed the vile excretions the thrall had dripped onto his face with his sleeve, tried to retie his hair into its ribbon so that he did not look so dishevelled as he felt. His head throbbed and he was sure he was limping, but he gathered the required text and the writing implements and returned to the parlour. With luck, he could pretend he had tripped on the stairs, if he had to.

The scene was as awkward as he had left it. Willard stood apart from the circle, watching it hungrily; Joa, as glorious and fearsome as a triumphal painting, waited inside the summer glen, his eyes fixed on Layton; and Layton, larger somehow, his eyes bright, his smile knowing and terrible.

“Father, apologies,” Idris started, striding into the room, but Layton shook his head.

“I did not give you clear instructions. You have everything now,” said The Remaker, holding out his hand for the book and the parchment.

Everything happened slowly, somehow, after that.

Idris looked down at his hands, at the shaking in them, and he realised he was still holding his grandfather’s stiletto dagger. He looked, quickly, at Layton, who was watching only Joa, and then Idris looked at Joa, who flung out his hand towards Willard and said,

“Now.”

Willard darted forwards, towards the circle. Layton’s hand moved, too. Instead of grabbing the parchment, he seized the back of Idris’s collar and yanked him forwards. Idris dropped everything – the ink, the book, his weapon – and in an instant, Joa marched out of the circle, something long and blacker than midnight in his hand, and he swung it at Layton’s chest.

Instead of hitting Layton, it struck Idris clean across the face. Idris tasted iron, lost vision in his right eye momentarily. Layton shoved and Idris fell to the ground, his hands splashing in the spilled ink, gasping and dizzy.

Idris heard the aria, then. It was heavy, insistent – dark and thick and hot, all through him. And yet it was tainted. The fae aria inside the familiar notes of Idris’s whole existence made them warped, strange.

It was the song of the Spirit Glass.

“Idris!” shouted Willard from somewhere.

Idris turned his head.

Layton sank into a stance, his face still. Joa raised the staff again.

“Joa, move!” Idris said.

The necrotic blast hit the fae prince directly in the stomach. Layton did not hesitate. He threw a second one at Joa’s hand, the one curled around the staff. Joa, doubled over, glowing golden, twirled the staff out of the way and swung again for Layton’s side.

“Grab him!” Idris said to Willard. “Get him out of here!”

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And Layton’s coat opened, and the shimmer of black-green glass lay upon his torso.

“Layton, no!” Idris roared, shoving himself to his feet.

The next blast slammed the wind out of Idris, tingled through every nerve, all the way to his fingertips, but he absorbed the blow, tried to blink the water from his eyes.

Layton held a Half-Moon, looked Idris dead in the eyes and said, “You see if I don’t, bastard.”

The words rang inside, outside, through the aria, through the air. Idris felt them tear at the inside of his skull, poison his heart.

“I am larger than a fig,” Idris said, raising his inky hands in a defensive position.

But the call of the breastplate, oozing power from Layton’s chest, was blinding, and even if Idris could drop to his knees in time to cast, he knew he would be killed if Layton performed the drain.

To his left, Idris saw Joa raise the staff one more time.

Layton moved faster than Idris expected. As Joa gave his final assault, The Remaker gripped the staff without a care, took its momentum and snatched it from Joa’s grasp. Joa had only a moment to scream a curse when he was dragged backwards into the circle by Willard.

Idris felt, briefly, Willard’s hand on his shoulder.

“Idris, please -” said Willard’s voice, begging, desperate -

And the heat of the circle was gone from Idris’s back, and Layton, his jaw clenched, raised the Spirit Staff and slammed it across Idris’s cheek.

*

Idris woke all at once, feeling everything. His face was swollen and sore; there was crusted blood on his lip. The back of his head hurt, too. His arms, previously warm in the coat, were cold, and his hands were clutching something behind his back. He knew what it was – a sapping crystal, to keep him from casting. He could feel the drawing, sucking tension in it, pulling at the death aria in his blood.

He groaned, closed his eyes, tried to focus. His hands were bound. His prosthetic – gone, he could feel the cold air on his stump.

You see if I don’t, bastard.

Idris shivered.

“Master Vonner,” said Layton, from close by.

Idris started, stared. Layton sat in front of him, much like he had on their first meeting – above him, in a large chair, straight and still and knowing. In the Spirit Glass armour, he seemed made from stone. It was a hideous item. The black glass had been carved to look like a protective ribcage, complete with a heart etched in the centre. Runes fled along each rib bone, fluid and glittering. On Layton’s lap was the Spirit Staff, its pentagonal head smoking with necrotic energy.

“And so we return to where we began,” said The Remaker softly. “You at my feet, knowing nothing. And myself, in control. With plans and preparations. It pains me to know how utterly ignorant a child of my line is, you know that? You thought yourself smarter than me and look where it got you.”

Idris wished to look anywhere else, but there was nothing else of note to look at. He assumed this was the dungeon Layton had mentioned previously, except he could not see past Layton in his chair, full and wide and awful in his view.

“The Puppeteer,” said Layton now, and he laughed scornfully and shook his head. “Oh, if they knew true power... well. Let me tell you what will happen now, Idris Eremont.”

Layton leaned forwards, gripping the staff with white knuckles.

“You are going to stay in this tower for the rest of your days,” he said. “It is up to you whether you do this in chains, weak and powerless, or by my side. But judging by your actions of late, you would prefer the former. It is too dangerous to have you out of my grasp, I see that now. It was smart of your uncle to keep you from me. It is a pity he ruined you.”

“Would that you were half of the man my uncle was,” Idris said, through the lump in his cheek and the pain in his teeth. “Perhaps we would have been civil.”

“Do not be so quick to place Haylan Eremont on a pedestal. You did not know the man as I did.”

“I do not know you and you knew nothing of him. Haylan raised me. You hid in your tower, skulking in the dark -”

A sudden surge of terrible squeezing, burning pain clenched around Idris’s stump, cutting him off mid-sentence. Even with the strength of his rage and sorrow, nothing could get through the excruciating acid in Idris’s leg. He could hardly breathe, could not see properly. The staff on Layton’s lap shimmered with silver fire.

“This is not a negotiation, Eremont,” said Layton softly. “This is merely the way things will be.”

The pain subsided; Idris took a deep, steadying breath, hearing the silence ring.

“Who did you send the letter to?” said Layton.

Idris said nothing. In response, Layton waved the tiny scrap of notepaper that Cressida had sent, retrieved from Idris’s boot.

“Distress call?” he said. “For the soldiers in the ruins to come and save you? It hardly matters, except the poor girl says she loves you and I would hate to think that she might send more, once she finds out that the previous unit came to an untimely demise.”

“Did you kill them already?” said Idris.

“Not yet. I did not want you to think me cruel. You can save them still.”

“If I give up and bend the knee?” Idris laughed through his tears. “If I say ‘yes Father’ and submit?”

“It is simpler than that.” Layton tilted his head. “I want you to say you will stay.” He paused. “And I want you to tell me what you came here for.”

“If I had the strength to curse you, I would do it,” said Idris. “I came to kill you.”

“No, it is more than that. But you do not have to tell me now. I have pieced together the bones of it and I think I already know.” Layton pursed his lips. “You came to kill me and take my armour. You came to depose me.”

“Depose -?”

Idris could hardly believe what he was hearing. Depose Layton, like he was some monstrous king? He was a hermit, living in a sunless tower, hiding from those who might do him harm.

The laughter was sudden and violent. It rocked Idris’s whole core, pushed the tears further out of his eyes. Layton frowned, but it did not deter Idris from letting the humour run its course.

“I could not care any less about this tower, or the Vonner line, or you,” said Idris, still laughing in the back of his throat. “Depose you? You have nothing I want. You are nothing. Nobody knows you exist, nobody covets anything you own. Why would they? You are a frightened, miserable man living with the ghosts of a family that wanted to burn the world down -”

The pain came again, more insistent, more grasping. Layton’s grip was so tight that his hands shook on the staff; the grey in his eyes burned.

“How dare you disrespect the blood that runs through your veins?” he hissed, as Idris gasped for air.

“I disrespect the blood that made me yours,” said Idris.

All at once, Layton seemed to snap out of some anger-induced trance. The agony vanished and he let go of the staff, and he stared at Idris like he was looking upon him clearly for the first time.

“Look what you have made me do,” Layton whispered. “I am torturing my only son. My heir, my flesh. You... this was all avoidable, Idris -”

“I liked it better when you called me ‘Eremont,’” said Idris.

It was silent, then, except the creaking and scraping of creatures living in the walls. Layton’s face was pale and sallow. He looked like a child in imitation armour, playing at knight’s games; Idris did not know how he had seen The Remaker as a thing to fear, anymore.

“I am going to stay right here,” said Idris, his voice shaking. “But not as your son. As your prisoner. I will rot here if it pleases you. But I will not stand beside you and I will not be forced into some deranged game of ancestry and duty. You are the furthest thing from a father that I have ever seen. You are a weak man, playing at power, because you feel lonely. And Layton, that is the saddest, most pathetic thing there is in this whole kingdom. I do not even pity you. You simply disgust me.”

At this, Layton stood. He left the chair where it was and walked to the cell door, and he paused for a moment.

“This will not end well for you,” he said, turning his head only slightly.

“It will end worse for you,” said Idris.

Layton slammed the door shut.