It was the flickering of firelight that greeted me as I wearily came back to consciousness. Every muscle felt like lead an ever present fatigue clouding my mind. I was sitting up leaned back against something which I realized was Rameses side as the furry wall rose and fell with each breath.

"Careful." Rameses warned as I tried to lean forward only to begin to fall being caught by Rameses' head as he pushed me back again. I took the time to look around since moving about was obviously out of the question at the moment. Night had fallen since I had last been awake and Danny was sitting not far from Rameses and I near the fire, even by firelight I could see the dark purple blue bruise circling his neck. Danny was poking at something in the fire his usually happy face twisted in grief.

"In the morning we'll start looking for Jasper." Rameses stated as my thoughts turned to our missing friend.

"We should go now." I told him although I knew I wouldn't be getting far, but the longer we waited the farther Dr. Cunning could take Jasper or hurt him or worse.

"Morgan, it's dark and none of us are in a condition to be traveling. Let alone we wouldn't know where to start looking or what direction they went." Rameses replied calmingly.

"Even if we do find him, Dr. Cunning is just going to wipe the floor with us again and this time he's probably not going to let us leave with our lives." Danny growled in frustration as he chucked the stick he had been using to poke the fire across the clearing and into the darkness.

"We can't just abandon Jasper, who knows what Dr. Cunning has planned for him." Rameses replied and although he was as monotone as usual I could feel his doubt.

"You and Jasper seemed to know Dr. Cunning what can you tell us about him?" Danny asked.

"Why do you think I know Dr. Cunning?" Rameses asked.

"I saw the look in your eyes. You recognized him, same as Jasper. Which makes sense since you two know each other and are probably from the same time period." Danny replied but that couldn't be right. Rameses was from ancient Egypt and Jasper was from Victorian England, unless they had met later on after Rameses death.

"I know of Dr. Cunning I didn't know him personally though, I was a child when he was in the papers." Rameses replied with a sigh resting his head on his paws.

"Well what do you know of him then?" Danny asked.

"He was a doctor in 1842 I was ten at the time but everyone was talking about the disappearances of Stepney, it wasn't in the news but everyone talked about it. Men, women and children just going missing in Stepney and no one knew where they went." Rameses told us.

"Wait why wasn't it in the news?" I asked I would wait to ask Rameses about him being from Victorian England rather than ancient Egypt later.

"Stepney was a borough in London but it was a slum where the poorest and immigrants lived so the papers weren't really paying attention to the missing people. At least they weren't until 1844 when someone noticed that missing people were turning up on display at anatomy theatres always on Dr. Cunning's table but the reason it took so long to figure out they were the same people was the, modifications, Dr. Cunning had made. A woman with the tail and spots of a leopard as if she had been born that way, a man patched together from the body parts of others named the cadaver of frankenstein's monster, a pair of twins joined at the hip one half a boy the other a girl stitched together." Rameses explained painting a frightening image.

"How could he have gotten away with it for so long?!" Danny asked.

"No one knew how he was doing it and thought they were just freaks of nature which in the Victorian era meant they weren't people and no one paid much attention to the poor, different times." Rameses replied.

"Why is it we've never heard of him, even half of that makes him worse than Jack the Ripper?" I asked since there should be some sort of record of such heinous acts.

"Several reasons actually, the first being when the police went to arrest him he escaped killing many of the police who went after him but they couldn't explain how. Knowing what I do now I think I know how he did it but it was a black mark on them so when the people wanted the bodies and evidence destroyed they didn't stop them. They were content to have the matter swept under the rug partially because the police were notoriously corrupt at the time I think. The second reason was the newspapers which had other things to focus on like the blight and the conflict with the US over the Oregon border, the police also pushed the narrative that they were always successful to the press especially when they caught the poisoner John Tawell relatively soon after there blunder with Dr. Cunning. The third reason was that Dr. Cunning just disappeared he didn't show up somewhere else and everyone was content to let sleeping dogs lie it became a taboo to even talk about him." Rameses told us with a shrug.

"Ok, that's just great. Well if we are going to go looking for Jack the ripper's psycho older brother I'm going to turn in early, I really need to rest after today." Danny said before heading for the tent.

"You lied to me." I stated once I was sure Danny was out of earshot.

"I omitted but I suppose I did lie by omission." Rameses replied.

"Then tell me the truth who are you and how do you know Jasper cause Danny seemed to think you knew him pretty well." I huffed already annoyed that Jasper had been taken and on top of that Rameses had been lying to me.

"I was born in Stepney Engalnd in 1832 my father was a wealthy merchant who moved us to a more affluent borough soon after I was born since Stepney at that point had become a slum and my father felt that it was below him to live among such poor people. Jasper is my younger twin brother which is why my mother named him while my father decided to name me, which meant that I ended up with the name Aberforth, Edward, Dumont the fifth you can see why I prefer the name Rameses." Rameses told me which made me chuckle a bit just at his actual name although he didn't seem offended by it.

"Jasper and I weren't close growing up since my father wanted me to be the perfect heir while Jasper stayed with our mother who took him to Stepney often to visit relatives who had stayed there. One day they brought back a girl named Willow mother thought she was interesting because she had albinism so mother and father often showed her off to guests. Willow was a gentle but smart girl and she brought Jasper and I back together helping me sneak out of lessons and just be a kid. I'll admit I fell in love with her and I know Jasper did too but I was the one to ask her to marry me first and she accepted. Father disowned me because he didn't approve but what surprised me was that when he turned to Jasper, Jasper left too living with Willow and I in Stepney which was the only place we could afford." Rameses reminisced nostalgia woven into every word.

"Then things changed when Willow gave me a trio of triplet daughters, it made things stressful but it doesn't excuse what I did. The triplets looked more like Jasper back then we didn't understand genetics like today, it was believed that a child would look like a blend of their parents so for my daughters to resemble my brother who was living with us more led people to talk. My father got back in contact with me giving me a job that often took me away from home so I could support my family. I had always known he was a manipulator and he started putting doubts in my head saying that Willow was too close to Jasper that my girls weren't mine, eventually I believed him." Rameses said in grief.

"I was on a trip when Jasper sent the letter a letter I burned and never responded to, he was asking me to come back that people were targeting Willow and the girls calling her a witch amongst other things. Instead I went back to my father's home it was a couple of weeks later that Willow's body was found at the bottom of a well. Jasper hounded the police to do something trusting that I would come back and I didn't I left my daughter to the mercy of the streets which led to two of them dying and the last with trouble breathing for the rest of her life. Jasper told me I was dead to him and took my daughter to America, my father pressured me to remarry a match that he approved of and I just didn't have the energy left to fight him." Rameses continued.

"My second wife gave me a son and when he reached the age of fifteen my father pushed me to reconnect with Jasper who had returned to London. When we were kids both of us were obsessed with ancient Egypt so I asked him to come on a trip too see the old temples and tombs, he accepted. He asked for the truth of if I had ever gotten the letter and I told him, at the time we were near a temple of Bastet so I went there to clear my conscience since she had always been Willow's favorite. Then the Lionesses showed themselves, I didn't fight them, I didn't try to run and I died. Bastet took my soul and sealed it into that statue where I stayed passed around and put on shelves watching the world change around me which for better or worse gave me time to think. One day Bastet came back and took the statue before giving it to you said that I could redeem myself and you know the rest from there." Rameses finished his frame tense and his mind filled with anxiety.

"I don't what to make of you at the moment but as long as you have been with me you haven't done anything bad and for better or worse I believe people can change so I will keep in mind what you did but I will still give you a chance and I won't send you away." I told him as diplomatically as I could, what he had done was horrible but he had stayed by my side so far and he seemed like he truly regretted what had happened. He hadn't tried to excuse his behavior just admitted to it and maybe all those years of being imprisoned in a statue were punishment enough. It did explain the animosity between Jasper and Rameses though, at least there was one good thing today the night sky was beautiful as I fell back asleep.