章 31: 31. Ren Reacts
Ren huddled in the kitchen next to the hearth, drinking the tea Hyde had prepared. Despite his threats, he'd added sugar instead of poison, but it was still hot and sharp and refreshing to her scattered wits.
Everything since she'd gone to bed the night before still felt like a bad dream only barely remembered. But they were all gone, every Servant she'd summoned save for Hyde, and Ritsu as well. It was enough that she wanted to believe this was the bad dream. But she knew the difference.
Artoria Alter stood in the kitchen, watching her. She looked exactly as she had when she'd held Ren by the hair in the Sovereign camp, and the empty coldness of her gaze was more than a little frightening. But she seemed to still be functioning as Tora's Servant, pursuing Tora's goals—and that was currently the protection of the existing children and herself.
Hyde crouched in the corner of the kitchen, behind Ren, but she could feel his intent gaze fixed on her. Her skin prickled under it, and even though he'd placed himself out of reach, she kept expecting to once again feel his arms sliding around her. His previous embrace had been both stressful and exhilarating—and all the more so when he'd released her on his own, despite all Jekyll's warnings. But it was a distraction she didn't need, all the same.
She finished her tea, and Hyde growled, "More? Or can we get this fucking show on the road?"
Ren exhaled. "Is this going to work? Is there any real chance I can save them?"
"No," said Artoria Alter bluntly. "You're Red Riding Hood walking into the woods with the Wolf."
"How about if you came too?" asked Ren tentatively, because she had to ask. But when Artoria shook her head, Ren felt only relief.
"I won't do that. Protecting the remaining children was my Master's last command."
Ren stood up. Her body ached with bruises and muscle strain that hadn't been there the night before: yet another sign that something worse than a dream had occurred. "Well… Is there anything else I can do? Other than acting out a fairy tale?"
Icily, Artoria Alter said, "You already know the answer to that."
Hyde bounded to his feet. "Yes, let's go, let's go!"
And so they went.
***
The Sovereign campsite beyond the walls of the Summoner's Castle had been kicked apart, with supplies unloaded from the dragon and the kirin tumbled this way and that. Ren's fragmented memories only covered parts of the previous night's conflict taking place within the castle walls, but it looked like the Sovereign champions had at least tried to fight back against whatever had taken them.
Deep shadows still cloaked the forest, even the scar left by Artoria Alter's intial greeting. As Ren eyed it apprehensively, Hyde tugged her in a different direction, more to the north of the Castle. "This way!"
He led her to a narrow trail into the underbrush, and shoved her ahead of him, retaining a hold on her top. "You first."
"Wouldn't it be better the other way around?" Ren protested. "You're the one who knows where we're going."
Hyde snorted. "It's a trail. The trick isn't finding the thing, it's getting inside. Nah, much better if you go first. That way nothing can snatch you away when I'm not looking." And he grinned to make sure she understood that he would definitely be looking.
Ren squashed down ordinary feelings. In a fairy tale or a nightmare, what did they matter? Into the woods with the Wolf behind her she went.
They walked along the trail for a while, and the only sound was their footsteps and the occasional hitch in Hyde's breathing. She heard no birds, no insects, and barely any wind. The fresh clean scent of the forest gradually shifted, until it was musty and… hard, somehow. Not alive, not rotten, but dry, like the rooms of the keep nobody had entered for years.
Finally, at no place in particular, Hyde hauled her back by her top. "Here we go. Good thing. I was running out of ways to distract myself!" He picked her up princess-style and she instinctively clutched at him.
"Don't jump!"
He grinned down at her. "Merlin really fucked that up, didn't he? Moron. All the better for me, though!" And then, delicately, he stepped forward, his shoulders hunching down as if he expected to pass through something unpleasant.
The passage through the barrier of the Bounded Field felt like crossing the boundary of sleep. She remembered more of the night before—
Cú complaining in answer to her call, and then appearing before her, leering. And behind him—
—And then she'd tried to bring him to his senses with a Command Seal and he'd transformed instead, and started attacking the others.
Jack, crying out for her. Astolfo, fleeing, laughing, into the night. Merlin, looking as if something faintly bothered him and he couldn't figure out what it was, even as Cú sent him flying.
Something had invaded her mind. The dreamlike nature of the night before wasn't just that she'd been half-asleep when it started, but the result of something left behind by the creature that had taken the others. She didn't think she could get any closer to what had happened without risking a relapse into nightmare mode.
"Oh yes, yes, this is nice," murmured Hyde into her ear. "Sometimes you have to ask yourself, is survival really worth it?"
Ren realized that not only was she still clinging to Hyde, but she'd wrapped herself around him like she was Jack. As she became aware, her grip loosened and his own tightened, until she dropped her feet to the ground.
"This place is really dull," Hyde warned her as he mostly released her, save for a hank of her hair he held like a leash.
She took his hand from her hair and put it back on her top, and then looked around. But Hyde was right. They were… nowhere. Almost nowhere. She stood on a sheared stone surface, surrounded by a patchy mist. The dim light had no obvious source, but it was brighter than moonlight on a cloudy night. The air moved fitfully, like it wanted to have a breeze but couldn't quite manage it. There was no visible sign of the barrier they'd passed through.
"How big is this place?"
Hyde paced around her in a circle. "Dunno. Pretty big. I didn't find any of those other losers before I found the boundary."
Ren felt like she was missing something. "So why have only you left? I mean, this is really boring. Not what I expected from a creature's lair. What's keeping them here?"
After a puzzled look, Hyde said, "Oh! Right. This isn't the web, master. This is the spider."
A chill ran down Ren's spine. "You mean this is the creature?"
"No, no, no. I mean, maybe it is. I'm not Jekyll, or that other ivory tower pansy. How should I know? But it's not what came to the keep. So the Bounded Field is what's draining them. What's keeping them here is…." He tapped his head. "Madness. The creature's got them all participating in a story or something, I dunno, I didn't pay that much attention. Jekyll's still trapped in it, though."
Ren closed her mouth on why can't we get him out first? "All right. How do we find them?"
Hyde shrugged and gave her a bright-eyed, expectant look. "You're the Master."
Artoria Alter had told her exactly the opposite, a few days ago. You're no Master. She wondered if anything had changed. She could reach out to them now… But doing that had somehow triggered this whole mess, and without Command Seals… yeah, no.
She turned her face toward the fitful gusts of wind. "All right. That way."
Once again, Hyde shrugged, grinned and gestured for her to walk in front of him. She shook her head, though. "No. Walk beside me. This place is too boring to walk through alone."
"I told ya," he said, but he looked pleased.
As they walked into the breeze, something occasionally crunched underfoot. When the crunching became every other step, Ren paused to investigate. Although the light was dim, once she stooped down, it was easy to see the thickening carpet of dead insects.
"Ew," said Hyde as Ren picked up a dead grasshopper. "I meant the spider thing as a metaphor. We see one, I'm stabbing it, Master."
"Hmm," said Ren, dropping the grasshopper and then scraping her foot back and forth, leaving an arc of empty stone. "Let's change direction. Follow the edge of the bug rug. Keep an eye out for a trail."
They spent a long time following the edge of the bug rug, until finally they came back to the place they'd started. The sweep of Ren's foot remained, the edges fuzzed only slightly by the scattered breeze. Hyde, already getting more and more restless, complained, "Aw, that should have worked."
"It did, I think," said Ren. "The wind kept changing direction as we walked. I think it's coming from inside the bug rug. Not the center of it, thank God, but…" She nodded firmly. "I think that wind is being generated by something with wings."
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