33. The Master of Raven Tower

"Ooh," said Hyde. "Are we going to kill this other Master? I like that!"

"I don't know," said Ren. "If we have to. I can't let Ritsu stay here. Astolfo?"

Astolfo scratched his Hippogriff's head for a moment. When he lifted his hand, the Hippogriff faded in a swirl of magic. "Sure, I can take you there. But you gotta keep Hyde under control."

Hyde bared his teeth at Astolfo, who stuck his tongue out. Ren put her hand on Hyde's back again and felt a shudder ripple through him. He said, "Gonna play dirty, Master? I'm down for that."

"You're useful," she told him. "So I'll give you the self-control you need. Astolfo… lead on."

Astolfo pulled his mouth to one side, closing one eye. "Yup, yup. Except you're just going to walk through walls the way you are. Hm." He took her free hand. "I've got to show you what you're missing first."

"How come you can see us and the fairy tale?" grumbled Hyde.

"'Cause I'm a total idiot, of course," said Astolfo blithely. "I mean, sometimes when you jump off the cliff, you fall, and sometimes you land on the invisible bridge, right? But you're not going to prove the invisible bridge is there unless you jump first!" He closed his other eye and concentrated before saying, "Do you see it yet?"

The mist swirled over empty stone. Ren said, "No?"

���You're clinging too hard to reason, Master," chided Astolfo. "You have to relax."

Hyde yawned. "Whatever. Let's go. I can borrow Jekyll's vision and I'll carry her if I have to."

"There's a lot of stairs in the Raven Tower," Astolfo warned. "And they start right over there."

Ren's stomach flip-flopped. "You'll carry me up invisible stairs?"

"If we do find Merlin, I'm totally going to stab him," said Hyde. "That'll help, Master."

Shaking her head, Ren said, "No, I can do this. I'm going to close my eyes, though."

"Huh," said Astolfo. "You've got your own Evaporation of Reason, Master? But that's right! Trust the you that trusts him!" He dashed away and then turned back to wave. "Come on!" Then he jumped up and landed on the mist, two feet above the ground.

Ren immediately felt sick to her stomach and her touch on Hyde's back became clutching at his shirt. He twisted around and scooped her up again.

"What does it look like, this fairy tale?" she muttered as she closed her eyes. "What do the stairs look like?"

"They're stairs," said Hyde. "Wooden, polished, broad. It looks like that Clocktower place."

It wasn't much of a description, but Ren concentrated on imagining it as Hyde moved. It was much, much better than visualizing him climbing empty air.

Hyde's breathing slowly harshened as time passed. Ren asked in a small voice, "Is it steep? Am I tiring you out?"

The Berserker's movement stopped and then he was nuzzling Ren's face. "It's boring, Master. So boring. And you smell so good…" His grip on her shifted as he adjusted how he held her so he could nuzzle more of her.

"Hey, Hyde, if you take advantage of Master, I'm going to have to kick you off the stairs. Come on, you can do this, we're halfway up." Astolfo paused. "Or I could carry her? Ooh, I want to carry her! Gimme."

"I'm not a toy," said Ren and gently pushed Hyde's face away from her own. He didn't lick her this time, which she found a little worrying. "Keep climbing, Hyde. Rewards and refreshment come later."

Without speaking, Hyde started moving again. Astolfo said only, "Aww," before falling silent.

Ren didn't particularly want to think about what she was promising Hyde but as he cradled her against him, his breath occasionally stirring her hair, she found it unavoidable. She remembered how she'd fled from Cú's suggestion that she was seducing him. Hyde's lust she found both exciting and troubling, but not terrifying. And it wasn't that she wasn't attracted to Cú. She most definitely was.

Astolfo's earlier words resurfaced. I think what really matters is why… or how, I guess, you want us. She thought about that for a while, and about Hyde's conflicting interests, and how her own original reaction to the idea of intimacy had been dread.

She didn't really know herself all that well. How could she? How much of her was there to know? Maybe her fear of intimacy was because whoever she became close to would discover there was nothing really there. But that wasn't a worry with Hyde. She wasn't even sure he saw what was there, instead of what he projected onto her.

With a sigh, she realized that Cú had probably been right when he'd gently rejected sex with her as too complicated. She wanted him to respect her, wanted to support him as a warrior and provide him with good leadership. She knew with a gut certainty that such required keeping uncontrollable emotions under wraps, at least for the foreseeable future.

Hah! The foreseeable future? She wasn't sure what the next ten minutes would bring. Cú had practically turned into a beast, a Berserker version of himself. He and Merlin—

Abruptly, she pressed her face into Hyde's chest, forcing herself to stop thinking. She might not be much more than a fragment of a person, but she could help people. She could help Ritsu. That was why she was here.

Wasn't it?

"Bite me," Hyde whispered to her, and Ren, angry at herself and at the direction of her thoughts, did, sinking her teeth into the front of his shoulder through his shirt. Hyde's breath hissed as he stopped walking, and his grip on her tightened until he was crushing her to him.

"We're almost there," said Astolfo coaxingly, from right beside them. "One more flight! Isn't it weird how it's called a flight? I wish I could have kept Hippogriff out. But that wouldn't have been very fair to everybody else, even if it's easier here."

Ren blinked and pulled away from Hyde, although his arms remained tight. He'd whispered to her at just the right time, as if he'd been able to read her emotions perfectly. She opened her eyes, looking up into his face. His pupils had dilated enormously, almost consuming his crimson irises.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I was… upset."

Slowly Hyde's body loosened. After a full minute, with Astolfo still babbling in the background, Hyde said, "Yeah. Any time,��� and started climbing again.

When he stopped at the final landing, with Astolfo crowing about how they were finally there, Ren wriggled. "Put me down." When Hyde obliged her, keeping one hand around her waist, she carefully looked around.

Stone ground. Mist. Nothing else. No sign she'd gone anywhere. There were even still bug carapaces scattered on the ground. The realization gave her vertigo as she looked over her shoulder, up in the air, and all around. "Why did we even bother?"

"It matters to the squirt." Hyde shrugged.

"I'll be right back," announced Astolfo. "I have to ask him about you first." He raised his fist and made a knocking motion on the air. Then he tilted his head, opened an invisible door, stepped through… and vanished.

Ren scrambled across the stone after him. "Where did he go, Hyde? Can you go after him?"

"He went through the door." Hyde's eyes narrowed. "Huh. Weird." He followed her across the stone and put his hand where Astolfo had.

Then he recoiled backward as Astolfo burst into sight again. After a hectic moment of shoving and cursing and Astolfo dancing around avoiding Hyde's knife, Astolfo said, "He says you can come in, Master. He's very interested in meeting you."

Frustrated, Ren hopped from one side of where she thought the invisible door was to the other, and then back again. "How? Must Hyde carry me again? Wouldn't it just be stone on the other side?"

Astolfo unfolded his hand, showing an empty, stoppered vial of cut crystal. "He gave me this. A way of inducing the madness needed to be here." He rotated the vial between his fingers and a single drop of amber fluid slid from the bottom to the stopper.

Ren blinked. "Uh." She glanced between Astolfo and Hyde. Astolfo jiggled the vial encouragingly and she realized she had no reason to trust him. The newest of her Servants, famously mercurial, and she didn't have the magecraft to evaluate whether he was bound to her in any way. Perhaps this other Master had stolen him. Perhaps this was all a trick.

But Hyde looked at her like she was the only thing in the world, despite his ability to borrow Jekyll's madness. Even if she could invent reasons to doubt him, she still believed everything he'd told her thus far. His own madness had prevented him from being co-opted by the forces that ruled this strange reality bubble.

"Okay," she said slowly. "Hyde, if I forget why I'm here, get me out and do whatever's required to bring me back to myself."

Hyde narrowed his eyes. "How'm I supposed to do that?"

Ren bit her lip and his gaze focused on her mouth. In response, she pulled him down to her by his tie and kissed him. Not the chaste kiss she'd given Cú once upon a time, but a kiss as aggressive and passionate as the first time Hyde had kissed her. She tried to gather up everything she was—and it was so very little—and put it into that kiss, as Hyde took over control, his hands roaming over her body.

When he ripped the high neckline of her tunic, though, she put her hands on his chest and pushed him away. Grumbling deep in his throat, he resisted for a moment. "The body remembers," she murmured against him. "If I need it, you'll remind me."

Grudgingly, he released her. "I better get the best hair care ever out of this, Master. Not just brushing but shampoo, conditioning, the works." He grinned at her. "In fact, you can just give me a bath."

"Ooh, yes," said Astolfo, who'd once again been watching them with an oddly wholesome interest. "We should all bathe together. Skinship! As soon as you get all this sorted out, Master!"

Something bright bloomed in Ren and she couldn't help smiling at Astolfo as she realized she'd been wrong when she'd thought she couldn't trust the paladin. He was odd, whimsical, and reckless… but he wouldn't willingly hurt her. She took the vial from his open palm, pulled out the stopper, and drank it.

It tasted of the border between life and death, and dissolved in her mouth before she could swallow it. And then she could feel each thump of her heart, three beats, and then…

She was a dragon.

With hands, yes, all right. Hands and feet and her wings were annoyingly tucked away and she didn't even have a tail like Elizabeth, or horns, but it didn't matter, because she knew what she was, and that was definitely a dragon.

She eyed her loyal servants, and then this heavy carved wooden door. Astolfo had said the one who had stolen her stuff was beyond it. All she had to do was step along and tell him to back off.

Well, she had nothing to wait for. She flung open the door and stomped into the room, ready to breathe fire.

The room beyond was a library, or a study filled with so many books that the distinction was meaningless. A youngish man sat at a desk, leaning back, his feet up as he read a small volume held in one hand. A window beyond him showed a blue sky with dark specks wheeling against it. The chamber was absolutely full of magic. It crashed into Ren like a wave, making her fingers tingle and the hair on her arms stand on end. She quivered as she stood against it, but she had the heart of a dragon and plenty of magic of her own—

Wait, did she?

Of course she did. Dragons were innately magical beings.

The man lowered his book to look at her, and for a moment her vision doubled and two very different men sat there. But when she squinted, the images converged and there was only the one man, long of limb and dark of hair, with an ironical expression as he raised his eyebrows at her. "That worked? Well, come in, and close the door."

Astolfo took care of that after Ren and Hyde had entered, and then bounced forward. "I'll introduce you. Ren, this is the Master of Raven Tower. Jonathan, this is the Master of Summoning."

The Master of Raven Tower closed his book with a snap. "Astolfo, what have I told you about using True Names?"

"I haven't!" said Astolfo cheerfully. "Not completely, anyhow."

"Enough small talk," announced Ren, irritably. She was a dragon, dammit. She didn't have to deal with this. She stalked forward and leaned on the other Master's messy desk. "You. Let my people go."

"Hmm," said the man called Jonathan. "And why ought I to do that?"

"If you don't, I'll rip your head off." Ren growled to show she was serious.

The man leaned on one elbow, looking up at her, before poking her nose with a long finger. "Nope. That won't be happening. I'd be embarrassed to see you try, honestly."

"Grrr." Ren ground her teeth, leaning closer. She'd just have to overpower him with sheer force of will. But he didn't flinch, didn't blink, until they were nose to nose.

Then he said, conversationally, "Would you like some cookies? The pastry cook we have right now is quite good. They're in the tin to your left."

Ren's gaze slid sideways and there the tin was. It had flowers printed on it.

"Oh, and sit down," said the magus in her ear, and she collapsed into the chair that suddenly knocked into her knees.

Wildly, she looked around. Astolfo had his hands clasped behind his head, watching with joyful interest, while Hyde crouched down near the door, his gaze dreamy and faraway. The chair she'd fallen into was comfortably upholstered and the Master of Raven Tower was presenting her with cookies.

"Is any of this real?" she demanded. "What about the fairy controlling the boy that Astolfo mentioned?"

"One of my fairy servants," said the Master of Raven Tower, as if it wasn't very interesting. "Do take a cookie. They're molasses. And after you've tried it, tell me why you're so interested in pulling your people away from me."

Glaring, wishing for her fiery breath, Ren took a cookie and bit into it pointedly. The Master of Raven Tower watched her in amusement, which was not the reaction desired.

"You're draining my servants," she informed him. "Using them in your magic. And the humans, too, which is even more monstrous. Absolutely despicable."

"And you'd have me… what… send them back to your own dying world instead?" The Master bit into a cookie of his own, cocking an eyebrow at her.

Ren frowned. "What do you mean, dying?"

"Oh, come now. Even if you're immortal yourself, surely you know what dying means?"

Impatiently, Ren said, "Of course. But how can a world be dying?"

The Master leaned back in his chair. "Worlds die all the time." He gave a quick, wolfish grin. "Some of us fight against it, though. But your world—" and Ren shifted uncomfortably, because it wasn't her world, "—is about to collapse utterly. I'm surprised it's still functional at all, given how many holes have been torn through it."

And then Ren's vision doubled again, and the other man she'd seen, small, shriveled, and elderly, took the place of the Master of Raven Tower, saying sourly, "I told you, Jonathan. World 2m19 is unusual. It's been on the verge of collapse for decades, perhaps even centuries in local time."

Then the first man appeared, his teeth clenched in a faux smile as he said, "Yes, Gilbert, but that's not helpful to share right now."

Ren looked around again, wondering if Astolfo or dreamy-eyed Hyde was seeing this, or if it was somehow related to the madness potion she'd taken. But while Hyde still seemed dazed, Astolfo gave her a big, unsubtle wink.

Meanwhile, the Master of Raven Tower buried his face in his hands a moment. When he pulled them away, he gave her a rueful grin. "My partner," he said. "But we were talking about your friends, and how you wanted to save them. I truly believe, Miss, that if that's your goal… your best chance is helping us."