3. Ren Is A Little Confused

Ren followed Merlin through the forest, reluctantly trusting him to not lead her into the bandit group. Despite his voluminous cloak, he moved through the dense underbrush like a deer. But the pajamas Ren wore caught on every twig, and the soft house slippers didn't do a thing to protect her feet from roots and pebbles.

Around the tenth time she squeaked and cursed, Merlin silently pivoted to look back at her, his eyebrows raised in amusement.

"Didn't you give King Arthur a magic sword? How about giving me some magic armor?" Ren grouched.

"It'd be a lot less effort to just carry you, although I'm really not one of those zipping-around kind of guys."

"Harumph," said Ren, and stepped over another root.

"Speaking of effort, there might be a leetle problem, young lady." Merlin lifted a branch out of the way for Ren. "Maybe we should talk about it before we meet anybody else."

"Fine," snapped Ren, preparing to take everything he said with skepticism.

"Well… effort. So, the Naming you did stabilized my presence in this world, and bound me to you, but there's one thing it should also have done, and didn't…" Merlin paused and then said, "Oh, I think we're coming to the village edge of the forest. Maybe we should discuss this later after all!"

Ren grabbed Merlin's sleeve. "No, tell me what you're talking about, you jerk."

Merlin closed his own hand over Ren's on his sleeve as he turned back to gaze down at her. "Well, the ritual here's a little different from what I learned, but it should have established a channel between you and me for ongoing mana transfer. I don't think it did, though."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you're supposed to be recharging my mana and you're not. As to why…well, that's not important right now. What's important is that you really are lucky! Because unlike pretty much anybody else, I'm not going to run out… unless you demand things like magic armor!"

Ren squinted up at him. His white hair puffed around his head like a really misleading halo. Presumably he'd vanish if he ran out of mana. If he vanished but left behind a suit of magic armor equivalent to King Arthur's Excalibur… Tempting thought…

"Young lady? Why are you smiling in that worrying way?" Merlin put a finger over Ren's lips, which sent a shiver down her spine.

She pulled away, releasing his cloak. "Just reminding myself who you are." She quickly changed the subject. "You sort of said that bandit leader's dragon was also summoned. A familiar? How does that work?"

"I'm figuring that out," said Merlin. "You know, it's really exciting visiting a world so different from the usual one. It's like a whole new game or tv show. But there's a lot to catch up on, if you know what I mean."

And Ren kind of did, although she couldn't explain it. She still felt all those bubbles of story in the back of her head: stories she knew but could hardly verbalize as anything but 'stories about heroes who can be summoned to fight'. They felt like half-forgotten dreams, with details she only recognized after she learned them again.

"This village has certainly seen better times," announced Merlin cheerfully as they emerged from the forest. A stream crossed by a damaged wooden bridge lay between them and the outskirts of a ramshackle village. Some of the half-timbered buildings had burned recently and a few of them still smoked.

People still lived there, though they didn't seem eager to meet strangers. Somebody ducked around a corner and a door slammed nearby. A dog barked, and the bark turned into a muffled yelp. As Ren and Merlin slowly walked through the village, more doors closed and shutters banged shut.

Ren started to get annoyed. She'd been summoned here for a reason, so why was everybody running away from her? At the very least, she'd hoped to find better clothes for this environment.

"Am I some sort of monster?" she demanded of Merlin as they stopped at the village square where the roof of the local well had collapsed. She felt her face and the top of her head. "Do I have horns or something?"

"No, no," said Merlin. "I don't think it's you." As an afterthought, he added, "Or me, of course. It's probably those bandits."

"Hah!" said Ren, and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Hey! I'm here to help you! Come out!"

Nobody came out.

Then, from the far side of the village square, a small hand beckoned from an open window. "Psst!"

Ren ran to the window and came face to face with a small boy with dark hair and green eyes. His gaze went to her marked hand and then met her own and he whispered, "You're a Summoner?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." She'd certainly been thinking about summoning a lot since getting here…

"Then why are you here?" demanded the child. "The Summoner's Castle is that way. If you're here to help, you should be able to see it. And if you can't see it, you're one of the bad guys!"

"Ah!" said Merlin. "We did see the castle, young one. So you see, we're on your side!"

The boy regarded Merlin suspiciously, impressing Ren with his perception. "Well then, go there! Miss Ritsu is all alone and those bandits are hunting for her."

"Thank you," said Ren, and dragged Merlin away, around a corner, until they could just see the top of the crumbling castle beyond a hill to the west.

"The Summoner's Castle, eh?" said Merlin. "And Miss Ritsu all alone. Well, well, well. Is this fate?"

For some reason the question made Ren very grumpy. "No, it's a castle. And maybe there's better clothes there. Let's go."