23. Jekyll Presents To The Class

Ren found Cú in the kitchen again, sharpening some kitchen knives while seated on the table. He glanced up as she appeared in the doorway and frowned. "Problems?"

Making a face, Ren shrugged. "What do you think of Jekyll at this point?"

A look of understanding crossed Cú's face. "I think he has his uses, but I can't speak to his compatibility with you. If it's bad, he may be a lot more trouble than he's worth."

"I don't know," said Ren slowly. "It's early, yet. But he doesn't want to be alone with me right now without a chaperone or Seals." She glanced down at her hand with the fragmented Command Seals. They hadn't changed since she used the last one that morning. That morning? It seemed like days ago.

"I really hope these do come back like Ritsu said. Neither of the two I used yesterday have changed yet." She couldn't help giving Cú an anxious look.

He laughed out loud and then said, grinning at her, "You really are a strange girl. That look… I can't quite believe it's coming from the same person who insisted on walking unarmed into the lion's den. Yes, my little Master, they'll come back."

"How can you tell?" Ren demanded, eager for whatever reassurance he could provide.

He put down his knife and whetstone, hopped off the table and walked over to her. Taking her hand in his and holding it against his warm chest, he said, "Because you're my Master. It isn't quite the same as at home, but I still feel it."

Ren stared at his large hands covering hers uneasily, and remembered her thought, right after she and Merlin had crashed through the forest canopy, that she was the bad kind of lucky. She tugged a little at his hand and he released her instantly. "Anybody you summon will crave your touch, and wish to touch you themselves, my lady. Even the brush of your hand through our hair reaffirms our connection."

"Ah," said Ren, pieces falling into place. "And with Jekyll, I summoned somebody who can't stand the thought of touching me." She pursed her lips. "Maybe he'd prefer I send him back. Not that I know how to do that--I'm pretty sure it's not like releasing a fish back into a river, Cú—but Ritsu might."

Cú shrugged. "There's always the old fashioned way." His red spear appeared in his outstretched hand.

With a sigh, Ren said, "If it comes to that. Meanwhile, the portal must be fixed so it stops summoning Servants with big warning labels all over them!" She finished less calmly than she intended, caught her breath and added, "So I need you to come chaperone Jekyll and I, or else he'll spend all his time worrying about Hyde f—" she bit her tongue on what she'd been about to say and then, her cheeks hot, said carefully, "about Hyde being inappropriate. And maybe you could explain to him that, uh, just explain to him what you just told me."

Once again, Cú laughed at her, and then held Gáe Bolg out of reach when she snatched at it furiously. "He knows, my lady. I'm sorry, I'm sorry for laughing, it's just your expressions—"

He chortled again before getting himself under control. "I don't think Jekyll ever had a warrior's training, or experienced the intense bonds of brotherhood formed in battle. And that era he's from… Jack's from the same time, isn't she? An era where they hid all their passions in the dark?" He gave Ren a keenly penetrating look. "Are you sure it's the portal at fault for those two?"

Ren wasn't, but she also wasn't about to directly admit that. "Yes! I mean, look, the portal's broken and leaking, it has to be fixed, right? If you don't like my plans now, you're going to hate them if I have to also deal with a new Servant every day."

"Maybe the little miss could summon instead?" Cú suggested. "I know there's a battle with her summons, but I think we could help out with that."

After thinking that over for a long moment, Ren said, "I'll think about that more if we can't fix it. Now, please come on. It might as well be you, because I bet you tomorrow's cooking duty that Merlin'll make you do the final magics anyhow."

"Not a bet I'm going to take," said Cú, with a disgusted curl of his mouth. "That lazy ass."

"It's your own fault for being so good with the runes, Lancer," said Merlin cheerfully. "If you didn't want to use them, you shouldn't have learned them." He stood in the kitchen doorframe beside Jekyll who still seemed pale and unsettled.

Fiercely, Cú said, "Hah! Do you think I could have refused her? Or done less than my best? That woman could sniff out what she called sloth a mile away. I'd just get settled in at a nice creek and *bam* she'd pop up out of the bushes and chase me all the way back to her lodge."

"I'm she didn't want you to get bored," said Merlin comfortingly. "Young warriors with too much time on their hands do get bored, unless somebody keeps their lives interesting."

"I like fishing," muttered Cú. "It's relaxing."

"Haven't you ever heard that you can relax when you're dead?" Merlin teased.

Ren kept staring at Jekyll as the two other Servants bantered over her head. She couldn't help herself. He met her gaze only briefly before looking determinedly at Cú instead, but she noticed his gloves were rumpled and his hair fluffed up. He looked like somebody who'd been in a scuffle, possibly with himself.

"Enough," Ren said abruptly, cutting off a whine from Cú. "Lead the way to the portal room, guys. This'll be a teamwork exercise."

They all fell silent and then, as Merlin and Jekyll moved out of the door, Cú muttered something she didn't entirely catch about women and dashed after them. With dignity, feeling like she was herding cats or perhaps children, Ren brought up the rear.

The blue lines on the walls of the portal room flickered fitfully as they filed in. Ren stared at the swirling portal, with its darkening blue radiance. If the negative aura had begun pooling, she couldn't yet detect it against the background noise of her own doubts and fears.

"Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak," said Jekyll, who had placed himself in front of the others like a lecturer before a class. "I am, as I originally mentioned, not precisely a mage, but I've managed to develop a few theories about the situation within this room all the same." His gaze swept across his little audience, and Ren realized he seemed calmer like this.

"First: this portal is a natural occurrence, rather like a volcano. And I suspect what emerges in its natural form isn't necessarily a creature. The magical structures in this room regulate and stabilize energy, and somehow, from that, the local Summoners call forth familiars." He paused and then added apologetically, "I don't quite know how. None of the elemental systems I understand seem to apply, so I'm sure I'm missing a lot of nuance."

Ren waved a hand. "I probably wouldn't follow it anyhow. Go on."

"Yes, well. I have some notes on how the structure can be temporarily repaired. It'll require daily maintenance but it would stop the energy leak. However… I couldn't resist looking into how Serendipity is calling Servants rather than local familiars, and I think that's possibly because of the destabilization. So repairing it while maintaining the crucial destabilization could be tricky."

Merlin, tapping his fingers together, glanced up. "My perspective is very different, but you could be right. We've all noticed that the Master-Servant connection is different here. Why do you think that is?"

And suddenly Jekyll wasn't the lecturer, but the student presenting to the professor. He dropped his gaze to the floor as he thought. "Ah. The Holy Grail ritual that summons Servants was adapted from an older ritual. When rituals are adapted, new pieces are added and old pieces dropped. I think…" His gaze rose to fix on Ren. "I think she is serving as an intermediary between the Throne of Heroes and the portal."

Ren's collection of knowledge regarding Servants and their stories was fuzzy on the details of the magic that shaped them, but this sent off vague warning bells. "You mean I'm a Grail?"

Very slowly, Jekyll shook his head. "Not that. Or if you are, you're an extremely stripped down version of one, limited to the summoning aspect. But if I'm correct, you probably have more influence over the Servants you summon than anybody else would without a catalyst."

"You might say she's a universal catalyst," said Merlin lightly.

"Hah," said Ren. "Or maybe there's more going on with this broken portal than we know so far. I certainly didn't summon Artoria or Lobo. I wouldn't even know how to make a demi-Servant, or pseudo-Servant or whatever. I don't even know how to make a Servant, not on any kind of practical level. I've been bleeding into a portal and wishing. Does that sound like how a Grail would work?" she finished breathlessly.

"Lobo and Artoria are probably part of a different modified ritual," said Jekyll cautiously. "I think they're not factors in understanding what's happening with us." He looked between the other Servants.

Cú had been staring hard at Merlin for a long time now, Ren realized abruptly. She looked between the two of them nervously.

"How much of this did you do, magus?" demanded Cú, and Ren's nerves multiplied.

Airily, Merlin said, "As I've already told Ren, I wasn't involved with her creation or her arrival here. I also didn't give her those Seals. She came to me exactly the pretty package she is." He then corrected himself, "Or more literally, I came to her, since I can already see those wheels of suspicion turning in your mind, Ren."

Cú's flat stare didn't change. "Anything else?"

"Well, my perspective is so very different from the schools you and Jekyll have studied, so you see, it's hard for me to corroborate everything Jekyll's proposed. It could be true. And if so, we're all being used by some entity I'd very much like to meet. As I already told you." Now Merlin's gaze was as hard as Cú's, and Ren felt like she'd found herself between two duelists about to draw blades. The pressure of both their wills crashed against her.

As she opened her mouth to complain, the pressure vanished as Merlin suddenly laughed, putting his hand behind his head. "The thing is, everybody always gives so much weight to what I say that I'd really rather not say anything until I'm sure, you know?"

"That's fine with me," said Ren firmly. "I'm not interested in the theory. You can do that when I'm asleep. Right now I want the practical element: fixing the portal so I don't have to summon something tomorrow or else lose my mind."

Merlin smiled and Cú sighed, while Jekyll said hastily, "Yes, I'm sorry we went off on such a tangent. That… always seems to happen with me. But I've made some notes around the room with chalk, Cú Chulainn, and—"

The conversation dissolved into yet more magical discussion Ren couldn't really follow, but at least this time they seemed to be doing something as well. Sighing, Ren sat against the wall and tried to learn what she could without interrupting them. Possibly, her life would depend on it.