Torches both mystical and mundane blazed through the Summoner's Castle, brightening every shadow. Despite this, Jekyll drifted through the compound unnoticed, shielded by the Presence Concealment that was Jekyll's one strength as a Heroic Spirit.
He was on edge, as he'd been on edge since Serendipity vanished: not the on edge of our fortress has been stolen from us, but the on edge of I, I, we could just kill everything… He was Jekyll, but he was also Hyde, and more of Hyde than he wanted to be, even now. Hyde would start cutting his way through the problems. But there were two Demi-Servants around, along with the power that had allowed the invasion to slip around their senses. Releasing Hyde would produce a lot of gore but very few answers, and if the Castle were to be retaken, answers were needed.
Come on. We can pull answers out of their gut. It'll be fun.
Jekyll slipped into the main keep behind one of the common soldiers, trying not to listen as Hyde explained exactly where to stab the man so that he'd stay alive but immobilized for hours. Carefully he made his way down to the basement. Two more soldiers were in front of the door that the villagers had barricaded themselves behind, while voices came from the portal chamber.
While keeping an eye on the soldiers at the kitchen door, he eased down the hall to eavesdrop on the portal conversation.
"—done something. But it saves us some trouble if we're not going to be capping it right away."
A soldier moved past Jekyll and into the portal room to report on the courtyard situation to a Lord Snow, a new voice, as cool and distant as his name. After Snow dismissed the soldier, he spoke to the original voice, Kokine, as an equal. "I need to talk to Beowulf and Yan Qing. We'll bring her in once we've accounted for all of her old familiars."
Ah, thought Jekyll, and ah thought Hyde, and the thoughts of the two merged together into one.
Torches moved through the dark forest beyond the castle walls, slowly coming toward where Jack huddled with Ritsu and the three children in the bushes they'd landed in. She didn't know what to do. Gil hadn't come along, and Ritsu kept falling asleep, and Mommy was gone, no matter how Jack tried to call her.
Those torches weren't a problem. If they got too close, she'd put them out. But there was a lot more than torches moving around the forest. Torches hadn't been what crept through the courtyard, blinking and fizzing like soap bubbles to Jack's perceptions. She already knew nobody else could see them quite the way she did, and if she left the babies to go put out some torches, what would happen? Would she come back and more than Ritsu would be hurt? More than Mommy would be gone? She didn't know. It frightened her and made her head hurt.
"Wake up, Ritsu!" hissed Ichigo, and Ritsu stirred from where she'd been staring at her injured familiar. Jack looked at her hopefully, in case she had some instructions. But the bigger girl just shook her head and then winced, her eyes dull and distant.
Ichigo looked at Jack instead. He was the biggest of Ritsu's little orphans. He and Kay were too big to be Jack's baby dolls, but they were fun to play games with. They knew lots: all the rules and all the tricks. But Ichigo didn't know what to do here. He kept looking at Jack like Jack was Ritsu or Mommy. That scared her too. Her experience at taking care of anybody started and stopped at helping baby Lulu put on a new smock and tying ribbons in her hair.
"Where are we going to sleep, Jack?" whispered Ichigo, patting Lulu's head as she dozed on his lap. "Pan's getting tired, too. Are those men with the torches going to find us?"
"No!" said Jack, and stood up, staring hard at the bobbing lights. She couldn't use her mist because Mommy was gone and those hearts really hadn't been any better than Merlin had said, way back on her first day. But she could move really fast, and when she used one of her special powers, she was as invisible as the castle's attackers had been.
But what if somebody came for the others while she was gone? Ritsu had been hurt when Jack had only turned her back for a few minutes!
Better to go fast, then. Jack hopped out of the bush and ran through the forest to the light that had wandered away from the others. It was a whiskered man in quilted armor, calling under his breath, "Hey kiddies, where did you go?"
Jack's knives flashed. He gasped breathlessly, but the sound of his insides pouring out, wet and beautiful (if missing some important parts), was sloppy and just a little bit squeaky. After that Jack picked up the torch he'd dropped and doused it in the pile of innards next to the twitching body. Then, quick, quick, she ran back to the babies, wiping away the blood that had splashed on her face.
They were all still there! She wanted to cheer, but only Mommy would appreciate that, so she stayed silent like she always used to be.
Ichigo said, "Did you kill him?" and when Jack nodded, he said, "Good." But Ritsu frowned, and Jack knew that it wasn't okay that Ichigo had praised her.
"They'll notice…" said Ritsu, and right at that very moment another torch passed where the dead one was, and started shouting. Ritsu's brow wrinkled like her head hurt. "They know you're here now, Jack."
Dread curled in Jack's stomach. Had she made a mistake? But what else could she do but kill and dismember?
"I could kill them all?" she suggested. "While you run away. Gil will find you." This idea made Jack feel the closest to happy she'd been since Mommy left. It was exactly the kind of thing Jack was good at.
"Where do we go?" said Ichigo anxiously. "They want Ritsu. They'll come to our house again."
Jack looked at Ritsu hopefully, but Ritsu touched the back of her head and winced. "I… I'm having trouble thinking not-now things."
The shouting spread from one torch to another, and some of them got closer. Jack shifted back and forth. If she killed more, would that be more mistakes? Maybe if she waited just a little longer, Gil would show up and tell her what to do. Or an idea would occur to Ritsu—
Lulu woke up, looked around, and started crying. Immediately the voices associated with the torches went silent, before starting to call to each other with renewed vigor.
Almost in tears herself, Jack scooped up Lulu and hugged her close, whispering nonsense to her like Mommy did for Jack, until finally Lulu's sobs became whimpers and she wrapped herself around Jack like a little monkey. "Everybody go that way," Jack whispered, shifting the toddler's weight and pointing in the direction with the least lights.
"What about Ritsu?" said Ichigo, balking.
Jack growled at him wordlessly and he growled back. Then Jack remembered Ritsu said they had to keep using words with Ichigo after he got hurt before, so Jack took a deep breath and said, "Help her! You help her walk!"
"Sweeping us up," muttered Ritsu, struggling to her feet. "They'll know where we are."
"Then I'll kill them!" said Jack. "Protect Ritsu and the kids! That's my job! Now run!"
Ichigo and Jack both moved easily in the dark forest, but Pan was small and Ritsu was dizzy, and the lights just kept getting closer and closer. There was something else moving around the woods too now. Jack could feel it. She wasn't sure if it was the enemy's own version of Information Erasure, or if it was one of those Demi-Servants she didn't know. But feral wraith that Jack was, she recognized the torches had become the bait and lightless monster the jaws of a trap.
They came across a stream and acting on instinct, Jack made them walk upstream through the water, even though the water was so cold on poor Pan's bare feet that he started to cry too. Then they clambered out along some smooth rocks and paused to drink, while Jack listened and thought, patting Lulu's back.
What Ritsu had called the 'sweep' hadn't actually kept up with them. There were still many lights centering on the castle. But shadows moved through the woods, shadows without accompanying lights. And worse, the babies were getting so tired, and Pan didn't have shoes, and Ritsu needed some kind of doctoring, something better than what Jack could do.
Jack had to find someplace for them to hide and rest. Not the village. Mommy had said the village mostly didn't like them. The only people who liked them from the village had been in the castle kitchen. And this forest was all wrong. If they were running through a proper city, there'd be a million places to hide. Nobody would ever find them. They could go up, or underneath, or through a maze of buildings.
Jack looked up, but the trees weren't good for hiding in. And there was no underneath in a forest, as far as she could tell.
"We have to walk more," decided Jack.
Pan started crying. Quiet sobs, not like Lulu's, but deep ones, where his eyes squeezed closed and the pain creaked out of him. Jack stared at him in horror, before looking at Ichigo and Ritsu. But Ritsu was barely standing, with Ichigo was entirely focused on her. Yet there was no way Jack could hold both Lulu and Pan, not in the comfy cozy way babies liked to be held. Gil could just barely do it but Jack just wasn't big enough.
"Pan," hissed Ichigo. "Shut up! Jack—" The older boy gave Jack a desperate look, at which point Ritsu started throwing up. Her gagging echoed off the surrounding trees, and Ichigo threw his arms around her to keep her from falling over entirely.
Jack looked around wildly. Lulu was whimpering now too, but the shadows that tried to hide in Jack's blind spot moved nearby. They'd been found, and it was just a matter of the bad thing moving in. "What do I do?" muttered Jack. "Mommy, what do I do? What do I do?"
She remembered Mommy stroking her hair, telling her she deserved a hug. Promising to fight for her. Such a silly Mommy. It was Jack's job to fight for Mommy.
But fighting here wouldn't work, so Jack had to be the Mommy instead. She had to take care of the babies and Ritsu the way Mommy took care of her.
Then Jack had an idea.
"We're not here," she announced, and then dragged Pan by the hand over to where Ritsu knelt. "Shh, shh. It's okay, Ritsu." Jack patted Ritsu's hair. "It's okay, Pan. I'm going to do a magic trick, okay? We're all going to go away. Shh, shh." She patted Pan's hair, and kissed Lulu's cheek, trying her best to make them all be quiet. If they could all be quiet, all together, Jack would make them disappear. She'd never made anybody else disappear before, but if the babies were hers like she was Mommy's, surely they'd disappear when Jack did?
The mind trick, blind trick, behind the mirror trick, moved closer. But it was okay. It didn't matter how close it got, as long as Pan stopped crying and Lulu didn't start. She patted his head more, whispering to him, singing a nonsense song about tricks in the dark. And as soon as his sobs stopped….
…she held them all close, and erased them.
The world shifted around Jack dizzily, in a way she'd never seen or felt before. She was in darkness, in a forest, and in an empty space where black silhouettes of men with torches froze in confusion. The blackness of the silhouettes radiated out from little pendants around their necks, Jack noticed, and remembered. Their mind trick, blind trick, behind the mirror trick wasn't actually theirs at all, and because of that, she could see them even when they couldn't see her.
Then Ritsu started throwing up again, and the empty space began to crack apart around them. Jack whimpered and tried to peel Lulu off her, because even if dismembering was a mistake, it was better than letting Ritsu hurt more.
Hey, big sister, thanks for being so patient…
Golden portals hummed open, blades flashed, and four corpses with magic torches and shattered black vials as pendants collapsed in a scattered pattern near Jack and the kids. Her heart pounding, she looked up.
Above them, perched on a branch that seemed far too precarious, grinning as he kicked his feet, was Gil.
Many miles away, on a recently blasted hillside in a pine forest overlooking a once-thriving mining town, Cú Chulainn slid a corpse off Gae Bolg. It had been a decent little fight, but the Lancer was in no mood to appreciate such pleasures. He'd followed the lines of communication from Lord Kirri's HQ after Lord Kirri had killed one of his brethren, which had led him here, to another of Queen Mada's knights. The knight had given him a bit of exercise, but nothing about Lady Serendipity's location. In the end, Cú had been convinced that the knight had nothing to share, which is why he was a corpse rather than screaming.
"What a mess," said a voice, and Cú whirled around, weapon raised. He didn't lower it when he recognized Merlin, standing high on the branch of a fallen tree.
"You. Have you found her?" Cú asked, but he knew Merlin hadn't. If Serendipity was free and healthy, she would have contacted him herself.
"It's only a matter of time," said Merlin cheerfully. "Meanwhile, I see you're keeping busy. Did he knock down the forest?" He nodded at the corpse.
Rolling his shoulders, Cú glanced around at the local devastation. "Yeah. I was a little surprised when he did it down in the town the first time."
"Ah," said Merlin, studying the damage. "I wonder why they're bothering with Demi-Servants if some of them can do damage of this caliber on their own." His focus snapped back to Cú. "But good work! One less enemy for Ren when I find her." He tilted his head. "I suppose that must have used up most of your magical energy?"
"Nah," said Cú, a grin cracking across his face. "I've got enough for the hunting I'll be doing."
"Hmm," Merlin said. "Be careful, Hound. Without Serendipity, there's no refresh coming."
A spasm of rage made Cú's fist tighten on his spear. "You think I don't know that?" She'd brushed his hair the night before she'd vanished, and he'd held her in his arms as she'd fallen asleep. He'd left her after an hour to do some work on the walls, and sometime between then and dawn, she'd simply vanished. Meanwhile Merlin, still in disgrace, hadn't even been present: not when she vanished, and not when they'd discovered her empty bed. "It doesn't matter. I have what I'll need."
Distantly Merlin said, "Yes, I suppose she topped you off before they stole her out from under you."
Cú's muscles surged and Gae Bolg ripped through the air toward Merlin, moving as a red blur. For an instant, the Magus's eyes widened. But that was all the satisfaction Cú got, because a half-heartbeat later, the spear passed through only an expanding cloud of dark purple flowers as Merlin retreated from the field.
A moment later, the red spear reappeared in Cú's hand. He hung around a few moments in case Merlin wanted to give him another free shot. But finally he shrugged, stretched, and went hunting for his next target.