Some of the questions Cter had to endure…

"You do not get to choose a monster form to inhabit as a Monster Mage?" was asked with a bit too much enthusiasm and curiosity for Cter to be comfortable underneath the expensive hat she found herself under from the noblewoman shooting her neck forwards.

"Which arm did Queen Toriel and King Asgore give to their respective Monster Mage to represent them?" was another question that gave Cter a startle as to how misguided it was.

Not all questions were such...distinct and colorful left turns though. Most of them were pretty relaxed and more about giving Cter a reason to explain about Jarasevo Castle, to explain about Jarasevo itself, Monster Country, her journey as a mage, how she found the taste of her slice of cake, and other more mundane questions that leaned more towards mingling rather than anything else.

Some of the questions from underneath the strange hats and expensive wigs were, as evident by the long blinks from the confused Monster Mage, a bit out there even for her who'd seen more of the world than any of the nobles had.

"Is green and purple popular in Monster Country?" asked with a rather condescending snide up and down Cter's attire.

"Don't monster fur smell worse than animal fur?" asked without the slightest clue to how dumb the question was.

"What is the average air velocity of an unladen bird that carries you over a disappointingly small gap?"

It was like some had never even bothered to open up a book in their entire life!

Humans…

Tsk tsk tsk.

The clicking of Cter's tongue was muted by the soft sponge and chilled cream of the licorice cake she finally got to enjoy after enduring what felt like hours of questioning. It was a soft bitterness to the taste, with a few long, thin strips of the licorice root still present that wrapped around one of Cter's teeth.

Tasted fantastic after what she had gone through, and was kept refreshingly cool by her magic. She was still the center of the festivities, but the human crowd had retreated to discuss what she had told them in her varied tone of voice to match the varied tones of their questions, with some having the two tones clash like a poorly maintained piano. Cter sank down into an ornate chair, flicking a nearby parasol closer with some stasis magic to angle it towards the sun. With shadow on her face she caught the eyes of some of the humans that had asked some of the better questions and bowed to their small applause to her abilities before returning to conversation.

The cold of her cake did have her wish that she had asked for some tea as well to along with it, although that would've probably clumped itself even if Cter kept it warm via magic. Maybe she would fetch some as she went for a second helping of cake.

The first second helping that she had planned to get, naturally. She had to taste as many as possible to figure out which ones she would note down for Idyll. It was important that she undertook such a vital and, well, important task for herself!

Very important.

"Do you have any sugar or milk in your tea, Monster Mage?"

And it would seem that she was to be given a cup of tea by…

Wait...

"Terri?"

The pouring from the white, ceramic pot painted with blue patterns in the form of glaciers stopped, and a pair of even bluer eyes narrowed underneath a deeply furrowed brow. "I would prefer it if you addressed me by my title please, Monster Mage." He put extra emphasis on Cter's to express his annoyance.

"Sorry, Royal Mage," Cter said back as an apology. "I have my tea with some drops of lemon if it is Golden Flower. Otherwise half a spoon of sugar if it is black." There was something on her mind though that she had to ask the Royal Mage of the Hjearta Court that sat down the saucer carrying her steaming cup next to her on the garden table in reach. "Huvett and Huvtvao?" said Cter while Terri carried a chair over to the table to join Cter at it. At first it struck Cter as weird that he didn't use stasis magic to move the chair for him. "Where is he?"

"Been a while since you were in the company of a human mage rather than a Monster Mage?" Terri challenged with a raised eyebrow underneath his auburn hair reaching to the middle of his eyes and otherwise-frozen like violent spikes of ice sheared by a blizzard wind. It was as if his hair took on the aspect of one of Hjearta's glaciers. Wild, but not unkempt. "Well, bad faith on my part there a bit since it's been years since I did something else than ice magic, but still, my question still stands."

Despite being the Royal Mage of Ice Terri still sported a very warm demeanor around him. Some of it was for show, that Cter could tell both in his aura and in his eyes not smiling as widely as his mouth did. Something had him interested in Cter though. Something Huvett and Huvtvao said? "Monster Priestess Frioke is the one that usually takes care of human mage guests at the castle, with the first Monster Mage Kry being responsible for...scouting ahead prior to their arrival." Cter drank some tea before she said too much. "And the travel here was mostly myself in the carriage."

All of it was herself in the carriage, really.

"Yes, Priestess Frioke was very kind in her assessment of my magic during my visit to Jarasevo Castle." Terri scoured the crowd for something, most likely Huvett and Huvtvao. Although why he needed to scour was a bit strange since Huvett and Huvtvao was the second thing any guest would see when visiting Fenkeep Castle just after the castle itself. "A lovely monster, she was. Is, I hope?"

To Cter's knowledge, "Yes," Priestess Frioke was still alive. She had no real reason to die while Cter was away. "Your ice magic did keep the Royal Purple cold even until I left for Hjearta. So do take my warmest congratulations from my soul, Royal Mage of Ice."

Cter chose to include 'warmest' deliberately to gauge the reaction from the mage famous for his ice magic. Would he let it slip by, or would he pounce on it like a snowdrake? Punce on it, that was. His aura might have been warm, but was his soul that as well?

"Well," Terri chuckled while gesturing up to the sun, "while I might be ice at heart and soul I'm still nothing compared to nature. On days like these I've learned to dial my magic back a bit so that I'm not experiencing too big a sustained temperature difference. Experiencing the shock of jumping into an icy lake after a while in a heated sauna is good for the health in the short run, but keeping it prolonged isn't. I mostly prefer to keep my ice magic a bit more distant during summertime if I can. Excellent excuse to focus on studying and to keep away from any of the inhabitants of the castle that see me more as a prized symbol rather than a human mage that could revolutionize Hjearta's ice market if he was just given the resources to."

And there was the cold in his aura that Cter knew that he was hiding, oozing from his mouth like a slow breath during the middle of winter. It even seemed to condensate the warm steam from the tea he drank into tiny drops that melted into steam again before reaching back down into his tea.

"But anyways!" Terri almost sang to raise his facade of warmth again. "I do owe my position here at Fenkeep Castle to Priestess Frioke. Without her rather-marvelously-complex signature I'd still be traveling from town to town like I did a year or so ago in that weathered robe of mine." With a playful thumb he bounced his ornate shoulder to have the tassels on them dance. "And now I don this, custom tailored for me, and me alone. Overall it is pretty..." He not-too-subtly leaned in over his elbow on the table. "Chill?"

Cter wasn't sure if she understood that. Chill? Chill how? Never had she heard chill in that context before.

The Royal Mage of Ice's head slumped down with a weary sigh, his spiky hair tapping at the frills of the parasol. "Oh how I wish that I could just figure out these ice puns as easily as Kallorean. Why ice is so synonyms with jests I've no idea. Seems a bit...cold...to do so?"

Nope.

Did not do it for Cter that one neither.

Terri Fyed sighed again, retreating back to his chair with his cup touching his lips. "Just feels strange that I need to become as much an ice jester as I need to be an ice mage to be respected." He peered with narrowed eyes into the distance while drinking. "Do I have to revolutionize the Hjearta ice market via limerick and vaporous poetry? Is that what my life as the Royal Mage of Ice is leading me to?"

Unfortunately, Cter couldn't really answer that one for Terri. He seemed to be feeling quite the juxtaposition of his position. Coming back from Xoff after helping out with the plague there to be expected to produce ice puns must have struck him with quite the stupor.

"Maybe I'm just making a glacier out of a flake," shrugged the Royal Mage while again letting his eyes glance over the small lake of humans bobbing from the waves of conversation stirred by Cter. "I haven't been a Royal Mage for long, after all. Been just a few months for me. Melted away just like the snow. I did good in Xoff, but here I've...barely done anything at all."

Cter saw a lot of her worries in the Royal Mage. She'd been a Monster Mage for longer, but a sizable chunk of that time was spent in carriages towards Xoff and Hjearta. Not to take anything away from Terri's career, but Cter had gone through a lot more than he had. At least, she assumed as much. She didn't sense that Terri had accidentally discovered a new type of magic in his aura. "The melting gives life to new flowers," she tried to cheer up. "You need the cold of winter to appreciate the warmth of summer too."

A sharp huff of air was shot out of Terri's nostrils, shaking his entire body. "Shows how much we've come if we can jest this leisurely about winter considering how frightening it was for the people of Hjearta just a hundred or so years ago. Back then winter was spent huddled in the homes praying that the food would be enough. Now it's spent harvesting ice and preserving the cold rather than hope that it goes away. Down in Xoff they've begun to incorporate ice into their cooking, with ice cubes imported from Hjearta placed onto flat dough to cook the bread with a hard crust and a very soft interior easily groped out and used for another batch."

A frosty cloud breathed heavily down the length of Terri's sleeve glowing as icy-blue as his eyes, with a spinning snowflake forming out of transparent ice taking shape in his loosely tightened palm. "That winter has gone from something to fear to something to look forward to because of human magic..."

The way Terri's aura was excited to make his ice was...different. Different to how Cter made hers. Different to recalling from memory about cold and ice. As if...it was...not...from his memories? Not at all. There were no memories of his at all in his ice magic!

"And that I'm supposed to embody. That is what it means to be the Royal Mage of Ice. To take what was feared and make it anew. Make it something to look forward to." The icy snowflake crumbled into shards that collected into a pile in Terri's sleeved palm. "Not to wait until the hourglass runs out, but to turn it back over and show that it is better that way. To realize the possibilities that human magic promises, and to show them effortlessly." He spread the shards out in front of him like seeds on a newly-tilted farm. The blades of grass the shards touched were covered in shimmering frost that crackled as it was immediately melted. "Maybe that's why ice magic is associated with jests and jokes now that I think about it."

It took a few silent seconds before Cter realized that Terri had turned his head towards her and was waiting for her to look him in his eyes. His aura was all that she had focused on, completely blind to his body. Once she did meet his eyes, he lifted his cup for her to clink at in a friendly cheer.

"Turning what used to kill us into something that benefits us in a way we could never guess sounds familiar, doesn't it?" Terri posed with a quirk of his askew brow.

While his parallel wasn't really exact since human magic was more the spirituality of death rather than the act itself, it was still close enough that Cter understood where Terri was going with it.

"Ice magic is laughing at death one more time on top of laughing at death which comes with human magic in general. The second time seems to be what makes it humorous."

Something about Terri's wild, red hair standing at its spiky angle on top of his regal outfit in dark blue and white with golden accents had Cter taking his words as wisdom. Perhaps that it showed how far he had come, and thus he should be respected? Maybe. Maybe it was that no one else in the courtyard besides Cter and Terri would actually treat what he said as serious. Chalking it up to just mage talk instead of the human behind the mage. That he didn't use any memories to prompt his ice magic was proof if proof was needed that there was something more going on underneath the spiky hairs.

And for that, Terri had Cter's curiosity.

The Fourth Monster Mage clinked her cup of tea with the Hjearta Royal Mage of Ice.

With introductions done and done Terri seemed to sit a bit more comfortably in his chair. What was left of his frosty cloud quickly warmed away as he swung his hand towards the crumbs on Cter's plate. "So how was the licorice cake, Monster Mage?"

"Delicious," Cter answered without having to think about it for a single moment. Because it truly was. "You said it was sourced from your family's farm?" Cter wouldn't mind passing by there on the way back to place a Royal Order for Jarasevo Castle. If it was on the other way then she'd just order by post. She was given some magical seals to use, and providing Barbeqa and Idyll with licorice to experiment with was a good enough reason for a Royal Order according to her judgment.

A judgment that was slightly biased, yes, but not enough to warrant it being compromised.

According to the biased judgment.

"Yes, that I said." Whether he said it in a joking matter or not Cter couldn't tell. "Grew it and other herbs for medicinal purposes when my family first settled down some generations ago. With the Royal Decrees from Queen Toriel and King Asgore the medicinal landscape shifted from the old ways of strong herbs to healing magic. My family still gets orders for medicinal herbs since miasma hasn't stopped making people sick just because healing magic exists, but herbs for injuries and milder ailments have been introduced more into cooking."

Huh…

"As in, people had herbs for those injuries and ailments at home for said injuries and ailments, but with healing magic being more widespread and available those herbs aren't needed for injuries and ailments?" Cter drank some more tea to stop her from repeating herself. "And now those herbs are instead used with cooking?"

"Pretty much what I was about to say, yes."

Albeit with less repetition, Cter guessed.

Thinking about it, Cter felt a bit stupid for not having realized it herself. It perfectly described why the Royal Decree had been the introduction to a golden age of monsters and humans. Humans had uses for things which monsters helped with, freeing up those things to have different uses which covered a wider field, a field which was then found a magical solution for which repeated the process.

And Cter had just eaten a moist, succulent slice of that Royal Decree.

Amazing.

Truly.

"Those herbs still used for medicinal purposes is how I got my magical potential scouted. One of the apprentices from Clinic Hill was visiting to buy some seeds for the herbs still relevant to medicine today at the behest of Bonny Sallus and to learn how to best cultivate them in a different climate." Terri made a motion of his hand somewhere yonder in the vague direction of where Xoff was. "Lerjung, she was called. She's the reason why I'm sitting here as a Royal Mage of Ice, and for that I can't thank her enough. Also from Hjearta, but had almost forgotten our language from having stayed in Xoff for so long. Her eyes had this almost orange hue to it, like an old cat. I remember asking her about it one day when I helped her with sorting some seeds, and she turned to me to say in her almost broken accent that a mage's eyes took on the color of their soul in their later years. I asked her back if she could see the color of my soul if she looked hard enough into my eyes." Terri harked to not have his voice become too nostalgic. "She obliged my childish request because she was worried that my eyes would pop out if I opened them wider and with more pout than I did, and in doing so she saw that I had potential in my aura. While she couldn't see the color of my soul, she could definitely see what magic I would be proficient in, she said."

Ice magic. Sure matched his eyes.

"Whether or not it was a lucky guess, she actually knew, or if it was just her encouragement saying that which led me to become the Royal Mage of Ice, I don't know, and frankly I don't want to know. Magic might be a science nowadays, but it's still rooted in emotion, after all."

His ice magic was rooted differently than Cter's though. Exactly how she hadn't managed to figure out. If she could do it without asking Terri that would have been ideal, since then…

Then…

No, it was just pride. No other reason than Cter being prideful. A challenge, yes, but a challenge that wasn't necessary.

Cter was a Monster Mage though, and growing into the more prideful aspects of her title meant she was getting more comfortable with being one. She would be able to figure out Terri's quirk on her own!

For that though she needed more of his magic. More for her to feel around in. To get deep inside and rummage around in his heart of hearts and learn all of his secrets so that Cter could manifest her own magic never before seen!

Yes…

Oh yes…

"C...Cter?"

She found herself with her shoulders hunkered down and her hands rubbing together gleefully underneath a low giggle that had her sleeve glowing a bit too eagerly. Terri's perplexed question stopped her rubbing hands in their track with her eyes wide having realized what she had just done. "Hm?" she tried to save after a cough and sitting up straight again in her chair. "Magic being a science nowadays? Yes, that I feel as well." As subtly as she could, Cter hid her sleeve inside her purple mantle for it to calm down a bit. "Professor Leraull was quite diligent in trying to bridge the thinking between humanities and magic during that first year."

Terri's eyes ran up and down the Monster Mage acting too casually to be casual. "Right," he said, unconvinced through a minuscule gap in his lips. With a slight pause on Cter's too-wide a smile Terri shrugged with his eyebrows and returned to his tea. "You traveled past Soul's School on your journey here, I presume? Did you meet with Professor Leraull?"

"I did," answered Cter with a lean to get an ocular inspection of the remaining cakes. The princess cake was almost gone, but there seemed to be a bit left. "He was in good health, before you ask. Told me to wish you the best from him."

Terri's eyes followed Cter's over to the long table that had seen a lot of traffic judging by the small piles of gravel reaching up the sturdy legs. "Good to hear," he said while thinking about something else. Cter could easily guess what it was. Even if she was a monster she could still put weight on the fact that she was an important lady visiting Terri's court and was looking hungrily towards the table of various cakes which she would have to get up from her chair to go get.

The Royal Mage of Ice was forced to offer himself to bring Cter another slice of cake.

Because of the implication.

And right on cue, Terri turned his head back to face Cter. "Would you like another slice?" he offered with a thumb over his shoulder.

"Oh!" Cter perked with acted surprise to the Royal Mage being so courteous even though he didn't have to. "Thank you, Royal Mage."

"Same licorice cake or do you want to try another one?" Terri asked while Cter reached for her empty plate. "I'm sure you can assume that you're entitled to the rose, Monster Mage."

That smile he gave Cter…

"Y-Yes," she managed to force out after her fluster had finished echoing inside of her. "Please, and thank you." After regaining her composure Cter picked up her empty plate with her sleeved hand and handed it over to Terri. She made sure that her fingers were reaching as far as they could underneath the plate. To her luck Terri took it with his sleeved hand too, and their fingers briefly touched.

"Oh, do forgive," the Royal Mage said after the...accidental...bump. He moved the plate over to his naked hand with a lingering look on his fingers which he rubbed due to a strange sensation. His eyes narrowed.

"Static," Cter lied while shaking her own hand. "These metal chairs and the cold magic you did." She wasn't convinced that it was true what she said, but she did say it with confidence, which seemed to be enough for Terri, who bowed his head slightly and left for the table of cakes.

Cter was with him, of course, but she didn't follow him.

Her magic was.

The brief touch of their sleeves was enough for Cter to make the tiniest Cooperative Connection with the Royal Mage. It was that which tingled on his fingers. All Cter had to do was to make him use his ice magic.

"Could you please chill the piece you cut since it has been out in the sun for so long, Royal Mage?"

"As you wish, Monster Mage."

It was a good thing that chivalry wasn't dead because it really was as simple as that.

With her chin resting on her hand Cter closed her eyes to help her focus in on her magic being carried by Terri. His ice magic began as any other magic, by his soul expanding its awareness and presence. There was something else to it though. Something that wasn't to prod a starter memory in his sleeve. Something…

Layered?

Like a cake?

No, not exactly.

But what then?

"Some more, Monster Mage?"

"Yes," Cter said instantly. "Yes please, Royal Mage."

She just needed a little bit more, she felt.

Just…

A…

Little…

Bit…

"Oh..."

More.

"Oh!"

Well, well, well.

Seems like the humans had their secrets too!

Obviously yes, they had, but a secret wasn't fun unless Cter got wind of it.

A cold wind of it.

With a smirk Cter bid her time for Terri to return with her slice and another one for himself while he was there at the table and all that. He returned with a generous smile and a slide across the table with ice on the bottom of the plate. It almost had Cter feeling bad for deceiving him.

Almost.

The Monster Mage returned the smile as she accepted the plate with a slice of princess cake on it. "Thank you, Royal Mage." The ice underneath faded away at Terri's whim. A whim that Cter knew about.

"Any time, Monster Mage. You just ask when you need something."

"Oh that won't be necessary."

Not at all.