A soul…

A human's soul.

Cter stood leaned with her weight on the metal cart behind her as the brightly yellow encompassed her body and aura. Each time she blinked or squinted at the overbearing brightness the magical sense of Sund radiating from his soul made her think that he was alive. That he was still breathing underneath the un-moving cover that laid heavy over his still body on the surgery table. His aura was still there, and so alive too! Even more so than she had felt it ever before. Her aura told her that Sund was more alive than ever. That his magical presence was stronger than ever.

It almost swept Cter away with its convincing warmth and innocent hovering. The two curved hills of its upper half were like Sund's shoulders, shrugging their innocent shrugs with each breath-like movement it hovered. The shape of the soul was an upside-down monster soul, just as it had been theorized. What it felt like though no one could have theorized. So much of the human that it had once inhabited was on magical display. Like a theater performance of the distilled essence of who the human was.

...Was.

With a bite out of the air, Cter jerked her head downwards. Her squinting eyes stayed narrowed, but did so out of forced focus. It was too much of Sund. Too much of his aura and magical presence for Cter to feel that things were right. Overbearing to the point of suspicion and denial. It was too good. Too Sund.

"No," she huffed through clenched teeth and clenched aura. More so than to try and protect the monster nurses, Cter had to keep her own aura under control and blocked so that Sund's exposed soul wouldn't take her over.

Or...something.

It wasn't correct though, whatever would have happened had Cter let it. That much she both knew and felt.

And if it was powerful enough to risk overwhelming her…

Then how was Dr. Sallus faring?

"It's a good thing I'm magically inert," said Dr. Sallus through a concentrated grimace bent into a smile. His ears stretched and relaxed like sails in random wind as he took strain with his hand on the surgery table right next to Sund's head. "I had to get the nurses out of here as soon as I realized what was happening, otherwise..." Amid the confused grimace Bonny's white furrow darkened grimly. "Otherwise...I don't know." The furrow shattered a moment afterwards when Bonny's head tilted with a painful jerk to the side. "Although judging by how it is weighing on me like Mt. Ebott..."

Seeing Bonny painfully grab at the edge of the cover resting on top of Sund's body Cter reached over for Bonny's other wrist. On it she inscribed a temporary Cooperative Connection using his magic inside her sleeve as a base. She had to impose the magic onto Bonny, force it to use him as the catalyst rather than just his memories. It was yet again a blunt method that she was forced to adopt. It hurt at her that she was essentially puppeteering Bonny's monster soul to cast the necessary magic. The implications of it paled however in the bright yellow that oppressed upon him. A lesser of two evils, in a sense.

Although calling Sund's soul evil...

A shell of his own magic made more potent by Cter's to counteract the pushing force of Sund's soul grew around Bonny to eventually converge around him. Due to Bonny's inert magic it resulted in but a faint shell around him like the thinnest of glass. Visually it didn't do anything, but immediately after its faint form reflected the bright yellow, Bonny's face softened and his ears relaxed.

"Thank you, Cter," he said with a relieved, yet still strained, breath. His loose ears flopped over his face which he let lay for a while over his eyes. "The weight of Sund is gone from me." His white hand held at his fluffy forehead. "I knew it was the right choice to inform you as fast as possible. You if anyone here can perhaps make sense of this." Bonny dragged his hand up, folding his ears behind his head as he straightened himself. As his ears folded they lapped at the top of his shell like two thick brushes. Lastly he corrected back his glasses onto his nose. "The fact that we have discovered the human soul."

Bonny too squinted at the bright yellow as he managed his first proper look at it. His head moved up and down along its quiet hovering as if nodding to himself that it was real. "A human soul..." he repeated with a slight echo to his voice from within his shell. "From a Monster Mage as well." The way he spoke his words wasn't out of grief though. It didn't sound to Cter that he was at all feeling remorse over that Sund laid silent and still on the surgery table just right next to Bonny.

It irked Cter.

To say the absolute very least!

"How do we put it back?" she asked. Borderline confronted, even. She knew the perverse fascination that Bonny had let swirl within him when he and Kry failed to heal Kurant's knee. "We need to return Sund's soul to him, Dr. Sallus. We need–"

Hearing her own voice speak those words twisted Cter's tongue with a gasp. She wasn't grieving either, she realized, as her gasp fluttered out between her half-closed lips. Why? Because she still felt that Sund was alive due to his soul? There had to be a way for his soul to return to his body though, right? A way for Cter to save Sund? Bringing it back into Sund's body had to do the trick, right?

"His heart has stopped, Cter. He has not breathed for minutes." The cold, factual way Bonny spoke irked Cter even more. It was still Sund! It was still the Third Monster Mage lying there underneath the white sheet bathed in bright yellow! Cter's friend! He wasn't just some human!

He wasn't just some…

"Don't think that just because I do not weep that I am not devastated about this," Bonny added after waiting for Cter to recover from her internal railing that ended with her hands cupping her face again. "We do not have time to grieve now though, Monster Mage. Sund's body may be dead, but clearly his soul lives on. A human's soul can live on after their body has died. Sund's soul has shuffled off his mortal coil, yet it still remains. Yet he still remains, outside of his body. This is the first time it has happened." He paused to take in the awe of the warm yellow that poured over him. "A monumental discovery about the nature of the human soul. A discovery that will be the next step in the Cooperative Connection between humans and monsters!"

Bonny was...excited?

"The convergence of the two races has accelerated due to Sund. The first human to have created his own magic not inherited from the monster memories inside his sleeve. Is that the necessity for a human soul to become independent like this? Is it the soul realizing its own magical consciousness, and independence after the human body has deceased being a consequence of that action?"

Disgusting.

"Can it be done without learning own magic? Will the next generation of human mages be able to summon theirs on will?"

Utterly and vehemently disgusting.

"Can you summon yours, Cter?"

Bonny's eyes were as tensed as his ears were stood completely up. His smile was wide and thin, stretching more than comfortably. The lack of shadows on his face from the bright yellow showed all of his intentions in the light.

With none visible in regards to Sund.

"You're not touching him," Cter growled through her gritted teeth and challenging furrow. Her spiraling line cracked melodically, but with only minor notes heard as sharp crystals bubbled up from the viscous glimmer. As Cter raised her arm towards Bonny some of the crystals began to drip into long, magical stalactites that solidified with a sudden shatter that threw away drops of crystals to dot the tiles around her. "You are not doing anything to Sund, Dr. Sallus!"

Cter was gonna make sure of that!

"Oh dear me!" the monster doctor hiccuped as his smile and tensed ears melted softly seeing the sharp threat from Cter's eyes all the way to her left fingertips. Her hair had settled down over her face and cast it into a shadowy dark that had Bonny taking a step back in cower. "Heavens no, of c-course I'm not gonna do anything to Sund's soul."

Unsurprisingly, that didn't properly convince Cter. She held her arm and hand pointed at Bonny, with all her vicious crystals visibly vibrating at the ready. She had never used her crystal magic to attack another, hell not any magic at all, but if it meant to save what was left of Sund, then she would gladly reveal the true nature of the Cooperative Connection to Dr. Sallus.

"I am going to do everything in my power to bring him back."

"Like how you did everything in your power to heal Kurant of her leg?" Cter shot back instantly with her fingers curling tighter. "Yet you ended up causing her soul to reject magic more than it had before?" She wasn't gonna hold back anything, be it her magic or her words. "Stagnating her powers as a Monster Mage due to the perverse way you ogled at her soul asserting itself. You did not want to heal Kurant, and you sure as hell don't want to save Sund. It's not what you want, it's just means to what you want!"

As Cter spoke the monster doctor's brow frowned with anger deeper and deeper as she spoke. "And what, pray tell, is wrong with that?" His ears slapped as they folded behind him. "I have never been shy of my dream in life. Why I am dedicated to medicine! Never have I hid the fact that I became a doctor so that I could find another angle to understanding the human soul!"

His anger became frustration which eventually had him punching the air in front of him with his closed fists to try and get rid of some of it so that he could formulate himself properly. "Kurant's knee was unfortunate, but how could I have ever known that her soul would act the way it did? Nothing is truly known about the human soul, Cter." His fist opened up as he swept his hand towards the bright yellow. "Until today!"

But he was not done though.

"Besides, Kurant was the one that suggested the procedure. She was the one that figured the magic. She was the one that asked me, and who urged when I expressed my worries. Yes, I found the situation fascinating, but I did so because I trusted Kry in keeping Kurant's knee under control with his healing magic. We did not heal her knee, however we did not make it worse. That was not on us, it was on her soul!"

The monster doctor again took strain with his hand right next to Sund's still head. "I can not rest on grief," he coughed with a hoarse hack. "Grief is not a luxury I can afford in my line of work. There's too much death for me to make one death special. I've seen too high a number that keeps counting up that I can't stay and cry. I'm needed for the next. I'm needed for more so that it doesn't count even faster!"

Cter's arm slowly lowered. Hearing Bonny speak with such frustration made her pause. Not any frustration towards her though.

Well...not fully…

"The pain of losing Sund is not as virile in me as the excitement of what Sund's soul means, and that I feel no shame towards. In fact, I don't believe that we have lost him just yet." The white ears slowly raised again, straightening up to bask in the bright yellow once more. "His soul is still here. His soul is still alive! If we can't bring it back to his body then we have to preserve it somehow." Bonny retreated his hand before it could wander off towards Sund's soul.

He gripped it tight, clutching it to his chest so that it wouldn't move again. "No experimentation. No tests. No nothing that could risk changing who he is. Yes, yes, that's the most important step we need to take right now." The white ears bent and twisted with Bonny's rapid turn of his head upwards. "The jars of miasma..." he whispered to himself with widening eyes. "Yes, those might work!" His exclamation was...worrying.

What was he planning on doing with miasma to Sund's soul?

Cter's arm began to slowly raise again towards the monster doctor who hummed and hemmed into his palm massaging his chin and upper lip. "It can work indeed. Sealed from nature, but we'll also need it to be sealed magically too. That you can provide, Cter?"

It all happened so sudden with Bonny shifting from lamenting how he could not grief, for it meant that others would more if he did, to him asking Cter if she would help keep Sund's soul in some kind of glass container, as if it was grapes to mature into wine. All she could do was blink and in disbelief and let her chin hang low. "Uuuhhh..."

"Yes, you're right!"

She...was?

"If Sund truly is his soul, and that he is still aware as it, which we should absolutely assume for his mental safety, then it will be necessary for him to have others be able to try and communicate with him. This of course means that the magical shell you're going to place around the miasma jars will have to be able to open up so that we can try and communicate. Since we have no reasons to assume otherwise than his soul being of pure magic we can keep the miasmatic seals shut at all times. While, again, he's fully magical and therefor won't suffer any more illness there can still be a risk of injury through other means."

Bonny said it all faster than he should have, and was forced to catch his breath enough so that his ears flopped over his angled-down head. Despite his face being hidden Cter still saw that he was smiling in the way his shoulders were loosened underneath his felt coat compared to just before. Even his recovering breaths were quicker than should be, and the good doctor was forced to quell an airy burp as he flicked himself and his ears up again.

"Sarbor!" shouted Dr. Sallus across the large room and through the double doors. "Head upstairs and find me the biggest miasmatic jar you can find! Make doubly sure that it is cleaned and properly sanitized, then bring it back down here!"

A hesitant shadow moved closer to the double doors as seen through the blurry glass, stopping just as it was bending to reach for the door handle. "Understood," Sarbor's voice acknowledged through the door. "How..." It trailed off quickly, with his shadow turning to the side. "Any upper limit to the biggest I should find?"

"The size of a human torso!"

Again the shadow stopped. "Under...stood."

Cter couldn't help but feel some empathy for the human doctor hearing the order without any proper context. However though, it was already too much to have Dr. Sallus with her and Sund...'s soul. Just one more cook and this broth ran the risk of spoiling real quick.

"Perhaps we'll even be able to create a monster body for him?"

With a snap back towards Bonny deep in his own head again, Cter's loose hair cast itself into her face, forcing her to wipe it away. "Wha–"

"For if he is of pure magic, then he is pure monster. He could shape his magic to form a body, just like a monster does. Whether it will look like his human one or be something completely different is impossible to tell, but why shouldn't he be able to? The principle is just the same for him now as it is for a monster." Excitement glimmered in Dr. Sallus' eyes looking directly into the bright yellow. "He might be confused and disoriented in a way no one has ever been before right now, and we should absolutely not try and force him to exert himself more than he already is. How his aura is just spilling out of him without any sense of slowing down indicates that it is not him magically bleeding, in a sense. Once it lowers it will mean that he's getting it under control, and that's when we try and communicate with him." Bonny glanced over to Cter with intrigue painted vividly on his smiling visage almost sunburned by the intensity of the bright yellow. "When you try to communicate with him."

Too vividly did his smile shine.

"We can do this, Monster Mage." Dr. Sallus chuckled quietly, "Sorry, Monster Mages," and bowed his head apologetically at the hovering soul. "Forgive me, Sund."

The vivid smile turned into a focused and sharpened tug down of his forehead. Bonny's closed fist moved up to his nose as he nodded. "Yes, we can do this," he repeated underneath his hand. "This is how we'll save Sund. His human body has failed him, so we help him make a new one. A magical one. A monster body with a human soul. A new step in what a Monster Mage represents. A new era of the hunt for the nature of the human soul!"

Bonny's fingers slipped off his nose.

"Nay, not a hunt."

From where they landed tightly on his chest they began to open up towards the bright yellow.

"For we've found it."

They reached closer.

"A human soul."

And closer.

"The soul of a Monster Mage."

And closer.

"Still alive after its human body died."

And closer.

"A life of its own. Could it be that it always was?"

And clo–

"Dr. Sallus."

The bunny monster turned to the Fourth Monster Mage who had grabbed his wrist and thrown it down and away from the hovering soul. He looked down to the spiraling line that glowed almost as bright as the soul's yellow was, pausing to take it in. "I am very much not comfortable with how close you were to touching Sund's soul," was said above him somewhere. "I'm taking you further away from him."

But he refused.

"No," replied Bonny with a shake to his head. "However, it is good that you came up to me, Cter." He tilted his head up with a friendly smile that had the complete opposite effect of what he meant for it to do. "I would like you to change my magic now so that we can take care of Sund properly."

Change his…

"No." Cter shook her head. "No, not just like that I can't. We will need to prepare. I will need to prepare." She motioned up towards Sund's soul. "Sund's aura is still radiating. I'm not risking him influencing your changed magic."

There was a pause afterwards, long and awkward. Throughout it Bonny's eyes melted with disappointment.

"You're risking him by not changing my magic," the monster doctor remarked coldly. "You're risking him by denying my request, Cter."

"No," she rejected with a sharpened angle to her brow. "No I am not, and you know that, doctor." Her motion towards Sund's soul became an angry point enough to have her finger shake. Her sleeved finger began to tingle being so close to Sund's soul, almost like the tickling sensation of fermented drink on her tongue. Tiny fissures popped in rapid succession as it slowly began to move deeper into her hand from her finger.

She curled it back, yet her point still stood even if she retracted it. "You said it yourself that we need to wait until he has collected himself. My mind is flush with thoughts of how hurtful his current state is for him. I want nothing more than to cocoon him inside as much healing magic as I can, to let him know that I am here, but if I did that I would be feeding his panic. Fueling the strife and trauma from having lost his body. I am not changing your magic right now, Dr. Sallus. End. Of. Story!"

Calmly, Bonny moved his eyes away from Cter and back to Sund to whom he squinted at. "End of his story, that is."

Oh for–

"Because my plan relied upon you changing my magic for me to make sure that he will be safe inside the miasmatic jars. Of course, my magic will need to be different from the initial different we planned. Specialized enough for me to properly care for Sund is my priority now." Bonny made a wide motion in the air between him and Cter. "If that is too specific for you to also have me be able to also heal other humans then so be it. That is something I am willing to dedicate myself to. If it takes another lifetime for me to figure out a way to save Sund's soul then so be it as well. What we will learn from this goes above anything else I can do here at Clinic Hill. If we manage to understand the human soul then plagues that took Sund's body will be a thing of the past. Sickness will be a thing of the past, even."

It was moving too fast though for Cter. How was she to just change her mind from being so horrified that Sund had died to her changing Dr. Sallus' magic? That's not something she could just switch her mind into just like that! Dr. Sallus might have been able to, but she wasn't able to!

She wanted to save Sund! Of course she wanted to! However, she did not want to risk anything! Not risk Dr. Sallus or Sund. She could lose both if she moved too fast! It was too much for her!

...

Although…

She had Dr. Sallus magic in her sleeve, didn't she? His presence which was cold when it was needed in such a dire situation. She had not used it in forever after she had figured her own magic. Letting it take her over would–

No!

No, she could not do that! Letting Dr. Sallus' presence in her sleeve take her over would risk her doing something she would never do on her own!

"I see it on you that you want to change my magic, Cter. You want to do it to save Sund."

"I understand that you are afraid. It is a lot to ask of you."

What if she tried and failed?

"However though, you are a Monster Mage, Cter."

What if she killed both?

"You and you alone possess the magical power necessary to save Sund."

What if…

"And I need that power too. The only way that Sund is getting through the night is if my magic and medical expertise come together as close to a Monster Mage as possible too. That only you can do."

What if she saves Sund?

"Take my arm, Cter."

What if she gets to see him again?

"Take it, and let us save Sund."

What if he lives again?

"Together."

"Together."