"We'll start off by doing some simple fire magic, okay?"
Cter looked around to the small, compact audience of close friends that stood in forced ease contradictory to the alerted and ready pose that they really wanted to adopt instead. In the half circle they stood in front of her they were like a shield blocking with stern auras raised and hardened together like a wall.
Like a...barricade.
"Please keep your aura as visible as possible, Cter. If I am detecting that it might begin to get out of your control I will ask Kry and Kurant to subdue your aura."
Understandable, although Cter didn't really enjoy how Frioke phrased it.
Although although, was there any way she could have phrased it that Cter would have enjoyed?
She agreed to it. She agreed to Frioke's caution, for she shared it too. Cter hadn't done any magic in the days which she had been lucid with the carving on her left arm due to what the others had hinted about what she had done with it when Sarbor and she had arrived back at Jarasevo Castle. They had all refused to tell her what it was that she did due to her mental and physical state.
It was partly why Cter agreed to both have Sarbor examine her and for her to show that she was indeed capable of controlling the magic of her new soul. However though, she hadn't the faintest idea what it was. She had some vague, hazy memories about her crystal magic just before Idyll managed to help her quell the two others that were inside of her.
Were, the operative word.
The fact that the two others weren't with her no longer as she stood in the middle of the sandy training area was comforting even if the reminder of their deaths weighed at her heavily. Cter being able to understand her new soul was for them though. It was to understand their deaths, and what it meant. How it came to be, exactly. How the magic worked that caused the two to fuse, and what that magic had done to Cter and Sarbor.
To make sure that it would never happen again!
"Cter?" Frioke piqued seeing the lone Monster Mage clutch her fists at her sides. "Are you feeling anything?"
"No," she answered quick before the suspicion could grow further. "I was just thinking about...them."
A short, forlorn pause swept through the training area, lifting up a long sigh of dust and moving it over to the opened backside facing the landscape of Jarasevo. It was easy to tell if the training area was in use due to the dust clouds that always formed. The old guard of the Royal Guard bragged about being capable of telling who and what type of training was going on just by the cloud of dust thrown up. If it were King Asgore and Sir Gerson sparring to keep the Monster King in shape or if it was a freshly initiated batch of Royal Guards training their mandatory conjuration magic to summon their weapons under the observation of Priestess Frioke, for examples.
The dust cloud that rose that day though not even the longest-serving of the Royal Guard could ever have guessed about.
"It is important that you keep...them...out of your magic," said Frioke after the short pause. She looked to the two Monster Mages stood at her sides to gauge how they were doing. Not well, but not bad either. As good as they could have been considering the situation. "Should you become wary and alerted about their presence, please tell us so as soon as you do. It will help us ready ourselves in case."
Had it been Sir Gerson saying that Cter would have felt more at ease about the situation. However, since she had been holding Frioke and letting her tears stain her purple robe it was a bit jarring to Cter that the two had switched places when it came to who it was that was supposed to be the one carrying and who it was that was being carried. It had been an hour or two, true, but still it was fresh in Cter's memories and aura how much Frioke had poured her relieved soul and aura over Cter like a warm duvet.
"You're troubled," commented Kry with a direct nod that displaced his glasses down the bridge of his nose. He pushed them up with a finger. "Please tell us, Cter. You don't have to tell it all, just what's most relevant right now."
Only that, huh?
"I'm sorry," Cter said immediately afterwards with her right hand grabbing at her forehead. "I shouldn't have said that. It came out wrong."
Kry traded glances with Frioke and Kurant who both shook their heads. "Said what, Cter?" he challenged while unfolding his arms to be more at the ready. "You didn't say anything." His eyes narrowed in focus behind the golden rim of his glasses before he turned to Kurant and Frioke. "Maybe we should postpone until Cter feels better. I trust Sarbor's and yours judgment about her, Frioke, but those were made in calm context. That extrapolation did not work, evidently, so it's better to wait."
Kurant simmered on the proposition for a moment before she turned back to Cter. "Why was it that you thought that you were saying something, Cter? Was it because you heard a voice and assumed that it was yours? Remember, your soul is different to how it was before, so it could be that you're not accustomed to how it is within you. Due as well to it being changed from an outside source that may too amplify that it feels as if you're speaking. The changed connection between your human side and monster side makes it so that there is friction when your soul's emotions joins in your aura, resulting in that you think of it as speaking rather than feeling."
Cter had to let it simmer too.
What Kurant said was quite substantial, but it did make sense. Cter's soul was different, so how it expressed itself was different, and with her properly acknowledging its magic for the first time to try and cast it, of course it would be when the more stranger quirks of her situation would come to rise.
And if anyone would know how it felt to have a soul that worked against them it would be Kurant, wouldn't it?
Cter slapped her right hand over her mouth to close it!
But...she didn't say anything, did she?
"No, you didn't say anything again," informed Kurant as Cter slowly moved her hand away from her mouth. "Why did you try and close it so hurriedly? What did you think that you said?"
"Uh oh."
Hjearta's beat, that she did actually say out loud!
A highly thrown shrug had Kurant's braid sliding off her shoulder. "Uh oh that I was correct or..." She wasn't exactly jumping for joy due to Cter's reaction of just slamming her mouth shut.
"No, no, no," Cter repeated to try and buy enough time to collect herself. "I feel that you're correct, Kurant, but that wasn't why I covered my mouth. When I thought that I was speaking I wasn't and when I was speaking I thought that I wasn't." She inhaled. "Give me a few moment to reset myself, please."
And exhaled.
Please let me know if I say what I was supposed to be thinking and vice versa.
"Wait..."
"Just relax, Cter," urged Frioke to the lone Monster Mage throwing her face into her palms with an exasperated groan that echoed out the open face of the training area. "Don't upset yourself. Just take the time you need. We'll wait here until you're ready."
It turned out to be a few minutes that Cter needed to get her deck shuffled correctly. Kurant's help was...well, helpful. By muttering her thoughts Cter could feel around where the friction came to be between her and her soul. It was not unlike how she first had to learn how her soul worked when she was a child underneath Romrom's raven wing trying to understand what magic was to her.
Cter did not start from scratch though as she had to when she was little, however she did have to fight against her habits of what magic was to her. It was a different challenge, but by thinking back to how Romrom would envelop her wing and aura around Cter to coax out more and more of her own small aura, Cter could draw a parallel.
It didn't have to be a parallel that made any sense to anyone else but her, but it had to be something. One parallel, one connecting link between her habit of magic and what she had to relearn about her magic.
"Ice magic?" Cter asked herself to gauge how it sounded to her. It was the first magic she had learned, and it was the first magic she had cast after she had gotten a sleeve from Romrom. To boot it also connected to Cter's crystal magic. She had mixed ice magic with her crystal magic during the first Crystal Day for King Asgore and Queen Toriel to skate on.
Suggested to her by Sun–
"Cter!"
"I'm fine!" she replied through a strained growl. Her head shook, revealing the red impact of the heel of her palm she planted against her forehead. It hindered Kry and Kurant's steps forwards, but not their initial ones. "S'just...had to make sure I didn't think about...them." His smile was still so vivid from when she had agreed to his idea that ice magic and crystal magic was out of the picture, pushed aside by the full cheeks and the friendly elbow nudge and…
"Is it from your arm?" Kry spoke up strictly seeing Cter grit her teeth again with an angry huff enough to displace her loose hair down over her face.
"No, no it's not." Kry's question prompted Cter to look at her left arm thoughtfully though. "It's...not," she mulled while turning it around. Despite her assaulting memories its magic had not flared. It was not glowing with her emotional intensity. Its gentle glow was that which it had constantly, with the slow, constant healing magic underneath the thin layer of permanent barricade magic keeping her flesh safe yet exposed.
The first and only permanent magic created by Su…
Dammit.
There was more to the disconnect that Cter managed with the other presences in her soul than them becoming quiet within her. Something else than her forcing away what she initially saw out her castle tower window. Her left arm, her Cooperative Connection sleeve, did not react to her emotions. When she grieved with her colleagues it did not react. When she poured her heart out to her best friend it did not react. When Sarbor poked at it physically it did not react.
Her thumb's nail scraped against the underside of her index fingertip, digging away a thin layer of the fusion-white flesh, as she pondered over it with her brow deepened.
A definitive test would have been if she let a vivid memory of Sund overwhelm her, right? To prompt her left arm as best as she could?
"It's not really a bad idea in all senses."
Whether or not she meant to just think it or have it drip from her tongue Cter did not know.
"What idea?" Frioke said before either of the Monster Mages on her sides could. "A bad one? How so?"
"My soul is different," Cter answered to the choir. "So my thinking now is that perhaps my arm isn't reacting to my memories since it doesn't think of them as mine. Since they were before it came to be within me they are all catalyst memories with no starter one from me. They are all supposed to be in the Cooperative Connection and not in me, the mage. I don't have any starter memories for it."
In a brazen act of disregard to that her theory could have been wrong, Cter threw her left arm down to create a whirling sheet of ice-infused crystal as she had done for her Monster King and Monster Queen during Crystal Day. She had coated the entirety of Time's Square with ease and splendor, yet the sand in the training area received no such coating.
If anything it became thinner by the breeze that swept by like an awkward broom.
"Nope," Cter said with a shake to her head. "Doesn't work. I can't cast magic like I did before." They knew in theory before, but with her pouring more into her arm as she had when she had coated Time's Square without even an embarrassing, petered toot of magic like how it was when she cast it at her graduation from Soul's School.
Change was necessary in her approach to her magic, but change how, exactly?
If all of her memories weren't applicable as starter memories then what was it possible for her to use then? She wasn't in a position to get new ones about...them, so then how would she? There was the possibility of her making new memories by letting someone else's memories of...them add to hers? They would be new ones that her new soul would consider its, but for that to happen Cter would have to go as deep into another one's soul as she had done with Idyll.
Perhaps even deeper.
Although how she would go about that without being able to cast any magic to begin with was a problem that would be rendered moot if she was able to solve it.
Because then she would be able to cast her magic.
"No, wouldn't work," Cter commented to herself with a smack of her lips. She spit slightly due to the specks of sand that had covered her lips in the brief breeze.
Seems like she did not have any shortcuts available to her and had to make an attempt in breaking down her magical habit and reforming it from scratch. If she had a lake nearby she could have let herself float underneath the surface perhaps to help with her trying to redo the shattered puzzle inside her new soul. Putting a wet towel over her face like she had done when she woke up in the more comfortable cell after the faithful night with Idyll and lying down in the sandy training area was a recipe for mud getting into her hair and face, so that was off the table too.
"Dammit."
Cter remembered so much about her life yet none of it she could apply to her magic! It was frustrating that she was the same person in all ways except magical. Her arm, her eyes, her soul, her memories that she used to summon her previous magic, all of it was there for her, yet did nothing for her. Her own discovered crystal magic which she had managed through bending the Cooperative Connection more than she had already done to discover that she was able to make temporary ones and explore a monster's soul and aura deeper than anyone else had before Cter lamented the most. She had been so proud over it, yet it was unavailable to her. It had been like breathing to her!
Angrily, Cter scowled at her left arm. She cursed it. She cursed the fusion that had gripped at it. She cursed what it was. What it had done! What its existence meant! How it had used the Monster Doctor and her friend to–
"Dammit!"
A faint streak of an icy-blue cloud swept behind Cter's slash of her arm.
"Cter!" Kurant shouted quickly enough that Cter managed to catch the brief, cold cloud before it began to melt away as it lingered in front of her at an angle. With a gulp of air she blinked back to the three stood blinking just as well.
Magic.
Cter had produced magic.
Ice magic too, the magic she in her anger had thought back to as the frustration felt akin to when Romrom had first coaxed Cter into doing magic. It was the same ice magic, yet more powerful. Not a petered fart like her first try, but something substantial.
She recognized it. The texture to the increase in power. It was a novice spell with more oomph to it, and not a more practiced spell. Clumps of ice rather than intricate patterns of more elegant flakes. Cter saw it for only a surprised moment, but it was so familiar to her that she instantly recognized the signs.
So many times she had given a monster a bit extra oomph when she was working as a freelancing mage down in Jarasevo. So many times she had made a temporary Cooperative Connection. The ice magic wasn't cast due to her left arm reacting to her emotions, it did so because it was something else acting on the magic on her behalf. The exact same as how her temporary Cooperative Connection worked. Magic through a more powerful Cooperative Connection disguised as her own.
"It wasn't me," Cter informed her audience with a tugged cheek. "The ice magic wasn't mine. It was like a temporary Cooperative Connection." She tried again to summon it on her own volition, but failed, confirming that it was something else at play. Even with her recalling the exact feeling she had when she first wore Romrom's sleeve and felt for the first time a proper Cooperative Connection there was no magic to speak of.
Then what was it?
"How do you mean exactly that it wasn't you?" piqued Kry with his arms folding and his chin bending down a bit. The folds on the bridge of his squinting nose held his glasses still. "Come to think of it..." His eyes closed fully as he felt around inside him. "No, I'm not sure who's aura it felt like. At the surface it's your magic, but it seemed...hollow, in a way? Like but a shell, but no filling." His sleeved hand angled upright from his fold, his fingers clutching and opening to help savor the brief moment of magic. "You saying that it's not yours I guess makes sense that it did, but not why it did." As if a closing hinge his sleeve fell back into the fold across his chest where it sat drumming as he began to think. "A temporary Cooperative Connection..."
Frioke and Kurant turned to Kry throwing his head back up with eyes shut hard.
"Temporary Cooperative Connection," he repeated with slight disappointment that he couldn't figure anything out. "What if..." he began before his head bounced down. "What if that is what it is?" His eyes landed on Cter's left arm. "What if your arm is a temporary Cooperative Connection? How would that change things?"
Cter held her left arm up. "What would change?" she thought out loud to it, yet did not get an answer. Her breath tickled at the exposed flesh. "Well, the temporary Cooperative Connections I've done essentially boil down to either giving the recipient new memories of me which then act as starter memories to allow the gifted magic to either come alive on its own or for it to strengthen the monster or human's magic, or me connecting that starter memory to another one that the monster of human already have to activate the gifted magic." The latter was much more useful and awe inspiring, Cter found out very quickly. "The magic that is on my arm on its own now I've tried to call to in a temporary Cooperative Connection earlier, but failed to."
"How deep into the soul do you have to go to connect temporarily?" added Kry almost immediately. "How invasively were you able to go before?"
"I don't want to go invasive if I can manage not to."
"That was not my question."
With a glance to the side, Cter dragged a slight scowl. "If I wanted I could have gone as deep as I wanted. Only once though," she made clear with her fusion-like index finger raised sternly. "Only once, and that was with Idyll during that night."
Kry was satisfied with the answer, and returned to thinking. "It's the invasive nature of your arm that I feel is the most important clue here," he narrated while rubbing at his sharp chin. "It's invasive and deeper than you have ever gone before, even beyond what you did to Idyll." It was straight thought and no filter. "And as evident by your inability to cast magic it seems like the fusion implanted its own memories inside of your soul too. That we...know, and that I'm sure you've guessed by now."
That they knew?
Well, suppose it was obvious enough with how...them tried to assert themselves from inside Cter's soul. Still though, something else was at play there as well. Something that the ones at Jarasevo had hidden from Cter.
"Could it be..." Kry inhaled deeply to steel himself. "Could it be that you have to use the memories of Sund and Bonny to cast your magic?"
"Kry!" Kurant coughed hard. "You can't suggest..." Her words failed her as she had to walk away with her hand over her mouth. "You can't..."
Cter stared at her left arm, at her carved flesh glowing gently in contrast to its appearance.
The ice magic had been conjured from her when her memories of Sund were about to surface.
Which meant that she did indeed have a temporary Cooperative Connection.
And to cast from it she needed…
"I need to use Sund."
