It was time.
"State your full name and the Court Oath, please."
It had been a long while coming.
Manny's testimony had continued after the short recess, followed by the Field General taking the floor to deliver a similar speech to what Sir Gerson did. He told of the human side of things. Of the plague and of the sights he had seen. Of the people he had collected throughout his journey through the illness-ridden counties with his growing entourage of lost humans and monsters.
Of how they had trusted him to bring them somewhere safe. The children of Clinic Village though, he told with weight in his words, those were the most lost ones he had taken into his care. Clinic Hill which their village stood in the shadow of, in both senses of the word, had been taken from them in a blaze filled with such magic that even a Monster Mage had been lost to it, with a second surviving just barely.
"Something was created on Clinic Hill," the Field General had paused to state. "Something was created that killed the doctors and nurses of Clinic Hill, sparing no one but Dr. Fech and the Monster Mage Cter. If it is what the monsters have told and the human soul's discovery is what led to this, then what does that mean for the humans? The Cooperative Connection has brought the two races together, yet no one has asked if there is a limit for how close we can come together. The monsters speak of overcoming death for human magic, yet none died when human magic was first discovered."
The Field General's head sank to look at his opened palms.
"What I saw up on Clinic Hill was the complete opposite. In the place where the Cooperative Connection between humans and monsters was the most exemplified, death overcame the Cooperative Connection. Up on Clinic Hill humans and monsters came too close. Up on Clinic Hill, a human became fully monster. Up on Clinic Hill, a monster became fully human. Up on Clinic Hill, the two races became one."
That Cter did not bite straight through her tongue was a miracle and a half.
"If this is what I have mistaken myself with then please explain to me how I am mistaken. Explain to me, and to this country, how the death of the finest minds in Xoff was not due to a human becoming fully monster. Explain how the human soul is not tainted by the blood and dust that has soaked into the destroyed walls that once housed a hope for a better future. Explain why the human soul is not to be feared."
The Field General took a deep bow with his right arm angled on his chest and his left arm angled on his back and retreated from the floor to the defendant's table, leaving a stunned air to be inhaled by the audience of the court. Deep, quiet breaths followed along the rigid steps the Field General let walk over the many pieces of colorful mosaic. The shine of the Xoff sun looked dimmer and foggier through the stunned air, giving the court room a hazy look to it.
For Cter, at least.
The haze she saw through was thicker than the others though. Her fuming was like the ripple-like mirages on the hot road basking in the Xoff sun, waving back and forth with each of her tongue-bitten inhales, distorting the image of the Field General into something else than a human. The way he had spoken about Sund and Dr. Sallus. What he had implied about Sund becoming a monster made her furious. How he spoke it with such an accusatory tone, implying that there was something more to Sund's death than tragedy of the highest order. Did he honestly believe that there was something else going on? He didn't know!
He didn't...know.
He didn't know magic. He didn't know what it could do. He was only a human. He did not know what it was to be monster. He knew none of it, yet still spoke as if he had all the pieces to the tragical puzzle. Was that what a hero was to Xoff? Someone who made accusations about something he had no idea about? A human who accused the monsters while not knowing in the slightest what transpired up on Clinic Hill?
"Will the prosecution take to the floor, please?" asked the Speaker, prompting Sir Gerson to begin lifting his weight onto his legs. Before he could plant his feet on the floor though, his ears were cut by the squeak of a chair next to him. He looked up the perturbed purple mantle that settled slowly from the quick stand up. A combined braid slid off the shoulders trembling with emotion.
"The prosecution would like to present their next witness," said Cter clearly through a loud exhale. The flat of her hands rested heavily on the prosecutions' table, suppressing the building emotions within her. Her aura was like thick tar with how much she let it cascade from her. She knew that it was, but let none of it affect her. Rasliela could observe it for how much as she wanted. Cter didn't care. Manny could be frightened by it. Cter didn't care.
She was there to protect the monsters. She could not sit still and accept that the Field General twisted the words Sir Gerson had said earlier, nor could she sit still and accept that those twisted words then were aimed at Sund and Dr. Sallus, making their deaths something to be feared rather than mourned!
Only Cter could speak up about it. Only she knew what had happened. They had planned for her to tell it once Sir Gerson had managed to sway the audience, but that was not a possibility no more. The Field General was a hero.
Cter couldn't let him make the monsters the villains.
"What are you going to tell them?" asked Sir Gerson before confirming to the Court Speaker that it was the wish of the prosecution to present their next witness. "What are you going to say?"
…
Tell? Say?
Cter looked down onto her sleeved hand, thinking.
No, she wasn't gonna.
"I'm not going to tell them anything." Cter lifted up her sleeved hand with her fingers curled loosely. She pinched the leather around her index finger. "I'm going to show them."
It was time.
"State your full name and the Court Oath, please."
It had been a long while coming.
"I am the Third Monster Mage, Cter, Court Speaker. My last name was that of my human family's so therefore I have discarded it to become monster."
She pinched off her index finger out of her sleeve's glove before putting her hand on the heavy book the flying monster brought to her. Patiently, in stark contrast to the volition in her aura, Cter waited for the Court Speaker to finish writing down her name and title on his parchments. Once done, he motioned for her to continue with the Court Oath which she did.
"I swear on my name and my life that I will tell naught but the truth as is my duty as a witness. Should I not, I acknowledge that I will be banished from this land that I so humbly visit, never to be allowed to return. It is with this fear in my heart that I will answer truthfully."
As Cter retracted her sleeved hand from the heavy book she continued pinching loose her other fingers from her sleeve's glove. She held the limp glove in her naked hand while waiting for the Court Speaker to allow her the floor. The inert Delta Rune was scrunched together as Cter's right, naked hand massaged it in her grip.
"You may proceed with your testimony now, Cter, the Third Monster Mage."
The Court Speaker disappeared behind Cter's fringe as she bowed in thanks.
"I am, Cter, the Third Monster Mage," she spoke loudly and clearly to the court room while lifting straight her left arm before her, presenting it. Slowly she began to drag the sleeve off it, gritting her teeth at the padding getting stuck in the wet scar tissue surrounding her left arm's carvings. "I was there during the tragedy of Clinic Hill. I, and I alone, know the full story of the events that transpired that night." One by one, each of the deep carvings protected by barricade and healing magic became visible to the court. The glow from them were unmistakable to the few mages and monsters in the room as her heightened emotional state had the carvings pulsating along with her breaths.
"A Cooperative Connection," she heard the Royal Mage of Ice cough out from the audience behind the prosecutions' table as he lunged forwards, only stopping due to his hard clutch at the backrest of the bench in front of him. "Can't...be..." He met Cter's eyes briefly. His were shaking with the thoughts that raced through his mind. "On her arm..." He fell back heavily into his seat, touching his head gently with his own sleeve. Only for a brief moment though, for as soon as he realized what he was doing, he sank it down before his shaking eyes, staring. "For how long..."
"I, and I alone, am still alive to tell you the truth of what happened. The truth of the human soul, and the fate of the human it belonged to!" The carved lines shifted color from the light-green mixture of the barricade and healing magic to a strange teal which she had only used once before. Used to summon the magical images of two that sat in the audience in the way her soul saw them. Terri and Huvett and Huvtvao's conjured images in the carriage when Cter was on her way back from Fenkeep castle.
"I'll show you what became of the Monster Mage Sund and Dr. Sallus."
A frightened, panicked wave of anxious nausea surged through Cter as she recalled the feeling of how the fusion touched at her soul. How it overpowered her aura to carve itself upon her very flesh, forcing her to be a monster in the Cooperative Connection it etched through magical means. Each inch it lengthened and deepened the carvings it was as if lightning and fire coursed through her veins.
She staggered on the mosaic symbol below, shifting her footing like a drunken dance while her left arm trembled through the pain she let wash over her again. Her aura she let pour out like cold fog rolling through the earliest hours of a spring morning as she let the memory of the Clinic Hill night come back in full force for her to relive.
"Dr. Sallus wanted to be human," she said through teeth gritted against the pain collecting in her left arm. The carvings felt as if they were spilling with the dense, pressure-filled presence that the fusion had imposed on her. "But more so, he wanted to save humans." It had her hunching down to quell it as best as she could. "When he saw Sund's human soul, his first thought was to how he could save it. How he could create for it another vessel to inhabit." She would not give up on them! "His want to help humans never left him."
Faint drops began to form on the white fingertips on her left hand, as if it was ice beginning to melt in the sunlight. Like sap it clung to her palm which her fingers were balled into.
"Sund wanted to be monster," Cter continued with a staggered step to regain her balance. Her long fringe had begun to mat itself to her forehead on the cold sweats her soul shivered from the deep recollection she was forcing herself through. "To be their protector and a beacon of hope for a future of cooperation between humans and monsters." Her voice grew harsher with each spoken word. "The horror of the plague caught up with him, and in his wish to be monster, he lost hope like one. The plague stripped him of his hope before it stripped him of his life, leaving behind the part of him that was considered monster."
The vague, faint shape of an upside-down monster soul took shape as Cter reached out with her trembling arm, shimmering the same as the hot mirages on the sun-blazed Xoff roads. Its yellow tint disappeared amid the bright rays through the many opened windows.
"His human soul remained after his death, shining with all the hope that the plague had taken from Sund. It did not want to die. It did not want to lose the hope it had dedicated so much to the monsters. It was the culmination of Sund's entire being, both as a human and as a monster. His final gift to the world was the discovery of the human soul."
Viscous, white drops began to dot between Cter's sturdy boots.
"Then..."
Along with thick, watery drops.
"I changed Dr. Sallus' magic so that he could connect with Sund's soul. I changed his magic so that he could dedicate his life to save Sund's soul."
Loud whispers filled the room. "She can do that?" "How is that possible?" "Surely..." More than there were whispers about the carvings on her arm.
"The change involved making his soul open towards outside magical influence, and by approaching Sund's soul with the intent to save it and to give it a new vessel, Sund's human soul entered Dr. Sallus."
The faint, conjured soul began to morph painfully. Like kneaded dough it lost and regained its shape violently, sucking in and spitting out as if chewed on. It grew with labored and fleshy pulses, changing shape between human and monster with each hollow inhale.
"Their souls became intertwined, both confused beyond understanding in what they had become. They died, and from their lingering souls was born a fusion between human and monster!"
A lumbering err trickled from the conjured fusion's form as it began to resemble what it had become on that horrific night. The ripped, mixed clothing of Dr. Sallus' felt jacket worn over flayed strips of Sund's purple robe struggled to hold in the growing boils of skin-like texture covered in fur.
"A fusion that killed when it wanted to save. A fusion that could not understand what its fused souls wanted to do. It did not understand who they were, or what it had become. All it could do was to be a magical paradox on both how it acted and what it did as its magic."
The rabbit-like ears of the conjured fusion perked at the sound of Cter's voice.
"Its first act was to both kill and heal me. It was to a human what a human is to a monster. Its confused intent both sent me crashing into the stone heart statue, shattering my skull." Cter put her right hand up on the back of her head. She remember the touch of the warm blood that had begun crusting, and the disparity of feeling a full palm of her own blood, yet with no pain or injury to show for it. "The same confused intent healed me as well, leaving me unconscious, but alive, as it wandered Clinic Hill. I was lucky in that its intent had struck me as the two souls were fusing together. The rest of those up on Clinic Hill though..."
The conjured fusion looked around, observing its surrounding.
"I awoke to the smell of copper from the spilled blood and the sandy taste of dust on my lips, seeing the fusion leave a chunk of its viscous body on the destroyed frame of the entrance to one of the patient buildings as it lumbered out of it. The Royal Guard Ziki, distraught by the false hope that had lured him up to on the hill and away from the children in Clinic Village, attacked the fusion. Its retaliation he protected me from, sacrificing himself so that I may have a chance to stop it. His warm dust coated me thickly, like a duvet of memories and fear."
It paused at the balcony audience for a few hollow breaths before continuing towards the two tables and the audience behind. It paused for longer, bathing in the stew of auras.
"Unfortunately, all I could do was give the fusion a common ground for its two confused souls. Through the pain I inflicted it became aware. It became its own being."
The conjured fusion's ears spun like soft clay to face Cter. Shortly followed, the magical image turned its twisted body towards her. Its labored hunch changed, straightening itself like it had done at Clinic Hill. Its large, dripping hand reached for Cter's left arm with fingers forming out of the white, viscous mass that became its hand. The drips of the flesh-like white onto the colorful mosaic was not from its uncurled fingers, however.
"A being that was to a human was a human was to a monster. With that, it carved a Cooperative Connection of its own upon my flesh. It assumed both the role of a human and a monster as it implanted its own soul within me to try and absorb mine too into it. Its thoughts and emotions burned like the most raging of fires within me. All I could do to give Sarbor a chance to kill it was to give up my soul to it. To willingly become fully monster as it wanted so that it became fully human. The last I remember was the fusion's head tumbling onto my body before everything became dark. I had managed to make it fully human by becoming fully monster, and Sarbor was then able to kill it like t was a human."
As the conjured fusion touched at Cter's white fingers, it dissipated, fading from view like the last shimmer of a mirage. The Fourth Monster Mage was left standing on legs that were sure to give up on her at any moment. Dark began to creep in into her peripheral, growing more and more with each exhausted blink that became heavier and heavier.
"I gave up on Dr. Sallus and Sund, and for that I have now confessed. I no longer bear the fusion within my soul." Cter lifted her left arm high once more for the court to see. "The scars it carved upon me I will carry for the rest of my life, however. It will be my reminder that I gave up on saving their souls."
She could only hold it high for a few seconds though, for with each second the dark encroaching on her vision took over more and more. Even as her arm fell down, tugging her shoulder down with its fall, the dark continued around her blurred vision.
"Let my scars be the only scars this tragedy leaves behind! It will never happen again for the circumstances of its creation will never repeat. It was an unfortunate strike of lightning, but it will never strike again. I've told you the truth of its creation and death, so please understand that it can never happen again."
Dark.
"Don't give up on them like I did."
Yet darker.
"Please."
Yet darker…
"Please..."
Until only the white that had grown to cover the entire lengths of her fingers pierced through the dark.
