"If there's anything I can say about the Princess of the Lineage..."

A hard throw of the letter vacating Sir Gerson's hand and onto his desk with enough form to risk denting the weathered wood had the three Monster Mages flinching at the sound which carried more weight than the hastily shut door by the rushing-away

Royal Guard to deliver the messages dictated to it on paper. Contrasted to the thud was the relatively calm voice of Sir Gerson breathing out over the stacks of parchments which he sat between. A green hand laid heavy over his eyes, and he leaned back in his chair with all the weight of his shell.

"She sure does moves quickly."

After trying to peer through his glasses at the letter bearing the royal seal of Noitaidarr, Kry stood up from his chair at the curved table. "Is that from the king of Xoff?" he asked while making his way around the curvature of the table he stood up from, excusing his way past Priestess Frioke leaning against the wall next to the office window with a book opened to read. "From the messenger bird that's recovering at the infirmary?"

"That it is," answered Sir Gerson almost in song through his hefty, dejected exhale. "A letter from the Xoff king written so hastily it resembles King Asgore's writing from when he was a prince." With a conjured spear thin like a long letter opener Sir Gerson stabbed at the letter at the end of his desk, lifting it up for the Monster Mage to take like a sausage on the end of a poker. "With dots of ink spread across the expensive paper indicating further that he wrote it during high distress."

It was with a slightly suspicious grip that Kry took the stabbed letter from Sir Gerson's magical poker. "Surely it..." A suspicion that deepened his brow so far over his gold-rimmed glasses that they were almost eaten. "Oh golly."

"My guess would be that he wrote in on the way down the cobblestone road that leads up towards Noitaidarr Castle," explained Sir Gerson to fill in the silence of Kry's surprise, still with his hand squeezing over his eyes and his chair's backrest taking the full weight of his shell. "The route behind the castle is much smoother, so the...I guess recently deposed Xoff king would have had a much smoother ride in which to compose this letter in his escaping carriage."

Sir Gerson's hand over his eyes slid down his face with a raspy sound as the scales on his hand and face ground hard against the other. He stood up, moving both his hands behind his shell, and walked over to the window in his office, looking out it with thoughts filling his aura like a warm shimmer around him. Through the shimmer, the morning light diffused to hang almost fog-like in the room.

Still leaning against the wall next to Sir Gerson, Priestess Frioke closed her book with a clamp of her hand. "The route behind the castle leads past the castle garrison too, doesn't it?" she asked in front of her to the turtle monster stood in internal contemplation next to her.

"That it does, Priestess," broke through the contemplation.

"So that should the castle be besieged the Xoff royals would retreat through the most secure section of the castle?"

"Indeed."

"However," continued the Monster Priestess with rhythmic taps on the spine of her book with a claw, "should the attack come from within the castle..." Frioke let it hang in the air between her and Sir Gerson for a few, long seconds. "Then that would make it the most insecure route, wouldn't it?"

Sir Gerson's head tilted down, almost in shame. "That it would, yes," he said after a low hum. "Whoever proposed that route must have not considered an occupation already in place at the castle." His hands collected behind his shell squeezed together hard. "That whoever failed in the preparations for an attack from within the Xoff castle, it seems."

Frioke's ears lagged behind her head's turn to the side to look at the turtle monster with the dejected hang of his head. "That whoever couldn't possibly have suspected the entire court at Noitaidarr to turn against the king all at once," she tried to comfort, but only received a bitter shake of whoever's head in return.

"Whoever's mission was to prepare for things that had not been prepared for before," Sir Gerson replied with a shunted look at the Monster Priestess. "And in that he failed!"

Cter had never heard Sir Gerson so...disappointed. So angry and so willing to throw blame. His voice bounced harshly against the stone wall and floor of his office, harsh enough to even have him gasp at the anger within the words echoing like the strikes of a sledge against metal. The sharp, vicious angle his brow had descended into loosened up, widening his eyes for a moment of shock which he shook off with another shake of his head.

He inhaled.

Calmly, through his wide nose.

"And for that he must do better."

He exhaled.

Calmly, through his mouth.

"And for that he must make amends."

With his calm restored, Sir Gerson walked back to his chair with his hands loosely collected behind his shell. He sat down at his desk, carrying himself the weight of his shell without putting it onto his specially made chair. From within his chest pocket he brought forth his magnifying glass, holding it like a wine glass in his opened hand with the handle dangling below his fingers.

Kry handed back the letter to Sir Gerson, who thanked him, but gestured for the Monster Mage to keep it. "Cter?" Sir Gerson asked around Kry. "Would you be able to read the emotion of the Xoff king from King Asgore's magic sealing the letter?"

That...she might, yes.

"A temporary Cooperative Connection and then that skeleton librarian's magic from Souls' School?" proposed Kurant to her colleague. "Maybe Kry can strengthen King Asgore's magic still lingering in the letter if it's not enough to make a temporary Cooperative Connection?"

Cter nodded to the idea while holding out her sleeved hand to take the letter from Kry heading back from Sir Gerson's desk. "It depends on how much emotion the Xoff king wrote within the letter and how much of it he put towards King Asgore and–"

And…

"Cter?"

As soon as Cter both touched and laid eyes on the inked writing on the letter, her heart and soul sank. Her laid eyes narrowed thinly, gazing hard on the penned lines. "I am going to need more of King Asgore's magic," she realized.

"Not enough emotion?" wondered Kry.

"No." Cter turned the face of the letter back towards Kry. "I can't read anything."

A bitter, disappointed exhale grazed at Cter's cheek like small needles. "Is it really a good time to be jesting?" accused Kurant bitterly with a tired, scolding look to her eyes. She reached for the letter, taking it from Cter. "Surely it can't..."

Then handed it back immediately.

"Nevermind."

If anything it proved that the Xoff king's panicked handwriting was close to how King Asgore's had been when he was a prince if only Sir Gerson, who'd trained him ever since he was a Monster Prince, and Kry, who wore King Asgore's influence on his sleeve, could read it. If anything it also proved more the dire situation the Xoff king had to be in for his penmanship to descend below bedrock.

"Take as much as you need, Cter," said Kry after failing to hide his smile at Kurant's instant shift in tone having seen the letter of the hour. He held out his left arm for Cter to take in hers, connecting the two's sleeves and auras. Kry's was calm and collected, strong and secure. An aura that could hold the weight of the castle should it start to topple. An aura that understood the Castle, to boot. "Wait, why do you need–"

"Sorry," Cter coughed to help her move away from the memories she found of King Asgore being lectured about the intricacies about the legal foundation that was Castle by an old, crummy fish monster with pale, shed scales. She focused over to where King Asgore had met with the king of Xoff to give his magical seal to the human royal.

There was warmth in the meeting, different from the warmth of the country which was laid thick over the Noitaidarr Garden where the two enjoyed Golden Flower tea. The Xoff king talked about his gratitude towards King Asgore and how he respected the Monster King. King Asgore had been there ever since the Xoff king had been born, and the young human had grown into a king he wanted to be similar to that of the Monster King.

Guess that explained the handwriting.

"A bit more," said Cter as she took in the feeling King Asgore had as he brought forth the gift he was to give the Xoff king. She indulged in the joy of seeing a gift being received well beyond expectation. The smile of a good friend so taken aback and so honored to have been given such a wonderful gift by a friend held dear beyond dear. A magical stamp that would seal any letter between the two so that only they could read it.

"Okay, I have it."

Similarly to how the carvings on her arm left had tingled with Idyll's magic which she had copied to make a temporary Cooperative Connection for a pair of magical fingers, the copied magic Cter was given by Kry from his memories of King Asgore felt like Cter's arm had gone to sleep. However, differently from Idyll's magic, King Asgore's felt more...gravely.

If Idyll's magic was like her left arm falling asleep on a bed of sand that made the strangely felt tingling, King Asgore's magic was like a pebble beach. It was more rougher and heavier. It weighed more for her to have copied it. King Asgore's magic carried heavier for her soul to have copied. His magic's presence inside Cter's carvings meant more to her than having Idyll's magical presence inside of her carvings.

In a way, she understood why.

But in another, she didn't.

Idyll meant more to her than King Asgore did. Idyll meant more to Cter than the Monster King did. At the same time though, Cter wasn't as intricately familiar to King Asgore's magic as she was Idyll's, so of course his would feel stranger to her.

"Anything the matter?"

Cter looked up from the lines on her sleeve on her left arm which had begun to glow with a mixture of teal and orange. "No, nothing," she let Kry know as she reined in the reigned glowing from radiating out her carvings underneath the inert sleeve she wore. "I'll feel at the letter now."

The letters on the letter didn't become more legible, nor did the squiggly words they formed. With King Asgore's magic at hand though, Cter could still read them. She felt the intent and emotion of the quick, slash-like cursive written with expensive ink on expensive paper as she ran her sleeved index finger over the face of the letter the same as the skeleton librarian at Soul's School had showed with the book she was reading.

Cter was not planning on detaching her finger to leave as a bookmark though.

"The Xoff king was afraid, primarily," the Monster Mage began to tell with her eyes closed to better feel at the feeling imparted in the letter. "He was afraid in a way that he understood. He knew why he was afraid, and that he had let things go too far without doing anything."

"Is there any sense of betrayal?" prodded Sir Gerson through the dark of Cter's closed eyes. "Can you sense how he feels about the Princess of the Lineage?"

Betrayal? "Yes, there's betrayal," Cter nodded, feeling her combined braid shift off her shoulder. She also felt her brow lower as she didn't find what she suspected she would. "There's betrayal he felt towards the Princess of the Lineage. The Hero of Xoff as well, even more so. Strangely though, this betrayal seems to be underneath a layer of...relief?"

Cter heard Kurant's chair scrape at the stone floor. "Relief?" Her hand came up to scratch at her head. "How much relief?"

It was faint, like the difference between the touch of King Asgore's and Queen Toriel's fur. Both soft in their own right, but Queen Toriel's had a slightly rougher edge to the ends of her fur's strands. Her years as a Monster Queen being tended to like a queen had softened hers up quite a lot, but there still was that slight difference to be felt if one knew to look for it.

"It's not much relief," relayed Cter with a small shake of her head. "A very thin layer of relief that the Xoff king had when writing this."

"Relieved that he finally knows who the Princess of the Lineage is," Sir Gerson guessed confidently. "He must have expected that the answer as to who the princess was would come as a result of the Council of Three Countries, and thus must've been quite anxious to know when the Xoff delegation came back to Noitaidarr Castle."

Cter heard Kry adjust his glasses on his nose. "He got the answer either just after or just before our message to warn him about the immediate coup d'etat." There was a strange accent to his last words that Cter could not place from where exactly. "In any case, Rasliela must've had things planned to go before she headed here to the Council of Three Countries." He adjusted his glasses again. "To gauge how both Jarasevo and Fenkeep reacted against her upcoming grab at the Xoff throne. To see if Fenkeep would support her and if we would make an immediate arrest of her."

"Why didn't we make an arrest on her?" asked Kurant. "I know we didn't, and that there wasn't really any thought from us to do so, but thinking back on it I'm not sure why we didn't?"

Cter opened her eyes and put away the letter since the conversation seemed to be moving away from it. She kept King Asgore's magic though, just in case.

"Had we done it, her supporters would have still gone through with the removal of the Xoff king," said Frioke, surprisingly. She angled up one arm from it crossed over her chest. "Imagine the Spider Butcher's spiders doing a delivery without him having a say over them."

Cter's eyes widened in pure terror.

"Exactly like that, yes." Frioke folded her arm back down across her chest. "Had we arrested the Princess of the Lineage her followers would have acted as a group rather than with someone above who they could follow. That would have led to a more violent attack on the castle, most likely. Instead of an organized, perhaps even cheered-on coup from the people welcoming the Princess of the Lineage back, which evidently gave the Xoff king enough time to flee, it would have become a more violent affair without anyone for the mob to decisively make the orders."

The Monster Priestess looked out the window. "A large of group of humans without a precise goal can accomplish anything, but never cleanly. The Xoff king is lucky that he has a competent contender to the throne."

It took a few seconds for Frioke's sentiment to sink in.

"A contender that we knew about for a long while," Kurant then added with a one-shouldered shrug. "How will that play out when the Xoff king gets here and finds out that we had known about who Rasliela was ever since the Noitaidarr Trial?" She looked to her colleagues with an expression that was surprised that no one else were taking it seriously, apparently. "It takes a while to get from Noitaidarr to Jarasevo. Plenty while to stew on things, and with someone so powerful as a human king stewing on things, will that boil over onto us?"

The light clank of Sir Gerson moving one of the bigger pieces across his game board caught the attention of his office. "I've dispatched troops to meet him at the border," he explained while resting his finger on top of the crown of the game piece.

"Commander Aajja and his griffons will meet him and make sure that nothing happens at the border when he crosses over. They'll meet him at Doggy Bag in Rivellige and continue onward to Jarasevo in disguise. It's the most we can do without giving the Princess of the Lineage something to work with and strengthen her implied legitimacy."

There was a small indent in his finger as he lifted it off to move another, smaller piece back where the big piece stood. "We won't invade Xoff to save its king, to put it in simpler terms. All we can do is to make sure his passage is safe within Monster Country. Commander Aajja will escort the king here, and from then we can begin planning to put him back on the throne where he belongs."

"And Hjearta?" asked Frioke with a glance to a third, large piece on Sir Gerson's game board. "Have you sent word to Fenkeep about this?"

"Naturally," answered Sir Gerson with his own glance towards the large piece stood a fair distance away from the pieces he had been moving around. He gave it a more detailed look through his magnifying glass he had put down earlier on his desk.

"Their delegation told that they would stand with the Xoff king should Rasliela go through with her coup, and that I made sure to remind them about. I proposed we meet to plan at The Flipping Heart the same as King Asgore and Queen Toriel met with the Hjearta Royals back before the Noitaidarr Trial." His blown-up eye through the convex glass narrowed with a strange smile.

"A full house flush with royals."

Hearing that, Frioke stood up. "I'll begin logistics for the Xoff king's arrival then," she said through gritted teeth and a small cough into her balled fist. As she passed by Sir Gerson's desk, she stopped, but did not look at him. "Should I let the jester carpenter know or do you want to let him and Fang Shuey know together?"

"Send them both to me, please," wished Sir Gerson with his eyes still visibly smiling even though he placed his magnifying glass down again. "It ought to be accommodations fit for a king, so planning is paramount."

"So I should bring King Asgore too?" added Frioke with a quirked brow. "To help to make the room fit for a..." She bit down on her balled fist, unable to continue. She inhaled deeply, sucking her cheeks to keep her tugging lips from moving. "I'll let them know," she said as a quick excuse and hurried off out the office with only a gust from her quickly accelerating robes behind her.

A faint chuckle Sir Gerson wasn't afraid to let show though compared to Priestess Frioke. "Asking King Asgore what would be fit for a king," he said after a click of his tongue and a shake of his head. "Silly."

True enough with King Asgore, to be perfectly honest. All he needed for him to feel like a king was time alone in his garden with a warm, awaiting cup of Golden Flower tea shared with Toriel. A simple king, he was.

But how would that be with things becoming more and more complex?

"If anything we should ask Queen Toriel about it," Sir Gerson said carefully at first, but as he heard his own words his forehead began to wrinkle. "Actually..." He leaned back with the top of his magnifying glass spinning on the tip of one of his claws with his other hand turning its handle. "Why don't we?" He tapped his thumb on the magnifying glass' handle while thinking. "Accommodations fit for a king designed by a queen..."

The prospect sounded intriguing to the turtle monster who nodded with increasing eagerness.

"To show that it is not only the friendship between King Asgore and the Xoff king that has Jarasevo offer shelter for the fleeing king." Streaks of reflected sunlight slashed across the office as Sir Gerson began spin his magnifying glass absentmindedly between his fingers. "And if Queen Toriel makes such a public show of her support of the Xoff king then the royals from Hjearta ought to do the same since they are closer to her than they are King Asgore."

Sir Gerson smile became wide.

"Maybe we can then completely remove the need for Monster Country to be a part of the conflict. Become further solidified as the mediator between the human countries."

And excited.

"The Princess of the Lineage's greed and self-proclaimed legitimacy might work out in our favor after all."

The slashing reflections stopped dead, showing only a distorted smile behind the magnifying glass.

"Humiliating me in my own proposed and planned council to ease the tensions between humans and monsters?"

With a flick he had the smaller, moved piece swaying in a circle on its rim, teetering on falling over.

"Then I'll humiliate you off the throne you so much sought for."

The piece steadied itself, facing towards the turtle monster.

"Princess."