"Looks like it's clearing up."
It was difficult to tell through the density of long, snaking streaks of water on the outside of the window Cter was sat next to. With the rattling from the cobblestone road that the Hjearta carriage was traveling over there was no way to hear if the rain had subsided.
"Guess we finally managed to outrun the clouds."
All the Monster Mage could do was take the Royal Mage's word for it.
"Can't remember the last time I've been in rain for almost a week straight."
Cter could though.
A handful of years prior it poured down enough to start flooding in Jarasevo and the surrounding villages which necessitated that Cter, Kurant, and Kry had to head out and help with damming the lakes and rivers. It was mostly for show and to give some sunshine by having the Monster Mages personally visit the villages to help, but really they didn't have to do much to actually help.
There were enough monsters with enough magic to dam things on their own, and all Cter had to do was to add some crystal flair to the mix of magical and physical fortifications. She could see that her presence around the villagers was enough to help though as their smiles and thanks reminded her of the ones she had to protect. The monsters of monsterkind which she served directly.
"I'd recommend that you have the window open once it does clear up, Cter. It'll smell something wonderful now that the leaves are beginning to shift color. The conifers too will seep some of their sap too after this heavy a rain, so that too will thicken the air with its sweet smell."
Not as thick as how it was in the Royal Garden after the heavy rain had subsided. In the few moments King Asgore could spare for himself he was seen in his garden making sure that the more sensitive plants did not drown from the downpour. Seeing the King of Monsters hunkered down with an umbrella tucked underneath his armpit both helped and worsened the morale about the rain.
On the one hand, even the King of Monsters had trouble with the rain. On the other, very similar hand, the King of Monsters had trouble with the rain too. Both he and his subjects persisted through the weeks of constant downpour though, and the air in the Royal Garden was thicker than soup during the following days. It was said that one could smell it in the surrounding villages. That one could smell the Monster King's efforts to save his people.
Oh was that smell ever so far away to Cter though…
"You were here during earlier in the summer when you visited Fenkeep Castle, if I'm not mistaken."
Cter didn't answer as she had it difficult to separate the traveling she did to Fenkeep Castle and the memories of Priestess Frioke traveling to Fenkeep Castle. The two journeys blurred together somewhat during the more exhaustive legs of the long trip. The one with the Royal Mage of Ice Cter knew wouldn't risk melting together with her other trips though as it had some slight difference in...connotation.
For starters, the time between being informed that she would travel to Hjearta and her entering the carriage to take her there was the span of just a day.
Unheard of before! Barely enough time to do the traditional humble thanking to have been honored to have been invited to the seat of such a powerful nation, and so on, and so on.
Although, what with it being war times and all that, things were expedited. That the first casualty of the human war was courtesy. Cter wasn't sure if it boded well or bad for the casualties that would follow.
It was a rather surreal experience to enter The Flipping Heart and see the royals of three countries sitting around a round table which looked more scuffed than the wheels used for the carriages that brought the royals to said tavern. Seeing King Asgore and Queen Toriel tower over the human royals with their Boss Monster forms too was a bit jarring since they were the two that held the least power of the royals around the weathered table.
"I don't know how much you noticed during your childhood in Hjearta, but the rain earlier in the year is different from the rain that falls during fall. Long has it been a legend of sorts, but a few years ago we managed to figure out why. Or at least, a theory as to why. It has to do with the melting of the glaciers during spring. You know how running water is safer to drink than still water? Similarly, rain from a period of a lot of running water is different from rain from a period of a lot of still water. We don't know how exactly that is, but that there is a difference might give us a clue as to how that is."
Even more surreal was how the human royals addressed Cter the first thing they did as the entourage from Fenkeep and Jarasevo had taken seats at the various other tables within The Flipping Heart. The Hjearta royals didn't do that when she was the guest of honors at Fenkeep Castle, but they did when they had just decided that a war between the human countries was to be enacted?
Had it been King Asgore or Queen Toriel that addressed her Cter might have not been as taken aback as she was, but as it was the King of Hjearta that spoke her name with a weight which could topple a boulder, she fell into a startled silence.
"Funnily enough it was a Froggit that started it all, technically. Lerjung and I found mentions of the difference in the rain when we searched the cellar library at Fenkeep Castle, but we hadn't come to think of doing so had we not heard a rib from a Froggit merchant visiting Fenkeep Castle about how it preferred the rain earlier in the year in Hjearta due to how it felt softer when it poured down onto its…I hope I'm not being uncouth when I call it its shell? Perhaps it even helped us to find the connection between souls and the rainbow from generations past?"
Like how Cter had inadvertently guessed correctly offhandedly, a monster contingency asked of the Hjearta royals to be dispatched into Hjearta to disincentive a resurrection flaring up within the country while its army was sent to Xoff was something that had been discussed at the weathered table encircled by the royal humans and monsters. Cter was the only Monster Mage that was born within Hjearta, so naturally it would be her that would be chosen to be the figurehead for the monster contingency, like how Sir Gerson had told.
Kurant and Kry both were from Xoff, so it would follow that they would be better off to help reinstate the legitimate king of their home country should Monster Country been dragged into the war somehow by the Princess of the Lineage. Their loyalties lay with Monster Country firstly so they would not join directly, of course.
However, should Monster Country be prompted into joining the conflict it was the smarter choice to have the two Monster Mages who were connected to Xoff be at the ready.
Which left Cter to be the one to be asked to travel to Hjearta, which she could not argue against even if she wanted to. It did not mean that she wanted to travel to Hjearta on the contrary though. For all intents and purposes she was chosen to look pretty in a foreign country.
Well, perhaps not pretty, but at least threatening to those who would find the Hjearta army going to war in another country to be a chance they would never have again to stage a coup. Still though, what it entailed Cter to do was just to be in Hjearta generally along with a contingency of Royal Guards.
A scarecrow.
A magical scarecrow in robes befitting the most powerful mage in the world with other scarecrows around her wearing armor ingrained with the Delta Rune.
But scarecrows nonetheless.
"I won't push you on that though, Cter. You made it clear back at The Flipping Heart that you're not ready to share with me. You share with me when you feel comfortable with that, even if it never happens. Even Lerjung hasn't shared with me what she believes is the color of her soul. I think she is saving that for when she gets a chance to visit her old family again. They were the one she pushed away to learn about the human soul, after all, so it figures that she would want them to know before anyone else does what she believes her own soul is."
The Royal Mage of Ice touched gently at his chest.
"Same can be said for me, in a way. I haven't told anyone what I believe mine to be. What that says about me wanting to know everyone else's but not wanting to share what I think mine is I don't know just yet. Maybe it is because I'm not confident in my belief about my soul's color. Kry and Kurant were confident in theirs, but they are Monster Mages, which has them closer to their soul than I can be."
And then came the declaration of war.
"I can only come so close to my aura with the Cooperative Connection I wear. I can only..."
The royals around the table were all sitting down when they asked Cter if she would be the figurehead for the monster contingency. They asked her as a preceding addendum to the actual reason they called in everyone they had told to wait outside while they deliberated.
Once that preceding addendum was finished, all the royals, both monster and human, stood up together, commanding a collective grim and serious presence that would have silenced any insect, be it monster or animal, that dared to buzz among the important silence they had all created.
"No, that's a lie."
It was the Xoff king that spoke for the group of royals. It was his country it was all for, after all.
"Sometimes the young must teach the old. Even more so with human magic than anything else. The young know more than the old could ever begin to understand when it comes to human magic. To be old now though? To be old before even a fifth of my career has passed by? Singe my soul..."
The Xoff king that spoke inside The Flipping Heart with his hands flat against the splintered and stained wooden table was not the same Xoff king that spoke to open up the Noitaidarr Trial. His voice was more powerful despite the drastic reduction in echo. It was fuller, filled to the brim with conviction.
"Could you promise me something, Cter?"
He spoke of injustice. Of betrayal. Of broken trust.
"For I have been taught by the young, something that has both built and shattered my pride. Shattered because it had me admitting to be old, and built because it had me admitting that there is more I can learn. What I can learn though goes against what I've been taught, however. It goes against what I came to believe what my Cooperative Connection was. When I tell you, could you promise to hear me out?"
There was anger within the Xoff king's voice. An anger Cter had never seen before. An anger she had never felt before. The Xoff king had no aura, yet his anger laid as thick as any she had ever felt before. That King Asgore and Queen Toriel stood respectfully without any reaction to their faces or souls as the Xoff king spoke vile about those that had betrayed him showed incredible resolve.
Only one thing did they do. Only one hand was raised as the Xoff king's voice turned harsh and hoarse. King Asgore's calm, gentle hand was placed onto the Xoff king's shoulder, quieting him immediately. The human breathed in after a quiet second, with a long exhale followed by a calm thanks to his dear friend who had calmed him down when he needed to.
"The demonstration the Princess of the Lineage did with Manny crested my curiosity about my Cooperative Connection with Huvett and Huvtvao, finally. I...I approached the young mage after the Council of Three Countries, and after his visit with Priestess Frioke. I asked him about his Cooperative Connection. I asked him about how he had gone about doing it. Not how Rasliela had described it, but how he had done it in his own words. He is… He reminds me of me, if I get to brag a bit."
War was what the Xoff king told The Flipping Heart. War was what the Xoff king made clear to his allies. War was what the Xoff king declared against the Princess of the Lineage who had unseated him from his rightful place on the Xoff throne. She had threatened the delicate balance between the human nations during a time when things were to finally come together again after years of insecurity between human and monsters.
To continue with that.
To continue with the rebuilding of the trust between humans and monsters, the humans had to come together first. It was foremost that Xoff would have it stability restored, for once. By removing Rasliela from the throne, the country which had undergone such drastic, hellish events, would finally know peace. Rasliela came upon the throne due to her beliefs that Xoff is stronger under her rule, however she was blind to her beliefs. What Xoff needed was to ease its pride and not to fortify it. The Xoff king knew that. He was fully aware that his pride about Xoff was wrong.
"He reminds me of me when you and I were students at Soul's School."
It was what deposed him, after all, his pride.
"There was an energy to him in how he described to me how his magic worked. How it was different from the...let's call it traditional Cooperative Connection. He shared with me how he had figure it out, but it did not apply to how my Cooperative Connection was, similar in spirit to how we had to learn on our own how our aura and soul responded to magic during our first year at Soul's School."
Flickering light-blue danced across the Royal Mage of Ice's fingers as he ran them down the lines of his sleeve.
"It was different not in concept, but more in the journey from the concept to the application, if that makes any sense? A reinvention of the wheel which ended up as a wheel, but made in a completely different matter. I can't really come up with any examples because it is so different. Instead of rounding out the wood into a wheel it would be like making the wood less square until it became a wheel, maybe?"
Humility was what the Xoff king had felt the most during the time he had been deposed. He was furious at Rasliela's betrayal, of course. Her, the Hero of Xoff, Sarbor, and all the others that took command of the castle guard and forced the king of Xoff to escape like a thief in the night by winding through all the alleys of his capital.
The escape through the back road of his castle wasn't possible due to the castle guard betraying him and blocking off his would-be escape. He had been humiliated beyond what any king or queen should ever be, but by the help of King Asgore he had managed to find strength in that.
He wouldn't let Rasliela see that humiliation as a victory! He would have her see that as the gravest mistake she ever did! He would make this apparent weakness his greatest strength and return to the throne a stronger king that was deposed! A king that would make sure that his subjects would know and feel themselves the security he would have upon his rightful throne!
"Strangely though, Manny did not want to tell me the color of his soul. Even after telling me, the Royal Mage of the country he would soon be at war with, about how he had figured out how to fully utilize the truth of the Cooperative Connection, something that has elevated his magic and would have been a point of negotiation in Xoff's favor. Even after giving away something like that out of the goodness of his heart and soul, he still did not want to share with me where on the rainbow his soul belonged."
A sign that maybe Terri should drop the prospect?
"It was...personal, to him. Personal in a way that him having figured out the true potential of human magic not beholden to the shackles the Cooperative Connection was said to have at its conception...wasn't. It's only really now that it has struck me as odd thinking back at it. At the time after he had shared with me his findings with such excitement and intelligence in what he spoke about I was similarly excited to try and use what he said and begin to find the truth inside my own Cooperative Connection. I asked him about his soul's color more as a means to continue the conversation, but it ended it instead."
If he would have his way then he would march through Noitaidarr on his own to take his place back on the throne alone, but believing so would be giving in to his royal pride once more, and for that the king of Xoff humbly asked for help to bring back stability to his country. He humbly asked the king and queen of Hjearta to aid his return to his rightful throne.
He would not beg of them for their aid, no. He would ask them as the king he was, for should he beg he would have lost the right to his title right there and then. It wasn't pride that discouraged him from begging though. It wasn't pride that kept him from pleading on his knees. Again, what his people needed was a king that could project the stability that his country needed.
What his people needed was a king that could march in alone and retake his throne, but was wise enough not to. He asked the king and queen of Hjearta as royal to royal to help him and his people. He asked them to help his people by showing that they saw theirs as equal. That Hjearta was willing to lay down the lives of their own to protect those in Xoff. The king of Xoff asked the king and queen of Hjearta to help humans with humans.
And the Hjearta royals pledged their support.
"It is a sensitive topic to humans. A secret that all know about, but none want to make known to others. Everyone talks about how their soul might be. Be as in existing, that is. They talk about how it might exist somewhere within them, and if they close their eyes real hard and slow down their breath, that they might feel it wriggle around within them. Why they would compare their soul to a worm on a hook I am not sure about."
Cter even less so.
"What I find to be the strangest result of the reveal that the human soul exist is that it has both worsened and helped relations between humans and monsters. It is true that the Fusion has created a rift between us that might never be closed again, and I have seen with my own eyes that rift becoming physical between humans and monsters as the humans have kept monsters at an arm's distance these last years, if not more. Curiosity is a fickle thing though, I've found too."
Humans helping humans with the monsters at their side was exactly what Sir Gerson wanted it to be. With the help of the monsters both human countries found comradery. With the help of the monsters the humans would undo injustice. The monsters were there to help the humans. That they always had been, and that they always would. The war would remind all humans about that. The war would make peace out of the strife between the two races!
"For who else would be better to satiate the curiosity about a soul within them than monsters? Who else could the humans ask about what their soul might be other than monsters? It has brought together humans and monsters in a way no one could have imagined before. Perhaps...perhaps that is the true truth of the Cooperative Connection? When all colors of the rainbow come together they make white which is the color of the monster soul, and the human soul was found with the aid of monsters, so it makes sense for the human soul to be only a part of a monster soul."
Cter would not admit to ceding half a point to the Royal Mage of Ice.
"One can be more flexible with metal when it hasn't been forged and cooled into something specific, and that might explain why the human soul is more flexible than the monster soul. We also don't have to make our bodies from our soul, which a monster has to use a lot of its available metal of their soul to make armor of."
That peace meant that Cter had to be a scarecrow still.
"Quite apt that we're just passing by Maerg, don't you think? The dark plumes from the great iron forges still rise through the heavy rain, it seems."
The peace meant that…
Wait!
"Maerg?"
A symphony of startled shatters clashed against Cter's sudden question as the Royal Mage of Ice flew out of his seat and crunched his icicle-like hair against the soft padding of the carriage wall. "Y-Yes..." he managed to say despite his heart having shot up into his throat for a moment. "W-We're near Maerg. You can see the forge smoke in the distance."
The Monster Mage dove her head towards the window, blinking through the drying streaks of rain that painted the outside of the glass. "Maerg..." she repeated to herself with a lowering brow.
Maerg, the town of forges. A town which her mother visited to weave delicate fabrics in contrast to the forging of robust steel present in the town. A town which her mother could travel through regularly.
Which meant that…
"May I make a request?" asked the Monster Mage solemnly with her breath making an opaque circle on the rain-chilled window. It evaporated as she turned her head towards the Royal Mage of Ice reshaping his broken hair. "May I..." She bit her lip, but it didn't stop her. She wanted it, both in heart and soul. She was tired. She was tired of so much and of everything. She wanted it, just for one day. For just an hour! For just something!
She...needed it. She'd be a scarecrow afterwards, but she needed it before that.
"May I go home, please?"
