The Main Lecture Hall.
With its wooden walls hiding the thick brickwork underneath it. Brickwork that peeked through curious as to the renewed commotion in the long-vacant hall which once housed a sea of students listening with various levels of eagerness to the lizard professor talking about the Cooperative Connection and how one day the humans present will be able to make the world better with their magic.
"Learning human as monster and monster as human together to be able to express it together as human and monster. To further the future one must be able to express this cooperation firstly from within and then outwards with others. We're together until the end. 'And including' comes from you," the lizard professor used to say.
But his voice was no longer within the wooden walls.
"You will be under constant guard, Cter. That's just a fact from now on. You are a prisoner of war now."
Cter did not ask the walls for advice when she struggled with her final exam the last time she was in the Main Lecture Hall. It would have been cheating had she done that.
"I am so very sorry about this, and I beg of you to please understand that I am. I will be here as much as I can, I promise. I'll make sure that you're kept with as best intentions as possible. I'll remind them that they invited you personally. You weren't a part of what happened. You were..."
What would the walls say if she asked them for advice? Would they praise her for how far she had pushed the concept of human magic beyond what anyone had ever done?
"You weren't part of this. You aren't a part of this. I wish I could do more, I truly do, but I..."
Or would they condemn her for how far she had pushed the concept of human magic beyond what anyone had ever done?
"I'm the Royal Mage for Hjearta, and Hjearta is now at war with Monster Country. None of us are happy with this. We've been close this half year we've been here at Soul's School. We've been through winter together. That if anything makes one as family here in Hjearta. Trust me when I say that none of us humans hold anything against you monsters, Cter. You and your Royal Guards won't be kept imprisoned even though we are under orders to keep you as prisoners. You'll be kept safe. That I promise you."
She did not ask the walls though.
"Please, believe me."
For that would have been cheating.
"I've protected you once here already, haven't I?"
The Fourth Monster Mage blinked out of her stunned stupor at the Royal Mage hunkered down a head above her with a conflict of emotions tugging at his expression everywhere. "Protected me?" she uttered weakly, blinking more to try and think about what he meant. He had helped her during her time at Soul's School, true, but protecting her? What did he mean by that?
Terri touched at the desk behind him where he stood and Cter sat, at the first row of the empty audience. "There was a page missing when I went to deposit my answers to Professor Leraull at the final exam we had here."
His slow caress over the desk's edge left behind a rimmed frost that melted into a few drops snaking down the front panel of the desk. "A page that I could not find on the floor anywhere. In the stressful moment I sorta...shrugged it off. My mind was so tired that I thought that I had already handed it in or that I didn't even write it in the first place." The Royal Mage looked up the stairs leading up between the rows of seats. "It was only the day after once I had gotten some sleep that I realized that someone must have picked it up."
Cter's hair whipped behind her as she snapped her head towards the Royal Mage looking up into the lecture seats with melancholy nostalgia in his aura. Her sudden movement had a bowstring taut from the top of the lecture hall, but she did not realize what the sound meant. Her heart had jumped up into her throat so fast that it had her almost coughing it out. "Y-You… I-It was yours?"
The page that she cheated with…
"Professor Leraull called me to his office to ask why some of my answers looked very similar to yours. However I could hear in his voice that he actually meant the opposite. I mentioned that I had lost a page of my answers, but that just because I lost a page didn't mean that you picked it up. He made the mistake of telling me that I had passed the exam before he asked me. Or it was deliberate that he did, I don't know. In any case he said that he would take that into consideration and thanked me for helping to explain the situation. He didn't tell me how it would affect you, but since you became a Monster Mage I'm guessing it didn't affect you much."
The Royal Mage's conflicted expression collapsed and he was forced to hold it together with his hands pinching between his eyebrows. "I say while I'm keeping you a prisoner here..."
Cter looked to her left arm, hearing another faint echo of a string being taut. "Weren't you protecting me?" she asked lowly. She didn't mean much about it, she just wanted to know exactly what Terri was doing.
"Protecting, yeah," the Royal Mage corrected with a long sigh out his nose. "Forgive me, it's all a mess for me at the moment."
It was all a mess for all at the moment.
Again.
"Singe my soul," Terri added to the end of his sigh like a signature at the end of a written letter. It was heavy enough to have his shoulders sink down.
"As soon as I become numb to the thought that the war will be far away from me it dashes back to me and comes closer than it already was. Now you and I are enemies, Cter. Now I have to keep an eye on you with fear and hostility rather than cooperation. I'm a jailer now. I'm not a Royal Mage, I'm a damn jailer. A jailer keeping confined the most powerful mage in the world so that she doesn't return to Monster Country. So that she doesn't return to the...to the enemy, now of which she is."
Cter let a glance travel up to the Fenkeep Castle guards stood at the ready with bows notched and swords within quick grip. They wouldn't be enough to stop her, but should she escape she would have made it worse for all other monsters.
Queen Toriel, King Asgore, Kry, Kurant, Sir Gerson, Priestess Frioke, Idyll, the Spider Butcher, Romrom, and all else. Their advantage was that this sudden and immediate shift in the war must have left many just as confused as Terri was. The war against the Princess of the Lineage was quick to set off, but it wasn't instant in a flash, like this shift in allegiances was.
"How is it for the soldiers having stood on either side of the war suddenly finding themselves on the same side?"
A question for the Royal Mage to ponder upon as the Monster Mage had much else to think about instead. Her thoughts were about the response from the monsters and how she would act accordingly. She was certain that she would be cut off from any correspondence from them since she was a prisoner of war. Any news about the war she would have to take with a grain of salt. Even if it was from Terri's mouth it wouldn't still be the whole truth about the matter. Had Cter been in his shoes she wouldn't have told him everything.
She never had.
The letter that Terri let her read that ordered him to place her under strict arrest he only let her read because he wasn't sure how she would react. He needed her calm, and that meant giving her all the information he had. With him knowing that she would stay calm to not aggravate worse for the monsters that assurance wasn't necessary no longer. He did not need to share with her any more information about the war, so why would he?
"Why am I scared? Why am I scared about this change? Why am I scared about humans being at war with monsters? I shouldn't be scared!"
Like how Cter came to seeing the Royal Mage's side of things about his fellow countrymen being sent to war it was the Royal Mage's turn to see Cter's side of things when it came to the prospect of a human-monster war. It wouldn't be a war. It wouldn't have the veneer of honor in it. It would just be–
"It's going to be a slaughter. A crushing avalanche. A genocide."
Sir Gerson would pull out all the stops to prevent that from happening though. He, if anyone, was to be the one to put some honor onto the map. Cter wasn't sure what he would do exactly though since he never told exactly what his thoughts were exactly. She knew that he would know what to do though. He would bring a fight where none should exist.
"How could this be? How could this be...again? Another Fusion. Another Fusion in the middle of a battle. How?"
Cter had her guesses.
Unfortunately.
"Kallorean..."
There was only the hurriedly written account from the letter which also ordered Cter and her Royal Guards to be arrested to go by, but the sparse details reminded Cter strongly of what happened at Clinic Hill. The air of human death hanging thickly, becoming too much for one human that was close to a monster. The desperate decision from a nearby monster to save the human no matter the cost. To save what was the human to the monster.
And absorbing the human's soul in the process.
"I can't imagine the fear. I can't imagine the desperation. How many saw it? How many witnessed its creation? God… It ended a war. It made peace between the Xoff king and the Princess of the Lineage. How? How could it be so terrifying that it ended a war? It scares me just thinking about it. How did the king even manage to write to me? It must've been...I don't know."
Not only did it end a war, but it beget another. A creature so vile and impossible to understand that it made all that witnessed it one in their collective fear. From soldiers to monarchs it swept a fear so different from anything else they had ever seen or could have possibly imagined. They had heard of the fusion, but could never in their life have imagined the horror and existential nightmare it would wash over them like a tidal wave.
Anger began to stir within the Monster Mage. Anger that this was proof that they did not listen to her at the Noitaidarr Trial. Proof that they did not take her words about the Fusion with any consideration. Proof that they weren't scared enough of the Fusion. Had they been they wouldn't have made peace over its second appearance. It wouldn't have shocked them so hard that they would resort to peace to stand together against the monsters.
Humans.
Damn them all!
"What will become of the monsters living in this country? What will become of the monsters living in Xoff? Of those in Monster Country?" Terri blinked wildly at Cter for answers, any answer! "W-Why am I this afraid? W-Why am I this uncertain?"
Cter broke off the eye contact without much effort. She was too tired to make any effort at the moment. "I don't know," she shrugged with a small shake of her head. "I want to say that it's because you're seeing things from my point of view, but how could you? You're a human." She really just wanted Terri to leave so that she could think about things.
At that moment, if any moment, she needed to float in the world below the lake's surface to help her think. Maybe she should just have used her magic to escape and flee back to Monster Country? Use her crystal magic to create sharp spikes around the human guards then subdue the Royal Mage of Ice's magic by overwriting his Cooperative Connection with a temporary one that he would not know how to use?
If he was so struck by fear due to the Second Fusion without having seen it and only read about it among two paragraphs of barely legible handwriting then perhaps that fear would be useful? If the monsters played into that fear then the humans would not dare come close to them. Maybe it would take a thousand monsters for one human to fall, but perhaps one was all that was needed?
The Second Fusion's existence confirmed Cter's theory that the human soul was universal for all humans. It wasn't a Monster Mage that became the Second Fusion. It was a soldier that became the Second Fusion, and not a mage at that either. Cter knew that. She knew the soldier that Kallorean absorbed the soul from. It was one of his squad mates.
One that Cter helped connect closer with the monster in his squad.
So she was to blame for the Second Fusion too? She was to blame for having changed someone else's magic to create another abomination? She was the one to carry the burden once more due to her undoing of the Cooperative Connection?
No.
How could it have been her fault this time? She wasn't there! What she did to the humans in Kallorean's squad she did years ago! All she did was help them understand monsters better. All she did was help Kallorean be closer to his human squad mates. If the Second Fusion was to happen due to her involvement it would have happened there at Fenkeep Castle.
That her magic would linger for years upon years when she deliberately made it temporary was absurd! It wasn't until after the ride back from Fenkeep Castle that Cter made her first permanent magic in the shape of a crystal brooch, and yet still it was permanent in the sense that a house was permanent. There was upkeep needed to keep its luster. Sure, it would still stay there, but would it be livable? There was more magic needed to keep it presentable. There was tar needed to be smeared on the outside so that the wood would still hold against water.
It wasn't her fault.
The Second Fusion wasn't her fault!
The fault laid with the humans. The fault laid with the humans that forced the Noitaidarr Trial! The humans that revealed the truth of the Cooperative Connection. With the Second Fusion it should have become clear why the Cooperative Connection stayed a secret.
Why monsters had to be in charge of magic in the world! If they weren't then the humans would go too far. The human soul shouldn't have been something all humans had, for that meant that magic was taken out of the hands and souls of the monsters. More knowledge, more people aware of the human soul, more people searching for what it meant.
And that was what truly formed the Second Fusion!
The culmination of the previous years wasn't the war between humans, it was the Second Fusion. All the years of magic being out of the hands of the monsters and into the hands of the humans led up to all the knowledge that shouldn't be known coming together in one moment to form another fusion. It wasn't a tragic tale like the first one was. It was an entirely preventable tale which would not have happened had the humans not tried to understand what they shouldn't have!
And they were upset at the monsters about it…
Damn them all!
"Am I..."
Cter kept her head turned away, hiding the Royal Mage's face behind her unkempt monster side. What was he talking about now?
"Am I afraid because..."
Just spit it out, please.
"Because I fear that you'll take my soul?"
Because she…
Cter brushed aside her unkempt hair to meet a piercing pair of icy-blue eyes staring without any breath at all to displace them. The icy blues shook like aspen leaves yet still kept themselves hard against Cter's forest-green eyes. Once more there were strings being taut from atop the lecture hall, but their tensing were limp compared to the air between the two mages.
"Will you?" asked Terri low and precise. The fog around him turned transparent, but not due to him dissipating it. The cold in aura grew, intensifying enough to have goose bumps run up the length of Cter's right arm. She was inside the Royal Mage of Ice's fog, inside his aura. Her breath out her nostrils was thick like whipped cream. "Will you take my soul, monster?"
The cold bit at Cter's cheeks, flushing them with an uncomfortable tingle. Out of the bottom of her eyes she could see the icy flood rushing through the Royal Mage's magical lines. Viscous, like shattered ice turned to slush in the rivers of early spring, the Royal Mage's sleeve began to disappear within the thick slurry flowing as water but behaving like ice. Sharp spikes of cold jutted out like angled spears with deep cracks running up and around them, each spike roaring as the cold intensified further.
So they were at war after all, despite his insistence on the contrary.
"Would I?" Cter replied with lips stinging from the cold. Her exhale hung in the air between them like a cloud. She made a show of her inert sleeve, fillings its inert lines with a similarly viscous slurry of her crystal magic. A mesmerizing flow of its colorful and refractive nature spilled out from the lines to cover her sleeve the same that Terri's arm had been covered with his ice magic.
"Would I take your soul, human?" Crystal spikes arose from Cter's left arm, slowly and controlled whereas Terri's icy spikes had been rapid and violent. She showed that her magic was more under her control, even bending a few of the spikes like hooks. "Why would I?" she added as her arms solidified with a long, screeching chime. "Why would I take your soul?"
Drops of condensation formed on the crystal tips, dropping off and running down the slick crystal magic. As they fell off the edge of her hanging arm the drops turned into ice immediately, shattering as they crashed down onto the stone floor covered in a sheet of black ice.
Was this Terri protecting Cter? Was this how he would keep her safe like he had promised? One sliver of fear finding root within him and him completely forgetting about his promise? Did the same happen at the battle where the second fusion was formed?
Did the humans turn on the monsters the same? An instant spin on their heels fast enough to make them dizzy and intently afraid of that dizziness, blaming it fully on the monsters? No trust left towards the monsters from the humans?
So by the rules of the truth of the Cooperative Connection that they so much enjoyed finding then Cter as the monster would respond to this prompt by the human. She would respond in kind and in regards to the memory that Terri had initiated.
"You wanted to know the true color to your soul, human?" Besides a cowardly yellow? "Then allow me to–"
"Youngsters! Behave!"
An uncomfortable gush of steam clouded between Cter and Terri as their collective flinch at the loud shout had both their magics dissipating from their tensed sleeves. Their startled breaths hung together between them, obscuring the strange figure that stood at the lower entrance of the Main Lecture Hall frequented by Professor Leraull.
A strange, imploding melody rung out from both the ice and crystal spikes breaking apart and raining down onto the floor along with the small drizzle from both of the mages' arms. A puddle formed underneath them, reflecting from underneath their stunned faces squinting through the thick fog at the startling voice that had called them out.
"I will be able to make it from here now. Thank you very much for your assistance on the way, and don't worry too much about the broken wheel. It seems that the message got through quick enough to where it should have."
That voice…
"In all my many years I have only really visited this institute once," that voice said with a wandering angle to its echo. Through the thinning fog Cter could see a wide shadow swinging around exactly the same. "It has changed less than I expected since the last time I visited some...I think close to a hundred years ago? To think that with human magic having changed so much this last century that this place would still stand the same. It is comforting, don't you think? That despite everything, this is still the same?"
It can't be…
"Especially with the turn of the heel that has us three here."
How?
"Us three, the most powerful mages of our countries."
Why?
"I do beg of your forgiveness for this, but at my age you struggle to find opportunities to do something you have never done before. Having lived as long as I have, novelty is worth its weight in gold."
The wide silhouette was raised up. Not high, but raised up from its hunched position.
"There was another page to your instructions, Royal Mage of Ice."
The green of a wide brim shone through the thinning fog.
"But do not worry, I am here to deliver it to you."
As did the glow of a conjured cane.
"And myself."
Rasliela.
