"But wouldn't that mean the Soul Rainbow was forgotten then?"

Kry's question at the end of Kurant's explanation laid heavy with the weight he put on it. The same weight had his forehead sinking over his eyes, folding behind the golden rim of his glasses with worry.

"But then how could it have been forgotten if it was so integral then?"

Cter would have chimed in with her own thoughts had she not been busy processing her own on the matter. What Kurant had told was peculiar to say the least. That the Soul Rainbow was something that the humans worshiped before because it made them feel closer to each other was something Cter had mused on before, but that it could be connected to what she had been doing with the Monster Army she had been too busy to recognize.

It fit quite well that there would be a human equivalent to the monsters being able to feel each other at such a personal level, but again as Kry asked it meant that the Soul Rainbow would then have been forgotten some way somehow, and while Cter had an idea as to why she shuddered at the implication.

If the Soul Rainbow was where the human souls' could come together with their individual colors as something cohesive with them all, then that would mean that Cter's theory about the soul being able to have its vessel forget was not only true, but a fundamental property of both the human and the monster soul, then if all could come together as one…

Could all drift apart as one each as well?

"Again though, it's just my thoughts on the matter," added Kurant after refreshing her throat with some water.

"If anything it is piggybacking off what Cter has done. The scrolls that she had the two Fenkeep mages copy for us before the war turned towards us was interesting to read and told a lot about things that I have not read before ever. Granted, I've not visited Fenkeep Castle before, but perhaps when all of this is over, I might. If there is more to be found about the Soul Rainbow there then I really must visit."

Her left leg did not move along with her shifting her weight, and while she acted like she noticed it, the twist on her knee couldn't have had that be the case.

"Perhaps there are some similar scrolls to be found in the Xoff capital too? If the Soul Rainbow was truly something that all humans knew about in distant times then surely there has to be something somewhere tucked away at Noitaidarr Castle? Even if it was planned and decided that it should have been forgotten there must have been at least one mage or similar that had the foresight of collecting it all for posterity's sake. There has to be something written down somewhere that explains all of it."

Kurant's gaze went through her braid hanging at the side of her face and out into the passing-by landscape outside. "We might be repeating events that took place before. There might have been a similar war that happened earlier and which resulted in everything about the Soul Rainbow being forgotten."

"But we would have seen evidence of that, no?" added Kry who followed a dilapidated farm with his eyes as it passed by the carriage window. "Surely something other than just some hidden scrolls would have been found then?" He thought a bit more on his own words.

"Although it is true that there are difficulties with record-keeping even with the assistance of magic. Many of the Royal Guards in the Monster Army we do not have a family history on. Hell, I suspect that a good chunk of them are not old enough to enlist, but still have done so."

He looked to Sir Gerson who's folded arms turned away slightly from the conversation. The Leader of the Royal Guard knew too, but did not want to address the fact. He couldn't, for he needed them all if he was to protect monsterkind like his duty had him do.

"And then we have that the plague in Xoff could have been more easily contained if the County Generals had kept more uniform bookkeeping instead of their own, quote unquote, secret methods. The First Fusion could have been kept a secret too if powers that be wanted for it to be secret, I suspect as well." Kry finished by again pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "So now that I think about it..."

Cter only barely passed the required history classes when she was a student at Soul's School, so she did not have a lot to add to that particular argument, and ever since her graduation it had all been new magic and new events. She had never had time for any history.

"I would love for my interpretation of the Soul Rainbow to be wrong," Kurant said with a timid shrug. "If anything it would give me a reason to read the scrolls again in a new light. I'm quite fascinated by it, to be honest. It hints at human magic having been discovered before, but that it was different. If it is the same with how human culture and monster culture spawned human magic as with us then how would it have been before then? Could we learn how the humans and monsters were via the Soul Rainbow? Could we rediscover how human magic was before? Could we–"

The carriage was rocked violently, sending the excited Monster Mage's shoulder into the wall and interrupting her. Her left leg twisted at the top of her knee brace, and a gritted exhale followed after she managed to realize what had happened.

Kry reached out to help her sit up again, and Kurant accepted the help as much as she could. Carefully she leaned down at her knee, squeezing it with healing magic. The excited expression that had shone on her face was gone, replaced by a hardened brow that was less about the pain from her knee and more about what would follow.

"How is you're brac–"

"It's fine," Kurant interrupted with a huff that she immediately regretted. "It's fine," she repeated more softly, moving one green-glowing hand down to a strap on her brace. With stasis magic she tugged it tighter, straightening her knee in a more comfortable angle. "I was just startled by it, is all."

Cter shared a look with Kry, and decided with him that it was for the better to let it be. With a glance over to Frioke and Sir Gerson sitting on the other side of the carriage they were let in on the decision as well. The silence from that though was more telling than anything they could have asked Kurant though, so for how much good it did nobody really knew.

After Kurant had managed to straighten her leg better she tried to return the excited shine to her expression and soul which she had before, but all that she managed was not enough to convince that she wasn't perturbed by her startle and twist of her knee.

"We can learn a lot about the Soul Rainbow, and while I think that I have good grounds for my interpretation, I still would want for it to be wrong so that I may examine it again with fresh eyes. It is not something that I feel is set in stone, especially not with us only having a few scrolls of old paper to show for it. This war needs to end so that we can look both ahead and to the past and stop this senseless violence that is the present."

Carefully she lifted her leg a bit to the side so that the pit of her knee rested against the edge of a cushion. "I'm still able to walk on it, you can stop looking." Kurant's eyes softened as her colleagues heads turned away. "A bit less subtly, please."

Shame hang heavy among the rest.

"Sorry," Cter was the first one to say. "I know the walls are expensively padded, but you still hit it with some velocity. Your braid whipped in the air to and..." Why she continued to explain while knowing full well it did nothing to help she did not know. "Yeah, sorry." If the carriage had moved slower Cter would have most likely opened the door and walked over to another carriage to escape her blunder. A similar sentiment she could see in Kry as well, albeit slightly lesser since Cter took the arrow for him by speaking up first.

A few, short shakes of Kurant's head had her aura mellowing into stale fatigue. "I get enough worry from Barbeqa about it," she sighed with a snicker at the end which made a slight whistle. "God, her flames almost went out completely when I told her about..." She gestured around her. "This. About the Final Battle and that I was going to take an active part in it."

Kurant let her gestured hand fall haphazardly onto her lap. "Don't think they've come back to the luster they had before I told her yet. Even less so since there was no chance in this life or the next that I would allow her to come along on this." Her sunken brow raised so that she could meet Sir Gerson's eyes even if he had his averted. "Thank you for taking that fireball for me, Gerson. I wouldn't have been able to tell her myself."

"She is needed more at Jarasevo Castle than she is on the battlefield," the turtle monster answered after blinking his eyes over his shoulder then blinking them back to the outside landscape that the long, slow Monster Army convoy was rolling through.

"Her cooking isn't suited to the purely functional cooking equipment we are bringing with us, nor to the purely functional flavors that will be served. Even the Monster King will be eating the same as his soldiers, same as us. If that does not tell about the direness this Monster Army is formed from..."

He ran one of his green hands down his nose and mouth, stopping at his tuft of beard which he held on to. "Just sitting here knowing that there are carriages in front and behind us further than I can see in either direction is sitting with me more poorly than when King Asgore got fooled into replacing the Royal Garden benches with hammocks so that the visitors could enjoy the garden with more leisure."

"He did tell you to climb into it carefully though," came a rather important addition from the Monster Priestess while she had begun busying herself with some magical knitting. Three differently colored balls of yarn she combined together with stasis magic to act as one which she knitted at with her hands. The rhythmic sound of the knitting pins was pleasant and reminded Cter of Romrom. "Had you not thrown yourself into one shell-first you would have–"

"Many things I would have," Sir Gerson interrupted sourly, releasing his beard with an opposing exhale.

"And one of those would-haves would have been to split up this convoy into many smaller parts so that the humans would not be sure exactly where we would be congregating. We only have a time and a place decided for the actual battle, but what and where we set up camp prior to that would have been better to keep more in the dark for the humans." He again looked out the window as if he was about to exit out it and climb up onto the roof to survey the too-long convoy in his words and opinion.

"We have Aajja and his expanded squad surveying from high above for any if all potential human attacks of scouts our way," commented Frioke with a calm demeanor to both her voice and knitting patterns. "And from the latest scout report on our end the humans will be assembling their army from the north east. They would have to send their scouts to hurry straight into ours should that be the case, and ours move much faster than theirs."

She opened up one of the colorful knits with a finger, widening it to begin anew from it. "We are moving ahead in good pace despite the more cumbersome approach than we are used to taking. Not nearly as fast a pace as we are used to operating on." Frioke breathed into the opened knit, forming a conjured soap bubble of sorts which she let deflate into the shape of a pocket. "But a good pace nonetheless."

Sir Gerson spent a few seconds trying to deduce what it was that Frioke was knitting before turning back to the window where his talking breath still stuck on the glass chilled from the autumn weather outside. "If you feel that my rambling is too much I could always move to the King's carriage instead. Bring to him the suggestions we have for his speech."

Frioke's ears turned in waves as she shook her head daintily. "I'd like you here, please," she said without lifting her eyes off the magical pocket she was knitting around on its surface. "I feel safer about this when you're here." Despite her words being blunt she spoke them as if they were but truths passing by in the wind. She meant each one she said, and each one reached the Leader of the Royal Guard clearer than he could see the landscape outside the window.

"For King Asgore's sake or for my?" the turtle monster asked back as there was some of his breath that had fogged on the window pane, reducing its clarity somewhat.

"For my sake, as I said," Frioke answered.

Nothing else was needed.

"Right." Sir Gerson's silence sank into the cushions and carpet of the luxurious carriage, turning the already dark-purple upholstery even darker. Coupled with the carriage passing through the shadow of some thick overcast, the air became too thick for the quiet to continue. "Kurant? If I may?" He opened up his folded arms and leaned forward with his fingers folded instead just under his eyes. "Queen Toriel?"

Kurant didn't waste a second trying to pretend. "Has stowed herself onto this convoy disguised as a Royal Guard, yes." That she told with such lack of emotion, speaking only factually, contrasted strongly with her two Monster Mage colleagues flinching away from her like two Temmies falling over onto each other like wooden skittles. "She should be with King Asgore already now."

The turtle monster dragged at a corner of his mouth. "This also a reason you asked me to stay?" he directed at Frioke.

"No," she answered again with a similarly calm shake to her head. "I did not know that. It was only for my sake, as I said."

Sir Gerson hummed. "Right." He retreated form his confronting lean back into the shell-shaped indent in the carriage seat's backrest. "Guess you will all have to live with my restlessness born out of our languid pace until we reach our camp location." He seemed more at peace from Kurant's answer, which was strange.

At least to Cter and Kry.

Who both hadn't blinked for several seconds after hearing what the Second Monster Mage had revealed.

"What?" shrugged Kurant at her two colleagues. "You thought that she would stay at the castle?" The tone of her question had Cter and Kry trading mystified looks between each other. Kurant asked as if it was obvious, but neither Kry or Cter felt that it was. Quite the opposite, in fact. Otherwise they wouldn't have reacted the way they did and almost flipped the carriage over by their sudden lurches away from her.

"S-She said that she would," began Cter timidly. "The two made a speech together about it, didn't they? As we were departing? Queen Toriel was next to King Asgore at the balcony. She gave her half of the speech about how she would make sure that Jarasevo is safe while King Asgore led the Monster Army against the humans in the Final Battle." She looked to Sir Gerson and Frioke for support, but gained none. "I...uh..."

"If anything I can infer King Asgore's reaction from your reaction, Kry," Kurant mused for herself. "I'm sure his reaction was similar to yours." She knocked on the wooden board behind her with a knuckle. "Back at the castle she approached me with the idea rather straightforward. It wasn't her asking my approval, but more my opinion on it. My opinion and my suggestions, to be exact."

A small laugh was puffed out her nose. "And to be more exact she wanted my opinion and suggestion on which of the Royal Guard armors she had...procured which fit her best. It was an...interesting hour or so. To put aside the suspicion of the heavy, rattling sound of her taking off and on different armors I told those curious that it was Barbeqa trying out new kitchen equipment, and they didn't really have any reason to doubt that such was the case."

Kry's baffled scratch at his temple had him accidentally flicking at the arm of his glasses, tilting them off his nose. He flicked them back on proper with an embarrassed cough. "I do not fully see the reason as to why she would do that though," he brought up neutrally.

"The people back home in Jarasevo need to know that they are safe. They need to know that they are watched over by the Monster Royals in times such as these. Leaving the castle empty of Monster Royals and having both present at the Final Battle will make the people back home feel betrayed, no matter the outcome. Their queen lied to them. The Monster Queen lied to all of them!"

Kurant shook her head. "She did not lie to them." There was naught but confidence in the shake. "She promised them that Jarasevo would be safe, and that was all she promised. There are enough Royal Guards still present to defend the capital for enough time for word to reach us and for us to send a response." She motioned between her colleagues and herself. "Us."

Cter was unsure about the smile that Kurant put on. It had formed very quickly and sharply, dragging her rosy cheeks high up. Her aura as well had gotten a very Barbeqa-like volatility to it, igniting like a fire at the loud snap of a finger. "Us?" Cter repeated even though the rational part of her understood that it was a bad idea.

"Us three Monster Mages swooping in on the backs of the Griffon Commander and his subordinates, that is," Kurant explained with her hands glowing with excited magic trailing a hazy purple behind her sweeping gestures. "If the humans want to break the treaty between the two kings then they should be ready to suffer us acting without the treaty holding us back. We could hold the capital between just us three if necessary. We have planned for it before, after all."

Kry craned his neck forward. "As a defensive measure," he added with a few blinks. "You speak of it as us taking on the entirety of the human army by ourselves." Those blinks stopped as he inspected Kurant's retreating smile and the excitement in her aura. He sensed something which he did not fully agree on. "Where exactly did this come from, Kurant?" He looked at the wooden backboard she had knocked on. "If you could infer King Asgore's reaction from how I acted." Then back at Kurant. "Then is this how Queen Toriel feels about the Final Battle?"

Kurant didn't say anything.

But it was answer enough.

"She is hotheaded behind that calm exterior of hers," said Frioke after having blown another deflated pocket of conjuration magic into her knitting. "

She can, and does, stand against King Asgore when needed. She compliments him in ways he doesn't realize, and that too means that she is quick to act sometimes out of her soul's desire. She wasn't always a Monster Queen, and that she carries with her willingly. Not as a banner though, but as a reminder as to why King Asgore chose her."

The Monster Priestess let one ear flop down in front of her face so that she could measure its width in relation to one of her knitting sticks. Around one and a quarter at the widest part.

"She is with the Monster King now and not back in Jarasevo because how else would he be able to send his subjects into battle? You saw it yourself when he returned with Cter. He needs her, at the Final Battle more than ever. The Monster King's needs is the need of monsterkind as well. She will be at the Final Battle for his sake, and for monsterkind as well."

Cter...hadn't thought of it that way. Neither had Kry, as he mirrored her slow, understanding nod.

"It was difficult to keep it from Barbeqa," said Kurant to fill the knitting silence that followed. "She knew that I was lying about something, and couldn't tell her why. A part of me wishes that she would have done the same, but an even larger part of me wants her to be safe back home in Jarasevo. If the human army ever dares to approach the Monster Capital I will–"

"Then trust in the wisdom of the Monster Royals," interrupted Sir Gerson. With a furrowed brow he surveyed inside the carriage, stopping for a bit longer at Frioke's uninterrupted knitting. "It is what we need to do."

"Forever," she added.

"And always."

A rapid darkness drained the confident mood in the larger-sized carriage, and before the inhabitants could react to it, the carriage door was ripped open, and a large, orange pouch dove in.

"Humans!" the Griffon Commander bawked. "Humans have been spotted!"

Eyes turned to Kurant.

"They're heading towards Jarasevo!"

With hers widening larger than her head.