The air felt as if it was about to flee from the city. It held its breath, scared of what it would fuel if it stayed along for the ensuing battle. Cter recognized the aghast air, and the tension within it. It did not smell like it did back at Clinic Hill though.
There wasn't the same odor of wrong that hung like the smell of smoke, prickling at Cter's nostrils like stabbing spears. The air that still lingered as she stood atop the main gate smelled of a different kind of wrong instead. A wrong that was building up to something else. Wrong not of one large, but many instead.
"You should be resting, Cter."
Her combined braid fluttered from the griffon subordinate landing behind her, folding over her shoulder to come to over the golden chain holding together her shoulder ornaments. "Shouldn't it be me telling that to you instead?" she answered with a quarter turn to her head enough for her to notice the strong, white glow on her colleagues' right arm. It was all she needed to see. "Aajja is slowing down their siege building, so give yourself some rest." Cter glanced over to the nearest barracks. "I know Kry sure is."
Kurant and her griffon took joint bows towards each other before the winged monster took off in a leap towards the heart of Jarasevo. The gust from its mighty ascending did not reach her though to drag and push at her robes. It dispersed just behind her, on the shell of barrier magic she had conjured up. "I've gotten used to it."
Cter's eyes moved on their own down at Kurant's knee brace which too had a white glow around it. There was barrier magic inside her knee too, she could sense. "Just because you are used to it does not mean that it is not taking a toll on you." The hanging eyelids and the reduced flush on Kurant's cheeks spoke well enough about that once Cter managed to take conscious control back over her eyes again.
"I'm thinking of getting some sleep soon too. Might be the only I can get for a while, I reckon." Her left shoulder itched, but she did her best to ignore the seam which she had allowed to extend much, much further up.
"Hopefully you didn't sleep on your left side up until now." Kurant joined at Cter's side with a folded lean on top of one of the parapets. "In any case you might have to wear a night mask from now on like how Fang Shuey does. You'll only have to one wear one pair on the outside though." Her head shook slowly. "I still think that you should have let us give up more of what we had for this to have worked, by the way."
It wasn't that hard to guess with how her aura was filled with swaying emotion. "No need to keep thinking about it since I already made the choice." Cter's white-fleshed fingers balled together into a clumsy fist. "Better to give you two the biggest chance of not being hurt by it than to preserve just the one that is me. Simple mathematics." It opened up, with some of the barrier magic around her index finger sticking together like warm honey. "And what is war, if not a number's game?"
With a distant, forlorn look, Kurant turned towards the far north west where the Final Battle was taking place as the two Monster Mages were speaking. That Kry was sleeping through it only went to show how much the barrier magic transfer had taken its toll on him. If Kurant was going to argue differently then it was no wonder that she was quiet with thought for seconds on end.
"Horrible," she answered to Cter's rhetorical question rather factually. "Horrible and disgusting." Her right arm had her squinting as she lifted it up from her lean. "Forcing people to make choices they wouldn't normally have had for reasons that aren't good, but only not as worse as not making those choices."
A slight, struggling fog of purple-glowing magic fizzled away within her white-flowing palm, leaving but the colored stripes that found its way between her fingers onto the raised stone. "She seems to still be lingering on somewhat within me, at least." The white sleeve folded back into Kurant's lean. "I have felt her slipping until...well, until I stopped feeling her slipping, really."
Cter kept a respectful quiet since she both felt and knew that it was due to her actions that such was the case for Kurant. That she had used Queen Toriel's influence and overwritten it as much as possible with hers did not help with the fact. If she were to ask then Donial would most likely have found a passage within the rules set by the Castle that would see what Cter did as a coup against the Monster Royals.
Even if it was not the real Queen Toriel and King Asgore it was still their personally gifted influence that she changed to be that of hers instead. Maybe she shouldhave sent either Aajja or one of his subordinates to fetch Cter the pointy hat she had in her wardrobe in her tower. If she acted similar to Rasliela why not dress as her as well?
"Can't say that I will be keeping this sleeve after this is over, I'm afraid." Kurant conjured a box of barrier magic which she began idly spinning on its edge like a rhombus between her long finger and the top of the parapet. With her thumb she kept it spinning without much attention to it. "And really it's the same reason as to why I don't want to head for some sleep." She changed the direction of the spin.
"If I go to sleep then I will be rested enough to realize fully that Queen Toriel is missing from my soul. That there is a void inside of my soul where she has been for more years than I can remember. Her being with me with everything everywhere every time is the same to me as breathing."
She took a deep one to show.
"They're both something I take for granted until someone brings it up to me. Now that she is gone I can feel that there is something wrong within me, but again, my soul is too exhausted for me to fully realize that." Kurant let the weight of her hand fall over the cube, stopping its spin and squeezing it down as if it was made out of slime.
"I am being emotionally held back by my soul being too tired to share with the rest of me how devastated I should feel about this." The cube broke from the pressure, cracking with a slightly melodic sound to it which had Cter wondering if there was some of her crystal magic that had followed with the barrier magic she gave to her two colleagues. It couldn't have been a lot if she did as the melodic sound would have been more melodic in its nature. More like glass and less like weak ice.
"Can't blame you for not wanting to keep it," said Cter with her full sympathies on offer. She shrugged her left shoulder, causing the swirls inside her White Flesh to lift and sink with a slight delay in time akin to the floaters in her eyes that she was sure that everyone else had as well but which she did not want to ask about. "I would be lying if I said that I wanted to keep what I had even though I've gotten used to it enough that I didn't hesitate to let it chew at my forearm and up to my shoulder for your sake."
She massaged the seam where she had put a definitive stop to the painful expansion of her White Flesh. With her forearm it looked to be more of a gradient between her arm and the White Flesh. It was difficult enough to make the White Flesh stop expanding, in the first place let alone do it in a calm manner.
The barrier magic she had as a layer above it had the fabric of her robe folding at an awkward pile on her collar, causing the itching. She did not want to roll up the white-flesh-stained fabric all the way as it would have stained her shoulder ornaments. She wanted the White Flesh to stay only on her arm, and not a bit more, and that included her clothes.
Cter would have her clothes specially made to only have a sleeve for her right arm from that day on, that she swore. "I would also recommend for the two of you to discard those sleeves once you get a chance. Hopefully that will be enough for you to take in Queen Toriel and King Asgore's influences again, otherwise..."
"Otherwise we'll cross that bridge once we get to it," said Kurant quicker before Cter could say something else. She pointed casually into the distance beyond the city walls. "And thanks to Aajja's aim the humans will have to think about that in a more practical and physical sense."
It was quite a large boulder he and his two subordinates had not only found, but also carried over and dropped onto the bridge which crossed over the river flowing from the lake next to the forest. It would have to be repaired later, but it was more a hurdle for the humans to figure out a way around it. Not above it as the boulder sat awkwardly halfway in the rubble of the bridge which made it more cumbersome an obstacle than if it had gone straight through the bridge.
The humans would have to first budge the boulder, and then start working on fixing the bridge for their attack. "I've not heard the Royal Guards cheer as much as when that boulder slammed into the bridge."
Same with Cter. "I felt the impact all the way from here." Aajja and his subordinates' victorious screeches even more so from high above. "The humans must have felt it even more so." They hadn't yet managed to bring some over to look at it, and their lumber progress had slowed down too under the threat of the griffon squad circling high above them outside of arrow range.
It had given Kry enough calm of thought that he himself suggested that he would head for some rest seeing how much progress was impeded for the humans. He wasn't in any physical turmoil from the magic transfer, but while his soul had been obscured by his given memories from King Asgore it was still plain as day that there was great turmoil within him. Whether or not he was actually sleeping inside the empty barracks Cter could not tell.
She was sure the case was similar for the humans. Especially with Cter standing guard in plain sight atop the main gate. While they were not able to attack her they had surely seen her in the green and purple of her Monster Mage robe against the gray and brown rooftops of Jarasevo. If they had expected her or anyone else of the two Monster Mages as opposition did not matter to Cter.
She wasn't breaking any of the agreements by being there at Jarasevo. Part of the agreements between the two kings was that Cter were to be a passive element in the Final Battle. That she was by protecting Jarasevo against the contingency of the human army that were the ones that were breaking the agreement. It was supposed to be the Final Battle, one between the entirety of the human army and the entirety of what monsterkind could muster up against it.
To put an end to the war.
Be it a satisfactory end or not.
"Could I ask you something, Cter?" The sound of some Royal Guards bringing lumber to the main gate below was a mix between magical strain and heavy wood dragging against cobble. "When you were..." Kurant's fingers and lips curled in discomfort. "When you were inside my soul..." She lingered on her words, gritting against how they felt to say. "Did you..."
A deep breath was exhaled.
"Did you see the color of my soul when you were changing inside of it?" Flickering blinks filled the silence her question summoned. The air between the two Monster Mages was impossible to tell apart, whether it was because Cter was thinking, or refused to think about it.
Eventually though she lifted her head up against the warmth of the peeking sun that touched at her skin and played in the crystal brooch in her hair. "I'm not sure what I experienced with you two can be called seeing. If there was anything I'm guessing it must have been the same as what color is to those that are blind.
Perhaps if I did it again with focus on discerning some form of color then perhaps I could." Cter shrugged loosely, dissatisfied with her own answer. "Sorry, but I did not notice anything that I can remember now." She placed her right hand over her chest. "Perhaps I did and the memory of that is locked away within my soul the same as your fear of what I have done to you."
Kurant nodded. "I understand." Her left hand touched at her chest. "I just thought that..." It clenched.
"That if you did notice then it would mean that I would have more to go on when it comes to the Soul Rainbow. That I feel the way I do now should be proof enough that the soul is responsible for memories and thus also magic, but that only raises more questions for me. Questions that I feel should be easily answered if we understood the colors that the human soul is capable of. That we have forgotten the Soul Rainbow must have had to do with something happening to the souls of the humans, and now I am living proof of that."
Kurant looked as if she was trying to squeeze forth the memories that she knew were locked up inside her exhausted soul. "And there is still more about the soul that we do not know. Its capacity is more than we believe for even though I know and feel that it is exhausted I can still use your barrier magic easily. I can still protect Jarasevo with it!"
The heavy sound of large pillars of wood being propped up against the main gate below only strengthened Kurant's declaration. She swiped her right arm before her, painting a layer of barrier magic that wobbled slightly like subtly stained glass. With a confident smile she admired it, nodding at its corners and at its smooth nature. The smile of hers faded into a serious expression, but her confidence did not.
"Once I hear how Kry is feeling after his rest though I'll get some sleep," she said with a nod to herself to confirm. "I don't want to sound heartless, but he has already lost his connection to his Monster Royal once before. If I'm lucky he will be able to help me prepare for it as he did before you gave us your barrier magic. He could put it into words tha whicht I could not only hear, but understand and prepare with as well. I would not be surprised if it was partially the reason why I am not in a sobbing pile at the moment."
Kurant's age showed a bit in the wrinkles around her eye when her single chuckle pushed up her flush cheeks. "The Royal Guards aren't as well, so it seems like we managed to keep it just between us three, so to speak."
It certainly wasn't a repeat of the faithful night as Cter made sure to raise a field of her barrier magic around her and her two colleagues before she grabbed at their sleeves directly with her White Flesh. Comparatively it was more difficult to let go than it was to make the changes to Kry and Kurant's souls, and not only due to Cter having to reform her left hand after the fact.
They had cleared the barracks and the nearby neighborhood just in case something would have happened, but luckily the one-way barrier magic kept it all in check, even if it had begun to crack quite violently when their joint auras were at their most intense.
But the magic still held so that no monster felt the wrong that Cter did to her colleagues.
Nor did any of the humans too, for that matter.
"Do you think they still think about the color of their souls?" Cter asked into the pleasantly warm wind. "Terri...I mean the Royal Mage of Ice told me that it was something popular among the humans, even those that weren't mages, when we were at the Flipping Heart. Popular in the sense that it was something everyone kept a secret between each other. A morbid interest of sorts that friends spoke about with friends when they were sure that there were no one else but them around."
The smell of distant cooking brought with it a hint of onion and potatoes from within Jarasevo as the wind shifted. "With the Second Fusion's appearance, I wonder if that morbidity has grown too big. Grown too close to them with them being cursed with souls from the Second Fusion."
Kurant nodded along, letting Cter speak more.
"From what the Xoff king said about him feeling as if there is someone else within him that he thinks and feels of as a stranger, is the concept of said stranger having a distinct color to it something that the humans try their all not to think about or is it a way for them to cope?" Cter pinched at her folds on her forehead with her right hand. "I shouldn't be thinking like this though," she sighed out deeply. "If I do that then I'll not think of them as the invaders that they are."
"Not a good time to see eye to eye with them, no," Kurant agreed. "Or soul to soul, in this case."
Soul to...soul?
"I should visit Kry soon to see if he has woken up or not," she added after a short, narrowed stare at the growing human camp at the mouth of the forest in the distance. "He will most likely wake up at the next clang of Time's Square at the latest, and it would be for the better if I were there when he woke up."
"Should I–" was all that Cter managed before Kurant shook her head respectfully.
"Do not take this the wrong way, Cter." Kurant inhaled through her nose before turning to face Cter's eyes. Hers were apologetic behind the layer of tiredness. There was a different sheen to the windows to her soul, and Kurant could feel that with each blink she took. "You have done plenty enough already." Still though she put her hand on Cter's left shoulder with a calming weight to it.
"He won't want to tell about things about his soul that I might need if you are there as well, is what I'm saying. He will also want to let us two sleep some while he stands guard, I'm sure." The two Monster Mages shared a snicker. "So either prepare yourself for that or prepare yourself to argue with him if you don't feel tired. If you ask me then you should try and sleep now that you can." Kurant turned to the humans. "Not only because of them."
Then she bent her neck down with her left hand on her chest. "But because when I wake up I will either have forgotten this conversation or I will have remembered that I should be devastated because I can no longer feel Queen Toriel's presence in my soul." A weary sigh fluttered out. "And both prospects scare me more than the other."
Cter nodded. "I can't imagine what both you and Kry are going through. Even though I've been closer to your souls than even Queen Toriel or King Asgore have been I still don't know what you're going through." A pained smile was tugged briefly. "And I don't want to know. I don't want to know what you two are going through, for I know how it will make me act. It has already made me act something so invasive upon the two of you, so any clue about the consequences of that will just have me...well...like me." A weary scoff was chuckled. "We've done a lot of wrong today."
"We have, yes," was appended quickly by the Second Monster Mage. "Not just you, but we have done a lot of wrong today. We've learned, and hopefully we can use that in more good than the wrong we have done."
Cter let the feeling of Kurant's hand on her shoulder radiate within her before she again nodded to her friend and colleague. "Sleep well, Kurant. I pray that you do."
"Same here," she nodded back with another wrinkle forming at the edge of her eyes.
Then her fingers again clutched on her chest.
"And here."
