"Idyll..."

There was a hollowness inside Cter.

"I can't feel you..."

One that seemed to permeate outside her, even. As if how empty she felt inside had turned physical. It was cold, damp, and with a low and void-like wind blowing through her ears. Distant cracks from that of flames could be heard, but only barely. What deafened it was the emptiness Cter felt inside of her. As if her thoughts and feelings had been scooped out with a deep spoon. Her bones echoed with aches like flu which pierced her soul, making the hollowness echo even more.

"Where are you?"

Those cracks from the distant flames, were they from Idyll igniting the fire underneath her cauldron? Cter's bed didn't feel like her own though. It was uncomfortable, and it smelled weird. Damp and cold, as if she'd left the window open and invited in rain to flood her entire room. She pushed the flat of her palm against her forehead as she groaned underneath her breath.

She was hungry and parched. More than just her stomach was rumbling. It also felt as if her soul had been drained somehow. Like it hungered for a bun baked with only magic. Glazed with magic, and sugared with magic. It had her tuck her legs up to her chest to subdue it, but it didn't help. All it did was bring her another sense of different as the bed-sheet she laid on had a different material to it. She didn't have a cover either. On top of that she was wearing her clothes with their insides crusted with dried sweat. There was a slight coppery stench to it as well, which accumulated with the other metallic smells from her surrounding.

"Where am I?"

What met her blinking vision would've startled her if she hadn't felt so damn drained and hollow. She wasn't at home. Around her were weakly lit walls of mortar and cobble. Not human-built though. That much was clear from the seams being almost invisible between the stone and the mortar. It was cold, both in its color, and its lifeless presence. The weak fire flickering gently from somewhere beyond could only cast enough light to make shadows, and nothing more. With the gentle flickering it was as if the shadows wanted to burrow into the stones and meld together, but the slight blue hue from the cobble wasn't persuaded to let the warmth in.

One...two...three.

Three walls of cobble.

And one with robust, albeit rusty, metal bars.

"Hello?" Cter called out. Her voice traveled down the long hallway she heard was outside her cell, looking down each nook and cranny to find something else than stone walls to bounce off. "Anyone there?"

That was all she could think about in that moment. Not why, how, and when she got into this prison cell, but if there was someone else nearby. The hollow inside her made her crave to be near someone. Whoever! Just someone!

Because she couldn't feel either Idyll or Romrom inside of her!

"Hello!" she cried out as she sat up in her poorly made bed and leaned forward to try and see if there was a shadow walking down the hallway. "Where is Idyll!" Again the hollow made her prioritize what she felt missing inside of her. "Where am I!"

Her demands to know died off after traveling down both forks of the drab hallway only to return and clash where they began. She would shout again, but her shouting had caused her to taste blood in her throat. She grabbed it to caress gently.

While it helped a bit the taste still lingered, as well as the smell.

"Oh no..." whispered Cter as her nose had her turn her right wrist around to show its underside. Her wound had caked, but the slight movement she did when she caressed her throat had it open up slightly. Along the already dried river present on her arm the fresh blood ran, reconstituting the dark-crimson bank as it began to again pool at the bend of her arm.

If her wound was there it meant that what she could vaguely remember was indeed true. About Idyll sharing with Cter her life and Cter reliving her monster friend's memories. Those memories Cter couldn't make surface in her mind though. They felt hazy in her soul, as if they had been taken away.

Or transferred over.

They were there, but so, so very weak.

The last Cter remembered was that flash of incompatible intent coursing through her like fire as she tried to stop Idyll from using her magic.

For what reason though? Why did Cter want to stop her friend? She remembered that Idyll was on verge of turning to dust, and that she kept Idyll alive by letting her borrow some of Cter's magic. She remembered that she managed to figure out how to make the borrowing permanent, inverse, if not reverse the Reaction-Action of human magic to be ignited by a monster instead.

She remembered that it worked.

But then nothing more.

Even Idyll's touch on her sleeve Cter remembered. How heavy it was against her…

Against her…

Against her sleeve!

That was not there on her arm!

Where was it?

The scab on Cter's right arm dropped off and disappeared inside the flurry of thin hemp fabric that she had been sleeping on. Her right and left arm were both showing skin, even if that on her right arm was hidden underneath the fresh layer of blood she was bleeding, and quicker so with her heart racing.

No wonder she felt that she was alone! She'd fallen unconscious feeling the closeness, and woken up without it! Like if she'd had her glasses removed without her noticing but still was feeling the headache from not being able to see properly.

Her bed was devoid of any sleeves, be it her own or any others, and up on weak knees she expanded her search throughout her small cell. She moved over the one wooden chair standing on the opposite cobble wall, but there was no sleeve to be found there either. Not on it, nor below it.

She was alone.

In all senses of the word.

Alone in a cell, just by herself.

Alone in her mind, just by herself.

Alone in her soul, just by herself.

With the hollowness casting a deep a shadow inside her just as the shadows cast themselves on the stone walls around her. They seemed to compress around her to fill the void reaching out through her skin. "Idyll!" Cter cried out again against the walls to try and push them back. "Where are you, Idyll?"

But nobody came.

It was just Cter, alone.

"We promised we'd go to the castle," she whimpered. "I'm sorry that I didn't want to before, but I want it now! I want to go with you! Just please be alive!"

But nobody came.

With shoulders too heavy to carry, Cter sat down back onto the wide, wooden shelf with some thrown-away stuffing on it. She stared at her hands, one naked when it shouldn't, and one red with blood when it shouldn't. The paleness of her left hand shone white, almost as if…

"No."

Almost as if…

"No..."

She clenched it into a fist and put it inside her right hand's caress.

Almost as if it was caked with dust the same way her right hand was caked with blood.

She didn't want to believe it.

She didn't want to accept that she knew where the hollow feeling was from.

She only wanted to cry.

So she did, with both her hands pushed up between her eyes. Each choked sob echoed both in her ears and in her soul. Each tear blinked out of her dry eyes diluted the combined red and white from both her hands into a pink hue similar to that of her cheeks, which glowed subtly from her inner turmoil.

Her sputtered weeps filled the hallways like waves from an avalanche of boulders crashing into a tranquil lake, slamming together to reach higher in unison than they could on their own. The viscous percussion from her diluted blood tapping at the cobble floor was the ticking of the Jarasevo Time's Square Clock amid an eager crowd, with just as much importance even if it was drowned out by the sounds around it.

Cter could hear each and every single one of the drops as if they were Idyll's knocks on her room door to get up and help with breakfast. They weren't followed by the happy and lively voice of her monster friend though, but only that of her own crying. It was appropriate that the knocks made from death would be followed by Cter's crying, but logic wasn't something Cter could afford to let herself consider as she sat hunched-over with her balled fists trembling from how tightly she was squeezing them.

It wasn't long before she began feeling faint and sleepy. Not a comfortable tired after a long day and a meal with a friend, but a tired that she fought against. A tired she wasn't sure if she'd wake up from. A tired which she refused as it would mean that she couldn't look for Idyll.

With what strength could she fight against it though?

Nothing.

And she collapsed into the strewn stuffing with tears still running down her blossoming cheeks.

Feverishly Cter drifted in and out of consciousness as the hollowness inside her encompassed her and she began to get accustomed to it, however faintly. Similarly to her having bathed for a long time in cold water and then getting warmed up by the sun, creating a dissonance between the lower, cold layers of her skin against the warm upper layers heated up again from the sun. That sense of foreboding cold wasn't anything to her after bathing since she knew where that came from.

As she laid on the hard, bump-wise-soft prison bed that foreboding cold had her mind churning as to what could be the reason. There was no sun to heat her up either and give her reassurance that it would pass. Even worse, the cold had burrowed down deeper than just her skin. Through her bones and into her soul.

No, not burrowed down. Ascended up. From her soul and out her body. Out her arms and out her fingers that tingled with anxiety and confused restlessness.

A restlessness that gripped her tight when she heard a sound from long down the hallway. Voices followed. None she recognized. Footsteps began walking, softly. The weight and size of the one walking Cter couldn't deduce by listening. What she could deduce was that the figure was wearing long cloth on them. It dragged behind them. Or perhaps was it scraping against the walls?

She held her breath as she watched the flicker seemingly bow towards the figure's shadow as it passed the weak flames by. Again it wasn't enough to give her any idea of who this mysterious visitor was or what their purpose were. The rather-confident spacing between each of their long steps gave her some hints though, but how to interpret the hints she didn't know how.

Cter felt trapped not being able to sense and reach out with her aura. She definitely knew that her visitor's aura was all around her, but she could neither see or feel it. Wouldn't be much for the aura to see or feel of her though, as she was only human then.

The sounds of a wooden chair being dragged across the stone floor cut her ears, and she winced away from the prison bars while she covered her ears. When the sound halted into a few hollow thunks as the chair was being placed somewhere on the opposite side of the bars, Cter timidly removed her shoulders from her ears and tilted her head towards the soft shadow having sat down and opened a newspaper with a nonchalant flick.

A fire was ignited which contoured the soft shadow, making it sharp enough for Cter to make out the form of her visitor among the rows and columns of barred shadows which had also become sharp in the magical light. She saw the opened newspaper and a robe covering the visitor's legs, but nothing more. The magical fire that was ignited though didn't have the distinct human crackle to it, so it had to be a monster that had come visit.

But for what reason?

"W-Where's I-Idyll?" Cter tried to say threateningly to leverage that she was a human and the visitor was a monster. Even without her magic she was still more powerful than a monster, and if it was foolish enough to be close enough to the bars for her to reach it she'd…

She'd…

"A-And w-when am I b-being released?" she demanded again like a child thinking it had a negotiable position asking for a cookie from a jar way out of its reach. "A-Answer m-me!" Cter even curled up like a frightened child as she heard how weak and without any meaning her voice sounded. All she got in return was an inaudible scoff that made the shadow of the newspaper shake for a brief moment.

Cter didn't know what else to do after that…

What was to become of her?

What had become of Idyll?

"P-Please," she begged through a sob she could not hold in any longer. "I d-don't know where I am!"

Her visitor waited patiently for her cried echo to become quiet before answering her. "Jarasevo Castle," was said with a deep and commanding voice. A page of the newspaper turned. "The rest of the questions will be asked by me. Understand?"

That voice…

Cter sat up with sped-up breathing as she saw the shadow of the newspaper fold together to reveal a hooded form not unlike how her shadow was when she walked the streets of Jarasevo in her robe. The one the form donned was different from hers though.

So very different.

It was purple.

And with the finest material Cter had ever seen in her life.

"While I'll be the one asking the questions here I do not like repeating the ones I've already asked," trickled a viscous reminder from underneath the pulled-up purple hood. It was a human's voice, no doubt about that! "Nod, human. Show me that you understand."

She did. Whether if it was of her own volition or by the persuading tone of the visitor's voice she couldn't tell at the moment she made the gesture, and the thought vanished from her head amid a rushing cascade of other ones.

"Thank you."

As the visitor spoke again all the questions fused into one.

Could it really be?

The visitor pulled back his hood.

And Cter gasped her heart back down her throat.

The deep-tanned skin…

The slicked-black hair...

The golden spectacles…

Which the human took off and cleaned with the inner fabric of his robe before holding them up to his conjured light and replacing them back on his robust nose. His full lips dragged thinner than Cter could ever do hers, and he sighed. "You're a prisoner being held at the stockades of Jarsevo Castle, human." He waited for a second to watch Cter's reaction, but there was none to be had, or for her to give, so the visitor continued. "I can see that you recognize me. To be perfectly honest you're the last human I'd ever suspect to get yourself and your friend in this situation seeing as what I asserted from you the last time we met."

Cter only heard one thing from what the Monster Mage said.

Her friend?

Cter flew up on her feet and threw herself against the prison bars with her face contorting in both worry and relief. "So she's alive?" she shouted at the Monster Mage not reacting to her lunge. "Is Idyll alive? Where is she?"

All he did was gently angle his eyes through his gold-rimmed glasses towards Cter right hand clutching at one iron bar, and then at her left hand clutching another iron bar. She let go of both and took a step back only to avert her eyes away from the red-and-white handprints she'd left on the thick metal grate between her and Kry.

"Sorry," she whispered as her shoulders hung low and her forehead touched the metallic cold of the iron as her weight tilted forward.

He was the one asking the questions…

"Can't deny that you've made progress though since I was sent to check on you and your abilities." Kry lowered his light a bit so that it could illuminate Cter's face. He brought it up just a tad when he realized that she was crying. "From what I've heard you've gathered a rather-wide customer base in the Monster Capital. Tar, food, transportation, even the Jarasevo Time's Square Clock, human. A rather unorthodox way of the application of the Cooperative Connection."

Cter braced herself as tense as the metal she was leaning on. She clenched every muscle she could to weather the praise that was sent her way only to build up a tall-enough tower that would hurt the most when Kry inevitably kicked it over to make an example.

"However..." he prefaced, purposely waiting for his voice to echo as much as it could while he leaned forward on his folded hands braced by his elbows sinking deep into his purple robe. "Orthodoxy is status quo for a good reason, human. Amid all of this rapid progression and discovery we've managed to keep it all tied towards the Cooperative Connection as was taught to you in Soul's School and which is applied by every human mage there is, has been, and will be in the future. It is the foundation which we have built everything you know of on top of."

Again Kry waited for Cter to say something, but again she had nothing.

So he continued from behind his folded hands.

"That which we have prided among ourselves more than being able to explain how and why the monster and human concepts of death are being used to further both species into mutual prosperity. It is what has kept this rapidly expanding understanding of what human magic is capable of safe. It is what has allowed it to be so quickly accepted even when it is stemming from death."

The bridge of his glasses disappeared inside a deepened fold between his eyebrows. The cough he used to clear his throat was very tired.

"So when we were roused last night by a Royal Guard reporting to us that there had been a change in a monster's aura so drastic that three, almost four, entire blocks had awoken in a panic the first priority in our minds was that someone had gone and kicked over this tower of ours that we've so carefully built. That this night was the final night of not having to worry about how human magic would be perceived by the world. Word travels fast, especially with magic. That you know, human."

That she did…

"At least it would've been a good night for it all to come crumbling down. No clouds to block the moon or the stars. Few of which I wished upon even though I could feel in my aura that something wrong had happened. That it would just be something that I could go back to sleep on afterwards."

Kry yawned widely. He didn't even pretend to make an effort to hide it.

"Granted me as much as they did when I was a kid, did the stars last night."

He yawned again.

"The entire town was awake too last night, and not just me, you know?" That time he didn't wait for an answer, for Cter could not possible have known that, and continued immediately afterwards. "With the exception of you and your friend, that is."

Cter felt her mouth try and form words. Her tongue writhed and bent, scraped against her teeth to try and elicit...anything! The intimidating gaze from the Monster Mage gripped her tightly though. The immense weight he let fall upon her only allowed her to lean against the iron bars and nothing more.

"And you've put us at a terrible fork in the road, human. It's either gonna lead to human magic being seen as dangerous and something that needs to be put down, or it's gonna lead to human magic taking another step forward. That step will be taken with a twisted ankle though whatever the case. You've done damage, human."

She has.

"And that damage–" Kry halted as the door which he entered through slammed open and shut. A new set of footstep clamped down the stone hallway. "Get out, Sund," said Kry with his head turned towards the louder and louder footsteps. "I'm not done here."

"And that's why Sir Gerson sent me here!" cheered Sund, the Third Monster Mage, from out of view of Cter who had stepped back having been freed from Kry's heavy gaze. That gaze was turned towards Sund, it seemed, but with the way the shadow of his cloak danced weightlessly as he expressed his frustration through exaggerated movements Cter was almost more afraid of him than she was of Kry. "Did you spend an hour or so just brooding outside the door or something?"

Kry took off his glasses with a vexed sigh which he made silent by squeezing the bridge of his nose. "I went through the report, Sund," he muttered with annoyed emphasis on the name. "You're the one not taking this seriously."

"Oh I'm sorry!" The shadow of the cloak expanded to snuff out all light as it flew up in the air with Sund's arms outstretched on both his sides. Cter heard his knuckles scrape against the walls. "I'll try and be more serious in trying to tell the entire Monster Capital that nothing is wrong and deliver it with enough brevity so that it would be convincing. I'll refrain from snuffing out the dark with the sun next time and instead use the reflection of the fire and pitchforks in my panicked sweat instead!"

Kry's neck rolled over the back of his chair as he let his palm slowly slide down his face. "Well I guess this is ruined now so no idea to keep it going." He stood up and folded the newspaper underneath his arm. "After you," he said to Sund with a hand lifted by a shrug.

"Did you at least manage to ask her about her and the monster's relationship as that was why you were here?"

The hand then fell down.

Cter could hear fabric strain while she saw the cloak's shadow lull its head in a bit too wide a circle than comfortable. "You're less a people person than Sir Gerson, Kry. Singe my soul." She flinched as a yellow-tinted face leaned into view with raised eyebrow over two eyes of faintly red. "Your friend is safe. You'll see her soon," assured Sund, apparently, as his amber hair settled from his lean. Before his words could properly germinate inside Cter he asked something else. "Were you two in love or were you just friends?"

Cter shook her head.

"Not in love?" Sund repeated to clarify.

She shook her head again.

The raised eyebrows lowered as Sund turned back to Kry. "Hope," he stated while smacking his lips hard to further drive home the point he was overly articulating. "Strange how that works, isn't it?" He stopped just short of pulling Kry with him as he began walking back down the hallway.

Kry glanced gently over to Cter before replacing his glasses on his face and following Sund.

It took until the door closed behind the two Monster Mages that Cter finally heard what Sund had said before he asked her about her feeling for Idyll.

She was safe.

Idyll was safe.

Cter hadn't killed her!

But…

What was it that she had done then?