"And how much truth do you think was inside that human's answer, pray tell?"

Sund let the giraffe guard he instructed to return to her post at the prison gate go before he sighed and waited for Kry to catch up to him.

"We had no way to tell if she was lying."

As Kry was but one step away behind him, Sund started walking. He flipped up his purple hood over his head to further block out Kry's voice, but the longer man easily caught up with some long steps. Even as Sund turned his head away and tugged his hood further down Kry was still heard loud and clear as he made a scene for all Royal Guards to hear within echoing distance inside the functionally built basement.

"If only we'd spent some time trying to gauge her emotions physically to build some sort of profile, perhaps? Then perhaps we'd be able to lay the prisoner's feelings bare before asking them?"

Sund sent searing looks from underneath his hood up at Kry's tiredly, vexed, and unblinking face. With his purposely hidden aura, some of the Royal Guards broke their saluted stance with slightly worried expressions.

"Because you're having trouble gauging if I'm just annoyed or also angry at you to boot," Kry ended while tapping at his temple with a hard finger. "But you're absolutely confident in what the human said as true after having asked her an embarrassing question."

Sund shook his head.

"Just because she's from Hjearta doesn't–"

"Her being from Hjearta has nothing to do with this," retorted Sund after stopping so abrupt his form was swallowed by his cloak embracing him from every side. He lifted a finger, narrowing his red eyes to make it hard to see into, but the looks he could give weren't lessened due to that. Kry wasn't fazed though, and merely countered both Sund's gaze and the hark in Sund's aura with as little emotion as he could. "And you know that fully, Kry." He summoned as much of Gerson's stern demeanor as he could from his sleeve, but whether that only told Kry that Sund couldn't muster it up enough himself was a hesitation Kry took advantage of.

He adjusted his glasses in a way he knew Sund found condescending as he stepped back one leg-length to let some worker birds fly by with some thick, wooden girdles spread out between them all. "I also know fully that I felt similarly when I found out Kurant was from Xoff, Sund." With a bit of magic between them to clear the air, he and Sund then put on some cordial smiles towards a buffalo monster leaving for a mission to the border between Xoff and Monster Country. "And that it was because of that reason that Kurant has her study on the bottom floor."

"Well I'd try and kick myself in the head and dislodge my knee too if I was told the only colleague I was to have was you."

From a human perspective Sund was being a massive idiot for trying to punch upwards towards a chin he'd have to jump to reach. From a monster perspective though the two were equal in their auras grinding hard against the other like their molars.

"It's not that she is from Hjearta," continued Sund after throwing his sleeved arm towards the prison door. The giraffe guard took a long step to the side seeing the turquoise-glowing hand point straight towards her. She almost kicked over a suit of armor in her haste which had her neck flick up like a spring. "It was because you're biased against her, Kry. The human mage you..."

Sund let his words trail off as he felt, and saw, the surrounding guards pique both their auras and ears in curiosity. Everyone underneath the Monster Mages and Sir Gerson had only been told that something had happened, but not what and how.

Especially not how.

Because that hadn't been figured out yet.

Kry picked up on the curiosity tingling at the fringes of his aura, and he agreed with Sund's silent request for the two to move somewhere a bit more private to talk. To begin with, Sund wanted to let Kry know that he didn't exactly agree with Kry's methods, which he continued to do after the two found a lonely spiral staircase at one of the castle's close-by corners. After extending his aura to feel if someone was near the upper door and Kry extending his aura to feel for the bottom door the two faced each other again in the combined light of their conjured torches.

"The human mage you volunteered a bit too eagerly to interrogate being the same human you wrote to be merely pretending to know magic?" said Sund with his brow lowering further and further down as he spoke. Once enough of a second had passed afterwards for Kry to realize that he had been caught, Sund continued as he leaned forwards with his arms folded over his inflated chest. "Yes, I did read the report as well." His eyebrows shot back up on his leaned back against the outer wall of the spiral staircase. "What we had on the human on top of that." He unfolded his naked hand which he gestured underneath the air in front of him. "Well, technically it was under of that." He returned his hand to his fold. "You get the point though," he shrugged.

"Unfortunately," dripped from Kry's unamused growl. "Pray," he said directly afterwards, shifting his low growl to a high-toned whistle, "why shouldn't I have been the one interrogating if I'm the one that knows most about the prisoner?" He narrowed his eyes accusingly over to Sund through his glasses. "Why do you put so much weight on that supposed bias in this scenario that literally shook the entire Monster Capital to their very souls?" A quick finger bounced between Sund and him. "Even ours?" Then it curled to point up the stairs. "And Kurant's? Gerson's? Frioke's? The Royal Couple's souls too?"

The question hung in the air between the two Monster Mages. Eventually Sund sighed and leaned more weight on the wall behind him. "I just..." was the only thing he could answer to that without having to stop and collect his words again. "It shouldn't have happened. She just made a mistake."

"Yeah," Kry exhaled short and sternly. "Yeah, she did. Singe my soul, she did. Ebott's shadow, she did." Each distinct and deliberate pause was accompanied by an equally distinct and deliberate nod from Kry. "Hjearta's beat, she did. Fluffbun, she did. I can continue if I'm not being clear."

Sund moved his yellow-tinted flame forward so that his scowl would be cast in shadow.

"And by the golly which Asgore has entrusted in me I'll get to the bottom of this," said Kry after seeing that he was being clear. "Even if that means that the human that did this mistake drowns the prison with her tears. Once again what everyone else calls my cynicism actually becomes truth, and once again I have to defend my actions even though they're in as best an intention someone could have for Monster Country." He dissipated his fire with a nonchalant flick of his sleeved hand and began ascending the stairs. "Now let's go, Gerson is waiting for us."

"You could have at least told her that her friend was alive!"

Kry stopped just two steps above Sund, but it was as if he was on a mountain above the angrily staring Monster Mage. "Had she known that the gravity of what she and her friend had done wouldn't have sunk in and made her more open to answering my questions," Kry explained back while tapping on his papers he held underneath his arm. "A carrot I could've used to again lower the risks of her lying."

"Or," retorted Sund with a snap of his finger that moved his still-alight fire to over his right shoulder, "you could've made her feel comfortable after having experienced this horrendous event that's certain to traumatize even a human. Lips become loose when they're wettened with the moisture from a deep and relieving sigh. Worked with that sock incident over in Xoff's court, didn't it?"

"That it did," Kry conceded even though he said it more as congratulating a child for doing something it was already supposed to know or do. "However, today I chose differently on the account of my bias and all that." His quickly dragged, fake smile faded away into his usual tired, neutral expression. "Now can we please not anger Sir Gerson more than we've already done? I can feel him in your sleeve already seething with demands we explain ourselves."

Sund inspected his arm and its lines. He couldn't really disagree with that since he himself felt Sir Gerson's influence screaming at his soul to do fifty push-ups. He opened up his clenched fist which snuffed out his conjured fire and left only the light peeking in from between the bars through the upper and lower doors to illuminate the steps he climbed up.

"Singe my soul, I'm so tired," he whispered while he massaged the drooping bags underneath his eyes having reached the top step where Kry waited with his hand on the large ring-handle.

"That we all are," agreed Kry sympathetically. "Ebott's shadow, if I only was awake enough to do the sock diplomacy instead."

Sund held the door for Kry to follow through behind him. "Would've taken longer though. You made the right choice with your approach."

"Doesn't mean I don't wish that I could do sock diplomacy though."

"Fair point."

The two Monster Mages walked the rest of the way through the marble hallways upon silky rugs between portraits of monsters past. They could both sense the worried curiosity seeping from the walls which those monsters from before walked between ages ago. Perhaps they'd undergone something similar and wanted to help? Similar at most though. The situation that had the entire castle and capital on its toes so much that it balanced on its nails was not something that could have happened before.

If it did then there would've been protocol for handling it. It'd been written down. It'd been incorporated into human magic curriculum. It'd been another game piece for the monsters to present to the humans to show that they weren't players in the political game, but merely outside observers.

One of the pieces from the game Sir Gerson bounced impatiently in his hand as Kry and Sund entered into his office. He didn't acknowledge them at first, focusing instead on the dark-wooden, lozenge-shaped board in the middle of his desk in the ravine of surrounding stacks of loosely rolled scrolls. An uneven gradient of yellow went through from bottom to up, resetting somewhere in the middle from white to yellow again. The stacks shook as he placed down the game-piece on the map stretched on the lozenge-board, shifting the scrolls and unrolling some even more. It allowed the sun's rays through the metal-patterned-laced window to cast swirling patterns on the deeply furrowed scales on his green forehead. "What did the prisoner deluge?" he asked while his finger tapped on his upper lip. His right eye followed Kry and Sund as they sat down at the half-round table next to an awaiting Kurant who had been half-asleep when the two arrived. "You any closer to figuring this out?"

"Closer, yes," began Kry while rubbing his face with both his hands after having put down his stack of papers on the table. Kurant reached over and swept them closer for her to read. "How close we don't know though."

Gerson glanced down to the strewn pieces on his map for a moment before looking at Kry again for him to continue.

"The prisoner–"

"Call her Cter," interrupted Kurant from behind a scroll she was reading. Her fair braid rolled off her shoulder and down her robe as she poked her head out with her narrow eyes as tight as slits. "Frioke's request."

Sir Gerson scoffed to the side, placing a small magical hammer on the tilting stack of scrolls he exhaled on so that it wouldn't fall.

He didn't say anything to refute or change that request though, so Kry continued. "The human Cter told us that her and the monster Idyll were only friends. More than so we weren't able to extract from her at the moment. She's in a very anxious state, and coupled with her aura being fainter than either of us can sense it'll make interrogation difficult."

"Difficult?" quirked Gerson with an eyebrow raised.

"Not difficult per se, but more that her answers won't be as trustworthy, as I'm sure you're aware, Sir Gerson," Kry reformulated with his sleeved wrist spinning as emphasis. "Sund was the one that got the answer after he told Cter that Idyll was alive and that the two would meet soon."

One lie.

One truth.

"And you trust that answer, Kry?"

Him and Sund met eyes.

"I trust that answer, Sir Gerson."

The turtle monster turned his attention over to Sund, who poked at one of the scrolls underneath the pile Kurant was reading through with a summoned pitchfork glowing faintly of cyan. "The monster Idyll mostly confirms that which Cter said, but from which she is speaking through the unconscious aura I couldn't tell. It was as if two voices were speaking to me at once. Two different monsters."

Sund's report had the room falling silent as he read ahead to prepare himself for what he was about to tell the others. The two hanging, woven earrings from his ears jerked with his dry swallow as he continued. "The uncertainty of the two auras and their, for lack of a better word, squabble inside the soul of the monster Idyll hadn't settled when I arrived."

"Strife?" suggested Kurant friendly.

"I'll change it once I copy it down, but at the time I was just so taken back by the sensation of two monsters in one soul to think about more descriptive words," explained Sund without animosity. He was too tired to harbor any. He continued. "However, as I projected through my aura that of Cter, of her image and of her name, the two souls seemed to merge, to coalesce."

"Fuse?" suggested Kurant again.

"No." Sund shook his head. "They were still two distinct auras, but with the mention of Cter they began acting more as one. Acting, only. They didn't shed their differences, but they found something they could have the same emotion on. Still, even when the two auras agreed they didn't agree in the same way. It was as if they'd met at the same tavern but arrived there from different streets. Met together to talk about a mutual acquaintance which they'd met at different stages in life."

Sund looked to Sir Gerson for any question the Leader of the Royal Guard might have had, but he only gazed into the middle distance as he listened with his eyes closed and one hand caressing his chin. His one finger still tapped at his upper lip. "Did you feel which of the auras was the strongest?"

"That I couldn't either," admitted Sund with a sigh.

"Nothing you could parallel with the Royal Councilors in your sleeve?" asked Kry while he adjusted the arms of his glasses over his ears. "Didn't feel the same way?"

"It was my theory when I volunteered to question Idyll," said Sund with another, more disappointed, sigh that was close to turn into a yawn. "However, it did not help. What's inside Idyll's soul is something different, yet still scarily similar to that of the Cooperative Connection. I felt the same way as when the first mages and monsters did when they found out the reason behind human magic. A sense of morbid fascination that was eclipsed by my soul expelling this overbearing sensation of disgust and wrong. The way her smile looked so...tranquil too after I mentioned Cter's name." Sund shivered as the image flashed inside his mind. "So calm even though inside her soul two auras raged with strife."

He had to briefly pause to get his emotions in order.

"The strangest thing was that even though the two auras were so similar in their assertiveness over the domain of Idyll's soul they yet again were different. Two roads leading to the same goal, yet again. Two slopes up a mountain ending at the top. One of the paths being more than-vertical at the end, and the other starting all the way from the bottom and then fading its width at the top."

Sund rubbed one of his gifted earrings with his fingers while the image of the monster Idyll's gentle and solemnly content smile kept haunting him. It was so wrongly beautiful to him. So startling and unsettling serene. "Singe my soul, how can she look so tranquil and child-like with her slumber when her aura is in such disarray? I'm nauseous just seeing it in my mind..."

"You're tired," reminded Sir Gerson. "You need to remind yourself that you are so that you can keep focus, Sund."

Yes. Sir Gerson was right. "I will." Sund needed to keep his head and soul straight in this crisis. He'd promised the people of the Monster Capital that nothing was wrong and that they were all safe. Technically he wasn't lying, but he did not speak the truth either. All those scared and worried faces that looked back at him despite being in no danger, only startled out of their sleep.

And Idyll, smiling back at him so gently despite being in as much danger as a monster can be. As a monster never has been before! He and the two other Monster Mages had to turn that around though. Make it something that could be harnessed and used in the future.

As they always had.

"More than just that reaction I couldn't get from Idyll though. All I managed to do was prompt the reaction to Cter's name, and nothing else. Not even when I influenced the auras directly would they speak to me. They were too occupied with the other one. Too much in disarray for anything else other than the other aura's presence for Idyll's soul to be aware of outside her."

"What about Frioke?" asked Kurant as she looked up from the scroll she was reading while simultaneously listening to Sund's report. "Or is she still busy with the people?" She leaned back with her chair to try and look outside the window, but her angle didn't allow it.

"Either that or she's with the Royal Couple," answered Kry with his arms folded in thought. His naked hand drummed impatiently on his sleeve which began glowing faintly.

"She's with the people which the Monster Royals are there to protect," punctuated Sir Gerson with a sharp and quick reminder to Kry. Just enough to be certain that the mage would return to the task at hand. "This human..." Gerson then whispered as he spun one of the pieces on his map by its head. After a couple of circles he grabbed it in his weathered hand and stood up, the swirls on his face giving way to his entire face being painted by the midday sun through the one window in his office. "Let's assume that she is telling the truth and that her and Idyll are only good friends. How does that change our initial assumption that they were lovers?"

Sund and Kry looked over to Kurant who had been the first to suggest it, but the second to agree that it would be a viable theory. She cleared her throat and clasped her hands on her scrolls, pressing them down like Gerson's hammer on his, albeit taller, stack. "Our assumption stemmed from the two having built a connection that was beyond the Cooperative Connection. Something more that might point to another, deeper level of the Cooperative Connection as we know it. What is happening inside Idyll right now speaks of her soul being directly influenced by human magic due to the fact that it is still active with no other monster around."

"Besides the other monster that is inside her soul," Gerson added while gently tossing the game-piece in his hand up to then catch it. "The other aura that we don't yet know the name of?" He sent over that question to Kry and Sund with an accusing tilt of his head. The two shook their heads, and Gerson loosened his grip on the game-piece in his hand with a wayward sigh. "We're certain that it is the monster that was present in Cter's inert sleeve though, right?"

"Yes," said Sund. "That we're positive about. More so than our theories of what happened. There was no dust in the apartment or any other signs of another monster being present."

"No dust that wasn't Idyll's, that is," corrected Kry which Sund nodded to as thanks. "The only source of another monster's magic could only have come from Cter's sleeve. The fact that it reacted to Sund mentioning her name in a positive matter despite what happened further solidifies it. Going with the theory that the two were lovers and tried to find a more intimate way to share with the other their emotions, Cter using her human magic would've been the most obvious choice. Perhaps it became too permanent what they tried to do."

Gerson nodded as he mulled it over. "And going with the other theory?" he said while looking down at the wooden piece he held between two fingers.

"Then that means that this connection they made is a consequence of the generational acclimation of human souls to magic," answered Kurant with some excitement in her voice that she tried to hide. "There still must've been an extreme magical event the two agreed upon to do, but if it wasn't out of love and merely friendship then that might be studied."

"Assuming we figure it out," added Sund with an innocent shrug. "Cter might tell us, but not at the moment. Not in the state that she is in."

"You said you got an answer out of her though?" Gerson put his free hand behind his back at a right angle as he walked over to the half-circle table where his Monster Mages sat. "By mentioning that Idyll was alive?"

"That I did," said Sund while straightening his back in the close presence of Sir Gerson. "Kry and I both saw that she wasn't in a position to answer anything after that."

"Will you be able to figure this out without her help?" Gerson looked to the three Monster Mages not with a scolding gaze, but with a look that wouldn't judge the answer. It was him that had issued it, after all. One by one he got a denying shake of the humans' heads. "Any objections to her practicing this new type of human magic inside the castle?"

"We'll be there to subdue if things go astray," said Sund to the intense attention give to him by the Leader of the Royal Guard. "That this potential opportunity for furthering human magic landed so close to us is not something we should wrinkle our souls against. If what we suspect has been achieved then we should try and work with it rather than against it. Just as how human magic disgusted before it was understood so I see this also being the disgust before the epiphany."

Kry was next. "While I do stand by my initial observation of the human mage Cter I agree that we should take advantage of it landing so close to us. Even if it was just the luck in the unlucky we should at least do what we can to save the monster's life. Only from that will we gain more insight into the events that happened. Further beyond that with regards to Cter we should discuss later."

And finally Kurant was given Sir Gerson's absolute attention. "The next step in human acclimation to magic is what we've been looking for, and for it to have literally woken us at night to proclaim its presence is nothing short of a miracle. It lets us explore it without having to wrestle with any of the human countries for it. They're always weary when it happens in their countries rather than in Monster Country where it should happen most logically, to them. That it did completely nullifies the chance of any political baggage to be added from this incident."

Sir Gerson looked at the game-piece in his opened palm for a couple of long breaths. "Fitting that the human that the citizens proclaimed as their own monster mage would be the one to stump the Monster Mages appointed to protect them." He scoffed a light chuckle, "If anything it shows just how far this next step in acclimation is. I'm hesitant to suggest that we don her with purple just yet," and turned around back towards his desk. "We'll have another discussion about that after we either manage to save Idyll, or she dies. I want Frioke's opinion on it as well."

As the turtle monster passed his desk he put down the wooden piece he held in the middle of Jarasevo on the map.

"You'll be the one to fetch Cter and bring her to Idyll, Kurant," he instructed as he opened the door which had the commotion outside quieting down upon hearing the creak which he had purposely ordered never to be greased silent. "You're a human woman like her. It'll make it easier for you to calm her down enough so that she's willing to work with us for this. Mention all you want about Idyll."

Kurant saluted and exited into the hallway with her braid whipping at her robe's folded hood.

"You two come with me," Gerson instructed Sund and Kry, who saluted just the same and followed him.

Another creak made it an even occurrence again, and the commotion returned having heard it.